Friend Is a Four Letter Word

by Steph Campbell

  “You don’t happen to have a wetsuit in your bag, do you?” Carter asks. His voice is a low drawl that could easily lull me back to sleep. I pull the duvet up to my neck and snuggle back into the plush bed.

  “Huh?” I ask. I look up at him through a layer of lashes that I’m unwilling to part completely just yet.

  “A wetsuit. I’m going camping down at San Onofre, I thought you might like to come with? Or you could, you know, stay here if you’d like.”

  It finally dawns on me where I am and I pop my eyes open.

  “Carter?”

  “Morning, Shayna.” He slips his phone out of his pocket and gives it a quick glance. “Afternoon, I guess. How’d you sleep?”

  “How? Um…” I glance around the bed looking for my sweater. “Good. I slept really good. How long was I out, though?”

  “Eighteen hours. Give or take. You were beat.”

  “I am so sorry. So, so sorry. I know this has got to be a huge intrusion—”

  “It’s fine, really. I was more than comfortable out on the sofa.”

  “You slept on the sofa? At your own place?” Oh dear God, what a leech I am. I sift through the vague memories of awkward conversation before I must’ve fallen asleep. I can’t remember much from last night. I was so damn tired.

  “Would you stop it. I made omelets, I’ve already eaten, but help yourself. I’ve got to run down the road to grab some more surf wax. And I’m guessing that’s a no on the wet suit?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I don’t have a wet suit.” My brain is still cloudy.

  “Okay, so, I’m just going to run out then,” he says.

  His eyes rake over me in a way that I’m familiar with, but with Carter, the wanton look feels different. I can’t get what he said to me last night out of my head. He understands. Maybe more than he’s willing to admit. That feeling of loss for something that you maybe never even had. He gets it so much that the look of want in his eyes almost makes me sad. Because maybe he’s more broken than he wants to admit. Maybe all these years of being the ‘together’ sibling in his family is all a painful ruse.

  Or maybe I’m just hungry and reading too much into the way his eyes slipped over my skin like a soft satin ribbon, tickling me with delight without even being touched.

  “I’ll be back in a few,” he says, finally breaking eye contact. He turns for the door but stops short.

  “Listen, Shay, I don’t want to pry, but I thought I’d mention it before we get on the road because there’s crap cell service out at the camp site. Do you… do you want to call your parents or anything before we head out? I’ll be gone for a bit, so you’ll have some privacy—I just thought—”

  “No,” I say firmly. “I’m okay.”

  “Alright, I just wanted to bring it up, you know, in case you had anyone you wanted to check in with. Let them know you got here okay?”

  “I said no, Carter.” I reign in the bitch voice and try again. “Thank you for mentioning it though, that’s very sweet.”

  My mind flips back to the other night when I drove home from Nolan’s. I had already made up my mind to get out of town before I walked through the door, but my parents’ reaction only solidified the decision. My mom was furious when I told her that Nolan and I had broken up. On our ‘anniversary’ no less. She immediately asked me what I’d done wrong. And all I could think of was what she and Dad had done wrong. Pushing me to be someone that I’m not out of fear. Pushing me to be with someone they wanted me with. I’m not ready to talk to them right now. Not with all of the secrets floating between us. I’m not sure when or if I ever will be again.

  “Is this where we’re camping?” I ask as Carter pulls the car into a parking place. It doesn’t look like much, but it butts up against white sand. I open the car door and breathe in deeply, my lungs filling with the pristine, salty air.

  “Yep, it’s one of my favorite spots. Anytime I ever doubt my decision to move west, I come out here and remember all the reasons I did,” he says. He slings a couple of bags over his shoulder.

  “What can I get?” I ask, peering back into the car.

  “Depends. Have you ever seen the Pacific before?” Carter asks.

  I shake my head and bite my lip, my body vibrating with nervous energy at the ocean air swirling around me, and Carter looking at me with that gorgeous smile.

  “Then nothing. Slip off your shoes and go check it out. I’ll set up camp,” Carter beams.

