Chapter 23
GEMMA
Beck is gone.
He left a month ago—the day after his high school graduation. He made the announcement at dinner?—
I’ve decided I’m not going to college. I’m going to California. I want to be an actor.
When he said it, Dent muttered something about that goddamned McLeod kid, before throwing down his napkin and walking out while my mother stared at him like he just sprouted a second head. The only ones who didn’t look surprised were Reese and Riggs.
Riggs looked resigned and Reese looked… blank.
They’ve looked like that ever since.
Reese wanders around town like a ghost. I see her sometimes, down by the river, but she never comes to the house. Never knocks on the door to say hello or ask me if I want to walk with her.
Riggs is a different story altogether.
I can’t seem to get rid of him—not that I’m trying very hard. To be honest, every time I catch sight of him through the screen door, waiting to walk me home in the alley behind June’s, those stupid worms in my belly start squirming, overtime.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking home on my own, you know?
” I tell him, pulling off my apron before tossing it in the bin.
It’ll be my job to wash them when I get to work tomorrow morning.
Even though I’ve paid off my debt to June, she’s offered to keep me on through the summer, much to my mother’s dismay.
She’d been hoping for a mother daughter trip to Europe for the summer.
First my son forgoes college and just takes off to California, and now my daughter would rather spend her summer washing dishes in the back of a noisy diner, than spend it with me in some of the most beautiful cities on earth.
I encouraged her to go without me, telling her I’m more than happy to stay at Dent’s while she’s gone. It took some pushing but I finally won, with the provisions that I meet her in Italy for the last two weeks of summer and that I be allowed to bring Emily with me.
“Never said you weren’t, Gem,” Riggs answers back with a slightly exasperated smile. “But you’re on the way home, so I might as well.”
Riggs started his job at the golf club a few days after Beck left. He’s a pool attendant, which means it’s his job to pick up after a bunch of spoiled, entitled Clearwater kids. Even though he acts like he doesn’t, I know he hates it.
Shouting a quick goodbye over my shoulder at the busy kitchen, I push through the screen door and step into the alley where Riggs always waits for me. “June’s is nowhere near the bus stop,” I say, letting him know I think he’s full of shit.
“What’s the shoe situation today?” he asks instead of acknowledging the fact that the bus that runs between Barrett and Clearwater stops a block from our neighborhood. To walk me home, Riggs has to walk nearly two miles out of his way.
“Freshly duct taped,” I tell him while wiggling my toes. “They should hold for a few days.”
“Jesus, Gem…” Shaking his head at me on a laugh, Riggs starts to walk. “You’re the only girl I know with a closet full of shoes who refuses to wear any of them.”
He’s not wrong.
“How do you know what’s in my closet, Riggs Wheeler?” I ask, falling into step beside him. It’s warm today. If not for the breeze coming off the river, it’d be intolerable.
“Cam told me your closet is bigger than her room and mine, put together,” Riggs says, massive hands dug into the pockets of his navy blue uniform shorts. “It’d be pretty stupid if you had a closet that big and it wasn’t filled with shoes.”
Cam.
She and Sera are still on the warpath.
They came into June’s today and sat at the counter, giving themselves a clear view of me, washing dishes. They complained loudly that their glasses and silverware were dirty. It was all I could do to keep myself from going out there and stabbing them both with a fork.
Rather than tell him how horrible his sister is being, I flash him a brief, brittle smile while we walk. “Cam used to love my closet. She’d spend hours in there, trying on clothes.”
Giving me a brief, uncomfortable look because even though he brought her up, he knows his sister is the last thing we should be talking about, Riggs sighs. “Heard from Beck?”
“He called my mom before she left,” I tell him while we emerge from the mouth of the alley and turn right. “He got a call back for that series he was so excited about and I guess he booked a dog food commercial through some talent agency.”
“Dog food?” Riggs shoots me a quick, what the hell? kind of look.
“Yeah—” Stopping at the end of the block, I wait for a car to pass before I start to cross the street, heading for the trailhead that runs alongside the river.
