Chapter 18
“What’s Glenn look like?” Reed asks as we power walk toward the billiards bar.
“British.”
“British?” He repeats the word back like it means nothing.
“Yeah, like you look Scottish, he looks British.”
“Scottish is British.”
“English!”
“English?” he repeats dryly. “Come on, Rikki, you’re a writer. Do better than that.”
I pfft and cut him off, grabbing the bar door first and hauling it open. “He’s white with brown, voluminous hair and a lean physique. He looks like every other classically handsome English white boy I know.”
Reed follows me into the building. “So he looks like Harry Styles?”
“He wishes he looked like Harry Styles,” I correct.
“Really painting a vivid picture for me.”
Country music hums low over the speakers. There’s a haze of smoke fogging up the air. Cigars droop from mouths in every direction, and pool tables stretch as far as the eye can see.
“Wow, it’s gross in here. Isn’t this illegal?” I mutter, frantically swatting the area around us with my palm.
Reed steps up next to me. “Keep doing that with your hand. I think it’s working.”
“Reed Tyler. I’m in detective mode. Do not sass me.”
I spot a large wooden crate up against the wall, step up onto it, and scan the room. The place is loaded with men clutching pool sticks and alcohol. After a good three minutes, I hop down, shaking my head. “He’s not here.”
Reed steps onto the crate I just hopped off.
I glance up at him. “What are you doing?”
“Has anyone seen Glenn?” Reed’s projected voice booms across the bar.
I freeze as the place goes comically silent. Slowly, every head spins in our direction. I close my eyes, fidgeting under the weight of the unexpected secondhand attention.
“Yeah!” says a voice in the back right.
“Yeah?” I blurt excitedly.
The guy nods. “Yep, he was here last night! Drunk off his ass, lost fifty bucks to me.”
My heart leapfrogs around my chest. “Do you happen to know where he’s staying?” I yelp over the music. “We’re family, and we’ve come from out of town to visit.”
“No clue. He comes in here a bunch. We drink, we bet, we play pool.”
Reed puts a hand on my back and rubs the spot between my shoulder blades with his thumb. “All right, thank you for your time!”
I jog down the steps of the bar and spin around, hands held aloft for a double high five. “He’s alive!”
A new high-octane, close-lipped smile I have yet to be exposed to overtakes Reed’s face, highlighting—dimples? A dimple. In his left cheek. He meets my high ten, weaves our fingers together, and steps closer as he shines our arms down by our sides.
Wow. The way this man maneuvers his body is so effortless.
“It’s a good lead. I think we should go check out that beach he likes, take a look around.”
I nano-nod, admiring him. “All right.”
“All right.” He dips in for a quick peck to the right of my lips before tugging me in the direction of his car.
The roads get darker as we approach the coast.
This date is confusing. It doesn’t feel like a second date. It feels like a weird hybrid of a first date and a twentieth one. A casual, intimate, to-the-right-of-my-lips peck? Like we’ve been together for years? What was that? Why did it ping around my chest like a metal disc in a pinball machine.
“I’m really curious,” Reed starts, breaking me from my trance. “About what your dad did.”
A sad laugh falls out of me as I turn away from the window. “To give me the issues?”
“Yeah.” Reed gnaws at his lip self-consciously as he makes a left.
“Are you gonna tell me what your dad did in return?”
He’s quiet for a minute. The streetlights run over his sharp profile every fifty feet. “Yeah, okay.”
“How ’bout,” I propose, “we hold the backstories for the postmortem. Keep date two from getting too dark.”
He smiles. “Okay, I’m gonna hold you to that. I’m a sucker for good character flashback.”
I snort as snapshots of Broken and Bruised come to mind. “Yeah, that rings a bell. So tell me, how much of Derek’s story was autobiographical? Was there a girl who broke your heart?”
His mouth scrunches into an adorable pout. “Yes. Of course.”
“Were you engaged right out of high school?”
He grips the steering wheel harder. “Yep.” The word is dripping with the self-deprecating humor that comes with time and self-awareness. “It fucked me up. I was an angst monster for years. I wore all black, through the rest of college.”
I chuckle. “Awww.”
“I had a trench coat, Rikki. A black trench coat.”
I snicker. “Oh nooo.”
“I called it my writing trench. I bought it when I started Broken and Bruised. I would wear it every day to class, and I would wear it inside at my desk, typing, convinced I looked like the coolest person that ever lived.”
“Tell me there are pictures from this era.”
He smiles out at the night.
I sit up excitedly. “There are! Reed, I am going to need to see those, stat. Please blow one up for me and sign it. I’ll hang it on the wall next to your review.”
