by Tess Oliver
“Hey,” I said.
“Sorry, I need some water for the aspirin. No, he was real. I’m sure of it,” she continued her solo conversation. “It’s all coming back to me now that the tequila shots are leaving my head. That guy knew places to touch that I didn’t even realize I had.”
“I don’t really need to hear the tawdry details of your night,” I called to her. I turned off the water and grabbed around the curtain for my towel. It was no longer in reach. “My towel, Grace.”
“Oops.” She dropped it onto my hand. “I wonder if I took any pictures of him.”
I stepped out of the shower.
She waved off the idea of pictures. “Probably better that I didn’t. It would ruin the whole thing. He probably wasn’t as great as I imagined. Maybe I’m even imagining that he was breathtaking. I sometimes build a guy up in my mind better than he actually is.”
I patted my skin dry. “No, you weren’t imagining it. He is breathtaking.”
Grace’s eyes widened. “Did you see him?”
“He was making his escape while I was standing in the kitchen eating cereal.”
She sighed. “What a jerk.”
“The breathtaking ones usually are.” I waved her out. “Get ready or you’ll have to drive yourself.”
***
Greg was standing out front of the shop rearranging a few sale items on his half off sidewalk table. Every few seconds, he’d glance across the street at the construction site, and I knew, every time he looked over there, his heart broke a little more. Now that the foundation had been poured, the guy who owned the site was pushing the construction crew to work Saturdays, even though that meant clogging up the street and parking with work trucks. As it was, there was always a shortage of parking for beachgoers. Now they had to look harder for a spot.
Duke ran ahead to greet Greg. Grace went inside, and I stopped at the table. “I have a few other items to put on here. I’ll bring them out.”
Greg looked back across the street. “Looks like they’re moving fast on the framing.” He sighed. “Seems like the end of an era over on this side of the street.”
“Bullshit. He’s going to load that stupid shop up with factory made surfboards and designer label swimsuits and all the crap only a tourist would look at. The real surfers, they’ll still be coming here to Maverick’s. And besides, this looks like a pet project for a rich kid. Maybe his dad just wanted to keep him busy. He’ll be bored with it in no time. A few months into a long slow winter and the shiny penny won’t be so shiny. Then he’ll leave this place in the hands of some numbskull store manager, who also knows nothing about surfing, and he’ll be off spending his trust fund on the next project.”
Greg grinned at me. Years and sun and surf had carved deep lines in his face. The laugh lines around his eyes were the deepest. “You’ve been practicing that little speech, haven’t you?”
“Nope, just came out naturally.” I kissed his cheek. “Because it’s true. Grace and I are going to get the sale merchandise ready. I was thinking half off on last year’s bikini styles. What do you think?”
“You’re the manager,” he said.
The morning passed quickly, and Greg got an order for a custom short board, which seemed to snap him out of his earlier gloom. A thin stream of customers, some of the early season beachgoers, trickled through the shop, but most of the locals knew that we’d be putting a lot of swimwear on sale next week. While annual half off sales were always a good thing for business, they also made people hold off on buying stuff at full price.
After hours of sticking red price reduced stickers on last year’s merchandise, I decided to rearrange the sunglass rack before lunch. I’d put Grace to work on the window display. She had a total knack for putting together a fashionable display. She usually added one of her vintage straw hats for flare. Duke was particularly bored today, and he flopped down at my feet chewing his squeaky toy and managing to make the toy sound sad, like him. I reached down, grabbed it from his mouth and tossed it across the room. It bounced off of Grace and so did Duke.
“Hey!” she laughed. “Have some sympathy. I’m still feeling like crap. I will never drink tequila shots again, and I will never bring a guy straight home from a party when I’ve had too much tequila.”
I laughed at her convoluted logic. “The second half of that resolution is unnecessary if you stick to the first half of never drinking tequila.”
“Shots, I said shots. Tequila in mixed drinks is a whole other thing.” She turned back to the window and then lurched up onto tiptoes to get a better look at the construction site across the street. “There he is,” she squealed. “My god, he is unreal.”
I didn’t look up from my task of rearranging sunglasses. “Unreal isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
Grace’s sandals clacked against the tile floor as she dropped back down to her heels. “Oh, come on, Elle. Even you have to admit that he’s beautiful.”
I glanced across the street. “He has a great build, I’ll give you that. I’ll bet he’s a real jerk when it comes to girls. Looks like the type who never calls back after the first date.”
Grace sighed wistfully. “Why are all the shiny, sparkly ones always assholes?” She walked over and switched the radio station. “Still, I refuse to be discouraged by your usual dose of pessimism.”
“Suit yourself and best of luck. Hey, are you almost ready for lunch? My stomach is growling.” At the mention of lunch, Duke trotted over and looked up at me with an expectant glint in his black eyes and his toy between his teeth. “Go back to your pillow, Duke. I’ll share my lunch with you. I can take you to the beach after work.” As if he understood every word, he plodded over to the pillow and dropped his big head onto it. With an audible dog sigh, he stretched out and closed his eyes.
“I say we go to the Sandwich Hut,” Grace suggested as she stretched her neck to glance out the window.
