18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Betty
A Few Moments Earlier
I want you.
Laredo’s desperate plea plays on repeat in my head as I hop off the stage, racing away from the man who knows what I want before I do. I snatch Olivia by the wrist and pull her through the crowd.
She presses her empty service tray underneath her other arm. “That was freaking insane, B. You onstage with them?” She bounces on her happy feet, a joy I don’t share.
We step toward the empty bar, seeking quiet. Everyone in the bar is pressed near the small stage, yet the bar is nearly as loud because of the speakers cranked to eleven. I grab her by the wrist again and pull her toward the exit. We enter the outdoor patio, and I stop near the collection bin.
“Do you have any idea what he just mouthed to me? Onstage? In front of the world?” I start right in. It’s all I can think about.
“Let me guess,” Olivia says with a lightness in her voice, misreading my own. She pumps her arms in front of her of her chest, knees bent, hips swinging like she’s recording a TikTok dance. “He’s a guy. You’re wearing his favorite pair of shorts. It’s not that hard to figure out.”
Is she right? Am I reading too much into it? “He said—I want you.” I blurt it out, no longer able to keep it to myself. I need Olivia’s perspective.
“Of course he wants you. Every man in here wants you. Wants me. Wants anyone who looks like this.” She waves her hand down the length of her body and spins.
“No!” My frustrated shout halts her spin. “He wants me! Only me!”
Her brow furrows as my heavy words float away into the summer air. Her voice slows and lowers. “And that’s a good thing. Right?”
It’s a simple question that only highlights how lost I am. I should know the answer.
Olivia knows me so well. She sees my struggle and leaps in to lead me out of my confusion. “Listen. And I apologize for taking you back to your darkest moment last fall, but back then, you were kicking yourself. Claiming you were disposable, forgettable, replaceable.”
I lower my head to hide the shame that hits me, still. I felt so isolated, alone, carrying secrets whose weight was breaking me. Only Olivia knew all that I went through. She forced me to tell my parents. A step I had been trying to avoid at all costs. It was painful in every sense of the word, but Olivia traveled with me every step of the journey.
“Obviously, you’re not.” She jabs a finger back toward the bar. “You never were.”
I lift my head, not surprised to feel the warmth of tears on my cheeks.
“Let’s get out of here.” Olivia declares. It’s not a question but an order. “Give me thirty seconds to clock out and let them know. Don’t go anywhere.”
She’s gone before I can respond, and I’m left alone with a nearly full bin of cans and seagulls circling above me. I pull out my phone and type without thought.
Me—How will we make this work? There is so much we need to talk about. So much you don’t know. I want more than a week. I want you too.
My heart pounds in my chest as my finger hovers over the Send button. One click and my entire world will shift. It’s like pulling the plug on a dam. The cascade of everything I’ve been holding back will come rushing out.
“You’ll be fine. You’re only an hour from closing.” I turn with the sound of Olivia’s voice. She’s holding the door open with one hand, shouting back into the bar. Clocking out early on such a busy night is not nearly as easy as she thought.
My fingers pound on the backspace key, erasing my message to Laredo. I can’t. He wants me because I was literally standing in front of him. The doubts and insecurities from last fall return in a flourish.
The only reason he came out tonight was to connect with Ricco. All Laredo cares about is the music. And hooking up, but that is just a side benefit of the music. It’s not about me. None of this has been. How could I not see that?
Laredo—sorry I didn’t stick around , I retype. I will not be the girl that falls into his lap this summer. I fill out the rest of the text, giving him enough opportunities o walk away guilt-free. Just like last summer.
Go, enjoy. B.
Olivia’s footsteps approach, and my nervous finger hovers over the Send button again.
“Ready to go?” she says, looking at me holding the phone. “Tell him good night. He’ll be seeing you in his dreams.”
I don’t utter the words me too but do something just as reckless. I add a second B to my note. BB. A sign-off only he’ll understand. Two letters that change the entire tone of the email.
Betty Belle.
I despised that moniker when Laredo placed it on me right here at Driftwood. It sounded so juvenile, so high school. But the more he said it, especially the way he punctuated each B with a sexy twist of his neck, the more it grew on me. Just like he did at the bar that first night, his persistence paid off for him. No one other than my dad had ever given me a nickname. Something that makes me feel like they see me as unique and extraordinary.
It’s Olivia’s turn to pull me by my wrist, leading me down the boardwalk away from the bar. I already know where we’re headed. A decade of friendship will do that.
