“Hundreds?” I whisper. “For real?”
“Thirty-two!” he exclaims. “And why the hell are you whispering, bro? Shit. Are you still with Eva? Did you kiss her? Beck!” he yells into the distance. “Beck! The son of a bitch is with Eva still. You spend the night with her and you couldn’t even call and tell your best friends who’ve been worried sick all night? I covered for your ass.” I hold the phone away from my ear but can still hear him. “We covered for your ass. Well, actually we went to Beck’s and played X-Box all night, and my parents didn’t even realize you weren’t with us. But what the hell, Bodhi?”
I put the phone back to my ear. “I wasn’t with Eva. Well, yes, I was, but not like that. I can explain.”
“So, you didn’t kiss her?” Coop cries out. “Goddamnit, what the hell, bro?”
“No,” I sigh. “I kissed her. We kissed. There was kissing.”
“Beck!” Coop shouts again. “Son of a bitch kissed her! Fucking finally!”
“Details!” I hear Beck shout. “With adjectives!”
Adjectives? “Uh, magical?”
“Magical?” Coop questions. “Damn, Bodhi, I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word magical slip from your mouth before. Beck! The shithead said magical! You in some sort of Disney movie or something?”
I’m getting pissed off. “Can you meet me at Calvin’s later this morning?” I ask him before he has the chance to go off again.
“Calvin’s?” he asks. “You want us to come to Calvin’s?”
“Yes!”
“Fine man. Fine,” he grumbles. “But I expect some graveling. And some breakfast. And coffee. With bacon. I want bacon. I was up all night worrying about your scrawny ass and here you were just making out with your girl all night, or more. Was there more? Shit, Bodhi, you guys already—”
“Coop!” I hiss.
“Fine, fine,” he sighs. “I’ll get more details later. Breakfast, with bacon. We’ll be there soon.”
I hit end and toss my phone on the bed. The sound of laughter erupts next to me and echoes in the room.
“You’re awake,” I say to Eva. She’s lying there, laughing into her pillow. I groan, realizing she heard everything Coop said. “I’m sorry about that …”
“That was the best thing I’ve ever heard,” she declares through her laughs, but then she gets serious and sits up. “How are you? Your ribs? Your eye? Are you alright?”
I give her a slight push so she falls back down, and I lie next to her. Our faces are inches apart. I stay like that for a few moments, just staring at her. I love that we can do this. Stay like this in silence, without it being weird. She runs her finger around my bruised eye. It’s definitely sore to the touch.
“Does it look bad?” I ask her. The cut above my eyebrow stretches in protest every time my face moves. I peel the bandage off so all that’s left are the few butterfly band-aids Calvin put on last night after smothering it with antibiotic cream.
“You want me to lie to you?” she bites her lip.
God. Every single time she bites her lip, my body convulses. “Never.”
“No amount of concealer is going to cover this up. And you’re going to have a wicked scar.” She leans in and kisses under my eye. “I’m so sorry, Bodhi. I should have gone home by myself. I shouldn’t have let you anywhere near my house until I had this all figured out—”
I stop her with my lips because I have to have hers on mine again. She makes a soft sigh in her mouth as our lips are together, which only makes me push mine harder against hers.
When we pull apart, she declares with a smile, “That’s not going to work every time, you know.”
I kiss her again. “I would do it all over. For you,” I say. “And all that matters now is you’re okay, and it’s over, you and Porter. Now, we can do whatever we want with nothing holding us back,” I smirk. Her face turns red with my words. “Were you here all night?”
“I was,” she nods. “Well, a good hour after everything. You were already sleeping when I came in.”
“Was I asleep the whole time …?”
She laughs. “I thought you were dead. You didn’t move all night.”
“Good … Eva, your dad,” I say. “I had no idea how bad it was at—”
This time she stops me with her lips. I bring my hand up to her hair and hold her head, gently pushing my fingers against it. I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about her dad, but I need to know if she’s going to be okay in her own house, or if I do indeed need to kidnap her like the guys suggested.
