8
Sam climbs into the passenger seat of my rental Land Rover, gives me a look out the corner of his eye, and thumbs back toward the house.
“Real breezy sister you’ve got there,” he says, that Australian accent perfectly thick.
I snort a laugh.
His face gets a little more serious. “How was it like growing up with”—he pauses, thinking—“that?”
I stare over at him, dumbstruck. I’m not sure why he feels like he can ask me that—? And I know that sounds hypocritical because I ask people invasive questions all the time, but I think I do it (mostly) in the name of science. Sam Penny’s doing it in the name of…something else. And yet…that old connection we don’t actually have (but somehow we do?) leads me to answer with: “Complicated.”
He just nods and looks out the window.
“Sun’s not up yet,” he says.
“We can go watch it?” I offer, happy to extend my time out of the house. Happy to be alone with him, really.
He looks over at me, eyebrows up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I shrug all airy, because unlike my sister, I am breezy. Well, I’m not really breezy, but I want him to think I’m breezy. “Sure, if you want to.”
He swallows—which, as we all know, can be a sign of an intense emotion. It also can be a sign of saliva buildup, so a bit inconclusive there.
He gives me a barely there smile. “I want to.”
And then I swallow, which feels embarrassing, so tighten my grip on the steering wheel, because I clearly don’t have one on this situation.
“So.” I stare straight ahead as we drive to Hilton Head Island. “You’re a sponsor…”
He nods once, eyes staying on me.
“Alcoholic?” I ask.
He swallows again, and I’m confident that was an emotional response. He’s still watching me—maybe even closer than before—and I wonder if he’s trying to gauge my temperament. Whether I care, whether I judge him…
Answers I honestly haven’t decided yet.
I keep my face neutral.
“And user,” he adds.
I glance at him. “Cocaine?”
He nods again. Maybe a flash of shame? His eyebrows twinge together for a second, lip pulling back and a little down. But then it’s gone. “Among others.”
I nod, looking at the road. “So you and Oliver have a lot in common then.”
“Had,” he clarifies.
“Had,” I agree. “Sorry.”
He shakes his head, looking out his window.
When we stop at a red light, I look at Sam and ask, “Is he doing good?”
His eyes and lips pinch together quickly, but he smooths them away as he presses his tongue into his bottom lip.
“You’d have to ask him,” he tells me.
“So no.”
He swallows. Confirmation.
“It’s hard to lose a parent.” He shrugs. “No matter what.”
“Thank you, I know.” I give him a look. “Psych major with a dead parent over here.”
He squashes a smile. “You seem to be holding it together okay?” It’s a statement, but there’s an upward inflection at the end of it.
I sit up a little straighter, proud. “I do?”
“Seem.” He gives me a pointed look and I like him a little less. “You and Oliver kind of have a weird relationship with your parents, hey?”
A little puff of air escapes me before I glance at him. “We don’t have a relationship with our parents.”
He looks over at me. “Why?”
Now, if he was me, watching me, he would have seen it, a microexpression of anguish flashing across my face, but he doesn’t. He misses it because he’s a normal person.
“Because they’re…” I trail. “Terrible.”
“In which ways?”
That question throws me—I don’t know why; I guess I just thought it was plainly obvious, but maybe it isn’t?
“Um.” I take a breath then accidentally sigh it out. “Oliver and I aren’t like them. There’s them, our parents, and then there were the Nouns—”
His face pulls. “The what?”
“Maryanne and Tennyson. They’re—” I roll my eyes. I’ve had to explain this so many fucking times in my life, and every single time, I’ve hated doing it. “We all have these stupid middle names. Their middle names are words that are nouns; Oliver’s and mine are words that are adjectives.”
He looks both confused and intrigued. “What are the adjectives?”
I sigh again. “Just and True.”
He watches me for a second; a bit of a smile crops up. “Are you ‘true’?”
I glare at him a little. “Maybe.”