“Let me guess, your sleepover guest is heading that way for lunch?”
“Maybe.”
I finished tidying up the sunglass case. “I suppose we could get sandwiches. Your turn to buy as I recall.”
“Right.” Grace tapped her chin in thought, and I knew what was coming next. “Actually, I spent my last twenty on this really great hair conditioner. It smells like coconut.”
“Great. You should have brought it with you, so you could have some for lunch.”
Her lip pushed out in a pout. Grace had puppy dog eyes down to an art.
“Did Duke teach you that expression? I swear you two have so much in common. Except your obsession is hats and his is squeaky toys.” I walked to the counter and reached under it for my purse. I called to the back. “Greg, do you want a sandwich?”
“Nope, I’m good,” he called back.
“Let’s go, but now you owe me two lunches. Otherwise, I’m cashing in on the collateral and taking the coconut conditioner.”
As I’d already predicted, Seth, Grace’s new point of interest, was standing in line with another guy who had perfected the beer belly look and who had an impressive beard hanging a good three inches below his chin. They were both wearing extremely obnoxious orange t-shirts with the even more obnoxious Moondoggie logo.
“Jeez, those shirts suck,” I quipped as we strolled along the sidewalk toward the mouthwatering smell of onions and mustard and warm bread. “How dare that idiot Rice or whatever the hell his name is use that name. Moondoggie was a dreamy movie character who was the stuff of surfing legends. Even with the totally fake surf scenes and the cornball surf language, those Gidget and Moondoggie movies were classics. And that jerk is making a mockery of them.”
“You disapprove of my logo?” a deep voice floated over our shoulders. I looked back. It was him, the owner of the new shop. He had those sharp, hard features that made him look permanently mean. His hair was always neatly combed as if he plastered it with some expensive, invisible hair gel.
“Yes I do.” I faced forward. We kept walking and picked up
our pace. The guy seemed to always be lurking around, and it was starting to irritate me. I hadn’t seen his Corvette pull up across the street, and yet, he was there now, right behind us in line, clouding our airspace with his aftershave. When men splashed on that much aftershave, I always wondered what they were covering up.
We reached the line, which was eight people long. Seth and the other guy were three people from the order window. I was busy perusing the menu, and Grace was busy perusing the tasty man several heads in front of us. And, as if he realized someone was watching him, Seth turned around and gave us the cursory chin lift that guys used instead of waving.
Grace grabbed my arm, and a pink blush flooded her cheeks.
“Oh my gosh.” I lowered my voice. “You really like this guy.”
“I do. I mean, yeah, most of the night was a blur, but—” She looked up again. He was leaned down in the order window. “He’s just really something else, don’t you think?”
“Grace,” I couldn’t keep the warning from my tone.
“No you don’t, Elle. Don’t put a dark cloud over this. I’m determined, and you know when I have my sights set on something, I don’t give up easily.”
“I was just going to remind you that guys like him are usually just heartbreak and disappointment. But you know what, you’re right. What do I know about the guy? I’ve only had a few conversations with him, and during one he was sneaking out of our apartment, half dressed.”
Grace looked puzzled. This was a look she did much better than serious. “When was the second conversation?”
“When I first met him, and I asked him to unzip—” It wasn’t just my imagination. Rice’s aftershave was getting stronger. He was leaning closer to eavesdrop on our conversation.
Grace hadn’t noticed the rude intrusion. She stared at me expectantly.
I’d been thrown off by it all and forgot what I was saying.
“Well,” Grace said sharply, “are you going to leave me at the word unzip? What the hell did he unzip?”
“Huh? Oh, my wet suit. The zipper was stuck.” I tried to motion behind us with my eyes, but Grace was so caught up with the topic of her new friend, she didn’t catch on.
“Are you talking about my new welders?” Rice asked suddenly.
I turned around and flashed an angry scowl at him. “You know, if you’re going to intrude on people’s conversations, at least tone down the aftershave.”
His jaw twitched a little at my harsh words, then he grinned. “Sorry, I heard the word unzip coming from those beautiful lips, and my attention was snared.”
I opened my mouth to chew him out, but Grace grabbed my hand. I turned around. Seth and his friend were walking past. They stopped.
“Hi, Seth,” Grace gushed.
His friend looked hurt by her ridiculous overture to Seth, while completely ignoring him. I reached my hand out to his friend. “Hi, I’m Noelle.”
“Rocko.” His beard vibrated with his smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Seth looked down at me but didn’t say a word. He definitely had a penetrating blue gaze. He pulled his attention away from me and smiled at Grace. “Why don’t you girls meet us on the beach for lunch?”
“All right,” Grace answered without even glancing my way for corroboration.
“How long have you both been off on break?” Rice asked, once again listening to our conversation.
Seth stared coldly at the guy as he pulled out his phone. He looked at it. “We’ve still got a half hour. But if you want confirmation, I could call up my union rep and you could ask him. Course he might also want to know why we’re working on a Saturday.”
His friend snickered.
I could sense Rice’s tension with that comment. “No, that’s all right. Just make sure you’re back on site at the right time.”
