Chapter 12
ROWAN
“All I’m saying is people are scared of me when you’re the danger to society,” I say to Jules as I towel my sodden hair. We ate shit twice, neither time while I was steering the jet ski. “That last wipeout was nearly a whole-ass capsize, woman.”
She’s cackling maniacally, doubled over, arms across her bare torso. “You said you were ready to go out with a splash. I guess not.”
“Thanks for introducing me to the horror the Titanic passengers must’ve felt.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Am I really?” I grab her hips, pull her so close to me that droplets of salt water from her hair are dripping onto my chest. She’s not laughing anymore, just staring at me with those gorgeous blue eyes. If I’m going to drown, it’ll be in those pools. Yep, dramatic. “I don’t know about you, Tiny Terror, but I’m starving.”
“For food or for me?” She bites her lip. A knot forms in my stomach.
“Definitely for lobster. Sit your cute ass in the sun for a while and dry off so we can go get some.” I drape my towel around her neck and saunter away from her, toward the rental kiosk and the cubbies where we left our stuff.
“That was rude!” she calls after me.
“Who’s dramatic now?”
So far so good on the “trying to have fun” front, and she’s as stunning as she’s ever been in her hot pink bikini, wet skin glimmering in the late afternoon sun. I don’t know why the thought of having sex with her is too hard to grasp at the minute. There’s this idea gnawing at the back of my brain that I’m no longer worthy of being that close to her. I’m sullied, and if I’m not careful the hideousness inside me will rub off on her. A panicked, split-second decision and a small piece of metal stole my right to want that kind of intimacy with the woman I love, who somehow still loves me in spite of said decision.
It’s fine for now, but it’ll become a problem. And we have such little time left together before she goes back to school, thousands of miles away from me. She has to go, though. I don’t want her to; I need her to. Whatever bloody shit my dad has planned for the Calloways, I can’t stand the thought of Jules being anywhere near it. Maybe I’ll go with her, change my name, get a job at a Starbucks or something. It’s pretty fucking rustic out there, isn’t it? I could live in a cabin in the woods or whatever. I’d be very happy with a simple, quiet life, as long as she’s out of harm’s way and coming home to me.
Jules’s thin arms encircle my midriff from behind. She stands on her tiptoes to rest her chin on my shoulder. “You’re stuck in your head, aren’t you?”
“Kinda hard not to be.” I’m replaying it in an endless loop. The blast of the shot. The cloud of smoke and scent of spent nitroglycerin. I can’t recall if Gino screamed when the bullet hit him, but it makes sense that he would have: The eruption of bright red blood from his thigh, almost volcanic in force. It was arterial spray. That he survived for so long after is a wonder. “I keep thinking that if Teague had been smart enough or calm enough to take him straight to a hospital, Gino would be alive right now. Seconds count and he wasted too many.” I lower my voice to a near whisper. “Or if I had dropped the fucking gun right then and there and taken him to an ER myself, regardless of what shitty crime boss he worked for.”
“Okay, yes, you shot him.” She lets go of me and steps around to face me. “Do you think someone else wouldn’t have done the same thing? Gino would have. Teague would have. If it had been a cop facing down a man holding an unarmed man at gunpoint, they would have. That’s America, Rowan. Bad guys with guns, good guys with guns, it’s all the same. When everyone has one, everyone’s on equal ground. That’s why I hate guns.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way. “You’re right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“You know what might? I know for a fact that if you weren’t a Monaghan, and Gino hadn’t been a Calloway man, the two of you would’ve been friends. He was a real tough guy, but only on the outside. He would’ve liked your sense of humor. You would’ve had him cracking up all the time.”
That does bring a smile to my face. “Really?”
“Uh huh. Honestly, I bet my dad would like you, too. You make me happy, so my mom already does.”
Say what now? “You told your mom about me?”
“She guessed. She’s very observant. Annoyingly observant.”
“She knew you were going to meet me, and she still let you come here?”
“Yes. She told me to. She gets it. She loves my dad and he’s a total shitbag compared to you.”
“Shitbag,” I repeat. I can’t stop myself from sniggering. “My old man, too. Shitbags, plural. Does that make us Shitbag Juniors?”
“I hope not.” Jules sneers. “Come on. I’m dry enough and getting hungry. You promised me lobster; I demand you make good on that promise, post haste.”
How she manages to be so forgiving and accepting, I can’t understand. But it makes me love her more and feel even more undeserving of her at the same time. “Post haste? Alright, college girl. Let’s post the fuck outta here with haste.”
I grab her sundress and clutch from the edge of the towel. She relieves me of them, replacing them with her hand in mine.
“Babygirl, you wanna save some of that for the lobster?” Jules has melted butter all over her fingers, and a little dribbling down the plastic bib that was provided with her meal. “I heard tales of how graceful and elegant the Calloway Princess is. They were all enormous lies. Everyone back home is full of shit!”
“Don’t believe everything you hear. I heard Rowan Monaghan was the most stone-cold badass bitch in the history of stone-cold badass bitches”—she leans across the table—“but it turns out she wears lace panties and likes to cuddle.” She winks as she grabs her napkin.
The way she challenges me… She may be the only person I’ve ever met who has the stones to do that. I don’t intimidate her in the slightest. Meanwhile, I didn’t understand the concept of true fear until I met her. I never let anyone get too close—closeness, bonding, caring is risky. If I never cared, I could never be hurt by the loss of anyone. I care about her in a profound way—bigger than the word “lover” could encompass. There’s a sense of duty to the way I love her. She’s not a damsel in distress, and I’m not a knight in shining armor, but regardless of whether it’s infantilizing or antifeminist or what-the-fuck-ever, I can’t shake the need to protect her like we’re living some King Arthur shit. We sort of are. It’s the battle for Boston. I don’t give a fuck about winning or losing it, but losing her would be intolerable.