Sam presses his lips together, looks like he’s fighting off a smile.
“What?” I say pointedly, eyebrows up.
“Nothing.” He gives me a restrained smile, then shakes his head. “Just—that was sort of insightful of them, all things considered, right?”
I feel my mouth turn into a bit of a pout. “I guess.” I’ve never really thought of that before. That’s annoying of him. I feel a bit on the back foot now and I don’t like it too much.
I stare back at the road. “What part of Australia are you from?”
“New South Wales.” he says. I say nothing and I know he’ll say more anyway. “Palm Beach?”
I nod, eyes still straight ahead. “But you live in LA now.”
“Corona Del Mar,” he clarifies, and I have to admit, that’s way better than LA.
“So why are you an addict?” I look at him quickly to try and catch any emotional leakage.
He stares at me for a couple of seconds, and really honestly looks pretty unfazed. “Well, I’m really good at drinking,” he says, and he says it so brazenly and with such a confidence that it makes me laugh, so he laughs. “No, really, I am. I’m fucking good at it. And I’m fun when I drink.”
“Are you?” I smile, playfully.
“I’ll do anything, kiss anyone, climb anything.”
“Like what?”
“Like, trees, and telephone poles and cliffs—”
I interrupt him at that. “Cliffs?”
He smiles at me, and I know he can see I’m a bit horrified, and I can see that it pleases him.
“Cliffs.” He nods. “I’m fun when I drink…but I’m a fucking idiot.”
“How old were you when you started drinking?” I ask.
“Like, normal.” He shrugs. “Fifteen? Sixteen?”
“So then what happened?” I glance at him. “What was the escalation point?”
His nose lets out this little puff of air and he glances at me, a hint of a smile. “I was in a car accident when I was sixteen. It was pretty bad,” he says, watching me, but then looks out the window to say the rest. “My mum died.”
I stare over at him. “Oh,” I say softly, and he looks at me again, gives me this tiny smile.
“You would have liked her.”
“Yeah?” I smile, but he just nods and then he looks away again.
“She was teaching me to drive when it happened—”
“Oh, shit,” I interrupt him.
He glances over, flashes me a quick smile. His eyes look sad now.
“I was in a lot of pain,” he says. “Like, physically, mentally—and my heart was all fucked up too because it was a drunk driver who crashed into me, but it was m—” He catches himself, his chin angles upward, as though he’s about to shake his head—he’s self-correcting—and then he swallows. “I was driving, you know?” He looks at me, and I think I do see some guilt weighing his perfect eyes down a little bit. “I thought for a long time it was my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” I tell him quietly, for good measure.
Another quick smile from him.
“That was sort of my first taste of…” He pauses to choose his words carefully. “Pain numbing.”
I nod, following.
“I liked how the medicine stopped all the ways everything was hurting me.” He says that with a sense of ownership that I actually find rather astounding. “I liked how it made everything go quiet—but they cut you off eventually.” He shrugs. “Then after that—I don’t know. My dad didn’t know how to deal with it—he’s not a bad guy; he’s actually a good guy, he was just sad.” He pauses. “Still is sad, I guess.”
I wait for more.
“Anyway, I never really liked school, and it felt dumb after Mum died, like everything stopped making sense. So I left in year eleven, and pretty much straight away, I got scouted for modeling.” Which, I mean, of course he fucking did, look at him.
“And then—you know—” He shrugs again, like it was inevitable. “Coke’s such a normal part of that world. And it was fun, and I like having fun. It made shit quiet too, and I liked that.” He looks at me, but I mean, really looks at me—like there’s subtext.
“When I like something, I just like it,” he says.
And it’s me. I’m the subtext.
I swallow and drop his eyes because as we turn into Dune House Lane to find a park to watch the sunrise, my heart is bucking like a bronco out of the gate.
I don’t like people very often. You can call it self-preservation, call it a defense mechanism, call it being able to see through people and not liking what I find—I don’t know, whatever—I just don’t get crushes very often, and I can feel one brewing in me right now.
