by S. Love
“You need help all right. Remedial.” Ozzie grips my flesh, pulling me away from Brandon by my wrist, and not gently either.
“Yoo-hoo, Lyla!”
Lauren and Kenya walk-dance into the kitchen, and I brighten as soon as I see them heading my way, shaking my wrist free.
“So this is where all of Cape Pearl’s ran off to.” Kenya pulls her candy pink hair behind her shoulders, eyes scouting the busy kitchen and the teenagers dancing on each other. She adjusts her baby-blue tube top, turning to face me and pop a large, round bubble of gum. The gum snaps against her pink lips, and she drags it back into her mouth with her tongue, smiling broadly.
“I wasn’t sure you guys would make it.” Injecting extra distance between me and Brandon, who’s interest in me has rejuvenated now Lauren and Kenya are here, I walk around the island, putting us on opposite sides, and ask Kenya and Lauren what they’re drinking.
I mix three Malibu and Cokes and hand them out. Ozzie hasn’t budged from where he’s standing with a face like a smacked-ass, and Brandon’s hovering as though he’s part of the group, that pervy smile stuck to his mouth as he eyeballs Lauren and Kenya. He’s looking at them like he’s the serial killer and they’re his next victims. How the heck does Ozzie know this guy?
Lauren leans against the sink, sipping from her Solo cup. She hasn’t noticed the weirdo leering over her yet.
“What’s the deal with you and Con, anyway? That was pretty badass, you coming in out of nowhere and stealing him off the market.”
I drop my eyes to my drink and wish she would keep her voice down. Besides, I don’t know how to answer that without spewing a dose of lies, and I thought I was past that stage now.
“That was casual.” I take a sip of my drink. It isn’t the same without ice.
“You guys were just fucking?” Kenya enquires, peering at me over her drink. There’s a hefty level of mistrust in her voice, like I’m saying that to throw them off the scent.
“It wasn’t really anything.” I shrug, the tips of my ears getting warmer.
“Good,” Kenya says firmly. “He showed up at Catalina Ramirez’s house last night and didn’t leave until this morning.”
My whiplash reaction is, “How do you know that?”
“My cousin who lives next door saw him. When she asked Catalina about it, she said he totally strung her along then left her wet and reaching for her vibe.”
I frown. “What?”
“He wouldn’t put out,” Lauren says, like I’m slow. “Got the poor girl all worked up and then left her with her panties in a damp twist.”
Lauren and Kenya share a tight-lipped smile. I’m not sure what to think of the news.
Ozzie stalking off, pushing past another guy with a translucent tube in his mouth attached to a funnel where a girl pours in a can of beer, stops me from digesting too much of the news. Brandon’s also gone.
I’m unsettled, the anxiety sweeping over me born of a feeling that makes me itch. Am I jealous Falcon did go to another girl’s house like he’d said he would? No. That can’t be it. It had never bothered me before now, and I was sure that was what he’d done anyway. Or has the confirmation renewed a fire under me? Like now I’m sure that’s what he was doing, I’m suddenly bothered?
No.
Then what’s wrong with me? What’s changed in four of five minutes that now I can’t see clear through my encroaching tunnel vision?
To shake it off, I pound two shots of tequila with Lauren and Kenya. Garrett’s sex tape hasn’t been brought up, so there’s still the chance the whole world hasn’t seen it. I would ask, but I don’t want to shine the spotlight any brighter on myself, and I absolutely do not want to talk about Garrett.
“You could’ve said, you know. That you work here.” Lauren’s pointed look from under her eyelashes is less accusation than I deserve. I wonder who told her. Garrett, I’m sure. Big mouth.
Kenya’s face opens into a suggestive smile. “I’d shout it from the rooftops if I were you.” She fans herself with her hand, angling her gaze to the open French doors. “Like, can we talk about how hot Ozzie looks tonight?”
“Can we not,” I suggest. “And you guys are right. It was a dumb thing to keep to myself. I just, um…” I reach for the first excuse in my head. “With Falcon and everything, and Garrett… it was totally awkward all round—”
Kenya pushes her fingernails into my shoulder. “Don’t explain yourself, girl. We get it. We’d keep this sweet life to ourselves, too. I masturbated for a full hour Thursday night after watching Ozzie and Falcon surf all day. Those bodies, those wetsuits, those faces. Even Ozzie’s legs turn me on.”