Five minutes and one hopped gate later, we’re swinging our legs off the end of a closed pier. It’s our let’s get away from the world and chat spot. I’m the troubled one, which means Olivia gets to choose the music.
She flips the light on her phone and lays it down between us. A calming soul jazz song plays softly, and it’s perfect. We sit in silence for a few moments before she shifts her body, turning to face me. Heel pressed to the chipped wood, she wraps an arm around her knee and presses her cheek to it.
“He wants you.” she says with the confidence of a best friend. Her voice is filled with empathy, kindness, and history. A long history that began the first day of our high school sophomore year. Olivia's family had moved to Seaside, and I approached her outside the school grounds where she looked overwhelmed with all the changes in her life. We only chatted for three minutes but she's told me she knew we'd be best friends. She marched to the office and changed her homeroom assignment to mine that morning and we've been stuck together ever since. "Do you still want him?"
I don’t dare answer immediately. We both know it’s not that simple. “I can’t trust myself. Not with him.” I state the fear that finally dawned on me during our walk down the boardwalk.
Olivia waits and allows me to gather my thoughts. “Every bad decision trigger I own was there.” I hook a finger pointed back toward the bar. “An emotional return to the Driftwood. Me and him back at the place we first met.” My words ricochet back at me, and I realize for the first time how true they are. I’ve been riding an emotional pendulum from the time I walked into the bar. “Alcohol. Music.” I continue to list the triggers. Triggers the old me embraced. I count out each of the dangerous markers with my fingers, leaving only one. I hold up my last finger, pointing to the dark ocean. “And… him.” Every trigger that could lead to a bad decision. “So no, I don’t know if I want him. I’m not even sure he wants me.”
We listen to the waves hitting the beach before Olivia speaks again. “You know you are out of your mind?” She pokes my thigh with the tip of her toe. “I saw the way he was looking at you. He totally wants you. Like… wants want you.” Before I can object, she continues. “See now that you were never disposable or forgettable. Forget about the triggers. Ask yourself, did he look at you that way in the bookstore?” I peer up at the quarter moon, barely lighting the sky. “No Driftwood, no alcohol, no music. Just you and him. I bet you an extra shift at the Driftwood that he did.”
My laughter sounds foreign, the stress of the night making every syllable from me a difficult feat. Of course, Laredo looked at me like that at the bookstore. I search my memory and can’t come up with a time he’s ever not looked at me that way. Including the very first time he saw me.
“He came tonight with you. Didn’t you say he’s working with Ariel from Devil May Care in the studio?”
I nod, already sensing where she’s headed.
“And last I looked, she’s a pretty big deal. Her songs out chart Ricco’s. By a lot.” Ariel and her band have released smash album after album every year for the last five. “You may have forgotten, but your stalker version already told me about his family band breaking up and him losing out on his record deal. Don’t you think the fact that he’s not spending every second with Ariel trying to weasel a record deal for himself tells you anything? He’s here for you, babe. You’d better get used to it because something tells me he’s not going away that easily.”
I shake my head. Olivia always sees the glass half-full. Usually, I’m right there pouring in the other half. But I can’t. Not after what I’ve been through.
“I know what will make him run in the opposite direction.” My warning makes Olivia go silent. There are no secrets between us. “If I tell him what happened after he got on the plane, that’ll get him racing in the opposite direction.” Shock waves race through my body. I can’t even picture how I would even start that conversation with him.
“You already know where I stand on that.” Olivia reaches through the darkness and pushes my windswept hair from my face. She wants me to see her eyes, even in this dim moonlight.
Last fall, after crying in her arms, she pleaded with me to call Laredo. I never did.
“Maybe his return is the universe telling you it’s time you told him.”
I’ve run this scenario through my head a million times. They always lead to the same answer. Tell him.
But I’ve never had the strength or courage to go through with it.
I avoid Olivia’s gaze. “After the text I just sent him, I might not see him the rest of the week.” Over the last few months, I’ve tried to change my ways. Trying to change who I am, what I stand for. But I’m still a chicken shit.
Olivia doesn’t let me take the easy way out. “And if you do see him, will you tell him?”
Her question hangs in the air like a rhetorical weight that threatens to drown me in the darkest and deepest depths of the ocean.
My shaky breath causes Olivia to pull me into a hug. I muster up my last words before closing my eyes and snuggling with her. “I’m scared.”