I move my face away from hers and give her a minute before asking, “How’d it go at your house?”
Her eyes go to my lips. “I can think of a hundred other things we can do right now, that are far more entertaining than me talking about what happened at my house,” she smirks.
I grin, running my finger along her lips and bringing them onto mine. “That’s the last one,” I murmur, but then I kiss her again. “Okay, that’s the last one, until you tell me what happened.”
She groans, but tells me everything that went on when she and her mom walked in the door.
“Damn,” is all I can say. I’m relieved. “I wish I could have seen all of that. I’m sure it feels a little better, right?”
She nods. “It does. My mom said she’ll be over sometime this morning, which is good, because you’ll never guess what Calvin told me last night.”
I lie there and listen to her replay the conversation she had with Calvin the night before.
“Your mom?” I exclaim. “Your mom was the one who asked Calvin to come back to Flagler?”
“It doesn’t make any sense. Does it?”
I roll onto my back and put my hands under my head. “No, it doesn’t.”
“But …” she ponders.
“But?” I turn to her. “But what?”
She sits up and brings her knees to her chest but doesn’t say anything else. I pull her over to me so her head is under my neck. My ribs protest this sudden movement, but I’m not about to make her roll away. I’ll take Eva being this close to me, over a little pain, any day.
“But?” I say again.
“But, the night of your mom’s memorial, it was my mom who paid for everyone’s dinner afterwards.”
I let out a little gasp. “For real? How do you know that?”
“I saw her. Before I walked down to the beach, I saw her coming out of Funky Pelican. She saw me too. I know it was her that paid, but I don’t know why. I always assumed …”
“That your mom hated my mom?”
“Yes. But after talking to Calvin last night, and things I’ve picked up on the last week or so, our moms …” she pauses and looks up at me. “I think our moms were friends or something.”
“If our moms were friends, they sure as hell kept it a secret from everyone else.”
“But why?” she wonders out loud. “I don’t understand why they’d do that. These three years … we could have been together these last three years if our moms were friends. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Do you think we could get your mom to tell us?”
Eva sighs. “I’m not going to give her the choice. She’s going to tell me what the hell is going on.”
It takes me a few minutes to get out of bed. For one, my body hurts and every movement needs to be done in slow motion. But mainly because I’m really enjoying lying here next to Eva. I’ve waited years to know what it’s like to wake up with Eva at my side, and her warm body right next to mine makes me almost comatose with comfort. I know the guys will show up soon though, so I force us out of bed. Thankfully, once I’m up and moving my ribs don’t seem to be half as bad.
“This is as good as it’s going to get this morning,” Eva motions to herself, stepping out of the attached bathroom. “Until I go home and change.”
She’s wearing the same clothes she slept all night in. A snug fitted green top that makes her eyes that much greener, and tight black leggings that si
t right below the scraped-up knees I know she got yesterday. Her dark black hair is swinging madly behind her as she moves her head. She looks perfect, and too beautiful for someone who just rolled out of bed. I move towards her as I grab my t-shirt that’s thrown on a chair.
Eva suddenly gasps. “Your side, Bodhi!”
I look down to see a giant purple bruise that looks similar to the imprint of a shoe covering the side of my chest. “Yikes,” I reply, twisting my body to get a better view of it. Eva’s visibly upset. I throw my shirt on and say, “I’m fine. We’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
She’s pointing to me now and is shaking her head, almost laughing as she says, “You have blood all over your shirt.”
I glance down at myself. True. It covers the sleeve and there are fat drips all along the front. I pull it right back off and throw it on the chair. “Looks like I’ll be shirtless for breakfast.” A faint smile appears on her face. I move the few steps over to her and bring her into my arms. “Everything’s going to be alright.”
She nods into my chest. “I hope so.”
