He’d be tall, dark, and handsome, of course. Rich and sophisticated, with an elegant air of mystery about him. He’d travel in all the right circles, have power and influence, and fold me seamlessly into his world as if I’d been born into it just as surely as he had.
But lately it seemed like life was conspiring to keep me stuck right here in Arcata. First of all, Brandy and I had been awarded the “locals only” scholarships Winship University offered, and we were in no financial position to turn them down. I was stuck here for four more years. But during that time, I planned on making no meaningful connections. There was no way I could add “falling for a local boy” to a list that already contained “going to a local college” if I had any hope at all of breaking free from Arcata one day.
Talk about a double whammy.
Nope. That couldn’t happen.
That thought had me pushing up on my elbows and standing so fast that if it weren’t for Hunter’s ninja-like reflexes, I would’ve toppled him over and straight onto his firm ass. Instead of falling flat on his aforementioned area, he quickly caught his weight with his left hand and pushed to an upright position.
When he did, a ray of moonlight shone directly on him, like God, him or herself was his personal lighting tech. The sight of his perfect male form, highlighted by an ethereal glow, was enough to make me want to get down on one knee and propose to him.
That thought had panic rising in me faster than water filling a rowboat made entirely of Swiss cheese. I had to get out of here. Now.
Grabbing my discarded bikini bottom, I stepped into the leg holes and pulled it up as I grabbed the shirt that I’d worn out here. After a frantic scan of the area, I didn’t see my MIA bikini top. Usually, I was a no-man-left-behind kind of girl when it came to my wardrobe. I once spent the better part of a sleepover at Clarissa Jordon’s house searching for a tube top that had gone missing after we’d spent time in the pool. But, I felt like I was in a battle for my heart and future. My red bikini top was a casualty of emotional war.
I was pulling my T-shirt over my head when Hunter said, “Are you upset that I didn’t pull out? I was wearing a condom.”
I cringed inside. How could I feel so stilted and disconnected from Hunter mere moments after I’d been naked underneath him, with him inside me, our souls melting into one? It was strange, but that’s how it was.
I shrugged and tried to keep my voice light. “No biggie either way. I’m on the pill. Which you know, actually. You drove me down to the clinic last Easter to get on it after Carter asked me to Senior Prom.”
He was silent as I pulled my jeans on. I could feel his stare on me, but I didn’t make eye contact. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw him stand and start picking up his clothes.
Finally, he said, “If you’re not upset, then why is this awkward?”
“It’s just…” I couldn’t find the right way to explain. “I don’t know…weird. It’s—”
“Awk-weird,” we both said together and then looked at each other.
Since meeting in first grade we’d not only the habit of combining words but also having simultaneous thoughts, and finishing each other’s sentences. Damn. I didn’t want to lose our easy friendship over this one hookup.
“It doesn’t have to be. Awk-weird, I mean,” I attempted.
“No?” His smile seemed sad.
“Nah,” I reassured him adding a companionable punch to his arm in an attempt to maneuver us into the friend zone as I explained, “I mean…it’s not like this meant anything. Right?”
Even before the words were completely out of my mouth, I could see by the devastation on his face that it was exactly the wrong thing to say. I rushed to clarify, but I knew Hunter and he’d already closed down tight. I saw the second the steel shutters behind his eyes had clanged shut, and there was no opening them from the outside. The only way those suckers popped back up, was if they were raised from the inside.
“Right,” he confirmed tightly. “Let’s go. Brandy’s going to be worried about you.”
That was bullshit, and he knew it. When I was with Hunter, Brandy never worried about me. In fact, it was probably just about the only time she didn’t. I didn’t argue, though. I just nodded silently—and then worried silently as he drove me all the way to my house without speaking to me or looking at me.
As I stepped out of the car, I glanced over at him as I said, “Bye, Hunter. See you tomorrow.”
Not only did he not reply or in any way acknowledge that I’d spoken, he drove off before I had even fully closed the door.
All night, I tossed and turned, feverish and sick to my stomach. I felt terrible about the way things had gone down. Hunter was my touchstone. He made everything in my life good and stable. We’d never had a fight, and now that we sort of had, the whole world felt scary and out of control.
Before the sun rose the next morning, I knew what I had to do. I jumped out of bed like I was spring-loaded and put my sneakers on, quiet so as not to wake Brandy. I eased out the front door and set off on the three-mile walk to Hunter’s house.
I just have to talk to him, I reasoned. Maybe he feels as shitty about being in our kind-of fight as I do. Maybe, if I’m happy and bubbly and remind him of all the things we have planned to do this summer and all the reasons he loves hanging out with me, things can go back to normal. Maybe.
By the time I reached Hunter’s front door, my sneakers were soaked through with morning dew, but my heart was much lighter from the possibility of making up.
I pressed the doorbell and waited. After a moment, the door opened, and Hunter’s mother stood there in sweats and curlers. She smiled at me a little sadly, and I felt strange knowing that she’d most likely figured out that Hunter and I had a fight. He must’ve still been pissed when he got home.