“I guess he spent three days playing Frisbee with a golden retriever. He said the pay was shit but it was enough to earn him his SAG card—” I roll my eyes.
“As usual, everything seems to be coming easy for him.”
“Leaving wasn’t easy for him, Gem,” Riggs says quietly. “He was really worried about?—”
When he cuts himself off, mid-sentence, I stop on the dirt path to look at him. “He was really worried about what?”
Grimacing slightly, Riggs shakes his head. “Let’s talk about something else, okay?”
“No.” Standing my ground, I stack my hands on my hips. “I want to know what my brother was so?—”
“You,” he blurts out, his admission followed by a slow sigh, filled with frustration. “He was really worried about you before he left.”
“What?” Confused, I shake my head because that’s not the Beck I know. That Beck left with barely more than a promise to call me.
“Before he left, Beck asked me to…” Struggling, Riggs tilts his head and rubs at his ear. “He heard some things about you and Ethan and?—”
“Oh… I get it now.” Dropping my hands away from my hips, I turn away from him and start to walk the trail running alongside the river.
Catching up to me in a few, long-legged strides, Riggs snags me by the arm. Turning me around so he can see my face, he frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I get it,” I say, swallowing hard against the sick feeling beginning to gnaw at the pit of my stomach. “My brother heard the rumor that Ethan started about how I let him fuck me?—”
When I say the words fuck me, Riggs tightens his grip on my arm and his face falls into a scowl. “I told Beck what really happened. I told him?—”
“Did you?” I ask, looking up at him. “Did you tell him what really happened, Riggs?”
“Gem…” Yanking his hand off my arm like it burned him, Riggs shakes his head because the answer is no.
Riggs kissed me and afterward, it was like it never happened.
He went inside and I followed after him a few minutes later.
I’m not sure what I expected when I walked through the backdoor but I know it wasn’t to find, even though everything about me had been rearranged and pulled loose by that kiss, the boy who gave it to me, acting like it never happened.
“I didn’t think so…” Bobbing my head, I look away from him, mouth twisted to the side to keep from crying.
“So my brother has no idea he invited the fox into the hen house.” I laugh a little before I cut my gaze back to his to find him staring down at me like I just punched him in the gut. “Did you like kissing me, Riggs?”
He gives me that look. That sick, panicked look and I’m sure he’s going to lie to me.
But he doesn’t.
“Yes.” He says it quietly, his gaze burning a hole in my cheek.
Because his answer is more than I could’ve hoped for, I push him even further. “Are you ever going to do it again?”
His dark gaze slides upward to meet mine. “Probably.”
Going for broke, I push him again. “When?”
“I don’t know.” Shaking his head, he looks away from me. “When it stops feeling wrong, I guess.”
I make an ugly sound in the back of my throat. “Just what every girl wants to hear.”
“Fuck…I’m leaving.” Lifting one of his massive hands, he swipes it over his face. “I’ve been talking to one of the recruiters at school and… come on, Gem, don’t look at me like that. I can’t stay here. You know I can’t stay here.”
For a moment, all I can do is just stand here and stare up at him, stunned because while I knew it was a coming—Riggs will be a senior come the fall and there’s nothing for him to do in this town after high school except grow old and die—I didn’t realize it would happen so soon.
Or maybe I just didn’t want to think about it.
“I don’t want you to walk me home anymore,” I tell him quietly. “I don’t want you to come by the diner while I’m working. I don’t want?—”
He gives me that panicked look again. “What are you saying?”
Backing away from him, I shake my head. “I’m saying I want you to leave me alone, Riggs.”
“No.” Swallowing hard, Riggs shakes his head on another scowl. “I can’t. I?—”
“If you don’t stay away from me, I’ll tell Beck.”
As soon as I issue my threat, Riggs goes pale because the last thing he wants is for his best friend to know that he kissed his little sister.
“Gem—” Tone rusty, Riggs shakes his head.
“I don’t care what you promised my brother—stay away from me.” Turning away from him, I leave Riggs behind to walk home alone.