Chapter 24 Olivia
Juliette’s office door is ajar, so I push it open with a quick knock. It’s past eleven and she hasn’t paid me for last week yet. She’s at her desk on her cellphone, speaking in low tones to somebody.
“I gotta run.” She hangs up quickly, a strange expression on her face. She looks up at me with a strained, closed smile that isn’t like her usual warm self.
“Just came in for last week’s pay. Sorry if I disturbed your conversation.”
“It’s fine.” She digs into a desk drawer and hands me an envelope of cash. “Here you go — extra for Saturday’s double shift.”
I give her a sheepish smile of thanks. I’m still uncomfortable with her breaking the rules for me, and the more I come to care about her and the restaurant, the worse it gets.
Walking out into the restaurant, I fold and tuck the envelope into my shorts’ back pocket.
Deb is wiping down the bar counter with a tea towel while Kevin bolts the top and bottom of the row of French doors.
Outside, the night is still warm. Strains of laughter and music from the beach are drifting up, gradually shut out as Kevin finishes his task.
I drop my apron in the laundry bin as Deb steps over, removing her own. “Heading out on your bike?”
“Yeah, in a while. I might walk along the ocean first, there’s still a lot of people out. Care to join me?”
Deb shakes her fiery red head, as she leads the way toward the entrance. “Nah, I’ve done a double and I’m pooped.”
She holds open the door while I step through. Deb throws a glance over her shoulder, seeming to check nobody is following us. “So, Liv, I have a question. Why does Juliette pay you in cash?”
My eyes widen in the dark as we approach the steps to the beach. “What makes you think that?”
“Oh, you know. I have eyes.”
“Right.”
“So, why?” she persists. “Everybody else gets a regular paycheck, even for tips.”
I pull in a breath as we walk down the steps to the beach. “It’s complicated, Deb. I can’t really explain. I’d love to be able to, but I can’t.”
“Huh,” she replies, an uncharacteristically cool note in her voice. “And I’m guessing, for whatever reason, you don’t pay any taxes on that cash. Even though you live for free in your folks’ luxury pool house.”
It’s a fair point.
“Believe me, Deb, the reason I’m working is because I don’t want to live there. I’m saving all that cash to move out on my own.”
We pause at the bottom of the steps, where concrete meets sand.
“You can see how it’s kinda galling, though?
” It’s even darker in the shadow of the pier, and I can barely make out her expression.
“I mean, I’m working doubles to support my husband on disability, and pay the mortgage on our crappy rancher, and you’re not paying any taxes or any rent, and you just bought that cute new shirt. ”
It’s true I’m wearing a new shirt, but it’s only my third clothing purchase since Mom bought me a very basic wardrobe a couple of months ago. I bristle slightly.
“Deb, I get it, from your perspective, I really do. But there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.
If it weren’t for my folks, I’d be living on the streets.
I’d love to pay taxes and be an upstanding citizen like everybody else, but I can’t.
Again, for reasons I’m not able to explain to you.
So please try not to judge. You don’t know what it’s like for me. ”
Deb turns toward the road, and I follow her. She’s quiet for a moment, taking her keys out of her purse.
“I’ve tried real hard to be a friend to you, Liv, and you seem like a lovely young woman.
But it’s kinda tough when you tell me nothing about yourself.
You know all about Frank and my kids, our nightmare vacations, my issues with my mom, everything.
But it’s always me doing the talking. Girl, you gotta open up if you want to make real friends.
And you even turned down that police detective guy, right?
So you don’t even have him anymore. You’re gonna end up alone at this rate.
” Her voice warms a little. “Take my advice, okay, hun? I’ll see you Wednesday.
” She doesn’t wait for a reply, strolling off toward her car, which she beeps open.
Dammit. I’ve already lost Adam as a friend and now I’m alienating Deb, too.
She’s right, of course. Nobody will like me if I don’t open up to them. But how can I tell anybody the truth?
I’ll never be able to get close to anybody. At least, nobody but Jake, and he’s with Savannah.