I find a park.
“We’re here!” I sing, avoiding his eyes because my cheeks are pink and I know he can see it, so I barrel out of the car and onto the beach, walking quicker than a normal person would, which is as good as yelling from the rooftops that I have a big stupid crush on him. But then, I always wonder if everyone notices these things or if it’s just me.
Sam walks up behind me, stands there, and wordlessly, we watch the horizon get lighter and lighter by the second. I think there’s something romantic and poetic about how the light creeps up on the darkness that’s buried the horizon and blasts it away all gentle and blushy pink.
I cross my arms over my chest, not because I’m uncomfortable, but amidst my effort to get away from Maryanne as quickly as possible, I forgot to bring a sweater.
Sam notices. “Are you cold?”
I shake my head. “I’m fine.”
He pulls off his sweater and offers it to me.
“No, I’m okay.” I push it back toward him.
“You’re not—you’re cold.”
“I’m fine!” I insist, cheeks getting pink again. I worry that if I have a thing that smells like him wrapped around me, it might kick-start a want in me that I won’t be able to curb.
“Here.” He tries to put it in my hands.
I fling it back at him.
His brows furrow, annoyed. “What are you—?”
“I don’t want it!”
“Would you just—?”
“No!”
“Why?” He makes a frustrated growl—then pauses, clears his throat, and composes himself with a tight smile. “Georgia.” He peers down at me. “What is the psychological reason behind why I want you to have my sweater? And why am I so annoyed that you won’t take it?”
If I could right now, I’d cover my face with my hands and melt into a puddle of goop, but I can’t, so I do it internally instead, because oh my God, he’s perfect, and fuck. I don’t have a crush on him. I like him. I think like him a lot. I also think I should definitely not like him a lot. It’s been about thirty seconds since I met him, and I’m enamored with him.
I take one breath through my nose that’s a little too ragged to be normal, but I hope he doesn’t notice, and then I glance up. “It’s likely one of two reasons.”
Sam lifts an eyebrow, waiting.
“Reason one: you could be territorial. We’re in a public place, you might want me to wear your sweater so you can prove that I’m yours, or that I’m with you.”
Sam’s eyes pinch and he glances around us at the entirely empty, still-dark beach.
“There’s no one here,” he whispers softly, and a bit like he thinks I’m silly, but the thing is—he does it closer to my ear than he needs to. I turn and look at him, and now our faces are closer than they should be too.
I whisper back to him, “People can be irrationally territorial.”
Sam presses his lips together before he shakes his head, a bit rueful. “Not really a territorial guy.”
I look away from him, hope that the flash of disappointment that I felt doesn’t show up on my face.
“I don’t know.” I give him a little shrug. “I kind of like that primal protectiveness of men being territorial sometimes.”
“Okay.” Sam nods, squashing a smile. “Noted. What’s the second reason?”
“Well, because there’s no one around, and because you’re not really a territorial guy”—I give him a look—“it’s probably most likely that you want me to have your sweater because you want to prove that you can provide for me—like, you can fix me up and you can make me feel better, and that you know what I need.”
Sam’s eyes pinch, and a smile’s playing about his mouth, but he doesn’t quite let it land.
“And you’re angry,” I keep going, “that I won’t take it, because you think it’s a commentary on how I feel about your ability to provide. Like me not taking it means that I don’t think you can.”
“Well, I can, so if you’d just put on the fucking sweater—” He gives me a look and I laugh. He nudges me with his elbow. “So, what does it say about you that you won’t take my sweater?”
I scoff and roll my eyes, and he does this showy, cocky-little-shit thing with his eyebrows, waiting for my answer.
I swallow.
“Either that I’m romantically disinterested in you and want to establish a clear emotional boundary, or…” I catch his eye, hoping he knows that the or is the part that applies here. “…that I value highly being able to care for myself and I’m too stubbornly independent to accept help.”
