I took my beer and settled myself halfway down the steps on a small landing where the stairs turned and ended at the sand. Down there I was isolated from the people on the porch and the party, which was almost as good as being at home. The pulsing base and laughing partiers were just a quiet murmur in the background. As I slowly sipped my beer, every few minutes I would hear a long creak from the porch swing or a laugh from one of the guys at the table, but for the most part, all was quiet.
I had just finished my beer, and was debating whether or not to fish my iPod out of my pocket, when the door to the porch opened. I could hear two people talking. One of them was Molly, her distinct accent coming across loud and clear.
“You’re not okay,” she was saying.
“I’m fine,” came the voice of the guy she was talking to.
“No, you’re not. I can tell, Zack.”
Zack? Coffeehouse Guy Zack? I strained my ears in an effort to hear what they were talking about. Was it a lover’s quarrel? Were they really dating? Is that why she was asking me about him?
“Molly, go back inside. Just leave me alone. I need five minutes okay.”
“Come on, Zack, talk to me. I know you’re pissed. That was a really insensitive thing for those guys to say, but how could they know?” She sounded like she was pleading with him.
“Let it go, Molly. I’m fine.”
“Fine,” I heard her say and then heard the door slam as she presumably went back inside.
“Dammit,” I heard Zack say, as the flat of his hand made contact with the railing, causing a loud slap.
I heard him pause for a second before I heard the distinctive click of a lighter as he lit a cigarette. Then before I knew what was happening, he was charging down the steps, not seeing me sitting several feet below him.
“Oh,” he said, as recognition set in and he noticed me.
“Hi,” I said, for lack of anything more inspiring as I watched him blow out a stream of smoke into the night air.
“Hey.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair, and I figured he’d keep going down to the beach, but he didn’t. “That’s my spot.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, I was coming down here to sit. It’s my spot. You know, the place where I go when I want to drown out the rest of the world?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, starting to get up. “I didn’t realize these stairs were claimed.” I knew I sounded a bit irritated, but he was forcing me out of my spot, so I was irritated.
“Oh. No,” he said quickly, putting his hand up. I stopped in the middle of rising to my feet. “You can stay.”
“Ok-ay,” I said slowly, sitting back down, my irritation falling away as confusion replaced it.
Zack sat on the bottom step, perpendicular to me, his worn sneakers almost touching the side of my thigh, his arms hooked around his knees. I noticed he had another tattoo on the inside of his forearm but couldn’t make out what it said. There were four lines of script. As I leaned forward to read them, he shifted so his hands were resting behind him, and I could no longer gawk at his tattoo.
I looked up at him, not sure what else to do. He looked upset as he took a deep drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes as he blew out the smoke, like it was a release of some sort.
He opened his eyes, giving me an appraising look. “Do you want one?” he asked, gesturing to his cigarette.
I shook my head. “No thanks. I don’t smoke,” I said, even though I stared at his cigarette intently. It was brown, not white like I was used to. It also smelled like spices and incense. Normally, I hated the smell of cigarette smoke, but his smelled good.
Zack caught me staring. “It’s a clove cigarette,” he said. “You don’t smoke? I’ve seen you smoke.”
“I know, but I don’t really. It was just that one time.”
He leaned back against the step behind him and looked out at the ocean. “Suit yourself,” he said, taking another drag, as I fixated on the tattoo peeking out of the sleeve of his white t-shirt.
It was a design of some sort that I couldn’t make out, and I suddenly wanted to push up his sleeve to see what it was. I was fascinated by his body art. It looked so good on him.
“So you’re staying here this summer?” I asked him, trying to spark some sort of conversation. “At this house?”
“No, not anymore.”
I nodded, not sure what he meant. Had he gotten kicked out?
“My dad owns the house. He grew up here, and his parents gave it to him and my mom when they couldn’t take care of it any longer. We used to come here every summer. Then my parents got divorced when I was in high school, and my mom still wanted to come to the island in the summer, but she obviously didn’t want to come here, so she bought a smaller house a few blocks away. My dad rents out this place throughout most of the year, but he and his new wife come out here occasionally.”
I was a little floored with how much he’d just shared with me. In the few times that we’d spoken, I didn’t think he’d said that many words in any of our conversations, let alone all at once. I was riveted and suddenly wanted to know all about him.
“So this was your spot when you were growing up?” I asked, still not sure what he’d meant by that comment.
“My parents fought a lot, and this was where I would come when I got upset. So yeah, it’s kind of my spot.”
I nodded, fully understanding what he was talking about. “It’s your spot. I can go if you want to be alone.”
“No,” he said quickly. “It’s okay. You can stay. Some company might actually be nice.”
I couldn’t ignore the sadness that was literally oozing out of his eyes. I recognized it from the other times I’d seen him. It was like it never quite seemed to leave him, even when he was playing an upbeat song or making a joke.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I offered, knowing that sometimes it just helped to get things off your chest.
