“Jesus you’re good at that,” he says in between pants.
I just shrug. My parents would be so proud. I attempt to smile, but a sudden sense of dark, unsettling regret and possible disappointment weighs down on me.
“You’re turn.” He flips me onto the couch and crawls up the length of me, but his touch and weight are suddenly claustrophobic, and I don’t want him here anymore. I wriggle around out from under him.
“That’s okay,” I say all casual, like I’m passing on an hors d’oeurve or something, even though my heart is hammering and I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.
He hops up off the couch too and closes the space between us. He finds that spot on my collar bone he knows I can’t resist.
He doesn’t know when my birthday is, what my favorite food is, or the fact that, before today, I’d never seen the ocean, but he does know how to turn me on like he read my body’s personal instruction manual. That used to be enough. That used to be better than enough. Now it feels robotic and soulless.
Not that this is supposed to have soul. That’s not the point. This is supposed to be about our young, hot bodies rubbing against each other in the most carnal ways. This was never about feelings or emotions. Those are messy and just screw things up. Look how they’re screwing up the perfectly good time I’m supposed to be having with Ryan.
“I got mine, and you’re the one who called me all the way over here. You’re not even going to let me make you feel good?” He nips at my neck, and it’s the strangest mix of feeling good, technically, but also cloying and too much and too little all at the same time. “That hardly seems fair.”
“It’s not a big deal, there will be other nights. I didn’t realize how beat I was.” This time, I fake a yawn. I don’t know why I’m trying to get rid of him. Letting him remind me of what we have and why it works is exactly what I need right now. I tell myself that, but I can’t stand the sight of him, and I feel like a major asshole. I just blew off my fuckbuddy. Can I go any lower?
“Whatever you say, Whit.” He pulls on his pants and checks his phone. He cracks a small smile at whatever is on the screen. I wonder if it’s another random girl somewhere. If Deo had gotten a message from a girl while we were out, I would have had to resist the urge to shatter his phone. In this case, I’m actually hoping someone else is calling Ryan away and that he’ll be distracted enough to just leave me to wallow. “If you’re sure, I guess I’ll take off then.” He gives me a cool, detached look.
I relax. He’s going. Good. Problem solved. Problem I invited over and then didn’t want to deal with solved, but still. “Yep. I’m gonna head to bed. Have fun.”
“Cool.” His phone buzzes again, and he gives it his full attention.
He doesn’t bother kissing me goodbye or anything like that. We don’t do that. He pulls his baseball cap down low on his head and a few fine, brown curls peek out the sides.
“Hey, Ryan?” I ask, just as he’s pulling the door open to leave. He glances over his shoulder, but doesn’t turn all the way around to face me. “What’s your favorite beach?”
“Huntington. They’ve got the hottest—why?” he asks. His brows pinch together, trying to figure out my motives. Why am I trying to learn anything about him now? He looks like he may run scared at the thought of me wanting to actually get to know him.
“Just wondering. I’d never seen the ocean before today.” I don’t know why I offer this bit of information. Deo seemed so amazed by that fact, maybe I’m hoping to intrigue Ryan, too.
“No kidding. Weird,” is all that Ryan offers before walking out the door.
The bell above the door jangles as I push through it, and, with that noise, I’m emotionally right there back at Deo’s mom’s house, where she’s holding my hand and dabbing her special oil on it. It’s been a long time since I felt taken care of. It was awkward and somehow, warm-feeling. I could easily see where Deo got his laid back side, but there’s another part to him that I haven’t placed yet. I shake my head. I came here to forget about Deo. Whether Rocko wants me here or not.
“Hey, kiddo.” Rocko peers over the counter. “I thought I told you not to bother coming in today. Like I said, there’s a whole lot of nothing going on.”
The place is dead. It doesn’t look like Rocko’s done a single piece of art today. There’s no ink left out, no guns laying around. He hasn’t even bothered to turn on the typically blaring 70s rock. It’s just quiet. I set my purse down on my desk. I’m staying.
