His source pulled everything two days before they went to press with the issue. It wasn’t just rage that Benson felt; it was loss and grief and shame and embarrassment. He’d sold everyone on something that he couldn’t deliver. He’d have to let the story go into the ether, disappear and find its own light.
Benson walked away.
He needed something else—a new mission, a new lead, a new cause. He needed something to take back to his editor to show that he could do this—he could enter the world again, ready to tackle whatever it brought him.
And, of course, there it was like the God of Writing gifting him. A girl, on a date, an elite matchmaking service, a family of lawyers hoping to marry their daughter to a family of doctors.
It was too perfect.
In all her three-dimensional glory, there she was: a page-ready reluctant (the perfect type) heroine. Annie Gerwitz, public defender and superhero. Single and looking fearlessly.
Annie grabbed his hand and tugged him effortlessly out the door and into the cool winter air—he saw the way she didn’t want to look at him, but yet she tugged him down the cement ramp to the beach access, the mountainous landmark of Haystack Rock visible in the bright moon.
He could see her perfectly, even though the sun had gone down hours ago and she wasn’t looking back. At the point where the sand climbed up into the lot, a small stream ran down the sand and Annie kicked off her shoes and tucked them to the side of the access sign. Winters on the beaches in Oregon were mild enough for the She unearthed a hair-tie from her pocket and pulled up her hair into a ponytail and she leaned down and hiked up her dress. She was ready for the beach. Benson looked down at his own beachwear: his shoes, his pants, his dry-clean only shirt, his coat. He followed her lead, however, removing his shoes and socks and doing his best to roll up his pant leg as she traipsed on ahead, splashing quickly in the stream and disappearing around a sand dune.
Benson followed.
The sand on his feet was freezing and it wiggled beneath his toes and stuck there, and he walked in the direction of Annie’s calling. When he turned the corner and saw her there, all cocksure and brilliant, her back to him, facing the ocean and the rock, he watched her for a bit before calling out.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.
She motioned with her head for them to keep going and so he followed her down to the water’s edge. She reached out and crouched down, the waves lapping against her toes. He stayed standing until he felt her hand tug him down into a crouch as well and there they sat on their haunches, watching the waves.
“Watch,” Annie whispered and she ran her hand across the wet sand as the tide rolled out. Underneath her palm, the water and the sand sparked blue and green, and Benson, let out a small laugh. He copied her and the sand beneath his own hand sparked blue and green and bright.
Underneath their hands, each time they ran them against the sand, were fireworks.
“What is it?” he asked, feeling like a child again.
“Bioluminescent critters…phytoplankton…microscopic and unseen, until you move them,” she said and she rubbed her hands across again and the blue glow followed her motion and disappeared, disturbed, and returned dark.
“I never knew that,” Benson said. He made the sand glow again and then again, and Annie laughed at his self-indulgent excitement. “Phytoplankton?”
“Uh-huh,” she said with a nod. Her blonde hair was illuminated by the moon and Benson watched the strands flame brightly in the light.
“So, your undergraduate degree was in what? Law and biology?”
Annie turned and winked. “Don’t you learn facts as a journalist that you didn’t learn in school?” She laughed and stood, stretching her hands into the sky and crossing her arms over her body; Benson noticed the cool air for the first time—as the water retreated and the glow lost its initial excitement—and his teeth began to chatter.
“Sure,” he replied and danced a bit backward to slip back up to dry sand.
Annie had other ideas.
She began to walk north, away from the rock and the beach entrance and their shoes. She tramped in the wet sand, clearly freezing, but unaffected, and her footprints created little bursts of glowing critters, as she’d called them, underneath, alighting her walk. Benson felt he had no choice but to follow her, and something inside him seemed amused that she wasn’t quite ready to end their evening either.
“Well, you learn a lot from people,” she replied back to him, her voice carried on the wind, the ocean doing everything in its power to drown her out. “Say nothing about the pay or the exhaustion or the anger that gets thrown your way, but…I love all the people I meet. Don’t you?”
Benson thought about it. No, he realized. He liked the story and the hunt and the mystery…he liked tying up narratives with neat bows and taking his readers on emotional rides, but he only liked the people as much as he liked the pieces of them he could use. So, then Annie was right about his intentions. He realized how callous that sounded, but he knew it was the truth. He found people tiring.
He also found their uniqueness endlessly enthralling.
“I suppose…” he danced around without answering.
“Let me ask you this,” she tried again. “Why the matchmaking story?”
“What?” he asked.
“You’re going to pitch writing about matchmaking to your magazine. I saw how your face got all excited when I said it…like it lit you up.” One of her shoulders went up and down. She dug a toe in the sand. “You said you needed a story.”
“I didn’t say that out loud,” he said and he stared at her. Had he said that out loud?
She spun and stared at him, her hair waving in her face. She reached up and gathered it up and held it on her head, watching him.