“Hey, Mrs. Blakely,” I said a little stiffly. “Sorry to wake you up. Is Hunter here?”
“Oh, honey,” she sighed, sympathy in her eyes. “He’s gone.”
What? “Gone…where?” I replied.
“To school. He left early. He said if he accepts the lab assistant position, they offered him last spring, he can get into the dorms over summer term.”
Shock knocked me back a step. “But…when… How… When? When did he leave?” I asked, panic tinged my voice.
“Late last night. He sent a text message to the department head and got confirmation, then threw some clothes in a duffel bag and drove away. He said he could have me mail him anything he can’t buy there.”
The look on my face must’ve been truly pitiful, because Hunter’s mom folded me up in a hug. Then I did something I hadn’t indulged in since I was four years old. Without inhibitions or restraint, I let myself sob.
Chapter 1
Sandy
Present Day
“Holy shit! I can’t believe we’re really taking our asses all the way across the country. Can you? And we’re going on a plane. This is going to be insane!”
I was in my childhood bedroom with Brandy, and we were packing for our upcoming spring break trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was, in point of fact, going to be (objectively) the coolest thing either one of us had ever done. I wasn’t being hyperbolic in my excitement. There’d been many times in the past that I’d been accused of exaggerating…and the accusations were, I admit, pretty spot-on. But this wasn’t one of those times.
Brandy looked up at me from where she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall. She was giving me her worried puppy-dog eyes, but I didn’t think much of it. Brandy tended to pull out the worried puppy-dog eyes whenever she thought I was getting carried away and heading towards a disaster that she was going to be the one to have to clean up.
(Full disclosure, when she gave me the eyes, I usually was headed towards a disaster, and she most definitely was the one who had to clean it up…but that was beside the point!)
I decided to preemptively try to reassure her about whatever might be worrying her in my packing methodolo
gy. “And, yes, before you ask, I went online and read all the regulations and stuff. I know that my beauty products are going to have to be carefully measured out. Because, apparently, the FAA thinks I wake up like this. Uh…no. This takes work, government types. But I’m not even trippin’ about that. I’ll follow the rules. No six-ounce shampoo shoved in my bra. I promise. I will take a page out of your book and follow all of the rules.”
“I have to tell you something.” Brandy spoke so softly that I barely even noticed.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head. I have the tickets. I have the hotel confirmation. I have our traveling cash. I have my packing under control. Everything is all set. It’s going to be epic! And the main thing is—we’re doing this together. As excited as I am to get out of this shitty little nothing town and have a real adventure, it would so not be as fun without you. Go, go twin power!”
Brandy quietly waited for me to finish my assuring rant. That actually made me more nervous than if she’d been trying to butt in every second. I should’ve just asked her what was going on, but a niggling sense of dread was taking root in my belly and quickly growing. Instead of addressing it, I decided that simply pushing on with cheerfulness was the way to go.
Queen of Denial, anyone?
“I mean, think about it, Bran. The first time either one of us has been on a plane. The first time either one of us has been out of California. The first time either one of us has been to the beach—”
“We live by the beach.”
“We live by the ocean. It’s not the beach.”
“We went to Cat’s house in Malibu that time.”
I snorted. The time we visited our college roomie in her hometown last Thanksgiving, and stayed a grand total of a couple of hours, hardly counted.
“We barely even got out of the car,” I shot back.
I didn’t get any response to this joke, which was normally the kind of reminiscence that would make her smile, at the very least. This time? Not so much as a lip twitch.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I threw the blouse I was holding down on the bed, undoing all of my careful folding work. “Okay, Eeyore. That’s it. I’ve had enough. Spill.”
Brandy exhaled in an audible sigh. Before I even heard the words she was about to say, my stomach was doing flips like it was training for the Women’s Olympic Gymnastics team.
“I can’t go, San.”
I greeted her words with stunned silence.
She continued, her eyes pleading. “I’m so sorry.”
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” I asked, my mind immediately filled with any and every horrific, life-threatening illnesses that Brandy had obviously been stricken with. Cancer. Brain Tumor. Okay…well I thought of two life-threatening illnesses.
“No.” Brandy shook her head slowly and her blonde ponytail swished over her shoulders. “I’m not sick. There’s nothing wrong. I just…can’t go.”
“Why?” I asked feeling both relief that my sister didn’t have only weeks to live and anger that she was backing out of our plans.
“I just can’t,” she replied simply with a firm finality. “I can’t tell you why. I’m so sorry.”
Anger boiled up inside me. “You. Just. Can’t? You’re sorry?”
Her expression matched her voice; both were miserable. “Yes. You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t have any idea.” Letting out a forced laugh, I threw my hands in the air. “You’re right about that. But there’s no need to be sorry. I mean, what would you even be sorry for? Because you’re not backing out of this trip; that would be crazy.”
“San, please. Just try to understand—”
My voice rose several decibels as I yelled, “Understand what? You just said that you can’t tell my why you’re blowing off a trip we’ve spent months and months planning and saving up for. Why? Why can’t you tell me!?”
