Unfaithful
Unlocked: Part One
by
Suzuki Sinclair
Text Copyright 2014 Suzuki Sinclair
All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Sneak Preview: Unbidden, (Unlocked Part Two)
Homecoming
The Offering
Reviews And Such
About The Author
The Next Suzuki Sinclair Series?
CHAPTER ONE
When I told my girlfriends I was going to be housesitting while the Moores went away over the summer Sara nearly choked on a piece of her spicy shrimp scampi.
“Whoa!” she blurted, after Lucy was done smacking her on the back. Her face was still tomato-red and her eyes were watering. “You gotta have a party! A huge, killer party! Their place could hold a couple hundred people, easy. We can get those hot guys that Lucy’s cousin knows to come down from Sacramento!”
Her eyes went as wide as bowling balls.
“I bet they can get us a keg! Two kegs!”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes, “and the moment some drunk jerk barfs on something, goodbye college fund.”
“Oh yeah,” Sara said, and wrinkled her forehead. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“Maybe you should invite Alex Locke over,” Darci murmured. She reached over the table to my plate and helped herself to one of my sweet potato fries. “For a... private party. Just you, him, and a bottle of fine, fine wine.”
Sara and Lucy giggled, and I tried to hide my suddenly-red face behind the laminated menu.
“I think he’s out of town again,” I mumbled, my face burning. “Do any of you guys want a drink?”
“Ha!” Darci crowed, and she snatched the Salmon Bar’s laminated menu away from my face. “Check it out, LJ’s face is about to catch on fire.”
She flapped cold air into my face with the menu. I gave her my best drop-dead look. It bounced right off her shit-eating smart-ass grin.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “Alex Locke is a freakin’ stud. I’d go there in half a heartbeat.”
I grabbed the menu back from out of her hands.
“Yeah, well, we’re not all turbo-sluts like you, Darce,” I said. “And I don’t think those kind of things about my boyfriend’s dad’s business partner.”
I paused, and a slow, sly smile crept over my face.
“Even if he is a total babe.”
The girls burst out laughing, and Darci snuck another crispy fry from my plate. She threw it up in the air and caught it in her mouth, then crooked her head at me.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you just call me a turbo-slut?”
“The truth hurts,” Lucy said, and waved the waiter over to order another round of Diet Cokes.
We were sitting out on the open red brick patio of the Salmon Bar. The heat of the summer sun was beating down on us through the big striped beach umbrella over our table. The soft breeze that rolled off the water was just perfectly warm enough and the sweet smell of the purple lilacs in the garden beds dotted around the patio filled the air.
Everywhere around us people were enjoying the beach. They walked up and down the promenade in twos and threes and fours, some holding hands, some just taking in the sights of Beacon Bay. The sky was clear and soared high about the bay, a limitless blue bowl without a wisp of cloud. The heat had been soaking into the pristine white sands all day and the shimmering ocean waves sparkled out as far as the eye could see. Out past the bay some yachts chased each other slowly across the sea.
Sara was half-heartedly picking at a cold chicken Caesar salad, and, as usual, Lucy had ordered her favorite dish in the whole world, the Salmon Bar’s trademark spicy scampi. Also as usual, Darci hadn’t ordered a single thing to eat. But she was more than happy to steal my food without a hint of shame.
“Hey, check it out,” Darci suddenly said, nudging me with a sharp elbow. “Speaking of total babes...”
Inside a bunch of shirtless surfer boys were hanging out by the Salmon Bar’s old-school fake-wood jukebox. They all had smooth skin turned dark bronze by the sun and swaggering, easy walks. One of them cracked a joke I didn’t hear and another knocked his faded baseball cap off his head. The first one, laughing, chased his hat across the floor.
“Out-of-towners,” I said, turning back to our little table. “They’ll be in trouble when the football team comes in for burgers.”
The Salmon Bar was where just about everyone in town hung out on summer afternoons—it was built like a gigantic Hawaiian bungalow, all dark, polished wood and high beams holding up the roof. It was decorated with garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, bright green and red paper lanterns and fierce-faced, glaring Tiki statues and old posters of Manny, the owner, from when he used to be a hotshot surfer in the Pacific Islands. There was one right next to our table, Manny from years ago with one arm around his board, stuck in the sand, holding up some trophy with the other, and beaming this massive grin so big it was almost as if the top of his head was going to fall off.
Manny himself hustled over with our Diet Cokes balanced on a thick circular wooden tray. He’s put on a lot of weight since his surfing champ days. His big brown belly sits around his middle like a spare tire but he still moves gracefully in and out of the kitchen doors and around the restaurant. The frosty glasses didn’t move an inch while he circled around our table, picking up the drinks off the tray and putting them down in front of us.
“Four such beautiful girls all huddled together?” he asked. “Whispering and plotting and scheming? That can only mean trouble for men everywhere.” He shook his head, sadly. “I pity the boys that run foul of you.”
“Hey Manny,” I said, and smiled. “You should know by now. We’re sweet as sugar.”
“I’d believe it from you,” he said, and he gave me a broad wink. “But these other ones...”
