7. A Line in the Sand
A LINE IN THE SAND
Jake had trouble letting go of what had happened with Cooper and the Jacobys. They should have been more grateful. Even Robbie agreed, even if he refused to admit it out loud.
But something else about that night kept nagging at him, too: Robbie had been nicer to him than usual.
It might have been because he needed help, but he’d been less snarky after that, too.
And Jake didn’t feel like poking fun at him as much now, easy as it would be.
It was almost too easy, like stealing candy from a baby.
That was it. It was more satisfying when Robbie had the attitude to fight back. The sooner they could return to that dynamic, the simpler everything would be.
The beach was closed over the weekend because of the predicted rainstorm, which also kept Jake inside with Isabel. That was no trouble for her, as she had plenty of projects that needed doing inside, but Jake was pretty sure that if the storm lasted for one more day, he would go stir crazy.
He didn’t want to return to the beach, exactly, just to be anywhere that wasn’t the overly quiet, idyllic little neighborhood where his aunt lived. The beach, Robbie-heavy as it was, provided him with that escape right now.
Jake had never considered himself the outdoorsy type in any sense of the word—unless outdoor sex counted.
He’d done that a time or two and enjoyed it, but not enough to make it a habit.
Nothing beat the privacy and comfort of his own home, something he still didn’t have for God—not Mier—knew how long.
When Monday dawned sunny and dry, Jake breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled the curtains open, letting light stream into his room. Soon enough he would be back at the beach picking up trash—the only place he even somewhat belonged in this snooze of a town.
Robbie was, of course, already there when Jake arrived.
He’d tried getting there before Robbie once during that first week, but there were always too many stragglers from beachy afternoons for him to get any work done without being asked stupid questions by rogue kids or stoned teens.
Robbie had found the ideal pockets of time, and all Jake could do was follow in his footsteps.
“Hey,” Robbie said, waving as Jake approached. “It’s good to be back, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have a good weekend?”
Jake furrowed his brow. Whatever Robbie was trying to do here by being so nice, he didn’t like it. “Good enough. What about you? Did you siphon more money out of your parents so you can keep spending all your time volunteering?” His insult fell much flatter than he would’ve liked.
“Great, you’re in a bad mood again. You know, Jake, we don’t have to chat if you don’t want to.”
“Good.”
“I’m just trying to be nice. I thought that maybe… maybe after the dog last week, you might be more open to…”
“Becoming friends?” Jake raised an eyebrow. “Aw, come on, Robbie, you know we can’t be friends. We despise each other too much for that.”
“Yeah, right.” Robbie looked down at the sand. “I know.”
For a moment, just one flickering moment, Jake actually felt a little bad for Robbie. He seemed genuinely hurt by Jake’s rejection. It was almost like he was a real person with real feelings and a real life, not some sort of floating figurehead of the town like everyone had painted him out to be.
“Do you have any friends, Robbie?”
Robbie looked stunned, like he’d just been slapped in the face. Jake hadn’t meant for the question to be mean at all, but Robbie had certainly taken it that way.
“Of course I do,” he said. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I know plenty of people.”
“No, not know them, but have actual friends in them,” Jake said. He was pushing it, and he knew it. “How many real friends do you have?”
“A few close ones—like you, I’d imagine, or anyone else my age. I’m not unique, Jake.”
Jake snorted. “Whatever, Mr. Moneybags. And you’re sure they’re not just friends with you for some certain, not unique at all, monetary reasons?
” Robbie didn’t answer after several dragged-out seconds, so Jake cleared his throat and said, “We should get to work. I wanna be back home before it gets dark. Aunt Isabel’ll worry if I’m gone too long. ”
“No, she won’t,” Robbie said, handing Jake a trash bag.
“She won’t,” Jake echoed, outing himself as a liar. “She’s pretty easygoing.”
“I’m aware. Remember, Jake, I know your aunt. Your family’s not an entire mystery to me.”
“Like yours is to me?”
Robbie laughed a little too harshly. “Oh, my family’s not a mystery if you know where to look. Give it another month or so, and then you’ll have heard all the dirt on us.”
“On your parents, you mean. I’ve got my issues with you, Robbie, but you really don’t strike me as the shady type, unfortunately for me.”
Robbie glared at Jake, his lips forming a thin line. “Yes, my parents, and by extension, me. But you don’t care about all that.”
“You’re right, I don’t.”
Robbie turned around, walking a few steps away from Jake to start combing the shoreline.
