Chapter 14 #2
“I’m so close, sweetie. If I can just pin down where the barn lay. We’re so close.”
I got up to clear the plates and kissed the top of his head.
“I know you are, Dad. I can’t wait.”
—
Sedge brought his girlfriend back from Boston. Her name was Nerissa and she was from Florida. They’d been dating since freshman year.
“I thought they’d broken up,” Laura said to me, in an undertone, as we rode down to the village in the Club Car. “They keep breaking up and getting back together again. It’s so toxic.”
“She seems nice, though.”
“She reminds me of a stray kitten,” said Laura. “You know, the big eyes and the fluffy hair and the—the smol.”
“Small?”
“Smol,” she said. “Tiny and cute.”
Up front, Nerissa leaned her head against Sedge’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.
Laura and I sat in the middle seat. Ben slanted his big frame on the backward-facing rear seat and stared thoughtfully at the pavement unraveling behind the wheels of the Club Car.
I couldn’t tell if he was listening or not.
I leaned forward and tapped Sedge on his other shoulder. “I didn’t know Monk Adams still played at the Mo. He, what? Sets up in the corner of the bar?”
“Yep. Guitar and a mic. They don’t publicize or anything. Just word of mouth among the locals. Our little Winthrop secret.” He turned his head over his shoulder and grinned at us. “You have to promise you won’t tell anyone.”
“Seriously? Who would I tell?”
The Club Car squeaked to a stop where the Mohegan Inn sat against the hill. The tired white clapboard was surrounded by golf carts and bicycles. Cars parked without any regard for emergency vehicle access.
“Looks like the word got out, bro,” Ben said.
We made our way through the crowd and found a pocket of space near one of the battered circular high-tops. There was no music yet, just a deafening buzz of impatience. Ben said he would find the bar and buy the first round.
“Beer for me,” said Sedge.
“Vodka cranberry,” said Nerissa.
Ben looked at me. “You want a beer, Luce?”
“Bro, she’s seventeen,” said Sedge. “Her dad would kill me.”
“She’s eighteen,” said Laura. “And I’ll have a beer.”
“The fuck you will. She’ll have a Coke,” Sedge said to Ben.
Laura scowled at him. “Diet Coke.”
“Just water for me,” I said.
Ben started for the bar. The crowd parted around him, as water around a shark.
You could see the top of his head above the other heads, the maple gleam.
I wanted to tell him to watch out for the wooden beams that shouldered the stained plaster ceiling, but the noise and the human beings had swallowed him up.
“I can’t even breathe,” said Laura. “This is crazy.”
A ripple of cheering broke from somewhere around the bar to fill the room. Testing, said the microphone. A couple of track lights illuminated a patch of golden hair making its way from the bar area to the corner of the room. The cheering spiraled into whoops. A lone female scream—I LOVE YOU, MONK!
“I think that’s him,” I said.
“WHAT?” Laura yelled, over the growing noise.
A voice came through the microphone. Hey, Winthrop.
Cheering like a tide of noise. A few guitar strings smothered it to silence.
Got a brand-new one for you tonight. The random notes from the guitar fell into a bar of music. It’s about a place I think we all know pretty well. Lot of memories down on that beach. Or is it just me?
And that was the first time I heard Monk Adams sing “Horseshoe Bay.” The first time anybody did.
—
After the concert, everyone headed to Horseshoe Bay.
As we pulled away in the Club Car, Posie Pinkerton launched herself onto Ben’s lap on the middle seat.
Laura and I sat in back, listening to the giggling and murmuring until Sedge lurched to a stop at the edge of the meadow, where we walked across the grass to the path down the slope—the same path Ben had carried me up on his back, two weeks ago.
By the time we reached the beach, Ben and Posie had disappeared.
“Can you believe Posie,” said Laura. “Jumping on Ben like that. She’s been all over him since the Fourth of July party. They’re probably fucking in the grass somewhere. She was so drunk. I can’t believe Mike let her drink that much. She’s not even legal and he knows it.”
“Ben’s a dumbass. You’re a million times better than her.”
“Do you think?”
I nodded. “Reeks of desperation.”
Laura turned her head to take in Sedge and Nerissa, who sat together on a clean bleached log, heads bent toward each other like a pair of swans. “I bet she dumps him again by tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t know. They look pretty into each other.”
Sedge was, in fact, kissing Nerissa. Kissing her like his life depended on it.
I felt weirdly detached as I watched them.
Sedge’s left hand cradled the side of her face; his right hand crept at her waist, under her shirt.
She wore a pair of micro linen shorts and a snug strappy tank top.
She was tanned and dainty and delicious.
“Whatever.” Laura leaned her head on my shoulder. “At least we have each other.”