A laugh bursts out of him.
“Tell me you didn’t walk in on her cheating while you were visiting on Halloween.”
“I diiiid,” he says solemnly.
“Reeeed.” I chuckle. “I’m so sorry you had to live the plot of the sad, cliché teenage post–high school love story.”
Reed parks the car in the small lot along Glenn’s favorite beach, turns off the engine, and looks at me, eyes alight. “So what’s your relationship damage, Rikki Romona?”
I shake my head and unbuckle my seat belt. “Nah, it’s not as fun as yours.” I swing my door open and climb out of the car.
Glenn’s white Ford Explorer is parked in the far corner of the lot. I start toward it, and Reed catches up, quickly falling into lockstep.
“You’re not gonna tell me?” he says, stricken.
I shoot him a small smile. “Reed, my answers to these essay questions are quite sad.” The wind off the water barrels into us, tossing my hair around my face.
He nods, empathy flushing the disappointment from his eyes. “Yeah, I get it. I’ve had nine years and a book to process mine.”
I chuckle. “I’m only on year two, so it’s still working its way through.”
And it was only a five-month-long relationship. And maybe the breakup shouldn’t have affected me so dramatically.
He cocks an evil brow. “You know what might help you through it faster?”
I arch one right back. “A trench coat?”
His face cracks into a full grin. “Buy yourself a motherfucking trench coat, Rikki. It’s gonna change your life.”
I snort as we come to a hard stop next to Glenn’s car.
We flip on our iPhone flashlights, and slowly, the two of us circle the Explorer, peering in through the windows.
There are clothes scattered all over the trunk.
The back bench is folded down to accommodate a surfboard running vertically through the length of the car.
This fucking bastard.
I knock my finger into the window twice, pointing to it. “That wasn’t there when Whitney found the car. She thought he was lost in the ocean with it.”
Reed takes a few steps toward the beach, glancing around for any signs of life. “You want to take a walk down there, see if he’s around?”
I carry my sandals as we mosey down the dark, empty beach. The sand is grainy and cold against my bare feet. It’s cooler here near the water. We walk on a slight angle, my sundress flying up against my legs, our accidentally matching leather jackets tucked closed, hunched against the wind.
A pale-blue wooden lifeguard tower sits unoccupied down the shoreline, closer to the water: That’s our heading. Reed turns to smile at me, and his auburn hair blows up vertically over his head. “What’s on the docket for this week’s Love Today?”
I purse my lips, a little embarrassed to share any of my recent topics given our present circumstances.
“Um.” I kick up a spritz of sand. “Well, my latest went out yesterday. It’s been in the works for a bit.
It was inspired by, well, Whitney, and her wedding.
Her and Glenn’s love story.” I scuff more sand out toward the water.
Reed’s shoulder brushes up against mine, and I bump his back. The close proximity has my skin buzzing. “What’s the angle?”
I stare out at the water as a series of small, dark waves crash against the shore.
“It’s called ‘Debunking the Stigma of Instalove: We Can Fall Fast and Love Long.’ Basically, I pontificated on five different love stories from couples across different generations who spoke to me about their whirlwind romances that spawned successful marriages of ten-plus years.
I wove together the similarities between their stories and theorized how and why each relationship was a long-term success. ”
Reed raises his brow, cynicism in the slant of his grin, the set of his eyes. “And what was their secret?”
An anxious laugh rattles out of me. “The classics. Empathy, communication, love. Basically, love is transcendent. Almost supernatural.” I shrug. “It’s not hard to believe in magic when your job includes sifting through the stories of thousands of happy couples across the country.”
Reed bumps my shoulder again. “That sounds . . . so wholesome and uplifting.”
I nudge him back. “Your expression says otherwise.”
He rolls his eyes, mouth falling open. “I mean.” He sighs and takes a few steps backward toward the car. “I don’t know if I can do this conversation without my trench.”
I snort.
He shrugs, laughing at himself. “Yeah, like I said, that college incident burned. It’s not that I don’t believe in love—I’ve been in it—it’s more like I don’t quite trust it.
If people that love you can hurt you so hard, do they truly love you?
” He twists his lips together for a pensive beat.
“Love has too many different meanings . . . If you and your partner’s definitions don’t line up, the relationship is autodestined to fail, and someone’s going to get wrecked in the process. ”
I eye him thoughtfully. “So what’s love to you?”
He looks at me, mouth screwed back up into the knot. “That’s a deep cut, Rikki.”
“Says the guy doling out memoir prompts.”