Jake watched him for a second or two before that annoying seed of guilt began to grow again.
He coughed just loudly enough for Robbie to hear, and Robbie straightened up, keeping his back to Jake as he listened quietly.
“So people in Eventide are pretty trusting, huh?”
“Until you give them a reason not to be.”
“Did I do that at the bar?”
Robbie glanced back. “Probably not. You didn’t start that fight, even I know that.”
“So you trust me?”
Robbie stifled a chuckle as he turned around fully, still protected by the stretch of sand between them.
“Of course not. But Ricky Solante’s a much bigger piece of shit than you could ever dream of being.
I don’t know why Safiya thinks he’s worthy of her.
That girl has some of the worst taste in men I’ve ever seen.
It’d be funny if it weren’t kind of sad. ”
“Which one was she?” Jake asked.
“The one you bumped into.”
“Oh, yeah, she seemed nice. Way more chill than her boyfriend.”
Robbie took a step closer. He didn’t look annoyed at all, maybe because they were talking about someone he actually cared about for once. “If you ever have the pleasure of meeting her without Ricky hanging on her arm, you’ll like her a lot. She was actually my prom date in high school.”
Jake raised his eyebrows, and Robbie blushed slightly.
“I didn’t want to be the only guy bringing another boy to prom. It just felt…”
“Exposing.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t go to prom, so I can’t really make fun of you for that,” Jake said.
“I wasn’t out publicly in high school, and I hated the idea of dragging some poor girl along with me as my beard.
Besides, my sister was the one who was big on school dances.
I didn’t wanna be Alex’s little brother the whole time. ”
“Your sister sounds like fun.”
Jake narrowed his eyes. “She is.”
“No, I mean it.” Robbie slipped his gloves on, adjusting the fingers until they fit comfortably on his hands. “I’d love to meet her someday.”
Jake couldn’t help the little wrinkle in his nose. “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that. My family likes to keep to themselves, so I doubt she’d be interested in mingling with someone so… conspicuous.”
They began to walk along the beach together, stabbing at trash and taking care not to disturb the sea life beneath their shoes.
“It’s nice to have that luxury.”
“You’d know a thing or two about luxury.” Jake smirked.
“You know what I meant.” Robbie’s tone was solemn, and just as quickly as it appeared, Jake’s smirk faded.
“Yeah, I know.” He took a deep breath. “So tell me, Robbie, what do you do around here for fun?”
“Well, there’s the bar, which you’ll never be allowed entrance into again, and the theater, and a restaurant—”
“No, I meant you specifically. What do you do for fun?”
Robbie looked up, the slight surprise in his expression telling. “Mostly this,” he said, holding up a soggy candy box at the end of his poker.
“I don’t know why I would’ve expected a different answer,” Jake muttered before trying again. “What about, like, on the weekends?”
“You already know I’m out here.”
“When you’re not out here, you dolt. What do you do then?”
Robbie paused for a moment. It was not intended to be a hard question, but Jake may as well have asked him for the answer to how the universe was created. “Well, I work. And I enjoy cooking.”
“At home.”
“Yep.”
“Do you ever go out? To Grayland, or…”
Robbie smiled. “Ah, so you heard about the gay bar there. No, I don’t go there very often. That sort of place isn’t really my speed.”
“Yet you’re still looking to date. Do you even try?”
“Do you?” Robbie’s eyes twinkled. “You haven’t been out there yet at all, so you must not care as much as you let on.”
Jake bit his tongue to keep himself from saying something he would regret.
“Maybe we’ll both just have to concede and be single as long as we stay in Eventide,” Robbie continued.
“Maybe,” Jake said. “At least I’ll be leaving in a few months.” He cocked his head. “You could leave too. Why don’t you?”
“Because my parents expect me to stick around and take over the family businesses when they retire. Since I’m an only child, it all falls on my shoulders.”
“Oh, yeah, that sounds terrible, getting all that inheritance to yourself.”
“It’s not as simple as that, Jake.”
“It can’t ever be simple with you.” Jake stabbed a piece of garbage with his poker.
“Nor can it be simple with you,” Robbie retorted. “I just don’t get you. First you’re hot, then you’re cold, and I don’t know which side is the real you.”
“Both. Like you were saying, I’m a complex person.”
Robbie snorted. “Sure, you are, but that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m as complex as you.”
Robbie remained silent. When Jake chanced a look at him, he was staring at the sand again, the sun setting behind him and surrounding his head in a halo.