“Right.” A smile breezes across his face. “So which is it?”
I bite down on my bottom lip and fake glare up at him.
“Oh,” I growl as I snatch it from his hands. “Just give me the fucking sweater.”
I hear him laugh as I pull it over my head.
It smells how I’d hoped it would. Peppery, a bit like a fire. Earthy, probably from coffee. And like whatever cologne he wears, which, I’m not a perfumer so I can’t be wholly sure, but I think it’s something Tom Ford.
He grins as he hands it to me, and then he looks back at the sun.
“Is it hard for you being back here?” he asks eventually, not looking at me.
“What do you mean?” I ask the sun.
“With everything with your sister.” He shrugs. “It seems like they hold it over you.”
I stare straight ahead.
“You were a kid. It was a mistake.”
And then suddenly I feel alone again. I feel my walls come up, the lights go off.
“We all make mistakes,” Sam keeps going. “And as long as we’re sorry, we—”
“I’m not sorry,” I tell the ocean.
“What?”
I look up at him, daring. “I’m not sorry.”
“For sleeping with your sister’s boyfriend?” There’s a mixture of confusion and some surprise on his face.
I raise both my eyebrows in tacit defiance.
He cocks an eyebrow in disbelief, maybe disgust. “Really?”
I nod once. “Really.”
Eyebrows up, lips twinging downward—AU 1 and 15: surprised and disappointed—he nods a few times slowly. “Okay.”
And then I’m already walking back to the car.
My seat belt’s on and the keys are in the ignition before Sam even gets in. I back away from the beach and gun it down the 27.
The silence is equal parts deafening and devastating.
I have been judged about what happened that night for almost the last ten years—I’m used to judgment. People don’t get it, no one gets it. There are three people in the world who truly know what really happened; one of them is me and the other two are liars.
I don’t like his judgment, though…I don’t want Sam Penny’s judgment. Not because I think I’m better than him—actually, because I’m quite sure that I’m not. My whole adult life, I’ve taught myself not to give a fuck about what other people think about me, and I met this stupid guy yesterday, and it feels like a boot is stepping on my chest when I think about him thinking less of me.
He looks over at me staring for a few seconds, trying to figure me out. “You’re not sorry at all?”
I shake my head, incredulous. “What’s it to you?”
He looks a little pained. “You fucked over your sister and you’re not sorry?”
“We don’t have to talk anymore,” I tell him. I use a gestural emblem tacitly telling him to stop, and he does.
People respond better to nonverbal cues than to verbal ones most of the time. Most people anyway. And when they ignore your nonverbal cues, as I’ve learned the older I’ve gotten, they’re ignoring them on purpose.
“Forget about the coffee,” he tells the road.
“No.” I grip the wheel tighter. “You don’t want to be the reason Maryanne doesn’t get what she wants.”
Believe me.
***
Maryanne was right; as soon as we walk in, I knew she was right.
This place is substantially cooler than anywhere else in a fifty-mile radius. Most other cafés in Okatie, the menus are written in Bradley Hand ITC. Sometimes Papyrus. (If it’s ever Papyrus, just walk away.) Here’s cool, though. Helvetica, sans serif vibes. Exposed beams, brick, and cement floors. Lots of corners and flat surfaces. It’d slot right in back in Shoreditch.
I can tell Sam Penny is impressed too, and relieved, because I think he was jonesing real bad for a coffee after our nonlovers’ spat in the car.
I myself was jonesing for something a little more Irish, but it seems distasteful in front of an addict, and also it’s only about seven thirty in the morning, and I don’t want the addict to think I’m an alcoholic as well as a whore, so.
There’s only one other person in front of us, and the service is quick.
A pretty girl who looks half-Asian smiles at me as I step up.
“Hi.” I smile at her, then barely glance at Sam. “What do you want, Penny?”
He flicks his eyes at me, jaw tight, then over to the girl, whom he makes a conscious effort to be warm toward. “Do you do V60?”
