by Rose, Emery
“Do you like modeling? Does it make you happy?”
“I quit. Right before I came here.”
“Why did you quit?”
“So I could eat whatever I wanted.” I made it sound like I was joking even though there was some truth in it.
“You gave up modeling so you could eat?” His eyes raked over my body, but I couldn’t even tell if he liked what he saw. I was wearing a tank top and cotton harem pants with a batik print that I bought in Bali. I had pictured him there, surfing on the beaches and sitting in outdoor cafes, chatting with locals and surf bums. I’d visited temples and wondered if he still believed in reincarnation. Or if he still believed in anything at all. Those were the questions I wanted to ask him. I had spent seven years chasing the memory of us, and I hadn’t been able to move on with anyone else. Because he was always there. In my head. In my heart. In my dreams.
“Kind of.” I shrugged one shoulder. “It started to get to me…having all my flaws and imperfections pointed out. Having to keep my weight down.”
He started laughing. Then he laughed harder. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Which part?”
“All of it, Remy. The whole fucked-up story.” He leaned his head against the cushion. “You’re skinny and flawless and you look so damn good. Better than my dreams. Better than all my memories. And you know what?”
“What?”
He cocked his head and closed one eye. “I liked you just the way you were.”
And I liked you just the way you were. The past tense wasn’t lost on me.
“And now? Do you still like me?” Asking that question made me so vulnerable, all my old insecurities rose to the surface.
“I don’t know you anymore, Remy. You’re a supermodel. You live with a rock star…”
“I’m still me.”
“Maybe it’s me then. I’m not me anymore. Or… I’m not…” He waved his hand in the air. “I’m not the guy you fell in love with. Whoever that guy was he’s gone.”
But he was in there somewhere, I knew he was. Every now and then, I caught glimpses of him when we surfed together. It gave me hope. I felt like an excavator, trying to dig up relics from the past and expose them to the light. I hated this. I hated it that we couldn’t talk to each other the way we used to. There was so much built-up resentment and anger and hurt.
“Did you…” I took another gulp of wine, steeling myself for my next question. Really, I should have gone for something stronger. Tequila, maybe. “Did you do okay in prison?”
I winced. What did that even mean? How could anyone ‘do okay’ in prison, especially a guy like Shane who had known the good things in life. A good person who had killed someone by accident. In a horrible twist of fate, a fistfight had gone so terribly wrong. Shane hadn’t grown up on the streets and I always thought that would have made it so much harder for him. He’d never been a thug or a lowlife like some of the scum of the earth I’d met. Like Russell. Or the crackheads and dealers I’d run across in the shitty neighborhoods I’d once lived in.
“I did just fine. Kept my head down. Did my time. Got to catch up on all my reading.”
“So, nobody gave you a hard time?”
He narrowed his eyes. I didn’t know why I’d asked that or why I was asking these questions except that Shane was pretty and I’d heard what goes on in prison. Oh god, if anyone messed with him, that would kill me.
“Stop fucking talking about it, Remy. It’s over. Done. Put it behind me.”
I released a breath. “Sorry.”
“Just wanted to hear your voice…” His eyes closed. “That’s all I wanted and now you had to go and bring up… all that shit.”
I thought I could handle this, handle him, but I couldn’t. Finishing off the rest of the wine in my glass in one big gulp, I stood up and breezed past him. I needed more wine for this conversation.
His hand darted out and wrapped around my wrist. He reeled me back and yanked me into his lap, his reflexes still working just fine despite his drunkenness.
“What are you doing?” I tried to scramble out of his lap, but he held on tighter and wouldn’t let me go.
“Remy. Stay here. Don’t leave me.” It was the tone of his voice that made me stop struggling. Raw. Tortured. “Need you.”
