by Rose, Emery
I waded back into the water, my gaze focused on the asshole who had dropped in on her as he rode another set of waves in and hopped off his board in knee-deep water. I advanced on him and crossed my arms over my chest. He was wearing a HartCore wetsuit and looked vaguely familiar.
“The fuck was that? You dropped in on her. That wave was hers.”
He smirked. “You talking about the muffrider?”
Fucking douche. I smacked him upside the back of his head. A warning.
He shoved my shoulders. The little shit. The smirk was still there but his eyes had hardened. “I’d think twice before picking a fight with me. Do you know who I am?”
“I don’t give a fuck if you’re the pope. You didn’t even come to check and see if she was okay. You did nothing to help. What if I hadn’t been here? What if nobody else was here to help her?”
“Remy St. Clair isn’t worth fighting over. Girl’s a cock tease. White trash.”
“If I ever see you at this break—”
“What are you going to do? Beat me up? Oh, and by the way, I’m Tristan Hart. And you’re my daddy’s golden boy. Watch your fucking step.”
A hand wrapped around my bicep and Travis dragged me away. I shook off his hold and jabbed my finger at the asshole. “Brush up on your surfing etiquette.”
He was laughing as he paddled back out.
“Hey,” Travis said, jostling my arm to get my attention. “Shake it off.”
I ground my teeth. “You saw what he did.”
“Yeah. He’s a little shit. But it happens all the time. He’s not worth losing your shit over. Come on. Check on Remy,” he urged.
I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm the fuck down. Asshole. Figures he was John Hart’s son. John Hart was a pompous ass. Unfortunately, I needed his money. I was a brand and I couldn’t afford to lose my cool with that douchebag. He’d known that all along. He also knew Remy.
Remy was already climbing the stairs, using the railing for support, the board under her arm. Stubborn girl.
“You need my help?” Travis asked, his eyes darting to Remy who looked like she was struggling.
“Nah. I’ve got this. Get back out there.” I knew he was dying to get back out there.
He clapped me on the shoulder before he headed back to the water. “Call if you need anything.”
I jogged across the beach and up the stairs, catching up to Remy on the path that led to the parking lot. I took the board out from under her arm and side-eyed her. She was shivering, her arms wrapped around herself for warmth, her gait unsteady. Being in a wetsuit, a chilly April wind blowing, wasn’t helping matters.
When we got to the parking lot, I propped our boards against the side of the Jeep, opened the hatch and told her to sit down. I rummaged in the back and came out with beach towels and my hoodie, instructing her to peel off the top half of her wetsuit. Her hands were shaking so badly she was having trouble with the simple task.
“Remy,” I said softly.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine, so I did it myself, peeling the wetsuit down and wrapped a towel around her, then got on my knees in front of her and peeled off the rest of the wetsuit. Her skin was covered in goose bumps, her lips blue.
I grabbed another beach towel and wrapped it around her legs, then pulled my hoodie over her head. When she figured out I was trying to dress her like she was a toddler, she pushed her arms in the sleeves and hopped off the back of the Jeep.
Remy grabbed her backpack and brushed past me, in a hurry to get out of here now. I did a quick towel change out of my wetsuit and into shorts and a T-shirt and climbed into the driver’s seat, cranking up the heat as she pulled on leggings over her wet swimsuit. She reached for the hem of my hoodie to take it off, but I stopped her with my words.
“Just wear it for now. Until you warm up.”
“Thanks.” She pulled the sleeves over her hands and gripped them with her fingertips, wrapping her arms around herself again. I handed her a bottle of water and she thanked me, taking a few sips. “Just drop me off at home and then you can come back.”
Yeah, that wasn’t happening.