“Hey!” Sara said after a second, when she caught on.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Manny said. He gave the table a quick polish with his red and white checkered towel. “I know you’re good kids.”
“But,” he said, with a meaningful nod in the direction of the surfer guys, who were still jostling each other, “maybe you could do me a favor, Lisa Jeanne, and make sure your boyfriend and his angry buddies don’t start any fights out on the beach this summer, huh? I don’t need the agitation.”
I squirmed uncomfortably.
“Hey, I was just trying to give that guy directions,” I said, avoiding Manny’s eyes. “I didn’t know Mark was going to get all over-protective.”
“I think,” Manny said heavily, “that maybe the boy from out of town wasn’t really lost.”
“I know that now,” I said, and I took a big sip of my Diet Coke.
*
That night had been awful. The out-of-town surfer boy had come in for the summer, like they always do. They swarm all over Beacon Bay in packs and crowd the beaches by day, acting like douches and frightening off the mom-and-dad tourists. At night they try to get the girls to come back to their beat-up vans and always start fights with the local guys.
I honestly thought the guy was just asking for directions. At first. He was tall and tanned and had this blue and yellow bandanna tied around his head and a long leather necklace hanging low down on his bare chest. He came wandering up and smiled real friendly and asked me where he could find somewhere to buy some board wax.
> Mark had spotted me talking to him and come over and put his arm over my shoulder. The surfer boy made a stupid crack about taking me home, and then Mark had shoved him, and he’d shoved Mark back. Some other surfers walking by jumped in, and then Mark’s buddies jumped in... and before you know it, the cops were there.
I don’t know what happened, but Mark’s dad came down to the beach, and went off and spoke to the cops in private. All the local boys were allowed to go home. The surfers were given fines and told to get out of town before nightfall.
*
Darci nudged me, breaking me out of the memory.
“Jesus, Darce,” I said, rubbing my ribs. “You gotta file those elbows of yours down, or something.”
“So is Sexy Mr. Alex gonna be around?” she asked. “Doesn’t he usually come out for the summer?”
“Oh,” I said, blinking. “No idea. If he is, he probably isn’t going to stick around. What would they need me to housesit for if he was? He could just watch the place for them; he lives there like, two months every year anyway.”
Lucy sighed dramatically and put the back of her hand against her forehead like a damsel in distress.
“Your life is so hard, Lisa Jeanne,” she said. She ticked her list off on her fingers. “Hot boyfriend who’s ready to punch any guy who looks at you. Sweet mansion to spend summer in. And the promise of the sexiest piece of man-candy Beacon Bay has ever seen dropping in unannounced. Promise you’ll text me as soon as Alex shows up.”
“You know what I heard once?” Darci said. “That someone once bid thirty-five grand on Alex Locke at a charity bachelor auction. There were like, ten women fighting for a date with him.”
“Shit, I heard that too,” Lucy replied.
“You know, his picture’s still up in the trophy case,” Sara said. “Beacon Bay Senior High’s best QB ever.”
Lucy sighed.
“You only mentioned that every single time you walked past that case,” she said. “I think we know about his picture by now. And anyway, we’re out of that stupid school, forever.”
“Whatever,” Sara said, and went back to her shrimp.
Lucy looked around, then back to me.
“I heard,” she said, “that the cops busted him once having sex down by the pier.”
She winked.
“With three girls who’d come out here for the summer. The cops didn’t know whether they should arrest him or shake his hand.”
Darci leaned back in her chair.
“Well,” she said. “There are four of us here. We should see if Alex wants to break his own record.”
“You guys!” I said. “Can you quit being such dicks! A joke’s a joke, but shut up about Alex Locke!”
Lucy and Darci exchanged glances.
“No need to get so upset,” Sara mumbled around a towering forkful of scampi. “They’re just kidding.”
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “Let’s change the subject anyway.”
“What about Manny, huh?” Lucy said, leaning in over the table and dropping her voice. She had a conspiratorial tone. “Isn’t he such a creep? With all that ‘beautiful girl’ stuff? I wish he’d knock that off.”
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “He’s just being friendly. It’s old-fashioned. He’s like... Dean Martin, or something.”
“Who?” Lucy asked, looking puzzled.
“Hey!” Darci said, and Sara jumped, almost tipping over her Diet Coke. It rocked dangerously on the table, and Darci stuck out a hand and grabbed it.
“You should see if you can track down some of Alex’s sex tapes!” Darci whispered, or as close to a whisper as she gets. My nerves were starting to jangle. I took a hurried glance around the rest of the patio, but no one seemed to have heard.
“Sex tapes?” Sara almost squealed.
“Finally, something distracts you from your shrimp,” Lucy said drily. “I thought you were never going to join the conversation.”
Sara wadded up her purple paper napkin and threw it at Lucy. Lucy ducked and it flew over her shoulder to bounce off into a corner.
“Don’t you remember?” Darci asked. “Like, two months back? LJ was staying over with Mark and they had to get something from Alex’s little guest house around the back. They walked in and there was totally a video camera set up in the bedroom.”
Sara’s mouth dropped open and she stared at me.
