Benny
Peter has a difficult history with alcohol, so his bonfire party on the beach is totally dry, as usual.
He’s provided coolers of sodas and waters, everyone in town brought various sides, and I smoked enough pork to feed a crowd twice over.
Bree is wearing her sunglasses to keep her concussion ruse up, and the music is loud, but not as loud as usual, no doubt for the same reason.
“You shouldn’t let them bully you,” Sierra says, sidling up beside me with a Diet Coke.
Her blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail and threaded through the back of a Giants baseball cap.
She smiles at me. “I think it would be fantastic if you played during the concert, but I understand why you don’t want to. ”
“Oh yeah? Do you have a secret past you’re trying to keep hidden, too?”
She laughs, but the sound is empty. Her gaze tracks the sound of her son’s laughter until she finds Jack running along the sand, then swigs her soda. “Just stick to your guns if you want, okay?”
“I plan to.”
“Good.”
“How’s the flower business?”
“Booming, actually. Or should I say blooming?”
“I expect better from you,” I say.
She gives me a real laugh this time, but it dies out quickly.
It doesn’t take long to see why. Colby is sitting on a long driftwood log, chatting with Peter’s sister, Amber, who came down from Tahoe for the weekend.
I know he’d never date her, because we have an unspoken rule where we stay away from each other’s exes.
Even though I have no residual feelings for Amber, Colby won’t touch that situation with a ten-foot pole.
Sierra wants him, but I’m not getting in the middle of that. She doesn’t need to hear about our unspoken rules.
Bree had been sitting with Rose, eating dinner, but she threw her trash in one of the large black bags we’d brought down and made her way toward us.
“Hey, Anne,” Sierra says, smiling. “How’s your vacation going?”
If I didn’t know Bree so well, I wouldn’t have caught the strain that flashed over her face. It was so brief, I would have missed it if I’d blinked, anyway. “I haven’t slowed down this long in ages.”
“That sounds heavenly.” Sierra looks for her son again, then returns her attention to us after spotting him. “Do you have anything fun planned? There are some great hikes south of us. Point Reyes is amazing if you’re willing to drive a bit.”
“Uh…that’s good to know.”
“You’re not much of a hiker, are you?” Sierra asks, laughing.
“I’m not anti-hiking, but I don’t have the shoes for it. I don’t know if I have the legs for it, either.” She laughs.
I can’t help but look at her legs. She definitely has the legs for it.
“You can borrow some of mine if you want. We’re probably around the same size.”
“Thanks,” Bree says. “Maybe we could exchange numbers—”
“Who wants cake?” Amber calls, pointing to a white bakery box I happen to know is full of cupcakes. Easy to eat, disperse, and clean up. Besides, if we leave a cake out on a table for more than ten minutes out here, it’ll be full of sand.
Colby raises his hands like a conductor and gets us started on singing “Happy Birthday.” A few other people drag Peter toward his sister so he can blow out the one candle she keeps relighting behind her cupped hand.
We sing the entire song, Peter blows out his candle, and people move forward for cupcakes.
Jack is one of the first in line, of course.
By the time we get cupcakes, Bree has spoken to more people than I have. She’s made friends here, and seeing the mark she’s leaving on my town is bittersweet. When she leaves for good, will she tell them who she really is?
“You’ve got a case of the stares, Benny,” she says, licking some of the frosting off her cupcake as she looks at me.
I swallow. “And you’re eating that wrong.”
“Don’t shame me.”
“I’m not, but you might get to the cake and regret eating all your frosting.”
She holds my gaze. “Just because you said that, I want to eat all my frosting in one big bite.”
I laugh, the sound jolting straight from my stomach.
Bree’s grin is infectious, even hidden behind shades in the waning sunlight and extra thick lipstick with the wrong color makeup making her skin look odd. All of it together makes me want to pull her close and laugh with her. I’m caught in her smile, and I don’t want to be anywhere else.
Peter claps me hard on the back, a grin spreading wide over his face. “Thanks for coming, guys.”
I could shove this cupcake in his smug face. “Happy birthday, man.”
“Did you have a good birthday?” Bree asks, taking a bite of her cupcake, frosting and cake and all.
Peter nods. “It was great. Amber came up and we went out on the boat.”
His shirt flaps open in the breeze, showing off the tattoos climbing up his chest and disappearing beneath his collar, lit by the fading sun and the orange firelight.