I drove her home. Nobody was there. What was I supposed to do? Just let her fend for herself? I waited for her to change out of her bikini because that was wet too. While she was in her bedroom, curiosity got the best of me. I checked the refrigerator and the cupboards—empty except for a few condiments, cans of Spaghetti-O's, a jar of peanut butter, and milk—and sifted through the stack of bills on the counter addressed to Rachel St. Clair. Final Notices. I speared my hand through my hair, reminding myself that this was none of my business. I had no right to look at someone’s mail or nose around in their kitchen.
Crossing yet another line, this one illegal, I stuffed the utility bill in my pocket and wandered into the living room. It was slightly cleaner than the last time I’d been here. A set of sheets and a pillow were stuffed into the corner of the threadbare tweed sofa, a pile of dirty clothes next to a black-painted dresser against the opposite wall with a TV sitting on top of it. It was quiet in the apartment and I called out her name, worried that she’d passed out.
When she didn’t answer, I ventured down the hallway and stopped outside a closed door that I guessed was the bathroom. It sounded like the shower was running.
“Remy. You okay?”
No answer. The water stopped, and I returned to the living room, so it didn’t look as if I’d been lurking right outside the door.
I gave it five minutes then asked the question again.
“I’m fine. I’m just…” Her voice sounded faint.
“You’re just what?”
The door opened, and she came out into the hallway, a cloud of steam billowing behind her, her face pale and her lips colorless. I grabbed her upper arms before she hit the floor and guided her to a sitting position. “Put your head between your legs.”
She did as I said and took deep breaths. We sat there for a good five minutes before she lifted her head.
“I’m better now.” The color had returned to her face, at least. “I was just trying to warm up. I thought the shower would help. And I felt gross. From the saltwater and…” She let her voice trail off and swallowed hard. “I’m sorry about all this. You should go back. I know you love surfing after a storm.”
Water dripped from the ends of her wet hair down the turquoise hoodie I’d given her for Christmas. It matched her eyes. “I’m not going to leave you like this.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You need to stop saying that. You’re not fine, Remy.” I wasn’t just talking about her head injury or the dizziness. She averted her head, knowing what I meant and finger-combed her hair then gathered it into a ponytail and secured it with the elastic on her wrist.
She leaned her head against the wall and turned her face toward me. We were sitting in the hallway, side by side, our legs kicked out in front of us.
“Your eyes look greener today,” she said. “Green apple green.”
“It must be from the scent of your shampoo.”
She laughed because that made no sense. Her stomach growled, reminding me that she’d thrown up earlier and there was no food in this apartment.
“All that talk of green apples made me hungry,” she joked.
“How are you feeling?”
“Not bad. I just have a headache.”
“Did you take Tylenol or anything?” I asked, looking toward the bathroom.
“No. I checked the cabinet but couldn’t find any.”
Of course not. They probably didn’t have a first aid kit either.
* * *
“You can stop playing nurse now and get back out there,” Remy said after I’d cleaned the gash on her head—she’d barely winced—and gave her Tylenol.
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“How did you guess? You’ve eaten your weird breakfast. Now you’re just being a slacker.”
She bit into her green apple. “They are when you smash them and stuff them into a sweet potato.”
I watched her eat the entire apple, core and all. “And that’s not weird.”
She shrugged and held up the stem. “It would have been weird if I ate the stem.”
I laughed and shook my head. “So, how do you know Tristan Hart?”
“From school.”
There was more to it, I could tell she hesitated, not wanting to tell me everything.
“I didn’t realize you knew him,” she said.
“I don’t know him. His dad owns HartCore.”
“Of course, he does. I should have figured that out.” She sighed.
“Does he hassle you?” I asked, remembering his words. What I really wanted to know was if she had ever hooked up with that douche.
“No. I have nothing to do with him.”
Why did I get the distinct impression that she was lying?
Remy was cagey sometimes. She kept a lot of secrets. Peeling back the many layers of Remy St. Clair was a challenge. She only shared small parts of herself but unlike a lot of girls, she didn’t go out of her way to only show herself in the best light. She wasn’t trying to impress anyone or pretend she had her shit together.