“You bet.” Seth smiled down at us, and they walked away.
We got our sandwiches, and as hungry as I was, I was more thrilled to get away from Rice than to have a tuna melt in my hands.
Grace turned to head to the beach. “Where are you going?” she asked as I continued on toward the shop.
“You’re the one who accepted the invite. I promised Duke I’d share my sandwich with him.”
“Bring him to the beach.”
“You know I can’t let him on the sand when the lifeguards are in the towers.”
“So, you’re going to leave me to go eat lunch with them alone?” she asked.
“He’s your conquest. Not mine.”
Chapter 5
Seth
Rocko and I were both still hurting from too much partying and not enough sleep the night before. The work day on land was longer and more boring than underwater, but it was much easier. After a good eight hours on the job site, Rocko ate an entire sausage pizza by himself before settling in front of the television with his six pack of beer. He’d been thoroughly bummed when Grace had shown up for lunch without her stunning sidekick. He’d taken her having gone out of her way to introduce herself as a possible glint of hope. I didn’t know the girl at all, and I couldn’t help him with motives. But when I’d told him I thought she was just being polite, he didn’t want to hear it. So I dropped the subject.
I opened a beer and chugged it down in front of an angry scowl from my roommate, who was now one beer short of a full six pack. “What the heck are you watching?” I asked.
“Don’t know, some stupid movie on cable. I saw naked tits as I was flipping channels, so I stopped. And now the naked tits are gone, and it’s just a stupid movie.”
“Serves you right for using naked tits as a gauge for deciding on a flick to watch.”
He tossed back some beer and wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand. “As if you don’t do the same thing.”
“True. I think I’m going to take a walk down to the water.”
He lifted his hand. “That’s fine. I’m quite content here with my beer and occasional naked tits.”
I slid the screen door shut behind me. A light fog had coasted in from the ocean, filtering out some of the last remnants of sunlight. At night, the beach was always an entirely different place than in the day. The seagulls, now exhausted from hovering, scouting and raiding beach picnics, had settled in a mass huddle on the sand. Only two other people had come up with the same idea as me. The rest of the beach was deserted. Halfway into August, when the temperatures stayed warm though the night, there would be more people out. But it was still too early in summer for that.
The lights were popping on all the way down the pier, and I decided to walk in that direction. A black dog came bursting through the haze that had settled near the shore. It was my lunch companion. He pounced into the water and plucked out a tennis ball. With the yellow ball jammed in his jaw, making it look as if he was smiling, he stopped and wagged his tail at me.
Noelle appeared next. The moist air made her dark hair curl around her face. It took me a second to find my tongue, something that was rare for me. “I think your dog likes me.”
“That’s because you shared your sandwich with him.” She stopped in front of me. There it was again, a soft shade of sadness brushed over an amazingly beautiful face.
“So, what you’re saying is, he is smiling up at me because I look like a giant ham sandwich?”
She laughed quietly. The silver dog tags dangled from a long chain around her neck. She caught me looking at them and quickly tucked them under her shirt. “Grace is up at the house if you want to see her,” she said.
I didn’t answer.
She peered up at me. “I warned her not to get too attached. She likes you. Don’t fuck with her head.”
This girl was great at putting me on defense, something I wasn’t used to. “I’m not fucking with her head.”
“Well, after the whole jumping into bed with her and all.” She took the ball from her dog and threw it.
“What happened to ‘my wild roommate won’t even remember you so don’t flatter yourself’?” I as
ked.
She shrugged and started walking the same direction as me. I stayed next to her. I wasn’t even completely sure why. It was obvious she didn’t like me. “I guess I underestimated her.” She glanced over at me. “Or I underestimated this.” She waved her hand up and down in front of me.
I mimicked her. “What do you mean, this?”
“This package. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out for you.”
I smiled. “So you think I’m a package?”
“No, my roommate thinks you are. I think you’re a guy who dashes in and out of girl’s lives just because you can get away with it. And conscience be damned.”
“Shit, that’s harsh. So I’m a package without a conscience.” Her words were extra sharp because some of them rang true. I’d dated a lot of girls and had only hooked up with a few for more than a couple months. But I was convinced that was only because I hadn’t found the right girl. My brothers had both found their forever girls, but I was still waiting for mine.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so judgmental. It’s a character flaw. I size people up too quickly. I’m sure you’re a perfectly nice guy. I mean, even though you slinked out of my roommate’s bed the other night, you did share your lunch with my dog.” Duke returned for another ball throw. This time I heaved it along the sand. He chased after it.
“You’re a welder, huh?”
“Yep. I heat metal and stick it to other metal. But I usually do it underwater.”
“Really? Do you mean like building bridges and stuff?”
I nodded. “And oil rigs, barges, docks, anything that needs metal stuck together underwater.”
“Aren’t you afraid of sharks?”
“This coming from a girl who surfs and studies marine biology?”
She smiled. “I guess that’s why my mind went straight to that particular danger. I suppose there are other risks involved with underwater welding.”
“Electrocution, drowning and the bends. That’s why Rocko and I are on land for this job. Giving our bodies a little break.”