His eyes were hooded and lust-drunk. He slanted his mouth to mine and his tongue parted my lips, sweeping inside my mouth. I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck, deepening the kiss. He tasted like tequila and limes and all my favorite memories. His hand slid under my tank top, over my stomach and ribs, and cupped one of my breasts. He pinched the nipple and I let out a little moan, swallowed up by his kiss. He pinched my nipple again, harder this time and heat pooled between my legs, my body writhing. My heart was hammering against my chest and my breaths came out in little pants.
“I don’t know how to stop myself from wanting you,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I never want you to stop.
His hand tangled in my hair and we kissed like we were starving, our kisses greedy and hungry, never enough, our hands trying to touch everywhere at once. Somewhere in the back of my head, a warning voice was telling me that I should put a stop to this. Shane was drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. But I didn’t stop it.
My fingers fumbled to unbutton his jeans and he unhooked my bra with one hand, freeing my breasts. We broke apart long enough to rip off each other’s clothes and then our lips and hands found each other again. He lifted me up, my legs cinched around his waist, and my mouth fused to his. My back hit the sofa cushions and I stared up at him through my lashes as he knelt over me, nudging my thighs apart and settling between them.
“Miss me?” he asked with a mischievous grin.
Before I could form a response, his finger tunneled inside my walls and I bit back a whimper. The blood rushed from my head like a wave and shot straight to my core. He pulled out his finger, watching my eyes as he sucked the wetness from it.
“I remember the taste of you.”
“I remember everything,” I whispered, watching his eyes darken.
I reached down, aligning him at my entrance and he thrust forward, sinking inside me instantly. Buried to the hilt, his head dropped down to my neck, teeth biting my soft skin and grazing my collarbone.
Pulling back, he grabbed my leg and put it over the back of the couch, so he could go even deeper. Then he moved, hard and deep and fast, making me crazed by the sensations tearing through my body. My nails dug into the small of his back, whimpers and moans ripped from my lips when he rotated his hips on each pump, hitting a sweet spot he remembered so well. Sweat dripped from his face, our bodies slick with it, and I could smell the alcohol seeping from his pores, but I didn’t care. I wanted him. So badly. I needed him. This. Us. I wanted everything he had to give me, even though I knew it wasn’t enough.
I pulled his head down to mine, sinking my teeth into his bottom lip. He growled, the sound sending a jolt straight to my core.
My walls tightened around him and he pressed his finger against my clit. “That’s it, baby. Come all over my cock.” I exploded, his name escaping my parted lips as my body shook. Shane followed shortly after, grunting and pounding into me, the orgasm seeming to go on and on.
Afterward, we lay spent, boneless on the sofa on the Moroccan patio by my brother’s pool, until the beating of my heart slowly returned to normal. Idly, my fingers played with his hair and stroked his back and I tried not to think about the fact that he only came over here because he was drunk.
He lifted his head from my breasts and gave me a lazy, half-drunk smile. “I’ve missed this.”
This. Not you. Not us. This. He’d missed the sex.
Without warning, he pulled out of me, giving me no time to adjust to the loss, an emptiness that shouldn’t feel as devastating as it did. Hot, silent tears leaked from my closed eyelids.
What was wrong with me?
“Baby,” he mumbled, and I wondered who the hell baby
was because it wasn’t me. “Oh shit.”
Shane peered down at me, his expression so serious I panicked for a minute.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, lifting my hands to his face and rubbing my thumbs over his cheekbones. God, I loved his face. I loved his everything.
“I didn’t use anything.”
“It’s okay. I’m on birth control.”
His eyes narrowed, and his voice was an angry growl. “Why? Are you sleeping with the rock star?”
“No. I already told you I wasn’t.” I didn’t need him coming over here drunk and stirring up all these emotions. He was the one who had slept with someone in the past year without giving me a second thought. Shoving him off me, I scrambled out from under him.
34
Remy
I gathered up my clothes from the ground, and pulled on my tank top and underwear, tossing Shane’s clothes in his general direction.