No. Remy was unapologetically herself. She didn’t flirt. She didn’t act coy. She didn’t give the impression that she gave a shit what anyone else thought about her. I loved that about her. Even though she kept secrets, she was the most honest person I’d ever known. She was real.
“Well, as much as I’d love to hang out and watch you eat acai bowls or whatever is next on your menu, I have to get to work.” She stood to go.
“You should rest.”
“You’re great at giving advice and not taking it, aren’t you?” she asked as we walked down the stairs.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Hossegor. Your rotator cuff. How’s your shoulder?”
“Good as new.”
“Sure it is.”
After I dropped off Remy, I headed back to the break. Tristan Hart was gone.
“Where’s the douche?” I asked when I joined Trav in the lineup.
“You’re gonna love this,” he said, chuckling under his breath. “Not long after you left, the douche got slammed by a wave. Broke his board.”
We both laughed.
“Karma. What a bitch,” I said. Time to get down to business.
“Don’t even think about it,” Trav said, eying the same wave I was.
“Got my name on it.” I took off, paddling hard and caught it before he did.
“Asshole,” he called after me. “Karma’s coming for you.”
I flicked my head back, a little move to get my hair off my forehead, like an asshole posing for a pin-up in a magazine.
Karma was a bitch.
11
Remy
Mom forgot our seventeenth birthday. No card, no gift, no Happy Birthday. Nothing. Dylan and I bought half a dozen cupcakes—chocolate with buttercream frosting—and a box of sparklers. We took them up to the roof and got high and shared a six-pack, watching the sparks of light in the darkness until the sparklers fizzled out and Dylan snuffed them out in an empty PBR can. I was on my second cupcake when the door burst open and Sienna appeared.
“Seriously? You’re partying without me? I came bearing gifts.” She handed Dylan a bottle of whiskey she stole from her dad’s liquor cabinet and tossed a wrapped gift in my lap. I handed her a cupcake and Dylan cracked open the whiskey and chugged it.
“You’re welcome,” she said, glaring at him.
“Thanks, Princess.” He gave her a lazy grin.
Sienna rolled her eyes. “You’re an ass.”
I looked from Dylan to Sienna. “Am I missing something?”
“No,” they said in unison.
He rolled another joint and lit it, taking a drag before he passed it to Sienna. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
She muttered something under her breath I didn’t catch, making me feel like I’d definitely missed something. A few weeks ago, Dylan had gotten a new job working for a pool cleaning company. One of the pools he cleaned was Sienna’s. I didn’t ask if he cleaned Tristan’s pool or any of the others in that neighborhood. Ever since the day Tristan and Shane had that run-in at the beach, Tristan had stopped hassling me.
He hadn’t mentioned the incident, and neither had I. Which suited me just fine. Today had been our last day of school and with any luck, I wouldn’t run into him all summer.
I opened the birthday present from Sienna—a Starbucks gift card and a Nirvana T-shirt that I vowed to wear every day. We hugged and shared another cupcake. It made me nauseous.
After we drank half a bottle of whiskey and smoked the joint, Dylan came up with the brilliant plan to go to the beach. I lent Sienna the new bikini I bought with my discount from Jimmy’s Surf Shack, blue with a hot pink floral print, and wore my old faded orange suit. Sienna had never been inside our apartment and if all my edges weren’t blurred and the filter on my life so hazy, I would have been embarrassed.
We cycled to the beach, and Sienna rode on Dylan’s handlebars.
Drunk and high, the three of us were swimming against the tide in the moonlight. I was sure we were all going to drown.
Dylan was floating on his back, singing “Black” by Pearl Jam. He sang it to the empty beach and the endless sea and the silver moon. His anger and hurt seeped into every word. He couldn’t see my tears. He couldn’t see me breaking for him. I was just a broken shell of a girl, trying to keep my head above water. He was just a boy, trying to figure out how to be a man and keep us both afloat.