My eyebrows dip, and I pause over my cup. “His legs?”
“His tanned calves and perfect shins?” She offers me a disparaging look. “Hell yes.”
“What about his thighs?” Lauren throws in, laughter behind her smile. “He’s got good thighs.”
“Hasn’t he just. He’s got good everything. Rumor’s spreading around town that he was talking to some people from Red Bull,” Kenya says more seriously. “At the South Beach Open, on the first day. Not the last, the first.”
Lauren nods. “Yeah. But whatever they were offering, he turned them down on the spot. That’s what my brother said anyway.”
“Hang on,” I butt in. “Who’re you talking about?” I’m lost in their rapid, jaunty conversation.
“Ozzie,” they say collectively.
“He was offered a sponsorship?” How am I only hearing this now?
“I don’t know for sure,” Kenya says less boldly. She’s a gossip and she knows it. “But if you believe everything you hear, then yeah. Red Bull want him, and he told them to stick it. He isn’t going nowhere.”
He wouldn’t. But since the topic’s moving along in the direction of sponsorships, and potentially Garrett, I let it go.
“Might be because Rachel’s coming home,” Lauren adds timidly.
“Rachel?” I put my cup down on the counter behind me, like I can’t hold my drink and absorb all this information being thrown sideways at me.
Lauren and Kenya trade uneasy looks.
“Maybe forget she said that,” Kenya says, lowering her voice and closing the distance, even though I can hardly hear her over this music as it is. “It probably has nothing to do with her.”
“Who is her?” I ask. They’ve started it, they might as well finish it.
“I think they dated once,” Lauren jumps in too quickly. “Messy ending, or something like that. She moved away—”
Kenya opens her mouth, snoring loudly. “Blah, blah, blah. Boring. Thought we came here to get drunk and have fun?” She looks at me, her lips curling into a smile. “If you’re finished with Con, you don’t mind if I test him out, do you? Find out for myself if the man lives up to the legend.”
“Kenya!” Lauren slaps her friend, but I’m not really paying either of them much attention.
“He’s all yours. Enjoy.” I pick up my drink, the name Rachel fluttering around my head like a trapped hummingbird.
When Kenya and Lauren announce they’re getting in the pool, I hang back in the kitchen and make up an excuse about being on my period. I can’t help myself from clearing away empty cups and tidying the work surfaces. Falcon insists I won’t have to clean up this mess tomorrow, but any of the Osborne brothers taking on the job is unimaginable to me. It will get left and ignored until I end up with treble the work.
Avoiding the backyard, I carry the garbage sack through the house. Voices carry from the front entrance as I walk into the foyer. Falcon’s standing between one open and closed glass gilded door, his voice rising with agitation, like he’s quickly losing his patience with whoever’s outside.
I hasten my footsteps, holding the bag tightly by the knotted neck. If I can diffuse the situation, I will. Fighting at the house, especially at the front of the house where passersby can see, that puts the risk of cops showing up to an extreme level we could all do without. Cindy was
out of her mind to leave me in charge. Whatever drug’s she’d taken mustn’t have worn off. These boys live by their own rules and no one else’s. What was she thinking?
“She doesn’t want to fucking see you,” Falcon says before moving forward through the doors and then onto the porch.
I recognize the defiant, second voice holding its own from the paved yard. It’s Garrett, and he’s refusing to go anywhere.
Standing between the two doors, I say to Falcon, “Don’t hurt him.”
Falcon swings a look over his shoulder, brows slanted. “Go back inside.”
“Lyla.” Garrett tries to push his way past Falcon, but he’s caught by his biceps, Falcon ultimately pushing him even farther down the driveway, onto the surrounding gravel. Garrett’s focus turns to Falcon, a furious scowl denting his face. “Get your fucking hands off me.”
I don’t want to talk to him, there’s nothing to say. But seeing him act this impulsive and irrational isn’t what I want, either.