  “That doesn’t really sound fair,” I say, all the while pulling off my strappy sandals.

  “You can make it up to me,” Carter says. He gives me a quick wink that makes my heart race before waving me off toward the sand again.

  There’s about ten yards of sand with tiny pads of concrete to separate each camp site with picnic tables and fire pits in between before it all drops off to a rocky cliff. After a quick glance around I find a path that leads down to the water. I carefully navigate the tiny, rickety staircase that leads down to the actual beach, walking sideways and clutching onto the flimsy railing. I have the fleeting thought that maybe coming out here alone wasn’t the best idea after all, that is, until I let my feet sink into the wet sand at the bottom of the staircase. The wind is stronger now that I’m closer to the waves and I can’t help but close my eyes and let it blow through my hair, clearing my thoughts. I completely understand what Carter said about coming out here and forgetting everything else. There is no other feeling like standing next to this massive ocean, alone, just you and the wind and the waves. I hug my arms around myself in the cool breeze and for the first time in a long time, feel like I’m okay. My feet sink deeper into the sand as the water laps around them and I feel the most grounded I have in as long as I can remember. How can a place do that? It feels impossible.

  “You cold?” Carter’s voice is near my ear. I let my eyes flutter open and smile.

  “I’m perfect. This… this is amazing. How did you know that this is exactly what I needed?” I ask.

  Carter shrugs. “Trust me, I need this place a lot myself. I’m glad it’s helping. You want to stay down here for a bit?”

  I nod. “Please. Unless you need my help?”

  Carter pulls his hoodie over his head and hands it to me. “I’m good up there. Take all the time you need.”

  I didn’t think this through. I’ve got one tent.

  What if Shayna isn’t cool with sharing a single tent with me? I can’t really blame her. We’re friends… or maybe she’s my little sister’s friend. If I look at it like that, it makes it even more awkward. I want to look at her in a dozen different ways—and none of those ways running through my mind have anything to do with being Quinn’s friend.

  Shit.

  I put the tent together anyway and decide if she doesn’t want to share, I’ll take a blanket on the sand. Sleeping directly under the stars is what real camping is all about, right?

  I’ve got our camp set up and a fire going by the time Shayna makes her way back up the stairs. She’s walking toward me wearing my hoodie that’s so big on her, it looks like it’ll swallow her up like the ocean. But she’s gorgeous. So damn gorgeous. I remember her as pretty, hot even, but seeing her again—here it’s like seeing her in a new light. She’s relaxed, her features a little less pained. I love that. A smile tugs at the corner of that sweet mouth I’ve been staring at for the last two days.

  I don’t know what’s going on with her or why she showed up the way she did, but I need to find out. Something about her makes me want to help her. To fix things for her—even if I’m probably the last person on earth who should be trying since I can’t even fix myself.

  “You hungry?” I ask, clearing my throat.

  She bats at the rogue strands of hair swirling around her face. “Are you cooking again? I thought that was Quinn’s thing? Guess it runs in the family. Is your mom a good cook?”

  I shake my head and let out a nervous laugh because the thought of my mom being a domestic goddess that passed her culinary skills
down to Quinn and I is laughable. Mom tried her best, I’ve always believed that, but she never could quite get her shit together. Things would fall apart, Mom would leave for odd amounts of time, come back and we’d all sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened. Those things weren’t talked about in our house. I can’t tell if it’s better or worse now that Quinn and I are both out of the house and it’s just Mom, Dad and our younger brother Mason at home. Quinn has always said that Mason was the golden child and they’d keep things together for him, and maybe that’s true, but the brand of crazy and dysfunction that Quinn and I saw growing up couldn’t just evaporate. It’s still there, and if Mom passed anything down to Quinn and I, that’s what it’d be.

  It took Quinn a long time to accept that she couldn’t fix things—that she couldn’t hang around in that misery even if it was to take the brunt of the bullshit off of Mason’s shoulders. But dwelling on how Quinn and I took a major loss in the familial lottery isn’t something I want to do right now.

