Chapter 15
I’ve got one hand holding back my hair and the other holding down the edge of my sundress while Justin’s Jeep flies down the road. The top is off and I can only imagine the rat’s nest my hair will be when we finally reach our destination.
“How far away is this place?” I ask.
“Not too far,” he answers. A car passes us and honks. Justin waves in return.
“Friend?”
“Richard.”
“Oh.” I turn and watch his small black car disappear down the road.
Justin adjusts his rearview mirror and says, “I think he has a date or something.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he only takes the car when he has a work meeting or a date. Otherwise, he drives his truck.”
“How thoughtful,” I say, while losing a handful of hair to the wind.
We’ve passed the marina and the small cluster of restaurants, ice cream parlors, and touristy shops bordering the beaches. Justin shifts gears and turns down a bumpy road, leading back down to the water, eventually stopping in front of a shack.
“There?” I ask, pointing to the ramshackle building. To its credit, there are lights strung over the porch and I can hear music filtering from the inside. A couple of girls in short skirts walk up the porch steps and go inside.
“Best kept secret in Ocean Beach.”
I’m still skeptical when we enter the building, but the inside is cleaner than I predicted from the shabby exterior.
Plus, it’s a bar and a little seafood restaurant, not an arcade, which gives me hope.
High-top tables line the room and a tiny stage occupies one corner.
There’s no band tonight but the music is loud anyway.
“I see Anita.” I wave to my cousin across the room. She’s dressed up, which is funny because this is the crappiest bar I’ve ever been to. I guess going out is going out.
Clustered across the room are all my friends and three guys with hungry approval in their eyes.
Our relationships are escalating just as I continue to feel my time slipping away.
The dark shadow of Mason continues to linger long after his visit, but tonight I just want to have fun, and seeing the guys outside of beach or work wear is definitely a treat.
“I love your earrings,” I tell her. The swaying chandeliers almost graze the top of her shoulders.
“Thanks. You look pretty hot,” she says.
From Anita, this means I have a lot of skin exposed.
I bought one nice dress for my trip to France and at the last minute packed it in my suitcase.
Red and strapless. It was a good choice.
I liked showing off my tanned arms and shoulders, something I’d never had before.
“Doesn’t she?” Justin says, coming up behind me with two drinks and handing one over. His arm rests on my shoulder and his fingers brush against me gently. He likes the exposed skin, too. I realize the boys are circling the dart board. “Excuse me, ladies. I need to go kick some ass.”
He squeezes my shoulder and walks off, already yelling jeers at his brother.
“So, Summer,” Anita says. Her eyes shift between me and Justin as he walks away.
I take a sip of my drink and scrunch my nose at the sourness. I wait for her to continue but she doesn’t. “So, Anita…”
“I heard your friend from back home has visited the campground…twice.”
I make a face. “You heard?”
“Of course, I heard. I also heard the first time, he left angry. The second time he was sad.”
“That whole place is full of gossips.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve heard about your comings and goings as well—and the fact you show up some mornings in the same outfit that you left in.”
“Are you kidding me?” I hit my forehead with my palm. “No, you aren’t. How else would you know? Great. What’s everyone saying?”
Anita gestures to a back door. “Wanna go on the deck?”
“Please?”
I follow her outside, giving the boys a smile on the way out the door. “It’s not that big of a deal. My ex came to visit.”
She nods. “I suspected. What did he want?”
“I don’t know. To get me back? To let me go? It’s all mind games with him.”
“Are you going to?” Her eyes widen with curiosity.
“No!” I shout. “Absolutely not.”
“It’s a fair question.”
“He offered to back out of the trip to France and let me go with my friends.”
“Wow. France? When do they leave?”
“July first.”
“That’s in a few days. You could make it.”
“No.”
“Why the hell not?” her voice is loud.
“Shhh!” I look around but we’re alone on the deck.
“Because I’m really enjoying myself down here.” I smile at her. “I met you and I’m working on my mom’s book.”
“You can come hang out with me any time. Don’t miss out on France for me.”
She holds my eye. We both know it’s something bigger. Four times bigger. For some reason, she wants me to admit it.
“Fine. I don’t want to leave the guys. I’m just getting to know them too and well, I like them. A lot.”
A huge grin appears on her face. “I knew it!”
“Shhhh!”
“Girl, we’re in a honky-tonk bar. There’s no such thing as being too loud.” She rolls her eyes. “Have you slept with any of them?”