“Why did you come here?” I say, hoping my voice will calm him down. Give him something to focus on other than doing everything in his power to piss Falcon off.
“For you.” He pushes against Falcon, and this time Falcon lets him go, still slowly backing him down the driveway with his broad chest and squared shoulders.
“You’ve wasted your time. I’ve got nothing left to say. Falcon, leave him.”
“Don’t come back,” Falcon warns. “’Cause I’ve got no problem knocking you out, Jardine. Just give me one fucking reason.” He pushes his face into Garrett’s. “One.”
Garrett alternates cagey glances between me and Falcon. He falls silent for a moment, and then says to me, like he’s finally plucked up the courage and he doesn’t care if Falcon kicks him off his property with his actual foot, “I know what day it is tomorrow. Does he?”
Falcon bites, a flicker of surprise in his expression as his eyes rise and level with mine.
Garrett isn’t giving up. Funny, considering he never had that problem before.
“He doesn’t, does he?” In a last-ditch effort, Garrett spreads his arms, a look of defeated bewilderment across his face. “Tomorrow, I’m gone. I’m here now, but this is it, Lyla. Don’t end things this way.”
His gray eyes plead for something I can’t give him, and I lose it. For a moment, I lose everything I’ve been keeping so close to my chest.
“You ended things this way!”
Falcon jogs up the steps, facing me as he hammers the door closed on Garrett. He snatches the trash bag from my hand. “I’ll put this out,” is all he says.
Halfway to the kitchen, under the gleaming, crystal chandelier, he turns his head and asks, “What’s tomorrow?”
I’d think he didn’t care for the answer if not for the deep indent between his pinched brows.
I swallow, sliding my fingers from my right hand over my pinky finger on my left hand. “My birthday.” It’s not a lie, but also not the whole truth. It’s more than Falcon needs to know.
It isn’t until Falcon’s left with the trash that I see my backpack propped up beside the doors, sagging against the wall panel. Garrett must have brought it over, and the sentiment, so fucking small and unimportant, grips my chest in its sharp clutches.
I carry my bag up to my room, so no one takes it. Not that there’s anything in there worth stealing. Returning to the party like the last five minutes never happened, I suck it up and go out to the pool. Pull off my Chucks and my socks to submerge my feet up to my calves in the warm water, lit up blue from below.
There’s a game of chicken in progress, Lauren and Kenya on the shoulders of Topher and another guy, and I get sucked into the laughter and drunken jokes, pushing Garrett and tomorrow into the darkest crevice of my mind. It’s easy to tune both of them out in the thick of the chatter and music. But too soon, the darkness fades, and the clutter comes scurrying back.
Leaving my socks and shoes where they are, I lift my feet out of the water and head over to the sand trail, nestled in on both sides by undulating sea grass bristling against my wet legs and ankles.
The light fades to background filter, the ocean and the beach ahead cloaked in darkness that stretches into infinity. Tiny splashes of silver puncture the obsidian sky, and the surf roars and crashes onto the beach, rolling back out with the tide and churning up more waves.
The tide’s too far out to walk it, but when I’ve put a satisfactory distance between me and the party, I stop, close my eyes, and inhale the clean air. I tip my head back, open my eyes and stare at the never-ending abyss above me. I should have brought my phone out here so I could call Talia and listen to her voice while she tells me to hang in there and remember why I’m here. But she’s probably sleeping. She’s away at college, not on vacation. She has early-morning classes and homework. A demanding schedule to stick to. She doesn’t have time for my childish drama.
Static energy thrums under my skin. Night surfing suddenly makes so much sense to me. If I was seasoned in the sport, I’d dive in and burn this static electricity off. Drench myself in the freezing water and let the waves cure me—calm me down.
Only getting more frustrated with myself, I turn around with tense shoulders and collide with another person. When my eyes adjust to who that person is, I lash out, raising my arms and hands. Before I can even touch him, his arm slides around my waist, pushing against me or holding me back, and we crash to the sand. I land with a hard thud on my back. Ozzie’s lying on top of me, his upper body braced on one arm that’s up by my head.