“You mean there might be a sex tape out there somewhere starring Alex Locke?” she asked me. “Holy fuck, Lis, Sherlock that shit!”
“Jesus, guys!” I said, shaking my head at Darci. “I never should have told you any of that. If Alex hears about it he’s gonna kick Mark’s ass. And anyway. It probably wasn’t for sex tapes.”
Darci raised one perfectly-plucked eyebrow.
“There’s probably lots of reasons someone might have a video camera in their bedroom,” I said. Even in my own ears, it sounded lame. Darci’s other eyebrow joined the first somewhere halfway up her forehead.
“Anyway,” I said. I grabbed for my bag, and my hands were suddenly clumsy. I felt anxious and awkward and I didn’t want to stay any longer. “I gotta get out of here. Good luck with the surfer boys.”
Darci caught me up as I was halfway to the car. I’d slipped my cheap plastic shades on because the sun was so bright.
“Hey, LJ,” she said, catching my elbow. “Sorry. We were just giving you shit.”
“Hey, it’s cool,” I said, and I gave Darce a goodbye kiss on the cheek. “I just don’t want any stupid rumors to get started, you know? If Mark heard we were making jokes about how hot his dad’s business partner is... You know he gets. The company would probably be busted up by the weekend.”
“Yeah, I know,” Darci said, with feeling. “He already thinks I’m a, what was it you said? A turbo-slut?”
I didn’t know what to say. Mark had never liked Darci—he thought she was a bad influence. The pause got a little longer, hanging in the air.
“Are you guys still... you know, fighting?” Darci asked. There was something unusually tentative in her voice.
“I don’t even know,” I said, and I sighed. Thinking about Mark sucked all the happiness out of the beautiful summer day. “We fight, we make up, we have fun. Then we fight again, we make up again, we have fun again. But we fight a little more every time, and have a little less fun. I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. We almost broke up for real last week, then... I don’t know. We didn’t. Obviously.”
I took a quick glance around, then leaned closer to Darci.
“We haven’t had sex for about two months,” I said. “It’s like he just isn’t interested anymore. I don’t know what the hell’s up with him.”
Darci gave me a sympathetic half-smile.
“You know you can always call if you need,” she said.
But I couldn’t resist one last shot at Darci as I got in the car.
“Mark’s wrong about one thing,” I said. “You’re not a turbo-slut.”
Darci cocked her head to the side, a question written on her face.
“You’re a turbo turbo-slut!” I called through the open window. I watched her laughing in the rearview window as I drove away.
CHAPTER TWO
I’d just finished high school, and I couldn’t stop grinning like an idiot whenever I thought about that. Good-bye, Beacon Bay Senior High. Good-bye, locker. Good-bye guidance counselors who got frustrated and made exasperated sighs when I told them I didn’t know what I wanted to be. Good-bye gym class, and good-bye gross spaghetti sauce in the cafeteria every Tuesday.
Good-bye to the four most boring years of my life.
The best summer of all time was starting. Hot sun, easy living, and sweet pineapple and coconut piña coladas down by the shore. I wasn’t going to go to college for months. Maybe even twelve months if my mom let me take a year off to travel around Europe with Darci like I wanted (“Just tell her that French guys are babes,” Darci kept saying. “And we’ll bring her one back. But not som
e skeezy guy with a big nose. One of the hot models from Paris.”).
After all those years of high school, all I wanted to do with my summer days was finish my job at the animal shelter and go over the Moores’ place, to lay around by the pool and watch Mark working out (before I had to go to my second job waitressing).
Mark was tall and good-looking and had curly brown hair and whenever he got some sun, his skin would turn this dusky tan like the color of toast. He’d grin at me and his shiny white teeth would pop out against his tanned face.
*
Mark and I got together a little bit over two years ago, when I was sixteen. He went to a different school; a fancy school for rich kids, not for people like me. My mom made me invite my cousin Ralph to my sweet sixteenth party. It was my first birthday after my dad died and I guess she wanted me to have family there.
And Ralph, who was nerdy and cracked dumb jokes and had a penchant for wearing lame pick-up line t-shirts, asked if he could bring a friend. I had no idea he was going to bring this tall, hunky, total babe who played football and had muscles like crazy. Ralph was at the school for rich kids because he got a scholarship there, and he and Mark hung out because they were both in drama club. It was hard not to spend the whole night checking out Mark.
So I just spent half the night doing it.
I’ve never been brave when it comes to boys. I’m not funny like Darci is, or smart like Lucy is. I get shy and stupid and all the clever things I want to say get stuck somewhere in the back of my throat. Before too long I start to go pink and I get the giggles and I have to make up some excuse to get away. But when I saw Mark walk in the front door I thought, no, Lisa Jeanne, you can be the cool girl who knows just how to act for once.
I finally cornered Mark over by the pineapple punch. It was this crazy yellow color with bright pink umbrellas stuck all around the bowl. I originally wanted to spike it with some champagne or vodka or something. But none of us could get any by the time the party started.
“So . . .” I started, and then I forgot completely what I was going to say. I stared at the cup in Mark’s hand, one of those bright red paper party pitchers.
Unfaithful: An Unlocked Novella Page 1