by CC Bridges
He pulled me close and kissed my forehead. “You know I’m not that guy, right? When I said I wanted to date, I meant it.”
“I know.”
“I’ll tell everyone you’re my boyfriend,” he insisted, and I admitted, it was kind of nice to hear. “We are, right?”
“What? Boyfriends? Yeah.”
“Good.”
I snuggled back into the pillow, comforted by Lou’s warmth. I focused on his breathing, somehow louder and more real than the wind outside, and I finally fell asleep.
Chapter 9
WHEN WE woke late the next morning, everything was quiet, too quiet. The hurricane had come and gone, leaving us without any power. Or cell phone service. That was a nasty surprise when we finished showering together—and maybe that took a little bit longer than it should. There was nothing like a soaped-up Lou, gleaming from the sunlight streaming in the window. Thank God the water heater relied on natural gas instead of electricity, or else we’d be pretty stinky.
I realized I should probably call my parents, tell them I was alive. But though my phone powered up fine, “No Service” stared at me from the corner. “What the hell?”
“There’s a landline downstairs in the pizzeria.” Lou had come out of the bedroom, covering his beautiful chest with a green T-shirt. “You can call them from there.”
We started down the steps before Lou gave up and went back up for a flashlight. I’d forgotten about the boarded-up windows in the pizzeria. Without the sunlight we couldn’t see anything, never mind dial a phone number. But I was finally able to call both Mom and Dad and assure them I hadn’t been blown away.
“Have you seen the news? It’s horrible down there, horrible,” my mom said. Apparently she had power.
“No, Mom, we don’t have any electricity.” After I got off the phone with her, I indulged my curiosity and went out the back door of the restaurant—the front was still boarded up. I walked into the parking lot, which was flooded up to my ankles. Route 37 looked like a river—in fact, there were people in a boat floating down the road.
“Holy shit.”
I realized if I had left my car where I’d originally parked, it would have flooded out. I could see vans in the lot across the way with water all up in the undercarriage. Thank God Lou’s dad had told us to move.
Lou came out behind me and gasped. “I’ve never seen that much water before.”
I grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. Sirens blared in the distance, but of course no one could drive on the highway in front of us. Maybe they came from the neighborhood behind the pizzeria. I’d never really thought about that area before I ended up parking there.
Before I could propose exploring—and checking up on our cars—the phone rang inside. Lou turned around and ran to answer it.
I followed and waited by the doorway as he had his conversation, eavesdropping a little bit.
“Yes, Papa. Everything is fine. No flooding in the restaurant, but we don’t have any power either.” Lou listened for a moment, his head tilted to one side and one hand planted on the wall. He couldn’t go far; the landline was an old-fashioned phone with a curly cord. Not, I realized, that the cordless phone would even work without electricity. “I don’t see how a delivery truck is going to get down Route 37. Yes, it’s flooded.”
I ventured closer, and Lou made a face at me.
“No, Papa, I can’t open. Not without power. Hell, I have to throw out everything in the freezer if we go more than twenty-four hours without….” He trailed off. “All right. I’ll take care of things here. Good luck finding an open store.”
Lou put the phone down. “He’s going to try to find a generator somewhere. I can’t believe he wants me to open with the roads flooded like this.”
“How is he going to get anywhere?” I couldn’t imagine what the rest of the roads looked like.
“I’ll let him figure that out for himself. One thing I know about my dad: once he makes up his mind, it’s impossible to talk him out of it.”
“I understand completely.” I didn’t even try talking my dad out of anything. Although at this point, maybe I should. I wasn’t happy following in his footsteps, but it wasn’t like I had a better plan for myself.
We decided to pull down some of the plywood covering the windows, so we could see what we were doing. The storm was over now, and we didn’t need them anymore. After an hour of work, we had the wood stacked in the back storeroom, and sunlight filtered into the empty restaurant, making everything dismal and dull.
Lou stalked over to the kitchen, determined. “It’s a gas grill. Maybe I can light the gas, and we won’t have to toss everything in the freezer.”
I stayed near the fire extinguisher as Lou worked with a little propane lighter and the knobs on the grill. Luckily he didn’t blow us up, but he did get the flame going.
He stood up and rubbed his hands. I couldn’t help grinning as I watched him. Lou was always in his element in the kitchen, the master of his domain here. I could stare at him for hours if he were cooking.
“All right, let’s empty the freezer.”
“Wait, what are you going to do with all the food?” We couldn’t possibly eat all of it by ourselves. I mean, Lou did have a healthy appetite, but not twenty cheesesteaks’ worth.
And that was how many sets of beef he’d set out on the grill. “We can’t sell it,” Lou said. “But we can give it away.”
At first I doubted his wisdom, especially when he sent me out to canvas the neighborhood behind the pizzeria, back where I’d parked my car. Walking turned out to be a little treacherous—there were plenty of fallen trees, and if the power had been on, the downed wires would be dangerous.
However, everyone was coming out of their houses. There really wasn’t much to do inside, and people were looking for some kind of social connection. And there I was, offering free cheesesteaks. It did take me a while to get back. I ended up helping an older couple remove a giant branch from their driveway so they could get their car out.