EVA AND I STROLL into the kitchen a few minutes later. Calvin takes one look at the two of us as we walk in, and points at me, shirtless with my massive bruise. He doesn’t even say anything, just goes and gets me one of his shirts to put on. I’m now sporting a much too loose Z-Wave Surf Shop t-shirt from a local surf store that he might have owned since before I was even conceived, but it’ll do for now. As soon as we tell him the guys are coming over, he shoves us outside while he gets busy making breakfast for everyone.
I take a seat on one of the patio lounge chairs and pull Eva down with me. “Do you think he’s been lonely all this time?”
“I do. I have memories of him and your grandma,” she tells me. “I have memories of this house too,” she looks over at it. “I think we used to spend a lot of time over here. I don’t know why though? The more I think about it, the more I remember. Do you remember much from before you were six or seven?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “A few things. Nothing huge.”
“Yeah. Small things. But sitting outside, back here, I’ve done this before, and waking up and heading into the kitchen. It’s too familiar.”
We both suddenly hear Coop before we even see him. His voice is echoing from the side of the house as we turn to look. He and Beck both appear at the same time, looking like two pissed off dads.
Coop points to Eva and I and glares his eyes. “You two!” he exclaims, marching over to us. “You two have a lot of explaining to do. This will not happen again, understand? Worrying us half to death all night.” He freezes in his steps. “Holy shit!” he shouts. “Bodhi? What the goddamn hell happened to your pretty face?”
“Jesus,” Beck whistles. “That looks like shit. You do that to him, Eva?”
She laughs at his comment. “That would be Porter.”
“Goddamnit, Bodhi!” Coop throws his hands up. “Did we not tell you this would happen? Son of a bitch. You never listen. Gotta get yourself beat up as soon as my parents become your guardians. You missing a limb or anything? That son of a bitch do anything else to you?”
I wait a moment. “You done?” I ask Coop. “Your rant over with now?”
He nods and puts his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, man. I’m done. I’m calming down.”
“Good,” I say. “I think Porter might have bruised a couple ribs too.”
Coop throws his hands back up in the air. “Jesus Christ, that goddamn bastard! That his house over there?” he points across the Halifax. “Let’s go, Beck. We’ll be back in a bit,” he says, grabbing Beck and turning to leave. “Save me some goddamn bacon—”
“Coop!” I call out his name. “Sit your ass down, man.”
He stops with his back to me and shakes his head, but he turns around. “You can’t be doing this. You can’t be getting in trouble like this anymore.”
“I know, Coop.”
He continues. “We’ve gone all this time, never getting in trouble. Years. You, me, and Beck. Never getting caught. Never letting you get caught. Keeping your ass out of juvie. Beck and I covering for you over and over again. Hiding booze and weed from your mom. Making sure you never died when you were on one of your weekend bingers—”
“Coop!” I shout his name.
“One goddamn week in with Ma and Pop and you look like you’re the leader in fight club,” he goes on.
“I know, Coop.”
“Gonna beat your ass myself if you do this to me again,” he makes clear. “You got it? No more of this shit. No more keeping us wondering if you’re dead in some alley lying in your own vomit. Or if you drowned because you were surfing drunk in the middle of the night like you did last Halloween, which by the way, I still have PTSD from that. You answer your goddamn phone. You tell a brother when you aren’t coming home that night. Send a goddamn text. Tell us you’re fucking alive—”
“I got it, Coop. I got it. I’m sorry.”
Coop throws himself down in the chair next to me.
Eva’s gentle hand appears on my neck. “Sounds like these last three years have been pretty insane,” she mumbles.
“You have no idea,” Coop says to her.
Eva looks down at me with a pained expression on her face.
“I’m fine,” I say to her. “Coop was exaggerating.”
Coop sticks his middle finger up from his chair.
“Was this a preview of what’s coming?” Beck asks, pointing to my face. “Is Porter coming back for round two?”
“No,” says a voice behind us. We all spin around in the direction of the dock to see Eva’s mom standing there. “That will not happen again.”
