“I’m guessing you don’t want that cheesecake anymore,” he said.
Before I could answer, the world spiraled into darkness.
Pulsing pain chipped at my skull. Why does my head hurt?
I swallowed and grimaced at the acidic prickle. Why does my throat burn?
My tongue clung to the roof of my mouth like warm, wet cotton soaked in stomach acid. Why does everything taste like ass?
I smacked my lips. Yuck. That didn’t help. In fact, inviting oxygen toward my throat hole made everything worse. Opening my eyes didn’t improve matters, either. Rays of sunlight streamed through the window, causing me to squint. The blinding brightness made me want to crawl under the bed and die, but that required moving and wouldn’t happen. Instead, all I could muster was a pathetic moan.
“What happened?” I mumbled.
Wisps of a dream started to surface but vanished when I tried to grab on tight. The few triggering flickers I remembered weren’t enough to fuse it together. An obscure vision of Hui, a paisley mankini, and a freeway made no sense.
What did I eat before I went to bed?
I read the clock. 8:32 a.m. Something next to the table lamp caught my eye— the blinking light on my cell phone. I picked it up and saw missed text messages from Roxy.
Roxy— “Roxicodone”
WTF is happening in Cannon Cove?
Did you really get drunk???
I typed a reply to defend myself, ready to lay into her with the reminder I’d vowed to never drink again. Then, I added some snark by saying her question was pretty stupid.
Pretty. Stupid. I stopped clicking the keys before I hit send. Those two words struck a chord. Her ringtone didn’t need to sound— I experienced déjà moo.
I’d talked to Roxy on the phone— that much I remembered. Bits of the conversation replayed, me being the stupid one by calling her “pretty” way too many times. I backed down, deleted my text, and put the phone on my nightstand. “No,” I stretched out the “o” and pressed the heel of my palms to my aching forehead. “What did I do?” I whispered.
When I rolled over toward the doorway, a shadowy figure casually leaning against the frame made me shriek and flail.
“Good morning to you, too.” Seth lifted a mug to his lips and took a drink, curls of steam climbing upward.
Whether or not he knew it, his gaze tried to own me. I did my best to block him out. By simply standing there, he pried his way back in. “‘Good’ doesn’t quite capture the sentiment.” I didn’t mask the pain from my face. “Did someone run me over? Because if they didn’t, I’d like them to now.”
My insides swilled, and my hands moved to comfort my stomach. Panic set in when my palms greeted bare flesh. Thighs? They were naked. Cleavage? Exposed. All that covered me beneath the blankets was a thong and a skimpy camisole that’d ridden up to the bottom of my rib cage.
“Where are my clothes?” I shouted, instantly regretting it. Cranking up the sound of my voice meant increasing the volume on my headache.
“First, you were wearing my clothes. Second, you took them off,” he replied with a wink and took another sip. “Willingly, I might add.”
Squinting went forgotten. My eyes widened and embraced the light-induced ache while I waited for a punch line that never came. “But I don’t remember…”
His poker face remained. “I’d be surprised if you remembered any of last night with how much you drank.”
“I. Drank.” I absorbed the disappointing reality with sluggish speech. Seth told me I’d drank. Roxy texted me about being drunk. I sure felt like I had a first-class hangover. Those three corners of alcohol trifecta forced me into swallowing acceptance. Yet, it still didn’t answer the question about my clothes. “Okay… but you spent the night?” My head pounded while I gathered the comforter around my chest and tried to sit up. “We didn’t… we…”
“We didn’t…” he raised an eyebrow and punctuated his question with a coy grin, “what?”
I launched my most lethal death glare.
“Tell me.”
I ground my teeth. “Your crotch goblins didn’t,” I rocked my head left and right, “you know.”
“Crotch goblins?” He fought off a laugh. “For a girl who studied intense anatomy courses in school, you sure know how to skirt around a subject.”
I scrunched up my face and chucked a throw pillow at him.
He blocked the torpedoing cushion with his forearm, protecting the coffee cup from impact. “Maybe I just want to hear you say it.” He turned and walked out of the room.
“Get back here!” I stood up too fast and immediately sat back down on the mattress until the world leveled out again. The room swirled and my vision constricted while I put on my robe. Step by step, I braced my hand against the wall to help support me until I reached the living room.
Seth sat on the couch with his feet crossed on the coffee table, the sports section of the newspaper blocking his face.
“Well?” I asked.
He turned the page. “Remember what I told you in your office?”
“Please tell me this doesn’t have to do with safe words.”
“Nope. Don’t ask questions unless you’re prepared for the answer.”
The struggle was real, leaving me flustered. “You… did we…” I stomped my left foot and then bounced my entire body once without my soles leaving the floor. “Ugh! You drive me crazy!”
He lowered the paper and waited, his eyes barely peeking over the top.
Drive. Déjà moo— round two.
The air left my lungs. Crap. I sank down onto the opposite end of the sofa and said the single word aloud, “Drive.” Those three flickers of Hui, the paisley mankini, and the fountain from the night before ignited, spreading like wildfire through my mind.