It made his hair shine like threads of gold; a sharp contrast to the crisp blue linen of his shirt that was now shadowed by the wrinkles formed from a long day.
“I’m telling you, Robbie,” Jake said, “we could have some hot hate sex if you just put your principles aside for once.”
Robbie jerked his head up. “You’re insane.” He sounded like he wanted to laugh, or maybe scream, but he held back.
“Okay, but I’m being serious. It’d be fun. Maybe. At least it’d give us something to do for a night.”
Robbie shook his head, now smiling. “No, but thanks for the offer. I’m really not interested in having sex with you.”
“We’ve already kissed.”
“You kissed me when you were drunk. That’s different.”
“But you lived through it, and you didn’t end up hating me any more than you already did before.”
“I don’t hate you,” Robbie insisted. “That’s your thing. I just don’t like you.” He looked away when he said that, as though he couldn’t quite say it to Jake’s face.
“I don’t hate you either. I don’t hate anyone, really. I just act like I do.”
“Then you’re a great actor.” Robbie strode forward, extending the distance between him and Jake.
“Robbie, wait!” Jake jogged to catch up with him. “Let’s not make it any harder to work together than it already is.”
Robbie stopped in his tracks, clearly annoyed by how much Jake was holding him up from the work he so desperately wanted to complete. “No,” he said dully. “That would be a real shame, wouldn’t it?”
“Jesus, Robbie, I’m actually trying to be nice.” Jake threw his gloved hands up in exasperation.
“I know you are, and you’re doing a terrible job of it.”
“Worse than anyone else in this town who makes it seem like it’s an act of penance to be around you for more than a few minutes?”
Robbie’s lips twitched. “They’re nasty in a quieter way. Your disdain is out in the open.”
“Hey, at least you can take it, right?”
“Fuck off, Jake. Get back to your work before I decide not to count all this time as part of your hours.”
Jake was barely paying attention to anything but his own swirling thoughts when he walked up the front steps that night. He strode across the living room, making for the hall before Isabel stopped him.
“Shoes off at the door, Jake,” she said calmly.
“What? Oh, yeah. Sorry.”
Jake turned back and kicked his sandy shoes off onto the doormat. He started for his room again, but Isabel wasn’t done with him.
“Aren’t you hungry? You were gone for a while tonight.”
“Not really. I’ll probably get up later and grab something to eat, but don’t worry about it right now.”
“Well, there’s plenty of food in this house, thanks to you. You know where to look.”
“Sure do.” Jake smiled absentmindedly.
“Are you okay, sweetie? Did the cleanup go well tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” Jake had gotten all the way to his bedroom door with Isabel following him, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Was Robbie there?”
Jake’s mouth went dry. “Yeah, he was there. He always is.”
“Well, it’s nice to have a friend to talk to, I guess.”
A friend.
“Robbie’s not my friend.”
“Really? I thought that maybe by spending all this time together you would’ve gotten a little closer. That poor little puppy felt like it would seal the deal.”
“There’s no deal to seal,” Jake said a little too quickly.
Isabel finally let him escape into his room, and when he closed the door behind him, he wasted no time in sinking onto the bed and burying his head in his hands.
His mind was a jumbled mess. He shouldn’t have let a man like Robbie take it over so easily.
He shouldn’t have let what Robbie said today get to him.
And maybe a month ago, he wouldn’t have.
Before he thought better of it, Jake opened MatchdUp and found Robbie’s profile.
He was still single, he still liked the smell of freshly baked bread, and he was still looking for something long-term.
He and Jake were entirely incompatible. The mere idea was preposterous.
Robbie didn’t want him, and he didn’t want Robbie—not beyond his body, and even that was questionable.
He opened their conversation. The last time Robbie had messaged him was with his phone number, and the only time Jake had used the number was the morning after the bar fight. He could call Robbie any time, and the man would probably pick up. That was more than Jake could say about himself.
He entered the number, his thumb hovering over the green call button. Part of him wanted to test how quickly Robbie would drop everything to be a real friend. The other part just wanted to keep talking after their strange conversation earlier.
He was about to put his phone down, finally coming to his senses, when his thumb slipped and tapped the button. He scrambled to hang up, but when it rang through once, he stopped himself, waiting to see what would happen.
It rang again. Robbie wasn’t going to pick up.
It rang a third time. Some friend.
It started to ring again.
And then—
“Hello?”