“I spent the night with Justin—but no, we haven’t done it. I haven’t with any of them. We’re all taking it slow and…it’s nice.” She frowns. I frown back. “What?”
“They’re taking it slow?” She asks this in a confused, cautious voice.
“I mean, I’ve kissed them all and had some other, you know, activities with a few of them, but mostly clothes or bathing suits on.”
“Hmmm…” she looks out into the distance, across the waterway.
“What?”
She takes a sip of her drink and shrugs. “It’s not like them to go, as you say, slow. They’re kind of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am types. Just for kicks. Sex is fun. No strings attached.”
“We are just having fun.”
She turns and glances inside. The guys are ribbing one another, playing darts. Two cute girls approach Whit and Justin, asking a few questions and giving a flirty grin. Neither react and send the girls on their way. Whit looks my way and winks.
“Holy shit,” Anita says. “Holy fucking shit.”
“What?” Now I’m alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“They like you.”
“What?” I swear I’ve said the word ten times tonight, but Anita’s mind works at a different speed than my own.
“The boys like you. Like, really like you. All of them.”
“Well, that’s…” But I know it. I feel it, and that feeling is both parts amazing and terrifying.
Amazing because I like them too and I want to explore every little thing about them—with them.
But terrifying because France or no, my time here is limited.
And they have dreams off this island and I’m sure as hell not going to be the reason they break them.
Anita clutches my arm. “I see that look on your face. Roll it back, girl. This is a good thing. These boys…they need to learn how to settle down. How to love someone. You may be the best damn thing to enter their lives.”
“But what if it’s the opposite? What if I come in here and crush their fragile ecosystem. Their Pact has worked. Why stop now?”
“I’m not so sure it has worked.” Her eyes dart over my shoulder and I’m sure it’s one of them. I take a deep breath and turn.
It’s not one of the guys.
It’s Mason, standing at the bottom of the deck stairs in the same jeans and wrinkled shirt from this morning. His beard has grown shaggier, the circles under his red eyes darker.
He bounds on the steps and starts yelling before I get a chance to do a thing.
“I knew it. You’re not staying down here for long lost family or helping your mother with one of her trashy-grocery store novels.
It’s about whatever guy is in that bar that you’re fucking.
I knew from the start that you were a filthy whore.
You teased and taunted me for months with that innocent act.
” He clutches his head. “‘Oh, Mr. Lowery, I need help with this assignment. Oh, Mr. Lowery, you’re so smart.’ You got so inside my brain—so up on my jock—that I was willing to risk everything.
My relationship. My career, just to get a taste of you. ”
The truth, his truth, comes rushing out and I’m frozen by the onslaught.
Anita pushes past me. “What the hell did you just say?”
“I said Summer is a whore. A trashy, filthy, spread-legged whore.” He looks inside where the four guys and Bobby have now turned our way. “Which one is it? Which one are you fucking?”
In a blink, the deck is full of hot-headed men carrying pool sticks, with blazing eyes. I’m still frozen but Anita has jumped between the men and Mason.
“Absolutely no fighting,” her eyes level with each man. “This is under control.”
“He just called Summer a whore,” Nick argues. Whit paces behind him like a caged animal. Ivy and Maggie appear from inside the bar. Maggie approaches Whit and talks to him quietly.
“Which one of you is trying to steal my girl?” Mason says, his words are slurred. I realize he’s drunk.
I look pleadingly at the guys, at Anita. I just want this to stop.
“She’s not your girl,” Pete says calmly. “And it’s time for you to leave.”
“So it’s you,” he says. He looks like a fool.
Justin steps forward and says, “Hey man, looks like we got off to the wrong start. I’m Justin.
This is my brother, Bobby, and my best friends, Nick, Pete, and Whit.
Anita is my sister-in-law and Summer’s cousin.
This is our bar, in our town. We’re happy for you to join us for a drink, but Summer is one of us and if you disrespect her, you disrespect us, so watch your goddamned mouth. ”
“I saw her with you the other night,” he says, pointing at Pete. “And I saw her go with you in that cottage.” He eyes Whit. “And leave with you. So, who is it? Who is she with?”
“Stop!” I shout, snapping out of my fog. “Mason, stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. Go home.”
He spins on wobbly feet. “I’m not leaving until you tell me who you’re fucking.”