“You got interested,” she said. She ran her tongue over her teeth and raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to confirm or deny. “I already told you that I’m not a source, so I won’t…”
“There could be other sources,” Benson cut her off and took a few steps forward, the sand growing colder as he got closer to the water. He remained on the dry parcel of land at the tide-line, but she remained in the sinking sand, staring.
“You don’t have to write about Twoly at all. They probably don’t even have press because everyone is so confidential.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Benson said and he tried his best to sound light, but she shot him a look, annoyed and gearing up for an argument. He saw the color spot her cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it,” she breathed. “Fine. I won’t worry. But I won’t talk about the service with you. Not ever. Not a word. And I’ll find you another story…how about that? Something more interesting than me or dating or matchmaking or any of that?”
Benson laughed. He thought her petulance was cute. He liked the way her lower lip pouted as the hair whipped in her face. He wanted to tuck the hair behind her ear, but he kept his hands by his side and refrained.
“By tomorrow morning?” he asked while they walked. “I’m all ears.”
They walked a few more yards, Annie’s head bent in thought, and when she lifted her head, she gasped and pointed off to the left. In the dark, he could see nothing but a dark shape on the water, large and ominous and unmoving.
“You know what that is?” Annie asked with pride.
Benson knew the name, but he had to admit he didn’t have a lot of knowledge about Oregon lighthouses.
“Tillamook Rock Lighthouse?”
He matched her gaze. It was decommissioned and dark, but the moon cast the lighthouse out from its darkened spot two hundred yards from the shore, a basalt mound where the lighthouse sprouted in 1881.
“That’s Terrible Tilly,” Annie said. She pointed at the lighthouse, its towering column stretching upward.
“Wait. Wait I get it. You majored in law, biology, and Oregon Coast history?” Benson asked and couldn’t contain the smile playing on his lips.
“I live here, stu
pid,” Annie replied. She brushed her upper arm against his in a small push. “There’s always news coming and going about the place. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it before.”
“Only that it was once a lighthouse,” Benson admitted. They walked, the lighthouse staying ahead of them and on their left.
“It was once a lighthouse. Now, it stores bodies.”
“Bodies?” Benson laughed thinking he didn’t hear her right, but she nodded and his eyes went wide at the horror of the announcement.
They weren’t holding hands, but they walked side-by-side, her skin against the edge of his coat.
Chemistry was cruel.
Weren’t the fates assholes after all?
He once asked his mother what made marriage to his father easy.
She rolled her eyes over to him and said, “Forgiveness.”
But once, unprompted, she told him, “Marry someone to whom your relationship is easy. Marriage makes things hard enough.” Somehow the advice stuck deeply with him and struck a chord with his own ideologies. He was set in his likes and dislikes and his questioning ways, his rooted interrogations, his expectations. But Benson had turned a corner and he didn’t think he had it in him to be either forgiving or on the hunt for easy.
Sometimes he had to settle for available.
And there she was. Annie.
She was truly beautiful by moonlight.
It seemed like an impossibility. Available and easy to forgive and talk to and, he let his imagination wander. He took a sideways step back up to the warmer sand. She followed, meandering away from the water, staying close to him.
“Tell me all about it,” he said, looking down as she spoke.
“People think it’s haunted. Men lost their lives building it and it wasn’t open very long before a ship crashed on the rocks, the whole crew died. So, the lighthouse stopped in the 1950s, but after some failed investors some people bought it as a place to store ashes…charged people for a one-way flight to the rock. Even after the business stopped, they didn’t move the dead.”
“I love it. That’s creepy.”
“Whole place is condemned but sometimes people think they hear a copter headed out there. Strange old beach lore.” Annie kicked at a small piece of driftwood with her bare feet.
They stumbled upon an abandoned bonfire, only embers.
“Assholes,” Annie grumbled. Instead of putting the fire out, she plopped down in the cool sand next to it and tossed on a nearby abandoned piece of wood, causing it to burn brighter. The flames licked around the new addition.
“You think the lighthouse is haunted?” Benson asked.
“I don’t believe in the paranormal,” Annie replied without looking up. “But don’t you think it would make a good story?”
“What would I be writing about?”
“Terrible Tilly,” Annie replied as if that was enough.
“Great journalism is casting a light on unknown truth, nothing else. If there are no unknown truths in that place, then there’s no story.”
“Truth is subjective,” Annie said immediately.
“Kierkegaard. Huh. That surprises me from you.” Benson said. “I’m more of a Kant guy. Truth is the child of time and all that.”
“Of course,” Annie said with a solemn, mocking nod. “I’m a Philosophy major, too. If you wanted to make that joke.” Her arms were crossed over her body, he couldn’t see her face, but her voice had a smile as she stared at her feet in the sand. Benson watched her briefly and then shoved his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. “Sit,” he told him.
He obeyed.
She made him uncomfortable, light, giddy. She was smart and engaged and he knew he couldn’t really compete with her wit or her intelligence, but he’d never let her know it. Though as the baby to so many brothers, he was certain she’d already smelled out his anxieties. Women, he realized, were experts on that.