“We do, yeah.”
“Two of those, please.”
She nods and smiles, and glances at me.
“A caramel latte and a cold brew, thanks.”
She punches it through and I toss her my card before Sam even thinks about trying to pay for it. I don’t want a single thing from him.
That’s a lie, but now that he thinks I’m a slut like everyone else in this Podunk town, I don’t want to want a single thing from him anymore.
“Penny?” he whispers tonelessly as he stares straight ahead. “We’re doing last names now?”
“We don’t have to do any n—” I’m saying when someone interrupts me.
“Georgia?” says a voice and my stomach drops ten floors.
I go still. Totally still.
If I was observing me, things I’d notice: the upper whites around my eyes are showing; my lower eyelid is tense and maybe drawn upwards, my upper eyelid raised; my lips are slightly parted; my eyebrows are sort of raised up but make, for the most part, a flat line. My skin’s dropped about ten degrees in temperature.
If I was observing me, this would be my observation: I am afraid.
I brace myself.
“Georgia Carter?” He says my name again as he walks over to me, arms spread open wide, and then he wraps them around me. “My God,” he says as he holds me.
I swallow once and consciously slow down my breathing. I can’t see Sam’s face. I’m glad I can’t. I’m more glad he can’t see mine.
“Let go of me,” I tell Beckett Lane in the quietest, calmest voice I have.
He holds on for just a second longer, and might even grip me a tiny bit tighter as he does actually, and I know it’s to prove something, and then he pulls back, cupping my face in his hands and smiling down at me.
He looks about the same. Blondish messy hair, oozing the same Southern WASP-y vibe he’s had all the time I’ve known him. Eyes are too blue though. His eyes have always been too blue for the rest of him. That’s what Maryanne loved about him… It drew her in. Even before they’d even started dating, she’d talk about the blues in Beckett Lanes’s eyes. She was as annoying about them as Anne of Gables is about—I don’t know—fuck me, pick a topic—everything? She spoke about him with that sort of blinded, gooey admiration, always.
She loved him from the second she saw him, which was the first day of junior high for her, and she pined for him every day until she had him.
I’m searching Beckett’s face, looking for clues to predict what will come next and what to do, but I’m broken. I’m fucking offline.
I think he’s smiling genuinely. Why is he smiling genuinely? Is he happy to see me? He couldn’t possibly be happy to see me. Is he surprised to see me? I want him to be scared to see me, but if he is, I can’t read it on him.
He just shakes his head like we’re just a couple of old friends who the world didn’t fall in on ten years ago. “I hadn’t even thought about you being here, what with your daddy—” He looks up at Sam, who’s staring at me. Just at me. Brows low. Assessing.
“Hey, man.” Becks reaches past him, offering him his hand. “I’m Beckett.”
Sam takes it mindlessly, still staring at me. He says nothing.
Beckett pulls his hand away slowly, then glances at me.
“This your boyfriend?” he asks with a bit of a smirk.
“No.” I answer quickly. Too quickly—it was instinctual, I’m trying to keep him safe—well, not safe, but you know, out of it—but then I wonder if it might sound like I’m eager for Beckett not to think I have a boyfriend, and I get that vomit taste in my mouth. I’m wilting over here like a cut flower.
Beckett moves his head so he catches Sam’s eye. “I didn’t grab your name?”
Sam finally looks over at him, stone-faced, shoulders square. “Sam.”
Beckett clasps Sam’s arm with his hand. “Good to have you in Beaufort, Sammy.”
“Sam,” Sam repeats.
Beckett’s mouth twitches in smirky amusement. “Okay. Just in for some coffee, then?”
I give Beckett a look to show him I think he’s stupid. “Obviously.”
“You know, this is my store,” Beckett says, watching me, and my stomach churns.
“Is it?” Sam says, eyebrows going up, and I can feel him looking between Becks and me, but I can’t meet his eyes. “Heard it’s the best coffee around.”