So, yeah. Pretty much nobody. Ever.
I glance at my bike locked to the rack, but don’t move toward it. I need to take some time to think first. That stroll along the beach might help. Besides, some dude is sitting in the shadows on the wall near my bike.
I walk toward the sand, aware the tall guy by the bike stand has now jumped down onto the pavement. Is he following me?
“Liv.”
I turn back, my pulse racing as Jake steps into the glow of the streetlight.
“Hey.” His hands are raised. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I snort out a nervous laugh. “That’s okay. I couldn’t see who it was in the dark. What are you doing?”
“Waiting for your shift to end,” he replies simply. “I wanted to see you. You wanna walk with me along the beach a while?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess. Sure.” I’m suddenly nervous. What does he want?
We stroll out onto the sand, which is semi-illuminated by the pier lights and the waterfront condo complexes, but almost black near the ocean.
Some teenagers with a speaker are playing rap music and laughing, and there are a few other people with dogs milling around, but most of the tourists have gone back to their hotels.
Jake leads me north, away from the pier to where it’s a little quieter.
“What’s up? Why were you waiting for me?” I ask finally. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again after that night in the storm. Thought maybe you’d got all the answers you needed.”
“I guess not,” he replies after a moment.
I can’t see his face clearly. “Not all the answers. The truth is, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.
About everything you said, about our life together.
Your version of our lives. Your theory on life paths, and if your reality would’ve been the right path for my life.
I guess . . . I dunno.” He sighs. “I’m about to make this big life decision, and it’s got me all messed up. ”
“Right. Savannah’s birthday coming up.”
“Yeah.”
We walk on in silence.
“I don’t know if there is a ‘right’ path, for anyone,” I admit.
“There’s no right and wrong. It just is.
But we can change our fate by making the best choices we know how, given the information we have available to us.
If we don’t like our lives, or an aspect of them, we can work hard to fix it. That’s all any of us can do.”
I can just about make out Jake’s nod in the darkness. “I guess,” he replies. “But I mean, you dying as a kid, that was plain wrong. One hundred percent God-awful. And I’ve felt the wrongness of that every day for the past sixteen years. I’ve never been right since then.”
He stops. “I didn’t even tell you this the other week, but it totally screwed up my relationship with my dad.
He was so furious with me about your death.
I think that was the main reason I felt it was my fault.
He’s such a man’s man, you know? His position is always that the man looks after the woman, or the boy looks after the girl.
He was ashamed I wasn’t strong enough to pull you up.
To save you. He never said as much, but I knew. ”
I want to reach out to him, but I stay still, listening, hearing his pain.
“I retreated into myself as a teenager, didn’t do team sports, all the stuff he wanted for me. Our relationship never recovered, and I always felt . . . insufficient. To this day, we’re not close.”
I give in to my instincts and place my hand on Jake’s arm, his skin warm beneath mine. “I’m so sorry. It’s hard to hear. You and Ted are so close, such good friends, in my reality. That’s awful.”
He shrugs. “That’s what I mean about there being a right and wrong version.
In your version, I was strong enough. I pulled you up, saved you.
We were prom king and queen. I was a better version of myself.
” His voice cracks. “I don’t know how to be a good partner to Savannah if I’m always feeling like an inferior version of what I could’ve been.
And if I’m thinking my life with a different woman could’ve been a better one.
And now, you’re here with me, on this beach, and I’m feeling nothing but uncertainty about my next choice. ”
I know what I want to say, but I love Jake too much to do that.
He’s in such pain. Instead, I step toward the darkness of the ocean.
The water is black, the froth of surf briefly illuminated by the lights of the shoreline before the waves crash onto the sand.
The ocean seems so much louder than usual, with the usual buzz of tourists and children’s laughter now absent.
I can’t even make out the rap music from here.
Jake joins me by the surf, the water almost reaching our toes.
A ship sparkles on the horizon. Above it, a million pinpricks of stars are scattered across the inky sky.