BENNY
Beach Beautification Day is going smoothly. We got a decent turnout this morning. Almost two dozen people spent the last few hours scouring the beaches with metal reacher tools and trash bags while sporting orange high-visibility vests.
Bree’s wrapped in a thick baby blue sweatshirt she picked up at the tourist shop on the side of the road.
It’s emblazoned with white BODEGA BAY in all caps and a large, embroidered anchor.
Her blonde wavy hair—wig—is stuffed beneath a matching baseball hat and pulled through the back into a long, bushy ponytail.
Despite the chilly morning temps, she’s in shorts that hit her legs mid-thigh.
I’m in shorts too, but I probably don’t feel as cold as she looks.
“It’s supposed to be summer,” she says, frowning as she points her trash grabber at me. “Summer is warm.”
“The sun hasn’t been out long. Give it an hour, and you’ll be fine.”
“This is not warm,” she says again, ignoring me.
“It beats your humidity, though. At least it cools off here at night.”
She doesn’t seem to agree. “I’d rather sweat through my sleep than suffer this ice water ocean. You can’t seriously mean you surf in this.”
“The wetsuit helps.”
Her expression implies she doesn’t believe me. She shivers as a wave of wind passes over her, then shoots another glare my way. As if the chilly weather is purely my fault.
I climb between two sand dunes, scanning the ground for trash. If she keeps following me, we’ll be blocked from the bulk of the wind soon. “Hey, you wanted to be here.”
“Who knows why,” she mutters under her breath. Clearly that’s a rhetorical question, but it still makes me wonder why Bree Belacourt chose to join my BBB in picking up trash on the beach when she’s clearly running from something.
For me, I hope, and not for Peter. His invitation got her here, but I’d like to think the moment we shared in the waves was the clincher.
It’s possible the feelings that whole running-from-the-waves situation evoked were one-sided, but I don’t really think they were.
Maybe I shouldn’t have carried her from the water like that, but her pants were getting wet with the way she was splashing through the surf.
I’d acted on impulse. I didn’t realize it would throw us back a decade and make me feel seventeen again.
There are so many reasons I should keep my distance from Bree—our history, everything that made me decide to leave the first time, whatever made her run from the world and hide out here—just to name a few. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to toss all those excuses in a cupboard and twist the key.
Ignorance is supposed to be bliss, right?
Our current isolation isn’t helping things, either.
Whenever we’re alone, we get comfortable, talking about the past with such abandon I’m worried I’ll slip and reveal something I shouldn’t.
We’re the only two people walking through the sand dunes in South Salmon Creek, and I focus on the garbage poking from the sand.
I’ve found way too many plastic Pepsi bottles and fruit snack wrappers today.
“So you have the place for four weeks. How long are you planning to stay in town?” I ask, not looking at Bree.
That way, she doesn’t see how much I need to know this information.
Colby told me she had rented his house for a month, but knowing her—and how flighty she used to be with everyone but me—that might mean anything.
“As long as I need to.” She removes her glasses and wipes them on the edge of her sweatshirt, showing off the makeup she donned for today. Extra thick eyeliner frames her lashes, and those freckles are back. It’s jarring how different she looks. “We’ll see what happens.”
It’s not quite the time commitment I was hoping for.
It leaves me uneasy, knowing she could take off at any moment.
We haven’t gotten to catch up yet, not properly.
While I never expected to see Bree again when we parted ways all those years ago, now that she’s here, it feels like a waste for her to disappear too soon.
I’m trying to contain a cloud—she looks solid from a distance, but she’s not tangible up close.
“No Houdini acts without warning me, okay?” I say, my heart hammering at the audacity of my request.
Bree glances up. Her brown eyes rake over me in surprise.
“It’s been good to see you, that’s all.” I try to backpedal when the silence stretches too long. “I want to be able to say goodbye.”
“That’s fair.” She puts her glasses back on and targets a Doritos bag with her reacher. “I can’t believe how many people litter. These poor animals.”
“The fish deserve better.”
“And the birds, the sea lions, all of them.”
“Even the sharks?”
“I doubt a Doritos bag will slow Jaws down, but yeah, of course they do.”
I chuckle, moving away from her to nab a Red Bull can half buried in the sand.
My feelings and emotions are a jumbled mess, all swirling together and confused.
These are the facts as I know them: we’re both single, we used to be in love, and she’s here for a short period of time.