Is this what all those cheesy romance novels drone on and on about? Finding someone who makes you feel whole when you hadn’t realized you were half—until they walked into your life at a kid’s birthday party.
Anything less than forever with her wouldn’t be enough.
“Am I that big of a mess?” she asks.
“What?”
“You’re staring at me.”
“You are a mess. A perfect mess. My perfect mess, and I hope you never change.”
Her head tilts, kind of like when a puppy sees something it’s confused by. “You being so openly sweet is going to take some getting used to.”
“Pfft. You like it.”
“I love it. You’re a complete mush for me.”
“Well, you’ve seen me cry, so it’s either be a mush for you or destroy you.”
“Mush please.”
“You got it.” I take a handful of moist towelettes from the plate in front of me and slide them over to her. “For the love of God, use these.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She puts on an obedient face as she tears open one of the sachets.
People in Maine are unnervingly friendly, evidenced by how chatty our waitress is at the close of our evening. I’m used to servers checking in once during the meal, because that’s their job, then handing over the check all careless and fake nice at the end. This woman asks questions: Are you here on vacation, where are you from, blah, blah. At my best I am not chatty. I have a shit ton of words in my head, though they rarely leave my mouth. Juliet, on the other hand, is a schmoozer. Charming and delightful. She could do this professionally. We complement each other in the best ways because we’re opposites in all the right ones.
Jules says something cute about us taking a couple’s long weekend. The waitress replies, “That’s nice,” and asks how long we’ve been together. It stops Jules. Right. My turn.
“It’s pretty new, but when you know, you know.” I place three hundred-dollar bills into the red check presenter and give it to her. “We don’t need change.” It’s a nice tip for good service, but also a bribe to get her to go away. It’s close to sunset and I was dead serious about watching it from the beach with Jules, a fire, and some fucking s’mores; my soul needs all of that.
“That’s very generous! Thank you.”
Yeah, yeah, I’m generous. Let me leave. “You’re welcome. Have a good night.”
We’re up and at the exit post haste. I hold the door for Jules. She smiles to herself. I’m curious about what. “What’s that grin for?”
“You’re a badass bitch who opens doors and pulls out chairs. You must have learned that from your dad, so maybe he’s not a total shitbag.”
“I didn’t learn that from my dad; he doesn’t know anything about manners. I learned it from Alistair. It’s how he treats his wife, and most people, actually.”
Her smile disappears. “Alistair. I know him. I’ve seen him with my dad. I feel like I shouldn’t have, though.”
“You shouldn’t have. He was my dad’s right-hand.” Now he’s a dead man walking.
“Oh.” It’s all she has to say. She catches my meaning.
“I took care of it as best I could.”
She takes my hand, gives it a squeeze, and keeps hold of it the whole walk back to Sand Dollar Beach.
“Fuck me sideways, you’d think I’d be better at starting fires, right?” I’m frustrated by the tinder’s stubborn insistence on not burning. I’m getting embers to spark, but it’s too windy to light in earnest. Still, I’m leaning over the firepit, trying my damnedest. “Should’ve bought a Zippo.”
I catch Jules as she looks up from reading the ingredients on a package of marshmallows. “Sweetie, it’s a good thing. It means you’re not an arsonist. Not being an arsonist is very hot.”
I snap upright and drill her with a glare. “You just made a pun. You’re punny. I’m dating a punster.”
“Did I break you?”
“No, it’s dope. And that one was awful. The worse the better.” I snigger, and she does, too.
“It was really bad. Do you want help with that?”
“I thought about asking you to come stand over here and block the wind, but you’re so scrawny it wouldn’t help much.”
She titters because she knows I’m right, but tosses a “fuck you” at me for good measure. “Come sit with me and enjoy the sunset. We can worry about arson and s’mores later.” She thrusts her hand out toward me, fingers wiggling. I take it and join her on the recliners. “This is nice,” she says. “The whole day was nice. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the small waves splash against the shore, and seagulls making their weird half-barking, half-honking sounds. I can picture us when we’re old and gray, doing exactly this. I don’t know that I’ve ever pictured myself living to be old and gray before. It’s strange, but pleasant. I figured I’d be a brilliant star, one that burns white-hot for a short time then extinguishes unceremoniously. Maybe not.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you… Where’s your car? I didn’t see it in the lot.”
Right. She notices everything. Now I understand she gets that from her mom. We have that trait in common, but mine developed over time for survival purposes. When your father uses you as a drug mule, there’s a constant threat of attack or arrest—outside of the city proper, where we don’t pay off half the police force.
If I tell her about the chase, how I had to dump my whip and commit grand theft auto, her mind will catapult into overdrive, tanking the chill vibe of the day. She’s an overthinker, an over-plotter. She’s too smart not to be. It’s not information she needs. I lost the motherfucker, I’m positive of it. Don’t freak her out. “I had an issue with it. I took a different one.” Omission is not lying.
“Okay?” It comes out like a question, singsongy at the end. She could call my bluff or prod for more of the story, but she’s content to drop it. “Just curious. You made it here, that’s all I care about.”
Thank you for letting it slide, my love. Sunset is past. The moon and stars are brighter here than in the city. We don’t need a fire for light, although it is getting chilly. “I’m gonna try the fire again. I still want those goddamn s’mores.”
“Mmm. Hard same.”