“I know, but I didn’t have much else to do. I can at least get the deposit together and run to the bank.”
“What happened with Divo?” he asks.
I pull my hair back away from my face, like I’m going to put it in a ponytail, before remembering that I hacked all the length off the night before I moved here. I still haven’t gotten used to this blunt bob. Gone are the long waves that I loved. This haircut says I’m fierce. Unapproachable. At least, that’s how I wanted people to see me.
I laugh at Rocko’s lame attempt at at joke. “Deo. His name is Deo.”
Rocko nods and cracks a smile. I’m pretty sure he knew his name.
“Right. Well, why don’t go kids go enjoy this sunshine? On second thought, why don’t you kids go catch a bite or see a nice movie? I want your guy to stay away from the sun and the water. I don’t want that tat fading before it even has a chance to heal right, and he seems like the type that doesn’t respect the rules.”
You have no idea.
“Deo isn’t my guy. We aren’t even friends or anything, Rocko.” I dig through my desk drawer. Mostly as a distraction. Also, because I’m sort of looking for that handkerchief that fell out of Deo’s pocket while he was getting his tat, and that I might have hung on to and stashed in my desk. I pull the small square of fabric out and fight the urge to smell it. That’s probably freaky grounds for a restraining order.
Rocko pulls his funky tortoiseshell eyeglasses down on his nose so that he’s peering at me over the tops of them. “Listen kid, these glasses are purely a fashion statement. I’m not blind. I know what I saw the other night.”
“What are you talking about?” I recoil, the handkerchief clear evidence of my guilty moping.
“The way you were looking at him, like you wanted him to be looking at you. And the way he was about to jump off that table mid-tat when he thought you were leaving before he was. Don’t get me wrong, he also looked like he wanted to bend you over that couch out there—”
“Rocko!” Pennsylvania Whit is dying.
“Come on, kid. I know you aren’t scrambling to get out of here at night with your phone going off like crazy to go home to your DVR. You’re up to no good. And that’s all good, because you’re nineteen. I’d be worried if you weren’t up to no good at your age.”
Rocko smiles smugly, obviously feeling like he’s got me all pegged. And I guess, maybe he does.
He leans back in his chair and props his feet up on my desk. I knock his heavy black boots off.
“Manners,” I say under my breath. I’m only half-joking.
“See, it’s stuff like that, though, that confuses the hell out of me. Like that tat you drew for Divo—”
“Deo, and I didn’t draw it for him.”
“There’s something more to you than the sexy makeup and heels.”
“Rocko, I could so nail your ass for sexual harassment, you know that right?” This time, I’m totally joking. I love the free and fearless banter I have with Rocko. It’s one of the most real things I have.
“So, tell me kid, what else is going on in that pretty little head of yours?”
I haven’t even started talking yet. But I turn to him, knowing that this time, I will. It’s time, and really, I won’t find a better listener, or anyone less judgmental than Rocko.
-Nine—
Deo
Cara is applying a coat of shiny purple nail polish to my toenails while I lie back on my stale-smelling sheets and count the cobwebs that have mult
iplied like crazy fuckers on the ceiling above my Scarface poster. It’s been a little too dark to notice them lately, but Cara fixed the light problem with one snap of the sagging rollershade. She also tossed my iPod in my dresser drawer next to my bong and under my rolling papers to stop Robert Johnson’s incessant, broken-hearted wail.
“You’re harshing my mellow, Sunshine,” I gripe, wiggling my toes and making her click her tongue when she paints the side of my foot.
Cara glares at me and swishes her strawberry blond hair over her shoulder so she can paint with more precision, but all that long hair is tickling my knee now. “You can’t just hole up in here and listen to the world’s most depressing music on repeat all day while you get high,” she informs me cheerily.
“Robert Johnson happens to be a blues genius. And I’m not high,” I protest, sitting up on my elbow.
She blinks her big, sky-blue eyes slowly. “Really? Why not? Too lazy to go out and hunt for more product?”
