Chapter 9Cody
9
Cody
I pushed my polished silverware across the marble island. “Dad.”
“Son,” he acknowledged as he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and turned the page of his newspaper, which was perched on his crossed legs.
I knew he hadn’t read a word—I’d been watching. We sat at the breakfast bar of his oversized kitchen with a stool between us, but I was close enough to see that his eyes hadn’t moved, and when they did, it wasn’t in the correct direction. I suspected he was using the paper as a prop against me.
Or for me.
If I’d agreed to meet him for lunch like he’d asked instead of showing up for breakfast unannounced, then the table between us, the menus in front of us, and the people around us would’ve done the job of shaving off that layer of intimacy. Of the inherent too much. Unspoken agreement would have dictated not here, not heavy. There would have been so many others’ eyes, and they’d be on us, and they’d pave the path for light and easy.
But whether it was an intentional move or a subconscious one, he was trying to make it so here in his own home. Probably because I’d burned him before when he tried assert his parental whims.
I didn’t give a shit about light or easy or comfortable right now.
“The good china is a bit much for microwaved French toast sticks, yeah?”
He sat the paper aside as I picked up one of the sticks. It was squishy.
“And who eats these with a fork and knife?” I continued.
He took off his glasses and set them on the bar.
“Why did you even have these in your freezer?”
He blushed and then went big with a conversation swerve. “AJ asked about you again at work this week.”
I bristled. “What could he possibly have to say that wouldn’t lead to me punching him again?”
Dad uncrossed his legs but kept his expression relatively neutral as he told me, “At first, he said he just wanted to know if it was true that you were back in town. Then he wanted to know if your number was the same. And then today, he wanted to know if you were staying with me.”
I pointed my limp French toast stick at Dad. “That nosy fucker.”
An unimpressed look came across Dad’s face, as close to a reprimand as I’d seen in a long time. “What are the chances that you two could bury that hatchet?”
Running the French toast stick through syrup, I scoffed at the idea. Burying the hatchet with the guy who I thought was my friend for a decade but who then slept with Bree and took a bribe from Bree’s grandmother to skip town?
Fucking zero. That was the chance.
My answer must’ve shown on my face because Dad sighed deeply before squaring his shoulders as if he were going into battle. “I’m just going to say one thing.”
This was what I’d wanted—to try. So, I would.
I forced my shoulders to drop, talking myself through Liem’s instructions.
My fingers relaxed, causing me to drop the French toast stick I’d just picked up back onto the rose-patterned china. Then I blew out a breath and nodded for Dad to continue.
“There’s almost always more to the story. And if there isn’t, there’s certainly more to people.”
I was already shaking my head as he spoke, my mind easily conjuring the image of Alexander “AJ” Juno. His blond hair, blue eyes, stocky frame, and thirst to rise higher in the corporate ranks of the casinos.
My former friend, Ace.
“He made his choices.”
I chanced a look at Dad, but to my relief, he was nodding. “He did. I’m not saying you need to forgive him. I’m not even sure what happened, exactly, but all I want is for you to be happy, Cody. And it’s a damn near impossible thing to be happy if something or someone has some of your peace.”
We didn’t talk much after that, but I’d heard him. When we finished breakfast, I gave him a brief hug before I got in my truck, and then he got in his SUV to head to work.
The drive seemed about as aimless as my thoughts, but it wasn’t.
And they weren’t.
I drove up the Coast, past my old apartment.
Then I turned around at the pier where I’d first called LL.
There was an echo of an ache in my chest, and I rolled the window down and thrust my arm outside to give myself room to breathe.
And then remembered Liem doing the same on the golf cart and settled for bending my arm and resting it on the opening instead.
Neon lights and flashing marquees painted the sky and reflected in my mirrors as I drove down the casino strip. The twin bridges to Bay Springs came into view.
I didn’t take them.
Instead, I turned again and drove to the one place I’d managed to avoid for months.
As if the sky knew the mood was about to turn, the wind changed, and dark clouds rolled in. I pulled over to the side of the road closest to the short driveway, and I gasped just as the first raindrops pinged against my windshield and forearm.
It was so much worse than my imagination.
Previously white columns were charred black. The front porch was sunken, the blown-out windows covered in blue tarp, but from what I understood, the bulk of the damage was in the back of the house, near the kitchen. The trees stood tall and proud, undamaged.
Austin hadn’t understood why I needed to get off the cruise ship as quickly as possible when I heard that Miss Barb’s house had caught fire. He’d thought I was being dramatic.
But Austin had a whole-ass family. He didn’t have a friend— one friend—who was his family. He didn’t understand it or care to.
When it happened, it was my dad who finally got ahold of me to tell me. He’d been vague in his message and left out the parts about Miss Barb being missing and Bree getting hurt. At the time, I hadn’t thought how strange it was that it wasn’t Bree, Vinh, or even Liem who’d called. I’d just known I needed to be there.