A bird’s wing is visible now, and I know it involves a redwood tree, too.
He got them a few years ago to mark a significant point in his life. I’m proud of him.
But, dude, close the shirt. I don’t need to compete with his insane workout regimen.
My gaze slides to Bree, but her attention is on his face.
The glow of the bonfire dances over her skin as we move into evening.
Sierra has slipped away, probably to track down her son and drag him away from the ocean now that it’s becoming harder to see.
I look for them along the shore, but Peter draws my attention back to the group.
“Did you notice Kyle talking to Sierra earlier?” he asks.
“No.” In all honesty, I haven’t really had eyes for anything but Bree.
That’s obvious to Peter, so I don’t really have to tell him.
Among our friends, there’s been an awkward…
you can’t even call it a love triangle, because everyone is into someone else.
Our surfing buddy Kyle wants to date Sierra, but the only guy she has eyes for is Colby, who is totally ignorant.
Or that’s how he’s playing it. I don’t actually know how he feels.
“They went for a walk on the beach while Jack was flying his kite. They found a couple of guys with cameras, so Sierra turned Jack around and came right back.”
“What are they shooting?” I ask.
“Don’t know, but it is kind of weird, right? Colby shoots the beach all the time, but not with three other people.”
“Maybe it was a class?” Bree suggests. I try to read her face, but with the shades and the growing darkness, she’s a mask of stone.
The half-eaten cupcake in her hand is being pulverized in her fist, though.
“Could be.” Peter shrugs.
“A walk sounds good,” I say, putting my arm around Bree. “What do you say?”
It’s clearly the last thing she wants to do right now, but I’m trying to give her an out. She looks up at me, then sends a smile to Peter. “Happy birthday. Thanks for letting me crash the party.”
He shrugs, glancing at me. “Any friend of Ben’s is welcome.”
I gently push between her shoulder blades and we slip toward the table, where I pick up a napkin and scrape the cupcake and frosting from her hand.
She looks down, watching me clean her palm. “Shoot. When did I do that?”
“We don’t know if they’re paps,” I whisper, tossing the used napkins in the large black bag. I don’t release her hand.
“It would make sense, though. I shared that story about Jaida loudly at the church, and clearly someone was there.”
“Probably a priest.”
“Wouldn’t he have come out the door? The one we were blocking?”
I’m sure there’s a back door to the building too, but that doesn’t help.
It really could have been anyone. “We don’t know who they were or what they overheard.
The group on the beach could have been a photography class or a group of friends.
There are scary possibilities, but there are reasonable explanations, too. ”
“It doesn’t stop me from feeling totally exposed, though,” she whispers, glancing around the party as though she’s counting each person and wondering if she can trust them. “I probably need to head home.”
I’m straddling the space between understanding the situation and wishing it was different. I tug, pulling her away from the crowd. I’ll text Colby that we left, and he can find a ride home with someone else. There are plenty of people he’d be happy to get a lift with. “We can slip out.”
Bree tucks herself against my side, holding my hand and leaning as we walk away from the light of the bonfire, following the path back through the sand dunes to the parking lot.
These are the same sandy hills we cleaned up that first day together on the beach.
It wasn’t even that long ago, yet it feels like a lifetime.
Bree sighs, her feet digging into the sand with each step. “I’m going to miss this place.”
My chest echoes with a pang. I’m not ready for her to talk about leaving, not when she still has two weeks left. The threat of paparazzi must make her believe the end is possibly nearer than the beginning.
But does it have to be? Why does the end have to come at all? I know we can’t really be together, not with our lives as different as they are, but some things could change, couldn’t they? We could keep in touch. We could still talk. We could stay friends.
Except I want more than that, don’t I?
“Come on. This doesn’t have to end yet.” I pull her toward one of the dunes, away from the path in the growing darkness. There’s little moonlight to see by, but we don’t really need it, not when all the trees are back up the dunes on the other side.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“To look at the ocean.”
Our breath is coming faster as we reach the top. Stars spread out over the now dark sky above us, the Milky Way streaking through the blackness and white specks dotting the horizon until they disappear into the ocean.
Bree drops onto the sand, inhaling deep breaths and marveling at the view. I lower myself more slowly, sitting and letting my legs spread out on the cool sand in front of us.