  I hold up a potato. “You haven’t lived until you’ve had a baked potato and a rib eye cooked over a campfire. I don’t think Quinn will whip up one of those for you, either. She’s a little precious about her cooking.”

  “Sign me up,” she says. Her smile is ridiculous. It’s sass and sweetness all wrapped up into one gorgeous, plump mouth that is practically begging me to kiss it. Again. She’s crazy if she actually believes that I don’t remember that Christmas Eve. The one where she tried to open up to me, but when her eyes gave away that I was getting too close, she threw up a wall and put her tongue down my throat instead. I’m not complaining, not at all. But it wasn’t what she needed then, and now, well, I can’t go there now with anyone.

  “So it was nice down there?” I ask. I rub oil and coarse salt over the rough skins of the potatoes then wrap them in foil and toss them onto the grill I’ve rigged.

  “It was otherworldly. Seriously. How do you ever leave?”

  “Work,” I say. “Being an adult blows sometimes. If I had it my way, I’d be out here every day. Surfing, grilling, covered in sand for the rest of my life.”

  Shayna doesn’t respond, but stares up at the darkening sky and smiles.

  I hope she’s taking it all in, appreciating how rad this place really is. I’ve been coming here for a few years, but I haven’t always taken the time to appreciate it.

  It started out as a place to come with my buddies from school to drink until we passed out. Too many times I woke up Sunday morning when it was time to head back to campus still too drunk to roll out of my sleeping bag—sometimes with a random girl in it that I didn’t remember and then had to then make excuses as to why I wouldn’t call. I didn’t start coming out here alone until after a weekend of excess—a celebration of finals week being over. I woke up in a pool of my own vomit outside of my tent. My surfboard was gone, my friends said I tried to surf while drunk as hell and lost it. They had to come pull me out of the water, said I almost drown. Here. In this place where you have everything you could ever want, I chose to get so damn drunk I couldn’t see any of it. I couldn’t show my face around those guys anymore, I could barely stand to look at myself. It was the first time I really realized that I had a serious fucking problem. After that, this campsite became a place to get away when the cravings became too intense to stand back at home or when I felt lonely as hell, and knew that the one friend—the one girl I couldn’t stop thinking about for months was probably out with another guy.

  But now she’s here.

  I arrange the steaks on the fire and say, “Sometimes I feel like this is the only sane place left on earth.”

  “I can totally see that,” she says.

  “The waves can be better company than any other person I know.”

  Shayna laughs softly. “Present company excluded, right?”

  “That goes without saying,” I say and tip the rim of my Angels ball cap at her. “So, I wanted to talk to you about what I said this morning—”

  Shayna’s eyes fill with immediate panic. “About the wetsuit? I don’t have one, just this bikini.” She gives a light tug on the knot at the nape of her neck. Not enough to untie it, but enough to get my attention. “That’ll be good right?”

  She successfully changes the subject by forcing me to visualize teaching her to surf while she wears that tiny bikini, her skin slick with salty water, my hands all over her…

  I swallow hard. “Yeah, of course, that’s… perfect.”

  “Smells good,” she says, fidgeting with her hands.

  I nod, trying to come up with something to clear the awkward silence.

  “I’m hoping to get my mom to let my brother Mason come out at some point. I’d love to take him out here.”

  Shayna smiles. “I always forget that you and Quinn have another brother. He plays hockey or something, right?”

  “Baseball,” I say. He’s good. Crazy good. My parents have bred him to be. He has had a pitching coach, a batting coach, and specialists from all over the country to mold Mason into a major league player. Even though things at home had calmed down a lot after Mason was a couple of years old, he wasn’t shielded completely from the drama, and really, with all of the pressure put on him, maybe he had it even worse than Quinn and I. I keep waiting for him to snap, revolt, drop out of baseball… or worse. End up in the hospital after an overdose like Quinn… or turn out like me.