Eva jumps off my lap and goes over to her mom. The resemblance between the two of them is astounding. I find myself looking between them both, questioning how they could pass as twins.
“You alright this morning, Eva?” she asks her.
Eva nods as she backs up a little. “I’m good. You?”
“Good. Good. Oh, the alarm!” she exclaims. “Don’t turn it on today. Woke up this morning, and it’s toast. Nothing’s working. I need to call the alarm company later.”
“Got it,” Eva nods. “Mom, this is Coop and Beck,” she introduces. “And you know Bodhi.”
The guys give Mrs. Calloway a wave. I go to stand, but she shakes her head. “Don’t get up, Bodhi,” she tells me, walking over and squatting down in front of me. “Your eye okay?” she asks, moving the hair off my face so she can inspect it better. She winces at the sight.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s okay.”
She has a warm smile. It makes me miss my mom.
“Calvin said your ribs might be hurt too? Do you want to get them checked out?” she asks me. “I’ll take you for an x-ray if you think you need one.”
“No, that’s okay,” I answer her. “They already feel a little better.” She raises her eyebrow. She doesn’t believe me. “I’ll let you know if they get worse?”
“Audrey!” comes Calvin’s voice from the patio doors. “You staying for breakfast? I’m making a shit ton of food!”
“Mouth, Calvin,” she reminds him, rolling her eyes.
“Whoops,” he shrugs. “Not like these kids haven’t heard the word shit before. You staying? I’ve got that jelly for the biscuits that Rose used to always have.”
“Not today, Calvin,” she replies. “I have to pick the boys up from the Kellers soon. I just stopped by to check on Eva and Bodhi.”
“Another time?” he confirms. She nods. “You four,” Calvin points to us. “Go sit at the table, I’m coming out with food.” Then he disappears back inside the house.
Coop and Beck go to the table, but Eva doesn’t move and is instead staring at her mom with a weird look on her face. I can tell she’s confused by the interaction her mom and Calvin just had. Hell, I’m confused. They act like they’re father and daughter, or at least lifelong friends. I slowly stand and take Eva’s hand into my own.
&nbs
p; “Mrs. Calloway?” I question. She turns to me. “How well do you know my grandpa?”
Her warm smile disappears a little as she looks between Eva and I. “Very well, Bodhi. I know him very well.”
“And my mom?” I ask her a bit more guarded. “How well did you know my mom?”
Her warm smile returns. “Very well, Bodhi. I know this is going to confuse you both, but I knew your mom very well too.” She comes closer to us. “Now is not the right time to discuss this all, but we will discuss this all.”
“Really?” Eva exclaims. “Because I’m going to have to write all my questions down so I can keep track of them because there’s so many and nothing makes sense right now.”
I squeeze Eva’s hand.
“I promise,” Mrs. Calloway says to the both of us. “I promise I’ll explain everything. Just not right now.”
“Everything?” Eva whispers under her breath. “Jesus Christ, Mom. It’s like you’ve got this secret life I don’t know about. How much shit have you kept from me?”
I watch as she storms off to the table to join Coop and Beck, leaving me standing there alone with her mom, who looks wounded with Eva’s quick departure.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Calloway says, putting her head in her hands. “You try to do the right thing, but it always ends up hurting someone,” she mutters. I’m not sure if she’s talking to me, or herself. “Bodhi,” she looks up at me. “Trust me here. My daughter doesn’t, and I know that’s my fault, but you, I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”
I look over at Eva. I don’t even know Mrs. Calloway. In fact, yesterday I thought she was just as horrible as her husband. How do I trust someone I don’t even know? Something tells me this is really important to her though, and it goes beyond her knowing Calvin and my mom.
“I’ll trust you if that keeps Eva safe from whatever it is, you’re too nervous to tell us right now.”
She looks relieved. She looks anxious. She looks like a mom wanting to protect her child. “Bodhi,” she puts her hand on my arm. “Excuse my bluntness, but I think it’s pretty obvious that you love my daughter?”
Confession Page 15