It was such a strange, sad, bittersweet night. But despite everything—our absentee mom and all the crap with Tristan and my unrequited love for Shane—I loved our California life.
The next morning, I roused Dylan from the sofa. “Go away,” he muttered.
“I know the best hangover cure.”
The ocean healed. Shane and Jimmy swore by it. After Dylan and I surfed for an hour, my headache was gone and so was my queasy stomach.
When I walked into work a couple hours later, Jimmy wished me a Happy Birthday. He hadn’t forgotten. I nearly cried when he gave me a Polaroid camera and I used up half the film on photos of him. If I wanted to see what Shane would look like in twenty years, all I had to do was look at Jimmy.
* * *
“Where are you taking me?” I asked Shane, putting on the helmet he handed me. I acted as if it mattered where we went. But it didn’t. I would go anywhere with him.
“For a belated birthday.”
He took me to Oceanside and we ate tacos. I asked him about Rio—he’d just returned from a surfing event in Brazil—and he tried to paint a picture for me with his words but ended up handing me his phone. I scrolled through the photos he’d taken, ninety percent of them had ocean views. After we ate, we watched the sunset from the pier, our arms resting on the railing.
I watched Shane’s face as he stared at the ocean, his mistress, like a lover would—with longing and a smile on his perfect lips. He turned his head to look at me and the smile was still there. His eyes looked green today. I wondered if that meant something.
He pulled a small wrapped box out of the pocket of his frayed cargo pants and set it on the railing. I just stared at it like it might bite me if I touched it. “What’s this?”
“Your birthday present.”
I blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. It was still there. “You bought me a birthday present?”
“Are you going to open it or just stare at the pretty wrapping? Quick. Before that pelican snatches it up.” He sounded amused but a little bit embarrassed that I’d made no move to open it. We were both staring at the box now like it was a ticking bomb. He wasn’t joking about the pelican. It was perched on the railing only a few feet to my left. I grabbed the box before he could swoop in and
claim it.
It was pretty wrapping paper—midnight blue with silver stars. The box was light. Small and square. I turned so my back was against the railing and there was less chance of the gift falling into the water. I was holding my breath as I unwrapped it and then I lifted off the lid and gasped. A gold circle around a silver anchor on a gold chain. I lifted the necklace from the box and studied the medallion.
“Do you know what the markings mean?” he asked.
I looked at the engravings in the gold circle and shook my head. “They’re the coordinates for Costa del Rey.”
“It’s beautiful. I love it,” I said finally, realizing that it had been a few long moments of silence.
He huffed out a laugh. “That’s good. Because I can’t take it back.”
The necklace had been made just for me. Tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t believe that he would go to all this trouble. That he would have something made especially for me. I flipped it over and read the engraved words on the back: For Firefly, so you never lose your way home.
I smiled. It was a joke, kind of—he knew about my lousy sense of direction. But I thought the words had a deeper meaning. Like, he was my home. I don’t know. I just wanted to believe that.
“Here,” he said, taking the necklace from me. I gathered my hair and held it in one hand and he leaned in close. His head dipped as he clasped the necklace around my neck, his callused fingers brushing against my skin. I closed my eyes and breathed him in. He smelled like summertime. Like the sea. And something that was just him. Clean and manly and intoxicating. I missed him. I wanted to touch him, kiss him, press my lips against the smooth tanned skin of his neck. I opened my eyes as he lifted his head. My fingers traced the necklace and I sucked my lower lip between my teeth. His eyes flitted over my face. We were so close I could see the flecks of amber in his irises.
“Remy,” he said hoarsely.
“Shane,” I breathed.
He shook his head and exhaled loudly, then he took the box and wrapping paper out of my hand and tossed them in a nearby trash can. I wasn’t sure why he’d thrown away the box, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t need it. I had no intention of ever taking off this necklace.