At least…I think she’s single. As far as People is concerned, she’s recovering from a massive heartbreak.
I glance across the dune, where she’s frowning at a clear cellophane wrapper, trying to get it into her trash bag.
The Bree I knew fought heartache with 90s romcoms and lots of takeout.
This Bree looks perfectly at ease, except for the murder in her eyes directed at all the trash-leaving miscreants.
How hard is it to take your garbage to the garbage can?
My head is getting all kinds of distracted, so I walk the opposite direction. Obviously, the more I’m around Bree, the more I want to be around Bree. If I pursued seeing her again—strictly as friends, of course—what would I be facing when she inevitably went back home?
I haven’t really dated anyone in over a year. I kinda saw a tourist for a while last summer, but it fizzled when she went back to Arizona. Before that, I dated Peter’s sister, but she moved to be a ski instructor in Tahoe, and I rarely see her anymore. Neither of them broke my heart.
No one has broken my heart in the last decade of casual girlfriends, not like Bree. Which feels unfair since I’m the one who ended the relationship and left.
Again, it makes me wonder if this is a bad idea. What am I going to do, invite her over for Monopoly and lasagna? There isn’t really a way to pursue friendship with this woman without setting myself up for regret.
By the time we wrap up our cleaning in the dunes, I’m decided. The best thing for both of us is to go our separate ways today. Anything else is asking for trouble.
We carry the bags of trash to my truck and climb in. “The BBQ at the community center will have a much larger turnout than the beach. People always come for the free food, which is part of our purpose anyway…but there’ll be a crowd. Should I take you home first?”
Bree looks at me, cocking her head to the side. The sun is fully out, warming the earth. It’s shining over us, glinting off the truck’s mirror beside her. “Do you think we’ll stay outside the whole time?”
“Usually, I’d say yes, but they mentioned putting the tables indoors today because of the wind. I don’t know.”
She chews her bottom lip, and I force myself to look at the road as I pull out of South Salmon’s small lot.
We drive along the narrow street in front of a row of pastel-colored houses.
Sand blows across the lane in front of me, the sun glinting off the ocean to our side. I never get tired of this view.
“I’ll come,” she says. “So far, no one has suspected anything. I think my wig is doing its job.”
“You aren’t wearing your signature lipstick, and your glasses cover half your face, Bree. If you take those off—”
“You know about my signature lipstick?” She draws in a playful gasp. “And you know it’s called a signature look?”
Heat blooms on my cheeks. “It’s kind of hard to be American and not know about it.”
“You have a good point. About the glasses, I mean.” She sits back in her seat with a huff. “I think my makeup helps, and I really don’t want to return to that quiet, empty house yet. Did you know your cousin has dolls in one of the bedroom closets?”
“Those are probably his mom’s. The house was hers first.”
Bree shivers. “Still weird. Last night, I was convinced something was trying to break in, but it was just a branch hitting the window.”
“You mean someone was trying to break in?”
“No. Something. It felt like an actual scary movie.”
“Like The Birds?” I ask.
“The what?”
“The Birds?”
Her face screws up in confusion. “The seagulls?”
“No, the Alfred Hitchcock movie. They filmed it close by.”
She turns in her seat again to face me. “Really? I’ve never heard of it.”
“How? It’s a classic.”
“For locals, maybe.”
I shake my head. “A Hitchcock classic,” I repeat. “It has good suspense. The town they used is down the road. Bodega.”
“That’s not confusing at all.”
I chuckle. “They’re named after the same guy, but one’s inland. The other is…” I gesture out the window.
“On the bay,” Bree says. “Still, that would mean more if I’d seen the movie.” She tilts her head to the side and looks at me. “Maybe I’ll watch it.”
“Alone in your doll house?”
She squeals. “Don’t remind me!”
I laugh, unable to help it. “It’s one of my grandma’s favorites.
Probably a proximity thing. She also remembers when they were filming, though, which might have something to do with it.
” My phone rings, and my truck is too old to have Bluetooth, so I flip it over.
“Speak of the devil. Do you care if I answer this?”
“No, of course not.”
I swipe the phone on and hit the speakerphone button. “I’m not alone in the car, so be careful what you say.”
“Wouldn’t want to divulge my latest murder, you mean?” she asks, her familiar voice scratchy with age.
“I like this woman already,” Bree says.
There’s a beat of silence before Grandma speaks. “Who’s with you, Benny?”