“You’re still set on going back?”
I nod. “I’ll have to find a different place, though.”
My landlord was a total jerk about breaking my lease a couple months early, so I’ll still be paying him while I’m here living in my childhood bedroom. Leaving my job didn’t go much better. My boss at the real estate agency all but laughed at me when I mentioned taking a leave of absence. I hope Dad’s planning on paying me well. He might be a grieving widower, but I don’t work for free.
“So guess who walked into the hardware store the other day?” Billy says with a look that tells me to brace myself. “Deputy Dog-shit came in hassling me about the sidewalk sign. Something about town ordinances and blocking pedestrian traffic.”
My nails bite into the weathered bar top. Even after a year, the mention of Deputy Rusty Randall still coaxes a special kind of anger.
“That sign’s been there for, what,” Billy says, “twenty years at least.”
As long as I can remember, definitely. It’s a staple of the sidewalk, our wooden A-frame sign with the cartoon handyman announcing, YES, WE’RE OPEN! and waving a pipe wrench. The other side features a chalkboard with the week’s sale or new products. When I was little and loved following Dad to work, he used to yell at me from inside that I better not be drawing on the sign. I’d hastily erase my artwork and begin transferring it to the concrete, doing my best to force traffic around my masterpieces and just about biting the ankles off tourists who stomped their Sperrys through my sidewalk gallery.
“The guy wouldn’t leave until I brought the sign inside,” Billy grumbles. “He stood there for fifteen minutes while I pretended to help some customers and haggled with him about his bullshit ordinance. I was about to call Dad to talk some sense into him, but he went for his cuffs like he was about to arrest me, so I said, screw it. I waited a few minutes after he left and then put it back out.”
“Asshole,” I mutter into my coffee. “You know he gets off on it.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t tail you into town. Half expected him to be sitting outside the house in the middle of the night.”
I wouldn’t have put it past him. About a year ago, Deputy Randall became my cautionary tale. That night was my rock bottom, the moment I realized I couldn’t go on living like I was. Drinking too much, partying every night, letting my demons get the best of me. I had to do something about it—get my life back—before it was too late. So I made a plan, and a couple months later, I packed up everything I needed and set off for Charleston. Billy was the only person I told about that night with Rusty. Even though he’s two years younger than me, he’s always been my closest confidant.
“I still think about her,” I tell my brother. The guilt churning in my gut at the thought of Kayla and her children is still potent after all this time. I’d heard a while back she’d left Rusty and taken the kids. “I feel like I should find her. Apologize.”
Though the idea of facing her, and how she might react, is enough to send me into an anxiety spiral. It’s become a new feeling for me since that night. There was a time when nothing scared me. The stuff that left other people biting their nails rolled right off my shoulders. Now, I look back on my wilder days and cringe. Some of those days were not so long ago.
“Do what you want,” Billy says, taking a deep swig of his beer as if to wash the lingering topic out of his mouth. “But you have nothing to apologize for. The guy’s a jackass and a creep. He’s lucky we didn’t find him down a dark dirt road somewhere.”
I’d sworn Billy to secrecy; otherwise, he definitely would’ve run and told Dad or our brothers what had happened. I’m glad he kept it quiet. No sense in all of them winding up in prison for beating the pulp out of a cop. Then Randall would win.
“I’m going to run into him eventually,” I say, more to myself.
“Well, if you’ve got to skip town in a hurry, I still have about eighty bucks stashed in my old bed frame at Dad’s house.” Billy grins at me, which does go a long way to unwinding the knot in my chest. He’s good like that.
As we’re closing out the tab, I get a text from my best friend Heidi.
Heidi: Bonfire on the beach tonight.
Me: Where?
Heidi: The usual.
Meaning Evan and Cooper’s house. The place is loaded with emotional landmines.
Me: I don’t know if that’s a good idea.
Heidi: Come on. A couple drinks then you can bail.
Heidi: Don’t make me come get you.
Heidi: See you there.
Me: Fine. Bitch.
I stifle a sigh, as my tired brain tries to work through yet another pitfall to consider. Settling back into town, I was excited to reconnect with old friends and spend more time with others, but trying to dodge Evan makes that more complicated. I can’t very well draw a line down the center of town. And no part of me wants the summer to devolve into tests of loyalty and calling dibs on our tight web of friends, ties crossing and overlapping. It isn’t fair to either of us. Because as much as I know nothing good comes from letting Evan back in, I have no intentions to hurt him. This is my punishment, not his.
CHAPTER 5
EVAN
All the freaks come out at night. Under a full moon, we’re the hidden images of ourselves, revealed in silver light. It’s the Bay turned wild with inhibition and mischief, everybody hot and bothered and aching for a good time. Any excuse for a party.
On the beach, dozens of our friends, and more than a few random tagalongs, surround a bonfire. Our house is set back just beyond the dunes and grassy tree-dotted lawn, its outline evident only in the orange porch lights. It’s a good time, kicking back with a few beers, smoking a bowl. A couple people with guitars haggle over song requests while a nearby group plays strip glow frisbee. Whatever it takes to get laid these days, I guess.
“So this clone is wasted, right,” Jordy, an old high school friend of ours, says to those of us gathered around the fire, sitting on a driftwood log while he rolls a joint. Dude could do this shit with his eyes closed and it’d still be the tightest, neatest roll you’ve ever seen. “And the guy stumbles into our table. Like knocks right into us. He keeps calling me Parker.”
We laugh, because it’s such a clone name. Those collar-wearing pansy-ass Richie Riches who go to Garnet College are nothing if not predictable. Can’t hold their liquor and making it everyone else’s problem.
“For like twenty minutes he’s talking to us, holding on to the table to keep from splattering on the floor. No idea what the hell he’s babbling about. Then suddenly he’s like, hey, come on, bros, after-party at my house.”
“No,” Mackenzie says, eyes flashing wide and dread in her voice. “You did not.” She’s keeping Cooper in a better mood tonight, sitting in his lap with her tits shoved up in his face. Got him well occupied, which is a relief. I was getting sick of his tantrums.
Jordy shrugs. “I mean, he insisted. So the four us, right, are pretty much having to carry this guy out of the bar. Then he hands me his keys and says, you drive, it’s the blue one. I press the button on the fob, and this Maserati SUV flashes its lights at me. Like no way, right? That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car. I’m pretty sure I stepped in piss at some point in that dirty bar bathroom, but sure, guy.”