The pizzeria filled with people from the neighborhood. A few did take the free food, and I learned quick how to be a waiter, not a job I’d ever had before. It mostly consisted of grabbing paper plates off the counter and figuring out who wanted what.
It seemed like everyone wanted to talk.
“They closed the bridge.”
“Did you hear the Mantoloking Bridge went out?”
“Out how?”
“As in it’s all water now.”
“That’s not possible.”
“You know a tree fell on the O’Malley house? They had to be evacuated by the National Guard.”
“The National Guard isn’t going to come out here.”
“No? Then who the hell took the O’Malleys away in the middle of the night?”
I smiled to myself as I collected used plates and wiped down the tables. Nobody really knew anything, but they seemed to take some sort of comfort in making guesses.
“I had the police scanner going,” said an older gentleman with a goatee and wearing suspenders. He’d staked out a seat near the door and kept looking around. “The bridge is closed, maybe indefinitely. And I heard the roller coaster from Casino Pier is now in the ocean.”
I nearly dropped the plates I was holding. The roller coaster? In the ocean? How could that have happened? The storm must have taken out the entire pier. That place where I once met Lou for bagels? Gone now. I hadn’t imagined this storm could have been so powerful.
And what about my little Shore house? I was only a few blocks from the ocean.
It felt really weird to be cut off like this. If I ever got reception back on my phone, I could look it up, see if what they were saying was true. Or, you know, I could call my mom since she had power and get her to tell me, but I almost didn’t want the confirmation. Not yet.
Lou finished cooking and went around each table, talking to everyone like he knew them. Heck, he probably did. They hung around until the shadows started to fill the win
dows, and there would be little light for their walk back home without any streetlamps. It started to get dark earlier in October, making everything a bit more dismal without power.
I watched them go, standing in the doorway as the sun started to set. How odd not to see any lights, no cars down the road, only silence. Lou came up behind me.
“You can stay here as long as you want, you know.” He slid his arm around my waist and reached under my shirt to tease the bit of skin there.
I shivered. “Well, unless you have a boat in storage, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Would you want to?” His lips were on my ear. “I did buy the extra-large box of condoms.”
I laughed and followed him back up the stairs. Nibbles got fed, the litter box got changed, and then we made it an early night where little sleep happened. I could get used to this.
THE POWER didn’t come back for days, and when it did, Lou’s dad had finally managed to get his hands on a generator. Lou arranged for deliveries so the pizzeria could open up again. I turned on my phone in the mornings, and eventually I got reception back only be to be greeted every day by a text that said the college was still closed.
And then, to add insult to injury, exactly one week after the hurricane hit, it snowed, a wet, heavy snow that bent branches and took down trees. That meant not only did we lose power again, but it was cold.
Lou’s dad showed up with the generator the next day, determined not to lose any more business. I heard him and Lou arguing in the back room about where and how to hook it up, as I sat in the stairwell, Nibbles getting scratches in my lap.
“Every minute we are closed, we lose money,” Mr. Martelli said.
“Do you honestly think people are going to trek out here in the snow?” Lou grumbled.
“Nobody has any power. Where else are they going to eat?”
The voices faded as they went outside. I heard what sounded like the startup of a lawn mower, which was, of course, the generator. It was loud and echoed throughout what was once silence. But then the lights flickered on.
I picked up Nibbles and came all the way down the stairs, about to congratulate them, but I stopped outside the doorway.
“All right. Go take care of prep while I clean up back here.”
“What? Do you expect me to run this place by myself?” Lou said, irritation clear in his voice.
“Of course not. I’m here.” His father sounded distracted.
“What about Gio or Monica?”
Maybe it was time for me to head upstairs. I tiptoed backward and returned to the apartment. It wasn’t like I should bring Nibbles into the restaurant anyway. Actually, I should probably find a vet to take a look at him if I meant to keep him.
I heard a buzz and realized it was my phone ringing. Since I hadn’t had reception in a week, I’d gotten out of the habit of carrying it around with me. I ran for it, managing to accept the call before it disconnected.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Nick, it’s Mrs. Simmons.”
It turned out she’d been trying to reach me for a while. I explained about the lack of reception. I felt a flash of guilt for not even thinking about calling them. It was their house.
“We were going to try to come down and look at the property, but they won’t let anyone on the island, apparently. Max made some calls.”
“Yeah, as far as I know the bridge is still closed.” That would make it hard to get back there.
“Right. We wanted to tell you that you didn’t have to pay rent, since obviously you’re not living there anymore.”
Her words caused a stab of ice in my chest. Who knew how long the bridge would be closed? I’d have to talk to Lou. He’d said I could stay as long as I wanted to, but I really didn’t want to wear out my welcome, especially since we’d gone from taking it slow to scorching up the sheets every night.
That reminded me that I needed to lug the sheets to the laundromat as soon as this goddamn snow cleared.
I was getting a little bit sick of crappy weather.
I ended the phone call with her as Lou came stomping up the steps. His face was flushed, and he looked a little pissed off. “Hey?”