“Just wait,” Austin had said. “I’m sure they’ll update you soon, and then you can decide.” And when I refused, it became: “It’s a bad look when you keep forcing others to cover for you.” He simply did not understand that I needed to go and gave up arguing about it but from a place of surrender. Not understanding.
That’s when I saw the writing on the wall that it wouldn’t work out between us.
And if there was one thing I’d learned while stuck on a ship with a boyfriend who gave up on me so easily, it was that I never wanted to be made to feel like that again.
By someone else, or by myself.
Because the person I’d been on that ship? He wasn’t worthy of anything.
Not love, not adventure, not even understanding.
But I was home now, and I was going to do better.
I was going to be better.
And it needed to start with a fight.
“Last year, I left you behind. And not because you’re a bitch, but because I am.”
“Hey—” Bree tried to interrupt my speech, but I wasn’t having it.
“No, let me finish. You’re a bad bitch. The baddest I know, even if your hair blinds me in the summer sun and you laugh like a demented hyena. And watch TV with subtitles.”
“But they talk so fast,” my best friend sighed, repeating the same argument she’d been giving for years. “And I need to know every word.”
Damn, the hyena thing didn’t land. I might’ve used that one too much over the years.
“You know every word already, Cher. You used to bring a portable DVD player to FU so you could watch Rory and Lorelai while the other casino daycare kids played air hockey and raced down slides into the ball pit.”
The motion theater pod we were strapped into jerked as our on-screen boat banked on the Nile River. She snapped her head toward me as our characters stole horses and galloped away from unseen foes. “The hell do you know that?”
That was a damn miscalculation, but also damn my dad for putting thoughts of Ace in my head.
Dammit really was a good summary of our last year.
But still, I confessed, “AJ. He told me about it at some point.”
Our horses really started to… gallop? Was that the word? I was no horse girl, but they were going fast enough now that the pods were jerking up and down—in relatively close time to the action on-screen—that our conversation blessedly had to pause there.
Eventually the horses made it just in the nick of time to an oasis where whatever had been chasing us couldn’t follow.
A confusing but happy ending.
The pod lowered back to its starting position, and we unstrapped our harnesses. I followed Bree out, but she didn’t exit the theater. Instead, she guided me over to the steps that lead to the next row of pods and sat on one, her freckled cheeks slightly flushed from the ride and her expression distant.
I took the seat beside her and nudged her with my knee. “Do you remember when the stories sometimes didn’t have happy endings?”
She smiled wistfully. “Back when there were only lap belts and not full-blown five-point harnesses?”
“Yeah,” I said through a laugh. “I swear the movements were a lot more brutal then too. Like riding a damn bull.”
I worried the shells of my puka bracelet. Say damn one more time, Cody.
Her smile remained as she spoke. “They were, but only on the ones with the HEAs. They always had a terrible fall off a cliff or a malfunctioning roller coaster right before you were saved at the end. And then the ones where the villain won, you just kind of….” She trailed off, her forehead creasing as she reached deeper into her memory. “There was that one where the storm came after you thought you’d reached the end, and then you drowned.”
I remembered. That one had only played for one weekend before the more involved parents heard about it and complained to management.
The feeling of my toes scrunching inside my shoes was one that I hated , but it gave me just enough distraction to say what my heart needed to. I created the irritating friction and urged my mind to focus on that. “How did we go from kids running loose around arcades and casinos, thinking we ruled the world, to adults with ex-boyfriends and ex-friends and… just. Just so much dammit ? We did our best, didn’t we? I really thought we had. But now… now I’m not so sure.”
The screen came to life with the announcements and disclaimers about buckling up and keeping your hands and feet in the vehicles, and I thought of Liem again. But then the next show started even though no one was sitting in the pods. That was one weird thing about the motion theater. The shows automatically started every fifteen minutes, no matter if there was an audience or not. The nine black shells lifted from their individual platforms—three on each row—and in creepy unison, started the ride for no one.
“We did the best we could with the tools that we had,” Bree finally said.
“That sounds like a guidance counselor poster,” I said dryly.
She sighed. “Doesn’t make it less true. And you know I never ask this of you, but please do not razz me today about the next words out of my mouth.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “After today is still fair game?”
She nodded.
Smiling, I fluttered a hand at her in a “go on” motion.
Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and muttered, “My therapist said something that I’ve thought about a lot this month.”
Reaching over, I took her hand and forced seriousness into my tone. I never wanted her to think she couldn’t be candid with me, so I volleyed an opening dose of truth. “Your aura is as beautiful as it has ever been.” I squeezed her hand. “Please continue, Cher.”
She blew out a breath as she laid her head against my shoulder. From the first day eleven-year-old Bree had grabbed my hand at Caffeina and told me that everything would be okay, it had been. But only because of her.
“The way Meghan, the therapist, described it to me was a lot smarter, so I’ll just tell you what I’ve gotten from it.”