She hung her head. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I just can’t. I’m just…I’m sorry.”
“Oh, great. Well, that explains everything.” My tone was both icy and sarcastic.
As she stood, her baby blue eyes that we both shared, filled with tears, and two slid down her face.
“Seriously!? Crying? If you feel so bad about this, why are you doing it then?”
“I have to.” Her tone was final as she took in a shaking breath.
“What do you mean? That makes no sense. I mean, why? No one has a gun to your head. Is someone blackmailing you? What!?”
“I just have to, Sandy. It’s not something I can explain. I just have some things I need to work through here, and I need some time to do it.”
“Holy freaking hell, Little Miss Mystery!” I began pacing the room, I felt my head shaking back and forth as the reality of what my twin traitor—who I would now be mentally referring to as Benedict Arnold—was telling me. “No. No! You can’t do this. I mean what in the name of God could make you flake on our trip the day before we leave for the airport, and exactly”—I glanced at my watch—“oh, awesome. Exactly ten freaking minutes before we’re supposed to meet Cat and Evelyn to go shopping for the very trip you’re flaking on? Hmmm?”
She gave me a sad smile. “I’ll let you go on that shopping trip solo. I have a feeling you’re going to have some very choice words to say about me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Please. Don’t do me any favors. You being there wouldn’t stop me. I’d say them in front of you.”
At that, her smile turned affectionate. “I’m well aware. But I’ll give you some time to vent to the girls about me. You deserve it.”
“No. Uh-uh. Don’t do that. Don’t be all martyr-y and self-sacrificing. And you still haven’t explained to me why—”
I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye and spun to face the door, already feeling defeated. The last thing in the world this fight needed was the volatile addition of my mother to the mix. But the person in the doorway wasn’t my mother. Not at all. It was, in fact, the last person I’d expected to see standing there again.
The shock of it sent me stumbling back a couple of steps, and the backs of my knees hit the bed, knocking me straight into a sitting position. It was just as well. I don’t think my legs could’ve held me up much longer anyway.
In a soft voice, and with an even softer look in the golden brown eyes that I hadn’t seen in ten months, Hunter smiled and said, “Hi, Sandcastle.”
Chapter 2
Hunter
Whoa. Were those tears filling Sandy’s eyes? That was a first.
One of the things I had always admired the hell out of when it came to Sandy, was how she could laugh in the face of any kind of stress. No matter what kind of crap life—or, more accurately, her alcoholic, neglectful mother—threw at her, she kept grinning. She didn’t cry. Ever.
So the real question was: What did the tears mean? That she was pissed? Sad? What?
Nothing good. That was for damn sure.
Unless…well, if I looked at it a certain way, it was actually kind of good that she’d reacted to me at all. The worst thing in the world would’ve been for her to just glance over at me like Hunter who? and shrug like she didn’t give a crap. That would’ve been like a punch in the old breadbasket, as my grandpa used to say.
So that was an upside.
I knew one thing: unless I wanted this moment to steer into awk-weird territory, I needed to say something, and it needed to be normal. If I was normal, it shouldn’t be that hard to get us on track towards normal.
I’d fucked up royally by leaving for college on the spur of the moment for no better reason than being butthurt. Then my behavior graduated from butthurt to asshole when I spent the next few months ignoring her numerous emails and calls. But I’d been so hurt—my pride as much as anything, admittedly—that I hadn’t realized that I didn’t want to lose her friendship until it was past the point where, chances were, I’d already lost it.
That light bulb moment had happened last week. Which was why I was here. In Arcata.
This was a face-to-face mission. No way did I have a shot in hell of making things right over the phone. If I wanted to get it back, I was going to have to tread carefully. And, as the night at the swimming hole had proven, one of the things she didn’t want was an emotional display. Normal, even keeled, steady as she goes would be the way to get back into her life.
At a loss for anything witty or clever to say, I started with the obvious. “How are you?”
She met my eyes—finally. That was progress. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Well…not entirely true. No words came out, but a little frog-like croak escaped her, and she snapped her mouth shut. Her cheeks flamed up, and she looked down again.
Whoa. My normally self-possessed Sandy was actually off-kilter for once? I didn’t know whether to feel guilty that I was the one who’d thrown her off-balance or proud that I actually had the power to.
When she gazed back up at me, she’d regained some composure. “Fine,” she said almost regally, her voice steady.
Aaahhhhh…fuck. That voice. I’d forgotten how smooth it was. Smooth as silk. I’d forgotten that it had the power to warm my body like fine, aged whiskey sliding down my throat. I’d forgotten that I could feel it in every corner of my soul.
Even and steady weren’t going to be as easy to maintain as I had thought they would be.
As my mind started to fill with panic, I was struck with a moment of total clarity. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. I wanted us back. Walking on eggshells had never been the way we were with each other. We’d always called each other out on our shit when it was warranted. So, if I wanted things between us to go on as if nothing had ever happened, maybe I needed to go all the way in acting as if nothing had ever happened.
Chasing Perfect (Someday#4) Page 3