“You know what’s funny?” he said, not sounding amused in the least. “You come back here… uninvited… with your designer clothes and your expensive car, flaunting your money and rock star lifestyle… rubbing it in my face…”
I spun around to face him, anger surging through me and making my whole body shake. “I came back for you and I’m not flaunting my money. I was trying to help you.”
He pulled up his jeans and advanced on me, getting right in my face. “The last time you tried to help me, I ended up in prison for six years.”
I gaped at him, rendered speechless by his words and the harsh tone of his voice. This was happening. We were finally going there. Unable to stop myself, I rose to my own defense. “I tried to stop you. I never wanted you to go after Tristan—”
“You lied to me, didn’t you? You told me he didn’t hassle you at school. What else did you lie about?” His eyes narrowed to slits, and his jaw clenched.
He hates me.
That thought knocked the air out of my lungs.
“You’re drunk. I’m not having this conversation now.” I grabbed my phone from the table, and walked inside the house, turning on the lights as I went. “You should go,” I said, hating how my voice shook. “I’ll call you a Lyft—”
He turned me around and walked me backward. My back hit the wall and he flattened the palms of his hands on either side of my head, caging me in.
“I. Loved. You. I told you we would have found a way to work things out. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for you. Nothing I wouldn’t have done to be with you. Instead of telling me the truth, you broke my fucking heart.” Years of pent-up anger bubbled to the surface and erupted like molten lava. Heat and tension rolled off him in waves.
“I broke my own heart too. I thought I was doing the best thing for you.” I wanted so much for him to believe that. I raised my eyes to his, and I flinched at the flash of anger in his eyes.
“If you had one ounce of faith in me, you would have let me handle it.”
“I was tired of you always having to rescue me. Always playing the white knight.” My protests sounded so feeble now, but I was telling the truth.
“Excuse me for giving a shit about you.” His nostrils flared, and I could smell the beer and liquor on his breath. He smelled like sweat and sex and his own heady scent. “Was I supposed to apologize for that?’
“No. You were supposed to let me help you for a change. And you were supposed to stay out of it.”
“Explain to me how you fucking Tristan was supposed to help me.” He laughed incredulously. “Did you think that was all you deserved? Why would you let him do that to you? Why, Remy?” His voice was low and steely, and cut me to the core. “Did you fight him? Did you punch and kick? Or did you just lie back and take it?”
I struggled to break free of his hold, fighting off the memory of that night with Tristan. Shane pressed the length of his body against mine and cupped my jaw, tilting my face up to his. Unshed tears swam in my eyes and distorted my view of his face. A face I loved but didn’t recognize.
“You can fight me, but you couldn’t fight him? Why didn’t you fight, Remy? Why didn’t you tell him you didn’t give a shit what he said? It was my responsibility to take care of you. My responsibility to take the fall. In the eyes of the law, you were a minor. Too young to give your consent.”
A whimper escaped my lips. “That’s not how it happened. You know that.”
“How long… how long had he been hassling you?”
“What does it matter?” None of this mattered anymore. We couldn’t do anything to change it.
“For once in your goddamn life, tell the fucking truth, Remy,” he shouted. “It. Matters.”
I took a deep breath and averted my head. “He targeted me in eleventh grade. He said he wanted me… that I was a whore just like my mother. I told him he would never have me. Is that what you want to know, Shane? Why did you have to go after him? I tried to stop you.” Tears streamed down my face and I couldn’t stop them from falling. All our dreams. Our whole future destroyed because of Tristan Fucking Hart who was now dead. How could any of that have happened?
“Why, Shane?” I squeezed my eyes shut, going back to a time and place that had become the stuff of my worst nightmares. “Why did you have to go after him?”
Shane staggered backward, swaying on his feet, reeling as if the reality of everything that had happened was just hitting him now. “Because he hurt you. And I thought you were worth fighting for. Were you, Remy? Tell me. Were you worth fighting for?”
When had Shane learned to be so cruel?