I lie there panting, searching Ozzie’s eyes for the reason I’m coiled so tight. It’s fucking him. I don’t know how he’s done it, but he has—I know he has. I can feel it in my trembling fingers and my rapid heartbeat. He’s infected me with his poison, and I’ve lost all basic functioning of my brain. I wish I knew when exactly it’d happened, so I could pinpoint the moment and do something—anything—to stop his poison from spreading.
His lithe body moves above me, his chest expanding with each inhale and exhale of his lungs, the lean muscles bulging in his arms tensed as he holds himself rigid from the waist up. His black wife beater hangs loose at his chest and his sides, a thin, silver chain glinting in the moonlight as it dangles from his neck.
What my body wants next terrifies me. Leaves me questioning what I thought I knew about myself. Every time I’m with him, I lose what’s left of the good to the bad. I slip deeper into someone else.
“You’re sick,” I say weakly, oxygen hard to come by with him so close. I trace his jaw, his neck, shoulders, with my eyes—the way his hair hangs forward on one side. “But maybe I’m sick, too.”
He knows what I’m talking about. Understands perfectly why I loathe him as much as I’m desperate to smash down this gap and have his lips on mine.
“You wanted me to touch you.” His stare darkens in shadow, lips tilting downward with the brush of a frown. “Say it.” His frown strains even more. “Say it.”
“Fine!” I look into his eyes, forcing my tears to stay put. “I wanted you to touch me! Are you fucking satisfied now? Have you got your excuse for doing that to me? Is your conscience a little bit clearer now?”
Ozzie grips me by the throat and snarls, “I have no fucking conscience. You. Are. Not. His.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but the message isn’t any less threatening. “Stop fucking testing me, Lyla. My patience is paper thin.”
I pry my fingers beneath his caged at my neck, my head tipped deeper into the sand, my chin jutting up so I’m looking down at him. “I’m not yours.”
Ozzie smiles, like the devil himself handcrafted it especially for him. “That’s exactly what you are.”
With a surge of energy summoned from the innermost pits of my reserves, I yank his hand from my throat and push him off me, using my knees on his stomach. Either Ozzie allows me to walk free or I’m stronger than my previous capabilities.
Whatever it is, I storm back to the house, pound a full glass of water to so
othe my raw throat, and heave for breath over the kitchen sink like some manic out-of-shape runner who just completed an impossible sprint. I was standing so close to the edge I’ve toppled over. Landed face-first in a heap of cow shit.
As I lift my head, the kitchen, no—the whole house—is plunged into darkness. Even the lights in the yard and the pool have been killed. The music’s cut out, and a girl’s voice commands the room, talking over the moans and groans of the disruption to the party. She’s hoisted up onto a bare-chested guy’s shoulders, and she claps her hands to get everyone’s attention on her.
“Lights out for this next song, guys. That means pair up if you haven’t already. Treble up, whatever, just find someone—anyone. Remember, you only have one song before whoever you choose is revealed to you. You don’t want to know who you’re grinding up on? Move on before the song finishes. Those are the rules. Everyone plays.”
The ludicrous announcement receives a collective whopping, a couple ‘hell yeah’s’ thrown in for good measure. God, people can be so dumb.
Out of interest, I try switching on the chandeliers in the kitchen, but nothing happens. Darkness prevails.
The laundry room’s through the door on my left, after the integrated refrigerator. Since I have no plans of involving myself in this crude display of drunken recklessness, ending up with God knows whose hands on me, I mangle my way through the tangle of bodies that can’t be identified without suitable lighting and turn the knob on the door. I open it enough to fit my body through sideways, then close the door after me. There’s no lock on the damn thing, but the song’s started, and I’m sure most people are tongue-deep in each other by now, not concerned over hiding out with the laundry machines like a paranoid recluse.
I boost myself up onto the counter next to the stacked washer and dryers, leaning my head and shoulder against the machines. There’s a window in here, but the shutters are drawn, keeping any natural light out. It’s so dark I can’t see my hand in front of my face.
My eyes swing to the door when the song gets louder, the unmistakable snick of the doorknob sliding out of its latch stiffening my spine. The music dulls again, and I open my mouth to call out ‘who’s there’ when I think better of it and keep my mouth closed, muting my breathing.