  “You have any siblings? I ask, realizing how little I actually know about Shayna, and how much I’d like to change that. I know that she’s more of a dreamer than she likes to admit. I know that she’s smart as hell, but plays it down. I know that she’s brave and flirty in a text message, but more timid in person.

  She clenches her jaw before she shakes her head. “Nope, only child.”

  I thought it was a pretty benign question, but so far, nothing I’ve asked has been the right thing.

  I turn the steaks and then try again with something even simpler. “How do you like your steak cooked?”

  “Medium rare is great.”

  “Cool,” I say. Uncomfortable or not, I promised myself I’d figure out what’s really going on with Shayna so that I could try to help. She’s just going to have to let me in a little.

  I keep my eyes on her, gauging her reaction and say, “If you go up to the rocks over there,” I nod my head in the direction of the mound of rocks. “You can get a decent signal, just in case you want to call home or something.”

  She tips her chin high and narrows her eyes like little razors, slicing deep and making me want to crawl off to lick my wounds.

  “I don’t want to talk to my parents. No matter how often you feel the need to continue to bring it up.” She crosses her arms over her chest and hugs herself tightly. It contradicts the anger in her eyes—in reality, she looks scared.

  I experience my own version of panic when I think: what if she took off and didn’t tell a soul? What if she’s got an entire search party after her while she’s sharing steaks with me at the ocean?

  “I’m not trying to upset you Shayna, I’m really not. But you showed up on my doorstep—”

  “I thought it was Quinn’s place. If you didn’t want me around, I would have left, Carter. You told me—”

  I shake my head. “I’m not saying I don’t want you around. I’m just—I’m trying to understand how a girl winds up across the country with no notice, no place to go—you’ve got to give me something, you’ve got to help me understand a little.”

  She takes a deep breath. “Do you have any beer or anything? Of course you do, right? Who comes camping without beer.”

  Shit. I spent forty minutes in the store this morning before I finally came to that same conclusion: that’d it look suspicious if I didn’t at least grab some alcohol. I was just playing my odds she wouldn’t ask for any.

  “I—I do. It’s in the back of my Jeep, I’ll grab it.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve got it.” She stands up and brushes the sand from her tiny shorts.<
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  “It’s unlocked,” I call over my shoulder as she walks past me. It’s probably better that she get the beer anyway— if my hands never touch it. Because it’s only been sixty-three days since I’ve had a drink, and I still want one every second of every damn day.

  Shayna comes back smiling and plops back down in her spot happily. “How’d you know hard cider is my favorite?”

  “Lucky guess.” But it wasn’t. I did assume she’d probably like it because it’s syrupy sweet and most chicks dig that, right? Mostly though, I grabbed it because I think it tastes like ass and though I’ve slurped down worse when I really wanted a drink, my hatred of cider beer at least set up a tiny barrier between me snatching a bottle and drinking it.

  She twists at the bottle before frowning and handing it to me. “Can you open this?”

  I suck in a breath before I twist the cap off and hand it back to her, but still, when I breathe again I can smell the beer across from me as if it’s a soaked rag of chloroform under my nose. It’s strong and I know I shouldn’t breathe it in, but I can’t help it. The sweetness isn’t as off putting as I’d hoped. Instead of turning up my nose, the smell is invading my nostrils, sliding down my throat where it leaves a fiery burn in its path.

  Shayna takes a few long pulls from the bottle and I watch her lick the last droplets from her bottom lip. Like I needed another excuse to taste those lips.

  “Can I do anything to help?” she asks.

  “Huh?”

  She widens her eyes, knowing I’m not paying attention. “With the food. Is there something I can do?”

  I shake my head to clear it. “Oh, no. It should be just about ready.”

  “Good,” she says. “I’m starving.”

  We eat in near silence which is only slightly less awkward than having Shayna stare daggers into me for daring to ask about her family.

  I’m clearing the last of our trash and Shayna is starting on her second beer when she says, “It’s been months since I’ve had a drink. Maybe even longer.”

  That stops me dead in my tracks.