“Okay, look. Here’s why I want to write the matchmaking story,” Benson answered matter-of-factly. The extra wood burned easily and the warmth grew outward. “It’s fascinating. The class implications. The potential racial implications. Family dynamics. Why do people choose this? How many people had this picked for them? I have so many questions…and it’s a great story, Annie. It was fate. You, me, and that awful date. Fate.”
“Do what you want,” she replied with a flip of her wrist. “Just to tease you, I’ll sit around on the beach and recount all my dates, and you won’t get to publish a word.”
He stared off at the rolling waves and thought of the last time someone had told him he couldn’t publish what they’d told him. That had been different. Only the words were the same. Don’t publish a word.
She hummed, a recognizable hum, as though they’d crossed some silent threshold into the third act of the evening, where they could cut the act and lay it all down. Her buzz was wearing off, but she was not going to give: If Benson wanted to write about Twoly, he’d have to do it without her. He was fine with that.
“I think I’m gonna follow the Twoly lead anyway. Tease me all you want. I’ll enjoy the company.”
“It wasn’t a lead,” Annie replied, tilting her head, throwing a bit of sand on the fire. “It’s my life.”
She closed her eyes and he saw some flicker of resignation and acceptance pass across her features. She was having an internal conversation with herself about whether or not he was scum, and he watched the entire dialogue spell itself out on her face. A raised eyebrow here, a frown there.
“I can’t stop you,” she finally said and she stood up, the mirth over. She grabbed a leftover red cup from the bonfire litterers and walked down to gather water to put the fire out. Benson stayed put as she wandered down and back and then poured the salt water over the flames, sending steam and smoke into the air. “I’m private. That’s all. There’s something…important in doing something no one knows about.”
“I thought you said you told friends?”
“A few trusted individuals is different than the entire Front Street readership.”
“I’ve enjoyed spending time with you tonight,” Benson said. He had his hands in his pockets and he’d rocked on his heels and he knew he’d come across a bit business-like and perfunctory.
“Ditto,” Annie replied, a bit harder than he thought he deserved.
“Let’s get our shoes,” he said and they walked in silence the rest of the way to the beach entrance—a perfect loop. He slipped back into his shoes and tied them tight, the feeling of sand between his toes driving him crazy.
“Good luck with your story,” Annie said and she stuck out her hand. “Wherever it leads you.”
“Can I get your number?” Benson asked and Annie paused and withdrew her hand. She sucked in a breath and looked at the sky, appealing to the universe in some direct communication he wasn’t privy to.
“No,” she said and it looked as if it pained her to say it. “I signed an exclusive contract. I’m not giving my number to guys outside the program…I can’t…it wouldn’t be…” she could see the moral confusion play out as pain on her face.
“How about this,” Benson said, trying to make it easier, better, “I need your number in case I need to write about the lighthouse and I need to talk to an expert.”
“I’m not an expert.”
“If I need a lawyer?”
“You can afford one.”
“A fake date to my brother’s wedding?”
“You’re persistent.”
“It’s the journalist in me. I don’t even have a brother, I was about to go find a random guy getting married…” he hitched his thumb north toward town.
Annie paused. She waited a few seconds before turning again and assessing him; they were lit once again by lamplight from the parking lot of the Wayfarer. They’d come full circle. The kitchen door was propped open and sounds from the kitchen wafted toward them—cheerful banter and clanging dishes and pots and laughter.
“Maybe Terrible Tilly isn’t real
ly the story for you,” Annie said, her mouth and throat dry. Benson’s smile disappeared as he watched her take a small step forward and close the gap between them. Except, it wasn’t out of intimacy—it seemed more out of fear. “If it’s a question you need to answer…maybe I have one for you.”
“Okay,” Benson said, sensing the tide changing. “I’m listening.”
“Not here,” Annie answered with a small sniff and a smile. “But I guess you just got yourself a number after all.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. She’d scribbled her cell phone on the back already. “Call me and I’ll give you my address. What are you doing tomorrow night at seven?” Annie asked and she took off her shoes again and rubbed the extra sand off her feet before strapping them back on.
“I’m going wherever you tell me, Annie Gerwitz,” Benson said after looking down at her card with a smile.
Chapter Three
At home, Annie dropped her dress to the floor and crawled into her silk skull pajamas, tying her hair up into a bandana. In her teens, she was ambitious and tough, but even she could not deny that she was also the eternal baby. Her older siblings had patented the eye-roll for when she’d dare to express her own opinion; she’d come to model the same face of disgust in her own conversations. She didn’t have resting bitch face—she had resting horror face. Her face was always knotted into semi-torment and angst.
She opened her laptop and decided not to check her email.
Instead, she logged on to her Twoly page and scanned the initial profile she’d been given for The Date. His smiling picture showed up first and Annie clicked it away. She scanned over the pre-date documents and couldn’t see any red flags in his personal essay or interest pages. She clicked on the communication page and thought about sending an apology for her actions, but then she repeated: An hour late and already drunk, and convinced herself not to.
Savage Distractions (The Love is Murder Social Club Book 3) Page 4