That was the thing about the ocean. It was wild and unpredictable. It could be dangerous, showing no mercy. Shane once told me that it was a mistake to turn your back on the ocean. The thing you love most could destroy you. And Shane… he was still my ocean.
I sagged against the wall, my legs shaking, and watched the emotions play across his face. He looked so sad and so lost right now—bereft—and all I wanted to do was make it better. Rewind the years and go back to a time when he loved life. When he loved me.
“Remy, how did we get here?” he asked, his voice raw with emotion. His head dropped between his shoulders and he rubbed the back of his neck. I couldn’t bear to see him in pain.
Closing the distance between us, I wrapped my arms around him and I held him tight because I didn’t know what else to do. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I kept repeating the words over and over, my tears running down my face and soaking his bare chest. His arms wrapped around me and he buried his face in my hair. We held on to each other as the world spun around us and Pearl Jam’s “Better Man” piped from the speakers. We were so broken. How could I have ever believed we could fix this? What we’d once had together—the good parts—was nothing but a distant memory. But when he’d been mine, it had been the best thing I’d ever known.
Shane’s hands slid down my back and he hooked his hands around the backs of my thighs, lifting me off the ground. My legs cinched around his waist and he started walking. Carrying me across the living room and up the stairs, his gait drunk and unsteady. But still, I trusted him to carry me. I knew he wouldn’t drop me. I knew he wouldn’t stumble and fall. I had always trusted him. With my life. With my heart. With the secrets of my soul.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pulling back to look at his face.
“Where’s your room?” I told him—last door on the left. “Just for tonight. You can make it better, Remy.”
I don’t know how to make this better.
He tossed me on the bed, ripped off my panties and tossed them aside. Then he undressed, and he fucked me. That was how it felt. Just sex, without love. The only difference was that I still loved Shane. I loved him hopelessly and tragically.
35
Shane
“I want to die at sea,” my dad said over dinner.
“Why are you talking about dying?”
“I want you to know my final wishes.”
I pushed my plate away, not hungry anymore.
&
nbsp; “What are your other final wishes?” Remy asked.
True to her word, she still showed up for dinner every night. If I had thought it was hard to be around her before I showed up at her house drunk, it was nothing compared to this tension. I hadn’t even planned on going out that night. I didn’t socialize in Costa del Rey anymore. But Oz had called when I was on my way home from work after a particularly shitty day on the job. All day I’d been thinking about Remy and I’d been thinking about my stint in prison. It had been the one-year anniversary of my release and I was no closer to getting my life back together than I had been a year ago. In fact, everything was so much worse now.
While we’d been at the bar, I’d overheard some people gossiping. I’d never paid any attention to idle gossip but now that it was directed at me, it was hard to ignore.
I was the pro-surfer who had killed Costa del Rey’s golden boy. I was the guy who had ‘lost his mind and bashed Tristan Hart’s head against the rocks at his own home.’ Without provocation, according to the gossip mill.
Fuck my life.
So, one beer had turned into five or six and one tequila shot had turned into too many. Next thing I knew, I was standing outside Remy’s door, wanting her to make everything better. Heal my broken heart. Find the pieces of me I’d lost somewhere along the way. Bring some light into my darkness. It hadn’t gone to plan. Drunk ideas always seemed so good at the time but typically turned into the next morning’s regrets. So, that was where we were. Between a rock and a hard place.
“Don’t hang on to the house for sentimental reasons,” my dad said, sharing his final wishes on a beautiful summer’s evening when death didn’t even feel like a remote possibility. “It’s real estate. Sell it. Buy what you want and live wherever the hell you want. Got that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I got it.”
In theory, these things were so easy to agree to, but I didn’t want to think about any of it. I didn’t know what was harder, losing my mom so suddenly and unexpectedly or knowing that I was going to lose my dad. I should be taking this time to prepare for the day he wouldn’t be here but when I had told Remy that I didn’t know how to do this, I was being honest. I really had no idea how to do this.
