Heart Bones

by Hoover, Colleen

  I guess I’m not the only one who thinks that about him.

  “He wanted me to see the view from your roof. It’s gorgeous.” Now that I’m closer, I can see she’s cracking pecans. I lean against one of the stilts holding her house up. “How long have you known Samson?” I ask her.

  She lifts her chin in thought. “Since the beginning of the year, I guess. I had a heart attack in February. Can’t get around like I used to, so he comes over every now and then and I put him to work. He doesn’t complain. He also doesn’t charge me, so I’m not sure what he’s getting out of it.”

  I smile. I like that he doesn’t take money from her. Not that she can’t afford to pay someone to help her. She’s sitting in the tallest house in what’s probably the nicest neighborhood on this peninsula. It’s not the most modern. It’s actually kind of dated, but it has character. It feels lived in, unlike a lot of these other houses that are rent-ready and identical. “I really like your house,” I say, looking around. “What do you call this level?”

  “The stilt level,” she says. She points above her head. “We consider that the first floor.”

  I glance around at the other houses. Some of them have enclosed their stilt levels. Some have made them parking spaces. I like Marjorie’s. She’s got a tiki bar, a picnic table and a couple of hammocks hanging between some of the stilts.

  “Some people like to turn their stilt levels into extra rooms,” she says. “The new idiots next door enclosed an entire guest room on their stilt level. Not too bright, but they didn’t want my opinion. They’ll figure it out soon enough. Some days the ocean is our neighbor, but some days the ocean is our roommate.” She motions for me to come closer. “Here. Take these.” She hands me a gallon-sized bag of shelled pecans.

  “You don’t have to give me these,” I say, trying to hand them back to her.

  She waves me away. “Keep them. I have too many.”

  I have no idea what I’m going to do with a pound of pecans. I’ll give them to Alana, I guess. “Thank you.”

  Marjorie nods her head at the dog. “Have you named him yet?”

  “No.”

  “You should call him Pepper Jack Cheese.”

  I laugh. “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  I look down at the dog. He doesn’t look like a piece of cheese. I’m not sure any dog looks like cheese. “Pepper Jack,” I say, trying the name out on him. “Do you feel like a Pepper Jack?”

  “Pepper Jack Cheese,” Marjorie corrects. “He deserves the full name.”

  I like Marjorie. She’s odd. “Thanks for the pecans.” I look down at the dog. “Let’s go home, Pepper Jack Cheese.”

  ELEVEN

  I went to a small elementary school. That’s where I met Natalie. It was only a few blocks from my house and it was small enough that there was only one teacher per grade. Your clique was the grade you were in. In elementary school, no one cared about money because we were too young to really know better.

  Junior high and high school were different. They were much larger campuses, and by that age, money defined your clique. Unless you were exceptionally pretty. Or, in Zackary Henderson’s case, famous on YouTube. He wasn’t rich, but his social media status landed him in the rich crowd. Followers are considered a more valuable currency than cash to a lot of people my age.

  I came from the worst part of town and everyone knew it. The kids in my neighborhood who were just as poor as me slowly began to dwindle. A lot of them followed in the same sad footsteps as their parents, turning to drugs. I never felt part of that crowd because I did whatever I could to be the exact opposite of my mother and the people like her.

  It didn’t matter at school, though. Natalie was my only friend until I joined the volleyball team as a freshman. A few of the girls on the team accepted me, especially after I became the best one on the team, but most of them resented me. They still treated me like I was less than them. And it wasn’t necessarily typical bullying. No name-calling, or being shoved around in the hallways. I think I might have been too intimidating to some of them to be bullied.

  I would have fought back and they knew it.

  It was more that I was avoided. Ignored. I was never included in anything. I’m sure a lot of that had to do with the fact that I was one of the few in my school who had no cell phone, no laptop, no home phone. No means of connecting outside of school hours, and that can be socially detrimental for anyone these days. Or maybe that’s just my way of excusing being excluded for the better part of six years.

  It’s hard not to grow bitter when you spend so much time alone. It’s especially hard not to grow bitter at class systems and people with money, because the richer they were, the more it seemed I didn’t exist to them.

  Which is why being here on this beach with the type of people I’m sure I would have been invisible to in high school is hard for me. I want to believe Sara would have treated me the same as she does now had I known her in high school. The more I get to know her, the less I see her as someone who would be intentionally shitty to anyone.

  And Samson. How did he treat the underdogs?

  Not everyone who had money was an asshole in my high school, but enough of them were that I think I might have just lumped them all together. Part of me wonders if things would have been different if I would have tried harder. Opened up more. Would I have been accepted?

  Maybe the only reason I wasn’t accepted is because I didn’t want to be. It was easier to stay to myself. I had Natalie when I needed her, but she had a cell phone and other friends that kept her busy, so we weren’t inseparable. I can’t even say we were best friends.