“Who cares about boys,” I said. “Sisters before misters.”
I felt her despair leak through my T-shirt and into my bones. Some kids were linking hands and dancing at the bonfire, high on whatever. A spray of sparks burst from one side.
“That’s what I love most about you, Luce,” she said. “That’s why I would do anything for you. Of all my friends, you’re the only one I trust.”
Someone plopped into the sand on Laura’s other side.
“Laura Peabody, as I live and breathe,” he said.
Laura sat up. “Monk Adams! You scared the shit out of me.” She threw her arms around him. “What are you doing here, mixing with the normies? You know Bud Cooper, right? This is his daughter, Lucy.”
Monk stretched his arm across the front of Laura and offered his fist for a bump. “Lucy? Monk.”
“Hi, Monk.” I bumped his fist. “Love your work.”
Laura said, “You need to sing that song again. ‘Horseshoe Bay.’ Because here we are.”
He threw out his hand to take in the bonfire, the cove, the knots of people. “Here we are,” he said. He’d had a few beers, I thought. Not drunk, not sober. “How’s the tennis coming along?”
Laura turned to me. “Monk was my camp counselor one summer at the Club. He taught me how to serve like a badass.”
Monk saluted. The bonfire licked the side of his beautiful face, making him look slightly deranged. Fallen angel, I thought. He had this strange magnetic pull about him. I couldn’t look him in the eye; it was like looking into the sun.
I stood up. “I should be getting home. My dad was a little pissed I went AWOL tonight. We were supposed to be hunting for old barns on maps.”
“That sounds way more exciting than listening to a bunch of sad-ass songs from a man with a guitar,” said Monk.
“Stop. I can’t wait to get home and brag to everyone in London that I saw you play in a bar on Winthrop Island.”
Monk stood up, cupped my face with his hands, and pasted a loud, beery kiss on my lips. “A Winthrop lass is always family to me,” he said.
—
Instead of walking home along the road, I climbed over the rocks at the northeastern end of the cove and along the ledge until it sloped down to Poseidon Beach.
The steady wash of the waves made a comforting noise.
Laura and Monk had offered to walk back with me, but I could tell from Laura’s eyes that she wasn’t ready to leave.
I’m good, I told her. Enjoy yourself.
The sand on Poseidon Beach was deep. I took off my sandals and let my feet sink into the slippery cool. There was just enough moon, just enough ambient light to see where I was going, but not enough to see my surroundings.
So the voice that said Hey, Lucy made me jump into the air.
“Sorry,” said Ben. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I stood there, holding my sandals, and glanced around for Posie Pinkerton. I thought maybe I’d interrupted a tryst. Poseidon Beach—the perfect spot to hook up on a warm, moonlit July night.
But he was alone.
I waved at the darkness behind me, the faint voices that drifted across the rocks and sand and water. “I thought you were still there.”
“Nah, I just walked that girl back to her house. She was a little too wasted to be out partying.”
“And then you came here?”
He shrugged. “It’s a nice night. You on your way home? Want some company?”
“Sure,” I said. I don’t know why. I didn’t really want company. But Ben was the next best thing to being alone—he didn’t make you feel like you had to say anything or be anything. You could just exist.
We started up the beach. “Sorry about that situation back there,” he said.
“Situation?”
“The Nerissa situation.”
“What? Oh. She’s all right.” I stepped on a shell and bent to flick it off the ball of my foot.
“There was a bad breakup at the end of the year. The deal with Sedge, he goes for the needy ones, you know? Like he can save them?”
“Sounds like a lot of drama.”
“To each his own,” said Ben.
“They seem to have made up pretty well, though,” I said.
Ben walked along, staring at the ground a few feet ahead. “I probably shouldn’t say this. I just worry about the guy. He’s so fucking clueless, you know? Maybe growing up in the bubble.”
“Clueless about what?”
“You know. I mean, I like Nerissa? She’s smart and cool and everything. But she likes to hit the slopes pretty hard.”
“She’s a skier? I thought she was from Florida.”
“No, honey,” he said. “The other kind of snow.”
“Oh,” I said. And then—Oh.
“Yeah. I’m only telling you because I can’t tell him myself. He’d kick the shit out of me. She’s his fairy princess, right? She can do no wrong. I’m just saying. Gonna leave it there. You can do what you want with it.”
“You could tell Laura,” I said.
He shook his head. “She knows already.”
“Then why doesn’t she say something?”
“Maybe she has. Maybe he won’t listen to her. Besides.” He kicked a piece of driftwood aside. “She’s got her own shit going on.”
“Laura is not on drugs,” I said.
“I mean the eating thing. The not-eating thing.”