“I’m going to be downstairs most of the day and the evening.” He spoke in careful even tones, as if he didn’t want me to see how angry he was. “My dad wants to keep the place open, and apparently we can do that with two people.”
“Hey, I can help. I mean, I can’t cook, but I can, um, take orders and stuff? And wipe down tables?”
The tension in his forehead eased a bit. “Are you sure? You don’t have to—”
I reached for him, pulled his head down and kissed him quiet. He always tasted good, and it felt like I could explore his mouth forever. When I pulled away, I needed to catch my breath before I spoke. “Since I don’t have class or any way to do my homework, I have plenty of free time.”
“The honeymoon had to end sometime.” Lou grinned.
“Oh, just because we have less time to fuck doesn’t mean I plan on letting you off the hook.” I winked at him.
He blushed red again, but this time it wasn’t out of anger. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Chapter 10
GOING BACK to campus after everything felt weird. Being cut off from the rest of the world had left me out of sync. I’d lost two weeks from the middle of the semester, and that only made the disconnected feeling worse. I searched for signs of the hurricane on the campus, but aside from some cracked tree branches, everything seemed intact. I walked into the classroom not knowing what to expect.
“Nick!” Ana greeted me with a hug right as I made it through the doorway, surprising the hell out of me. She wasn’t the touchy-feely kind. Maybe I’d been wrong about the hurricane leaving no scars here.
“Ana.” I pulled away with a laugh. “I’m fine.”
“I knew you lived out on the island. And we’d exchanged e-mails, but not phone numbers.”
“Wouldn’t have helped anyway. We had no service.” I followed her back to our seats. Everyone else was talking quietly, like there was this hush throughout the room. A lot of people were missing. Including Clara.
I pulled out my laptop, feeling relief as it connected to the wireless. Finally! I was no longer cut off from the world.
“I ended up staying with Lou—my boyfriend,” I clarified, in case she didn’t remember. I hesitated a moment, but she didn’t react other than to keep listening. “I still can’t go back over the bridge, and I don’t even know if the place I was renting is still standing.”
She winced. “We had a tree fall from our front yard onto our neighbor’s car.”
“That sounds… expensive.”
The door opened, hitting the wall with a slam, and Clara entered the room. She looked different. She had on a pinkish/purple sweater instead of her usual gray hoodie, and she even wore pink lip gloss to match.
“Hurricane blew me out of this town, but it couldn’t keep me out.” She slid into her usual seat next to me with a grin.
“You’re looking happier.” I decided to not point out the obvious by talking about her clothes. Girls were touchy about that kinda thing.
“Sleeping on an actual bed for two weeks will do that.” She shrugged and ducked her head. “Let me guess, you guys didn’t have power and didn’t get any work done on the project?”
“And, what? You did the whole thing while we were off?” Ana huffed.
“As a matter of fact….”
The professor chose that moment to arrive. I never did get the chance to find out what Clara had done, because he decided to rework the syllabus for the rest of the semester, which meant we wouldn’t get a chance to present on our topic. We’d somehow have to turn it into a group paper instead.
Not like that wasn’t more work than a PowerPoint presentation. But we’d lost too much class time to have two weeks of presentations. I agreed with him there, but damn, I did not like the idea of more work.
We went straight to the library after
ward, trying to figure out how we were going to make a paper out of what research we’d done so far. I noticed a signup sheet for advising on the reference desk and realized it was time to register for next semester. Fuck, I hadn’t even thought about that. I didn’t even have a place to live next semester, never mind know what classes I wanted to take.
“I KNOW a guy who has a boat.”
I’d been back at classes for about a week when Lou made that non sequitur. I looked up from my laptop. He was up unusually early for having closed the place down the night before. I tended to get up before him, make some coffee, and work on my homework while he still slept blissfully away. Sometimes I had to get to class before he even woke up.
Despite living together, it seemed I was seeing less and less of him.
“Okay?”
“My sister is handling opening today. I thought we’d take the boat out to Seaside, see what the damage is.”
I closed the laptop. I’d seen images of the damage online, but after watching the fire that burned down Route 35 in Mantoloking, I’d stopped looking. But something in me was a bit curious about the place I’d called home. “Isn’t that a little illegal?”
“Only if we get caught. We’ll have to dodge the Coast Guard.”
“Oh, sure, no problem, then.”
Despite my misgivings, I went along with it. I couldn’t take the uncertainty, the not knowing about what had happened to a place I’d loved.
We met Lou’s friend down at the docks. Apparently they went to high school together, but while Lou followed his family into the pizza world, this guy Mac went into the fishing business. I honestly didn’t know people still did that, but now that I thought about it, where the heck did fish come from?
“Can you swim?” Mac handed me a red life jacket.
I slipped the jacket on and zipped it up tightly. “Um. Yes?” Although I didn’t want to have to try my skill in the cold ocean.
“Good. Hold on.”
Yeah, I did not like the sound of that. My stomach did twist, but luckily I didn’t get sick as Mac navigated the waters of the bay.