Bree lifted her head from my shoulder, and I released her hand. The girl loved to gesticulate, so I was in for a show of another kind.
And she didn’t disappoint as she scooted away and then turned toward me, her hands raised in front of her. “When we’re kids, we have small emotional plates. They reach capacity quickly.” She touched her fingers together to form a circle. “As we mature, the plates grow with us.” Her hands moved, the imaginary circle growing larger until her fingers were no longer touching. “ Theoretically .”
I nodded, watching her hands. “Because for some people, they don’t.”
“Right,” she agreed. “It’s not breaking news that some people are more mature than others, but the takeaway for me was really just, if I can make sense of one part of someone, even a part so basic…,” she trailed off, seemingly losing her thought.
“Give me an example?” I prompted.
She furrowed her brow, and then it smoothed as she smiled. “Vinh has a fucking oversized serving platter. As in, comically large.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “You were ready for that one. Thought about that a lot?”
Grinning, she replied, “Oh, yeah. A lot. A lot . But apparently that’s what happens when you’re raised by functional parents and have that beautiful, developed brain of a thirty-year-old.” She sighed, smiling softly to herself as she dropped her chin. “That kind of dismisses the work he has put in for himself, which is so wrong. Especially with how hard he has fought for his peace.”
Peace. That word had almost as much screen time as “dammit” had lately.
Bree lifted her chin. “If Vinh has a serving platter, I have a dinner plate. But last year, it got so overfilled that I was afraid to even move.” She glanced at me. “That’s how I’m summarizing it in my head. And that’s how I approach thoughts about any of it.”
My brain naturally wondered about what type of plate I had, but I stopped it. Now wasn’t the time.
Thankfully, Bree continued. “Grandmother…,” she started, then paused. “Some days I think Grandmother had a plastic bucket, but she only filled it with things for herself. Like when the slot machines used to pay out real coins. Other days….” She glanced at me, a wry smile forming on her lips. “Other days, I think she had a cocktail napkin. A wet one.”
I cackled. “Savage, Cher.”
She laughed along with me in a way that we only could in the dark of an abandoned theater. Because in the light of day, there was almost nothing funny about the downfall of Barbara Ann Copeland.
Our laughter faded from the room, and Bree’s gray eyes caught mine before she went on. “Understanding—even in the simplest of terms—the emotional capabilities people have before they make their decisions has helped me deal with a lot. Grandmother’s actions, Fortuna trying to con me into a horrible work contract, all the things in between….”
My chest was suddenly tight. I was on that list. “Like how I left in September, knowing you were keeping things from me.”
Her lips thinned. “And how I kept things from you too.”
We shared a long look before she stood up and offered me her hand like the gentlelady she was and hoisted me up with strength that always surprised me. “Now, let me go kick your ass at Skee-Ball.”
“This wasn’t much of a fight,” I observed.
She linked arms with me, and before we left the dark of the theater, she said quietly, “Not everything needs to be. But if you want to tell me about Austin and what happened on that ship, I’m all ears. My plate always has space for you.”
And I would tell her almost all of it. But not until after I excused myself to the bathroom to splash water on my face and pull myself together. That witch had given me feelings.
We played two rounds of Skee-Ball as I gave her the lay of the land on the ship. The tiny sleeping quarters, the shifting day-to-day tasks, how my hours and Austin’s didn’t often align.
She chased lights on the cyclone machine and racked up tickets while I rested my hip against the dome and told her about how the schedule on the boat made me feel—and act—almost manic.
About how I struggled to build friendships, or even pretend to want to, with Austin’s friends or with any of my co-workers.
How they all slowly started to regard me as unreliable and unapproachable after being lost, late, or misunderstood a handful of times.
But there were things I didn’t tell her.
Because no matter how big or small her plate was, I didn’t want her to add the weight of my failed relationship to it.
She didn’t need to know about that final straw—Austin’s frustration with my desperation to get back to the Coast. Really, the more I thought about it, the more I saw why he felt that way. During the entire summer I’d pursued him—and let him pursue me—I hadn’t hidden my growing desire to escape the Coast. And it only took one phone call to unravel that desire.
Or, to him, that’s how it probably seemed.
But I could, and did, tell her about how Austin liked me most when I was a dreamer. Because he’d been a dreamer too.
Our dreams just weren’t the same, and we didn’t discover that until after signing a six-month contract.
Bree and I mounted the fake snowmobiles of the Arctic Thunder game as she asked, “What do you want to do now?”
The forced air of the game blew her red hair back and tickled my exposed scalp as we made a lap around the snowy track.
“With my life?”
She nodded, and I shrugged. “Find a new dream. A better one.”
Her eyes flicked to me, but she kept her snowmobile avatar on course as only a kid raised in arcades and casinos could.
“What’s step one?”
I smirked at her. “Calling Daddy about a houseboat.”
Her snowmobile crashed into the bank.