The talk with my dad.
The vodka.
The bonfire.
The walk into the ocean.
The story about Bo.
The drinking.
The Chinese food.
The tequila.
The throwing up in Seth’s truck.
Holy barfaroni! I threw up in Seth’s truck!
He merely stared at me again with those coal-colored eyes that made me want to surrender. “Crotch goblins got your tongue, Doc?”
Scorching heat stole my face. I had equal amounts of embarrassment over the pieces I did recall from the night before and the gaping holes of what I couldn’t remember. An apology needed to happen, but I couldn’t figure out how to start.
I’m sorry I turned into a human puke sprinkler at freeway speed? No. That wouldn’t cut it. Oh, why didn’t I opt to work for a greeting card company that could handle poetic shit like this? There had to be a niche somewhere for vomit regrets.
“I… don’t.” My ears rang in the blistering quiet. “Wow.”
He waited for me to process my thoughts.
I stood up and cursed at the pain. “I’ll clean it up.”
He folded the newspaper section into thirds. “I already took care of it.”
“Then I’ll pay for it to get detailed…” I reached into my tote bag and pulled out a pen, quickly scribbling on white in dark blue ink. “Here.”
“I don’t want your money. It’s no big…” He unfolded what I’d handed him. His eyes flicked up at me a few times while he studied what I’d added to the K-7 napkin. A simple equation lined the right side— a cartoon truck plus two bottles of alcohol equaling a sad face.
“I am so sorry,” I added aloud.
“We’re even. You were my Florence Nightingale the other night. In return, I scrubbed Chinese food and a lot of booze from the floor of my truck at two o’clock in the morning.” He stood up and walked to the kitchen, returning with a banana from the counter an
d a bottle of water from my fridge. “Here. Potassium will combat Valiant’s revenge.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly.
He sat down on the far end of the couch. “You know, scraping cabbage and pork from a dashboard gives a guy time to think.”
I closed my eyes, wishing myself into non-existence. It didn’t work. “The dashboard too?”
“Vents. Dashboard. Windshield. Radio dials. My face. Pretty much everywhere. Like a fried rice exorcism happened in there.”
“Stop.” I covered my eyes with both hands. “Your… face?”
He reached over and pulled my wrists downward a few inches. “That’s not the point. The point is, while I was out there, I had time to think.”
“About what? Wishing you’d invested in a rain poncho?”
“No.” He laughed and then released his humor. “Last night, you shared a dark time for you, about your friend, Bo.”
I nodded and peeled the banana, breaking off a piece. The smell made my stomach flip-flop, so I set it back down.
“From the sound of it, you don’t know what happened. I want to share a dark time for me, too, about my friend, Bo.”
“Um.” My mouth formed a severe angle. “I’m confused. We can’t possibly be talking about the same Bo.”
He nodded. “One and the same.”
“Mambo Rodriguez?” The tail end of his last name lilted upward on my tongue.
“That’s him.” Seth let out a forced breath through his nose. “I’ve never done the best friend title thing, but he was as close as it got.”
I shook my head. “He never mentioned… until you two flew off the handle at K-7 on Tuesday. Even after that, everything he said was vague. And bitter.”
“Not surprised. It was a lifetime ago. At least it feels like it,” Seth replied. “Both Tuesday and the friendship.”
I cuddled into the cushion, drew my knees up to my chin, and wrapped my arms around my shins.
Seth painted a vivid picture of his past, starting with an introduction to his high school life, about how he didn’t connect with many people, and how he felt like an awkward outsider. He told me about how, as sophomores, he and Bo were paired up to work on a two-month-long history project. He explained they came from clashing social circles— Bo being the preppy, popular jock who lived for football and parties while Seth being the rebellious loner who lived for the grunge subculture and flannel.
He continued, “Everything I just told you, all of it happened before I moved away to Steele Falls—”
“And before I moved to Cannon Cove,” I finished.
“Bingo,” he said. “Back then, Bo and I found a common bond— a mutual love for sports. Track. Basketball. Lacrosse. He convinced me to try out after school.” Seth shrugged. “Making the teams was the easy part. But we were also dumb kids who did dumb high school shit. That’s when things got rough.”
“Who didn’t? Do dumb stuff, I mean.”
“No, I mean some really dumb shit,” he reiterated.
“Like…”
“You know the longstanding rivalry between Cannon Cove High School and Steele Falls Senior High?”
“Pirates versus Goats,” I said.
“Every game where Cannon Cove and Steele Falls faced off, both schools pulled a prank. Tradition.”
“I remember and I’ve heard some of the more infamous stories.”
“Which ones?” Seth asked.
I tried to recall the Cannon Cove details of prior years that my massage clients told me. “Once, the Pirates kidnapped Gertrude, the goat, and held her hostage. They left a note saying they’d make her walk the plank if they didn’t receive payment in chocolate coins.” I paused. “And those ugly topiary-lettered bushes outside the courtyard. Someone removed and rearranged them to spell FELLATE instead of STEELE FALLS. Plus, they burned a giant skull-and-crossbones in the grass next to it.”