“You don’t happen to have any you’d like to share, do you?” I make a kissy face at her and she tries to hide her smile by shaking her head.
She tugs out a little chip hanging on a cord from under her yellow sundress. “Deo, you know I’m sober now. Six months in a week.”
I lay back on my pillow and sigh. “When did we all get so fucking mature and boring?”
“Not we,” she corrects. “I got mature and grew up. You’re still a little boy who wants to get high and surf and do nothing with your life.” There isn’t a single ounce of malice in her words. Cara is like a surf-bunny Buddha. I irritate her sometimes, but she kind of respects that I do my thing.
Unless my thing is begging her to come over and then being a whiny little bitch who wants to be entertained.
“I don’t do nothing.” I raise my eyebrows at her. “Actually, there’s something we could do right now. C’mon, Sunshine. Nothing lifts the mood like an orgasm.”
She twists the cap back on the nailpolish and looks at me closely. “I don’t sleep with broken-hearted guys. It’s too pathetic.”
“I’m not broken-hearted,” I insist. “I’m just in a slump. Which I’d have such an easier time getting out of if you’d take off that dress. I feel like I have to wear sunglasses when I look at it.”
“Wow, you’re so charming, how could I even consider saying no?” she asks dryly. “Look, we’ve been buds forever, Deo, and I treasure that. And when we were more than buds? That was also awesome. But times are changing. We’re growing up. Well, some of us are.” She puts her hands up to her face. I look at her with confusion. She picks up the bottle of nailpolish and holds it like she’s on a cheesy advertisement poster. I wrinkle my forehead. “Deo! You noticed the color of my dress, but not this?”
I sit up against the headboard and look at her hands. Among the silver sparkling rings is a particular one with a deep green gemstone on her all-important left ring finger. “Uh, is that supposed to be an engagement ring?”
She throws her hands in the air. “It is an engagement ring. I didn’t want a blood diamond, so we opted for a fair trade stone.” She looks down at it, her face droopy with disappointment, and I feel like a huge jerk-off.
“Hey, it’s really nice,” I say. She doesn’t look up. “Sunshine?” She glances at me. “Seriously. It’s beautiful. And I’m happy for you. I’m happy you’re sober, I’m happy the pottery thing is taking off, and I’m happy for the lucky bastard who conned you into marrying him. Tell that fucking punk I’ll beat his face in if he doesn’t treat you right.”
She falls onto me, her warm, sun-dried sheet smell surrounding me as she hugs tight. “Thank you. So much. I wanted to tell you a hundred times, but I thought you might be upset.” She pulls back and looks at me, those blue eyes shiny with tears.
I snort. “Upset? Me? I love you, kid. I want to see you happy. If this fair-trade-ring-buying douchehole makes you happy, you have my blessing. C’mon, you know all that.”
She twists the ring on her finger. “I really am happy, Deo. And I wish…” She looks up and licks her lips. “I wish you could find someone for yourself. I know what we had was just fun. But I really think you’re amazing. And I know the right person is out there for you. Somewhere. I know she’s going to make you so happy. Maybe it’s this girl, right now.”
I chuckle and take her small freckled hands in mine. “You’re sweet, babe. But this girl? She’s not…this girl isn’t the one for me. We’re, like, from two different worlds, you know? She’s got complications I’m not about to get involved in.”
She raises her light eyebrows high.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.” A knowing smile quirks on the side of her mouth.
“What?” I demand again.
“Nothing! It’s just that you always take the easy way out, Deo. I mean, I know you never really thought you and I would get serious, but you’ve been calling me for, what, two years for booty calls? And you had to have had fifty girls you were interested in all that time. It was always the same damn thing. One, two, maybe three dates, then things were ‘too complicated.’ I think it’s code.” She flicks her hair again like a damn know-it-all.
“Code for what?” I tuck my arms behind my head and look at my old friend and former fuckbuddy, the now-engaged Cara. Unreal.
“Code for ‘maybe I like this girl.’ Code for ‘things are getting real, so maybe I’ll pull back like an enormous pussy.’” She crosses her arms over her chest.