He shook his head. “Not really. But thanks for asking.”
He ran his hand through his hair again and looked out at the ocean. I noticed his dark hair curled a bit at the ends. I wished I could tell what he was thinking. In the distance, thunder rumbled, causing me to lift my head in the direction of the sound, wondering if another storm was on its way.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
When I looked back up at him, he seemed to relax just a little. “Emily Cole.”
“Emily Cole,” he repeated. “Finally, I know the name of the girl from the coffeehouse who keeps showing up out of the blue.” His eyes got playfully wide as he said that.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, wondering if I’d heard him correctly. If I had, that meant he remembered me.
“You don’t remember meeting me, do you?”
I bit my lip for a second, wondering if I should tell him the truth. “No,” I said, slowly. “I do.”
“Yeah? You didn’t say anything when we talked at the beach.”
Talked, flirted, whatever.
I shrugged. “You didn’t either. I figured you didn’t remember me. I’m not exactly memorable.”
“On the contrary,” he said, taking a long drag off his cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs for a few beats before blowing it out slowly. “You’re actually quire memorable. You’re also very mysterious.”
“So are you,” I countered, not knowing what he meant, but I liked it. I wasn’t sure anyone had ever described me as mysterious. I honestly enjoyed that he hadn’t thought I was sweet or cute. It was a nice change.
He smiled, and it lit up his eyes. I remembered how much I’d liked his smile when I first met him. I was glad he was smiling as opposed to looking so despondent. He seemed so different than the light-hearted guy I’d encountered a month earlier at the coffee shop, and I wondered what had changed.
“Okay then, I guess we’re even,” he told me.
“I guess we are,” I said, knowing I was flirting just a little. “Okay, but really, how am I mysterious?”
He shrugged. “Well, you keep popping up places, especially when I’m not expecting to see you. I’m intrigued. Plus you look like you have a secret. I’m curious about what it is.”
“You think I have a secret?” I asked, not believing him for a second. That was probably a line he used on every girl he flirted with.
He nodded. “Am I wrong?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” I was playing coy, and I knew it.
“You want to kiss me, don’t you? That’s it.”
He took one final drag off of his cigarette and flicked it through the railings. I watched it fall to the ground, landing softly on the sand.
I was taken aback by his boldness but maintained my composure, shaking my head slightly as I smirked at him. “Um, no. But thanks for asking.”
“Huh, I figured the combination of you saying I had kissable lips, telling me you wanted to kiss me, and then getting within two inches of my mouth last night would be an indication, but I guess I was wrong.”
I stared at him. He had a confident air about him that was something I wasn’t used to in guys. I mean, Ben was confident, but Zack seemed older or wiser or just more insightful. He seemed to exude something specific that said he was totally comfortable in his own skin, regardless of what anyone else thought.
He also had a bit of a bad boy edge that seemed to draw me in. He seemed dangerous, but it was probably the sexiest thing about him. Of course, if he really was a bad boy, would he have been helping his future stepmother assemble wedding favors? Probably not.
“Nope. Sorry. I don’t want to kiss you,” I told him, shaking my head.
“That’s just too bad,” he said, leaning closer to me. “So what is it that you’re hiding then?”
“I’m not hiding anything,” I said, leaning back against the railing.
“Liar.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, starting to enjoy our little back and forth game. “If you think I’m hiding something, what do you think it is?” I asked, taking the new cigarette he’d just lit from his hand, putting it to my lips and inhaling deeply. It tasted like spices, and it wasn’t all that gross.
Zack raised his eyebrows at me. “I thought you didn’t smoke.”
“I don’t,” I said, putting the cigarette to my lips again.
When I didn’t give any indication that I was going to give it back, he pulled out another one and lit it. “See, mysterious,” he mumbled around the cigarette.
I shrugged while maintaining a coy look that I hoped was enticing. “So are you going to tell me what you think I’m hiding?”
He looked at me solicitously for a few seconds, and I thought I saw a smirk creep onto his lips. “I have no clue, but I’d say you’ve been doing a bit of soul-searching this summer,” he said, catching me off-guard. “You know, trying to figure something out.”
“Why do you think that?” I asked, trying to keep my cool about him seeing right through me.
He raised his eyebrows and quoted a line from my favorite Paramore song that I’d told him I loved.
I smiled. “You listened to it.”
“Do you identify with it?” he asked, sounding like a shrink. “Is your life really tragic, Emily Cole? Because quite honestly I’d have pegged you for more of a princess with a perfect life.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “My life isn’t tragic,” I said icily. “It’s also not perfect. I guess I just identify wanting it to be magical, wanting the fairytale, and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
I realized how juvenile that sounded as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I expected Zack to laugh at me, but he didn’t.
“You do realize fairytales are bullshit,” he said, and I suddenly felt like an idiot for admitting something so personal, but then he got that faraway look in his eyes again. “Of course, maybe you’re on to something. A fairytale would sometimes be better than reality.”