He sat back and his eyebrows jumped once, displaying confidence. “Any others?”
“Hmm. There was the time someone inflated red, black, and white balloons and covered the entire Steele Falls pool. Plus, they piped a sea shanty through all of the aquatics building,” my sentence slowed to a crawl as I put two and two together with Seth’s job around water, “speakers.”
He nodded. “I still have one of those chocolate coins packed away in my truck.”
“You two did all that?”
“We had help, but those three masterpieces were some of our best ideas. Can’t say I’m as proud of them anymore now that I’m an adult.”
I sank back into the couch and my face crumbled a little. Memories of the pranks Bo aimed my direction over the years no longer felt like they belonged to me. More and more, Bo no longer felt like he belonged to me, either.
“Is something wrong?” he asked. “Gertrude wasn’t hurt in any of our shenanigans.”
“It’s not that. I just… Bo and I know each other inside and out; at least, I thought we did. But all of this is brand new information.”
“Maybe he didn’t want you to know because our legacy took a downhill turn.” Seth took a long breath. “Junior year. A few hours after the homecoming game. I had a plan involving ten jars of petroleum jelly, a flagpole, and a dozen Pygmy goats wearing eyepatches.”
“Do I want to know where this goes?”
“Hear me out,” he said. “First, we dumped the goats off in the fenced-in faculty lot. Second, we went to the flagstaff outside the main office. My girlfriend, at the time, made a massive pirate flag in home ec, and she’d hidden it behind the planter boxes for us.”
I waited for him to continue, feeling a stab of jealousy in my chest that wasn’t warranted.
“That night, Bo had two jobs. Climbing the twenty-five-foot pole to replace the flag and lubing the metal when he came back down.”
I pushed my hair from my face, my hangover temporarily forgotten. “How on Earth did he climb a twenty-five-foot pole?”
“I can’t remember all the details, but there were a few nylon straps and a whole lot of faith involved. He watched a YourTube video online.”
I frowned. “A YourTube video. Online.”
“I told you, dumb high school shit. Anyway, my job was watching for the security guard. We knew his schedule and route down to the minute.”
I bit my lip, nervous for what Seth would say next.
“Everything went smoothly… at first. When Bo got to the top, he swapped out the flags and started back down. He’d busted into his fourth jar of jelly when the cops rolled up with their lights flashing. Not security. I yelled for him to hurry, and I waited as long as I could. By then, the police were on foot, so I bolted.”
“What happened next?”
“Long story short? We got caught but lucked out without anything landing on our records. Bo and I could’ve been charged as adults with a class-B misdemeanor or a first-degree felony. Because there was minimal damage, the Steele Falls School District agreed to drop the charges if we both did community service. The Cannon Cove principal thought differently and made school Hell. Me? I fought back. Bo?” He shook his head. “I watched them try to beat him into the ground academically. As much as I told him to stand up for himself, he didn’t. The whole situation changed him.”
“But I hadn’t met him yet,” I said, wondering what any other version of Bo could be like.
“I know. After that, the pranks continued without us. We also didn’t talk anymore because he blamed me for what happened that night and how it could impact his football career.”
“So, when you told Bo to stand up for himself at K-7…”
“It was a jab at the past. That’s it. I had no idea about his accident. But I sure sounded like an ass after I said it.”
I read the clock. More time passed than I’d realized. In a way, I felt l
etdown knowing I had to stop the conversation. “It’s getting late. I’m supposed to be one of the first at the winery.”
I glimpsed my keys lying on the table and slumped my shoulders. “My Jeep is still down by the picnic shelters.”
“No, it’s not,” Seth said.
“Yes…” I walked over to peer through the window and saw it in its usual spot. “How?”
“Sienna.”
“S… Sienna?” I stuttered.
“Yeah. She came by and took me to get it. P.S. I grabbed the tux from the back.”
“Hang on. She knows you spent the night here? And she’s not pissed?”
“Well, she wasn’t happy about that or being my errand bitch, but she’ll get over it. She always does.”
Always does?
I scrunched my nose in confusion when I turned around. “Right.”
“What? She’s not my keeper.” He grabbed the half-peeled banana from the table and popped the broken piece into his mouth.
They have a strange relationship.
He spoke with his left cheek bulging, “Besides, if she’s still salty, she’ll lay into me at the wedding while she’s taking pictures.”
“If there’s a wedding,” I mumbled, rummaging around my tote bag for sunglasses.
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Say that again?”
“Annelies and I need to talk.”
“About?” he drew the word out.
I wavered in replying and then gave in, “Last night, you asked if something happened between me and Eli.”
“By the way you were strangling my neck on our way up the beach when you saw him, I figured something was up.”
“More or less, he asked me to play herpes roulette,” I slid my arms out of my robe and shrugged into a sweatshirt, “outside The Salty Seaman, and then again on the beach. Annelies needs to know.”
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