“Ooh, did you just pull out the ‘p’ word? Your feminist teachers would blow a gasket,” I say to dodge the point she’s trying to make, but that I don’t want to hear.
“Desperate times call for desperate language,” she sighs. “Look, I know you better than a lot of people. And I care about you. I really do. I’ve never seen you mourn a girl this long. Maybe it’s a sign.”
“A sign?” I watch her gather her little embroidered bag and slide into her sandals.
“A sign that times are changing, Deo. And maybe it’s time for you to grow up and face those changes.” She leans over and brushes my hair back, kissing me on the forehead. I inhale and drink in her clean, sweet smell. “I want happiness for you.”
I grab her hand and kiss her knuckles. “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy, Sunshine. See you around?”
“Of course.” She pauses at the doorway. “Can I send you an invite to the wedding? I don’t want it to be weird for you, but it breaks my heart to think of doing this without you there.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” I say, and I drink in her bright smile before she darts out the door.
Cara is getting married. She’s actually getting married.
It wasn’t all that long ago she and I met at the skatepark, when she was just a scraped-kneed tomboy with moves every one of us guys secretly lusted after. And when she grew into those long legs and big blue eyes, I was right there to snatch her up and into my bed. It was always just fun and easiness with Cara, the sweet, sunny kid who never wanted anything more than friendship and sex. So why is her engagement shaking my world?
I pace out to the living-room and see my grandfather with a line of beer cans on the table next to him, watching a John Wayne marathon.
“What’s up, old man?” I ask, falling onto the couch.
“That pretty redhead left in a hurry. You two on the outs?” my grandpa asks, watching the Duke draw his gun and try to talk the shaky-handed bad guy out of a duel that would definitely end with the big man’s victory over his puny nemesis.
“Sunshine is getting married,” I say blandly.
My grandpa nods his tanned, wrinkled head. “Well, that’s what happens. You regret that it wasn’t you that scooped her up?”
I crack a pistachio from the bowl he always keeps by his armchair and throw it in my mouth. “Nah. I mean, she’s amazing, but it was always just friendship between us, you know? It’s just fucking with my mind that she’s engaged.”
“That’s the circle of life, kid. I w
as a piece-of-shit layabout before I met your grandmother. Goddamn, that woman was a sexy piece of ass,” he says, while his eyes get this faraway look.
“Ugh, c’mon! I know you loved her, er, in every way. But seriously? She was my grandma, dude.” I glance up at the pictures in their old wooden frames on top of his enormous TV. Gross as it might be for me to say it, my grandma was one hell of a knockout. And when she died, it gutted my grandfather for a few long, scary months. Which is a huge part of the reason I moved in and never left. “So, how did you know?” I ask.
“Know what?” His old, gnarled hands scoop up a bunch of pistachios, spread them on the worn arm of his recliner, and he starts cracking and eating.
“How did you know Gram was the one? How did you know you guys would be together for sixty years?” It shocked me right up to the end, how much my grandparents loved each other. You’d think my dad, growing up in a house with the two of them, would have had the whole happily-ever-after business down.
Grandpa laughs and cracks another pistachio. “She was a ball-breaker, and that’s how I knew. I was a good lookin’ kid. A lot like you. I had ‘em fallin’ at my feet, running after me and beggin’ me to come keep them company in bed. Not your grandma.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Holy shit, that woman had me confused. One date I’d think it was forever. The next time we were together, I was pretty sure one of us was going to get arrested for homicide. But, in the end, she was worth all that work. No one before me ever bothered to chip through and see what was really in her heart. And her heart…” His eyes go glassy with tears, and I look right at the pistachio shells in the bowl like I’ve never seen anything so fucking interesting in my life. “You know how much I loved that woman’s tits and ass, Deo. But her heart? My God, I’ve never met someone who felt every damn thing with so much passion. I thank God every single day that I got to have a woman like that in my life. One in a hundred million, your grandmother.”
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