I felt like we’d treaded into some pretty serious territory and I should redirect the conversation, but Zack was on a roll, and I couldn’t stop him.
“Is your life really that terrible?” he asked me.
“No, it’s not” I sighed. “It’s just . . . . predictable. Boring.”
Zack raised an eyebrow at me. “So let me guess. You figured you’d come here for the summer and let loose, because it’s summer and that’s what people do.”
I nodded, not sure how I felt about him being able to read me so well.
“But you’re not very good at it,” he said cautiously. “You come to these parties, but you’re really not into the scene. You smoke, but you’re not really a smoker. You got that piercing, because you wanted to do something crazy. And you’re probably not really as in love with your boyfriend as you think you are, but you’d never actually admit it.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. He was pretty much hitting the nail on the head, and it was a little disconcerting. Hell, it was a lot disconcerting.
“I’d guess that you’re probably scared to do anything radical that might have a permanent effect on your life, so you’re scratching the surface on shaking things up. Oh, and I’d guess that you’re a cheerleader and on student council, but that’s just a guess.”
Zack settled back against the step behind him, rested on his elbows and stared at me. I was well-aware that my mouth was slightly hanging open, so much so that I almost didn’t catch the last thing he said. I started to tell him I wasn’t in high school when he said something that gave me pause.
“Oh, and you really are thinking about what it would be like to kiss me, but you’d never actually admit it. How right was I, princess?” he asked smugly.
“You weren’t exactly right,” I said haughtily. “And don’t call me princess.”
He leaned forward, so his face was inches from mine. “Yeah, but I was close wasn’t I?”
“That is beside the point,” I said, not giving him the satisfaction that he was right about anything, especially that I wanted to kiss him, although now that he brought it up, I was completely thinking about it. His kissable lips were very close to mine.
He laughed lightly. “I have a knack for that – you know, observing and reading people. I was a psych major in college.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded once. “I also know firsthand what it’s like to try to fix things with alcohol, and I can tell you it doesn’t work.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, caught off-guard by his statement.
“Keep in mind that I’m not judging you or anything, but I’ve paid attention to you over the past few weeks.” I narrowed my eyes, waiting for him to continue. “Call it instincts, but I can tell you’re not a big drinker, yet you guzzle the stuff like it’s water. It’s not going to fix what’s wrong.”
“What is this, an anti-drinking PSA? ‘Cause I don’t need a lecture,” I said, my defenses heightening.
My recreational drinking habits, however excessive they’d been as of late, certainly weren’t any of his business, even if I knew deep down that he was right. I’d been drowning what was bothering me each night in an attempt to make things better or more fun or something, but each day I still woke up with that nagging feeling in my mind that I didn’t have any more answers than when I’d gone to bed. It was frustrating.
Zack sighed, obviously sensing my irritation. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but for whatever reason, you caught my attention, and I can see that if you’re not careful, you could head down a road that’s pretty bleak.”
“You’ve been down that road, I presume?”
“Let’s just say I had few dark months myself before I realized that no matter how drunk I got, my problems were still there when I woke up. I just had a raging hangover to go with them.”
“So you’re like a recovering alcoholic?” I asked, stunned that someone so young could carry that title.
He laughed. “No, I’m not. I just learned to deal with my problems head-on instead of trying to bury them.�
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“And you think I should do that?”
“I’m not your shrink. And I’m not here to tell you what to do, but I’m just saying there are other options.” He leaned forward, appraising me. “You just don’t seem like the kind of girl who’d get caught up in all this bullshit,” he said, gesturing up to the party I’d forgotten was going on above us.
It was unnerving how well this guy could read me – scarily unnerving – and I didn’t want him doing it anymore.
“Okay, then,” I said, maintaining my composure, so he wouldn’t be able to tell how unraveled I’d become in the past few minutes. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll definitely take it under advisement.”
“No problem,” he said as he took a satisfied drag off of his cigarette.
“My turn,” I said then. “Let me analyze you.”
He smirked at me. “Go ahead, princess.”
I fought the urge to roll my eyes at his nickname for me. I wasn’t a big fan, especially since my brother had mockingly called me that for years, but I let it go. I didn’t need Zack to have any more ammunition against me.
“You act all tough, but you’re really sensitive. You’ve been upset about something for a while, but you don’t like to think or talk about, so you’ve learned to turn your emotions off, like you’re doing right now. I don’t know what made you that way, but I’d guess it’s a girl – mostly because you seem really arrogant, so you probably did something shitty to this girl and are now regretting your actions. Oh, and you know that I have a boyfriend, but that doesn’t seem to stop you from flirting with me.”
He smiled after a few moments of seemingly pondering what I’d said. “It was a nice effort.”
I shrugged. “Oh well. I tried. We can’t all have degrees in psychology.”
He laughed. “And she’s not modest. Respect.”
“Well, you weren’t exactly right about me,” I countered, putting the ball back in his court.
Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns) Page 14