“Yeah.” Beckett gives him a warm smile. “You’re going to love it,” he says, but he’s touching my arm—lightly grips my elbow, to be more specific—as he does.
“Your coffee’s up,” the server says from the side, offering Sam a tray.
I take them before he does and turn on my heel, walking away.
“I’ll see you around, Gige,” Beckett calls after me.
I climb into my car and hand Sam the tray of coffee, peeling out of there before either of us have our seat belts on.
My chest is heaving too much. I’m obviously upset. My body’s giving me away, like I’m just some sort of pedestrian human idiot who wears all their feelings on the surface of themself. I can’t remember the last time I couldn’t get a handle on myself and my emotions, but the lid is slipping.
Something about the slipping lid feels like it’s Sam Penny’s fault. Like he broke the seal and he’s slowly opening me up. But I haven’t been studying what I’ve been studying for six years to be undone by some Zen reformed coke addict with a savior complex.
“What was that?” Sam asks, watching me.
“Nothing.” I shake my head, scrunching my face up like he’s stupid.
He shakes his head. “That wasn’t nothing.”
But I don’t speak and stare straight ahead, not focusing on Sam because Sam is a chink in my armor, and if I think about him and how his face looks, I’ll feel sad, and I don’t want to feel sad, because sadness is a loose cannon, and what I need right now is control.
I need anger.
She did it on purpose.
I know Maryanne did that on purpose.
“That was him, wasn’t it?” Sam leans forward, looking for my eyes. “The guy you—”
I snap my head in his direction so fast it silences him. It’s a yes, obviously.
I pull into the driveway and storm into the house, my sister sitting serenely at the dining room table with our mom.
I slam her coffee down in front of her. “You’re a cunt.”
And there it is: a flash so quick, but I catch it. Satisfaction. The faintest hint of a smirk that’s quickly concealed by faux concern. Her eyes go round and she turns her lips down, bringing her hand to her mouth.
“Georgia!” My mother gasps—literally gasps—sitting back in her chair, genuinely horrified.
I’ve actually never said that word before, not in my whole life, but it’s the most severe and harsh word that I have in my current vocabulary and believe me when I say, that was the time to use it.
“Oh no,” Maryanne sighs, but it sounds like a cry. “Georgia, I didn’t even think—” Her mouth shrugs. “I’m sorry—I can’t believe you’d think I’d do that on purpose, but I didn’t even think about the implications—”
The mouth shrug is a gestural slip that, in this specific instance, indicates that my sister has no confidence in the lies she’s telling.
“You didn’t even think?” I repeat back to her. “Are you fucked in the head?”
“Georgia!” my mother yells, angrier now, and she stands, looking between us. “Now, what are you two talking about?”
“She wanted coffee.” Maryanne looks at Mom. “I told her the best in town is Stomp.”
“Maryanne,” Mom sighs, nostrils flaring for a sliver of a second. Anger, I think—that’s interesting. It can’t be on my behalf, couldn’t be. Public perception, probably. Could be contempt, I suppose. That feels believable.
“It is, though!” Maryanne’s eyes go wide.
“You did that on purpose,” I tell my sister, eyeing her. “I know you did.”
Her jaw drops. “I. Did. No such. Thing.” But she punctuates her sentence with micro-nods.
So she did.
“You’re unbelievable,” I tell her.
“Take that back!” Maryanne demands.
“No.” I shake my head. “Because I know that you did.”
My sister clasps her chest in horror. “I’d never—”
“Georgia.” My mother points a finger in my face. “No one made you do with that boy what you did except you. You did this to yourself.”
Maryanne swallows heavily but copies Mom’s stance. Head tilted, eyebrows arched. She even folds her arms over her chest. A physical barrier between us.
I glare over at Maryanne, and—without thinking, really—I smack over her coffee so it spills over the table and down onto her lap. “Fuck you.”