  I just know that I never did things like this. I never hung out in groups with people. When I was old enough to get a job, I worked as much as I possibly could. So bonfires and cookouts and spending time with people my own age is foreign to me. I’m trying to find a way to be at ease in this crowd, but it’s going to take time. I’ve spent a lot of years becoming the person I am. It’s hard to change who you are in a span of a few days.

  There are about eight people around the campfire, but none of them are Samson. He came down and grabbed a burger, but then went back to his house after he ate. The only two I know are Sara and Marcos, but they’re sitting across from me, the fire separating us. I don’t think they know the other people here all that well, either. I heard Marcos ask one of the guys where he’s from.

  This must be a beach thing. Hanging out with random people you barely know. Strangers gathering around a fire, asking one another superficial questions until they’re drunk enough to pretend they’ve known each other their whole lives.

  I think Sara can tell I’m folding in on myself. She walks over and sits down next to me. Pepper Jack Cheese is lying in the sand next to my chair. Sara looks down at the dog and scratches him on the head.

  “Where’d you find this thing?”

  “He followed me home earlier.”

  “Have you named him yet?”

  “Pepper Jack Cheese.”

  She looks at me. “Seriously?”

  I shrug.

  “I kinda like it. We should give him a bath later. We have an outdoor shower on the stilt level.”

  “You think your mom would let me keep him?”

  “Not in the house, but we could make him a spot outside. She probably won’t even notice, honestly. They’re barely here.”

  I’ve noticed that. They both get home late and tend to go to bed soon after. They leave early in the morning. “Why are they gone so much?”

  “They both work in Houston. Traffic is terrible, so they eat dinner together in the city on weeknights so they don’t have to fight it. But they take off Fridays during the summer, so they both have three-day weekends.”

  “Why do they even bother driving here Monday through Thursday? Isn’t their main house in Houston?”

  “My mother would worry about me too much. She’s not as strict as she used to be because I’m almost twenty, but she still wants to
know I’m home in bed every night. And she loves the ocean. I think she sleeps better here.”

  “Does anyone live in your beach house when it isn’t summer?”

  “No, we use it as a rental. We come here for holidays, or a weekend getaway every now and then.” She stops petting Pepper Jack Cheese and looks at me. “Where are you staying when you start classes in August? Are you moving back in with your mother?”

  My stomach turns at that question. They all still think I’m going to some community college back in Kentucky. Not to mention I still haven’t told anyone about my mother.

  “No. I’ll be—”

  Marcos appears and pulls Sara out of her chair before I can finish my sentence. He swoops her up and she squeals and wraps her arms around his neck as he runs her out toward the water. Pepper Jack Cheese stands up and barks because of the commotion.

  “It’s okay,” I say, putting my hand on his head. “Lie down.”

  He resumes his position in the sand. I stare up at Samson’s house, wondering what he’s doing. Does he have a girl with him? That would explain why he isn’t out here socializing.

  I don’t like being out here alone now that Sara and Marcos are in the water. I don’t know any of these other people and they’re really starting to get rowdy. I think I’m the only one not drinking.

  I stand up and go for a walk to get away from the group before any of them decide to play spin the bottle or something else just as horrifying. Pepper Jack Cheese follows me.

  I’m really starting to like this dog. His loyalty is nice, but his name is way too long. I might just call him P.J.

  There’s an abandoned sandcastle a few yards away from the group that’s half destroyed. P.J. runs over to it and starts sniffing around it. I sit down next to the sand castle and start rebuilding one of the walls.

  Life is weird. One day you’re staring at your dead mother and a few days later you’re building a sandcastle on the beach by yourself in the dark with a dog named after a cheese.

  “It’ll be washed away by the tide in an hour.”

  I look up to see Samson standing beside me. I’m extremely relieved to see him here and that makes me feel strange. I’m starting to find an odd comfort in his presence.

  “Then you better help me build a retaining wall.”

  Samson walks around the sandcastle and sits on the other side of it. He looks at the dog. “He likes you.”

  “I fed him. I’m sure if you gave him a burger, he’d follow you around, too.”

  Samson leans forward and begins piling sand up on his side of the castle. The sight of it makes me grin. A hot shirtless guy playing in the sand.

  I steal glances at him every now and then, impressed by his focus.

  “His name is Pepper Jack Cheese,” I say, breaking a stretch of silence.

  Samson smiles. “You met Marjorie?”

  “How’d you know it was her idea?”

  “She has two cats. Their names are Cheddar Cheese and Mozzarella.”

  I laugh. “She’s interesting.”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  The tide pushes closer and some of the water spills into the area where we’re working. Samson stops patting the walls with his hands. “You been in the water yet?”

  “No. I’m kind of leery of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Jellyfish. Sharks. All the things I can’t see beneath the surface.”

  Samson laughs. “We hung out on top of a three-story house today. You’re safer in the ocean than you were on that roof.” He stands up and wipes sand from his shorts. “Come on.”

  He’s walking into the water, not waiting on me. I look for Marcos and Sara, but they’re a good ways down.

  The ocean is massive, so I don’t know why going into it with Samson seems intimate. I stand up and pull off my shorts, then toss them near Pepper Jack Cheese.

  “Keep an eye on those,” I say.

  I walk into the water. It’s warmer than I thought it would be. Samson is several feet ahead of me. I keep walking, surprised at how far out I have to go before the water even reaches my knees. Samson dives forward into a wave, disappearing under the water.

  When the water is finally up to my chest, Samson reappears. He’s two feet in front of me when he pops up out of the water. He brushes his hair back and looks down at me.

  “See? Nothing scary.”

  He lowers himself until the water is up to his neck. Our knees accidentally touch, but he acts like he doesn’t notice. He makes no move to back away, but I move the slightest bit to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know him all that well, and I’m not sure I want to give him that idea. He did just have a different girl on his lap the other night. I have no plans to be another lap trophy.

  “Did Marjorie give you pecans today?” he asks. I nod and it makes him laugh. “I have so many fucking pecans,” he says. “I just leave them on other people’s porches now.”

  “Is that what she does all day? Crack pecans?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Where does she get them? She doesn’t even have any trees.”

  “I have no idea,” he says. “I don’t know her all that well. I only met her a few months ago. I was walking by her house and she stopped me and asked if I was going to the store anytime soon. I asked what she needed and she told me she needed batteries. I asked her what size and she said, ‘Surprise me.’”

  I smile, but it’s not really because of what he said. It’s because I like the way he talks. There’s something about the way his bottom lip moves when he speaks that steals my focus.

  Samson’s gaze returns to my face, but he’s not looking at my eyes. I notice him glance at my mouth and then look away again. He swims out a little farther.

  The water is already up to my neck. I’m having to use my arms to keep myself in an area where I can touch.

  “Sara said you’ve been sick the last few days,” he says.

  “I haven’t been feeling well, but it’s more of an emotional illness than a physical one.”

  “You homesick?”

  I shake my head. “No. Definitely not homesick.” He’s in an uncharacteristically talkative mood, it seems. I take advantage of that. “Where do you go every day? What do you do besides help out old ladies for free?”

  “I just try to be invisible,” he says.

  “What does that mean?”

  Samson looks away from me, over to the full moon balancing right above the edge of the water. “It’s a long explanation. I don’t really feel like long explanations right now.”

  Not surprising. He seems to want to stay in the shallow end when it comes to conversations.

  “I can’t figure you out,” I say.

  His expression doesn’t change at all, but his voice has a tinge of amusement to it when he says, “I didn’t think you wanted to.”

  “That’s because I thought I had you figured out. But I already told you I was wrong. You’re layered.”

  “Layered?” he repeats. “Like an onion or a cake?”

  “Definitely an onion. Your layers are the kind a person has to peel back.”

  “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  I shrug. “I have nothing else to do. Maybe I’ll spend my summer peeling back all your layers until you finally answer a question.”

  “I answered one. I told you about my necklace.”

  I nod. “That’s true, you did give me that.”

  “Do you think you’re easy to read?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You aren’t.”

  “Are you trying?”

  He holds my stare for a moment. “If you are.”

  That response makes my knees feel like anchors. “I have a feeling we won’t get far with each other,” I say. “I like keeping my secrets. I get the feeling you do too.”

  He nods. “You won’t get past my first layer, I can promise you that.”

  Something tells me I will. “Why are you so private? Is your f
amily famous or something?”

  “Or something,” he says.

  He keeps moving closer to me. It makes me think this attraction might be mutual. That’s hard for me to wrap my mind around. That a guy as good-looking and rich as him would find me interesting in any way.

  It reminds me of how I felt the first time Dakota kissed me. Which is why I back away from Samson. I don’t want him to say or do anything that might make me feel the way Dakota made me feel right after our first kiss.

  I never want to feel that again, but I can’t help but wonder if things would be different with Samson. What would he say after we kiss? Would he be as heartless as Dakota was?

  We’ve somehow turned now and my back is toward the beach. It’s like we’re moving, but so slowly it isn’t noticeable. There are drops of water on Samson’s bottom lip and I can’t stop staring at them.

  Our knees brush again. This time I don’t move away, but the connection only lasts for a second. I feel somewhat deflated when it passes.

  I wonder what he feels. Probably not as confused about what he wants as I am.

  “What’s your reason for being secretive?” he asks.

  I think about that for a moment. “I guess I’ve never had anyone I wanted to tell anything to.”

  There’s an understanding in his eyes. He says, “Same,” but it’s almost a whisper. He sinks under the water and disappears. I hear him come up for air behind me a few seconds later. I spin around and he’s even closer to me now. Our legs are definitely touching, but neither of us pulls away.

  I’m not sure I’ve ever felt this—like my blood is zipping through my veins. My interactions with guys have always left me wanting more space between the guy and me. I’m not used to wishing there was no space between me and another person.

  “Ask me some questions,” he says. “I probably won’t answer most of them, but I want to know what you want to know about me.”

  “Probably more than you’ll give me.”

  “Try me.”

  “Are you an only child?”

  He nods.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Where did you grow up?”