by Lexi Scott
Instead my father deflates. His shoulders slump, and the power that made his backbone stiff and his voice strong leaks away. He picks up his plastic cup and loosens an ugly little laugh. This time his toast isn’t ironic.
“I’ll drink to that,” he says simply.
Jocelyn pushes me gently off the bed. “Get going, baby. When Murdock and your daddy get drinking, it never ends pretty.”
I trip off the bed and turn a shoulder as I pass my father to avoid touching him. I swallow back a sob.
I’m so tired of letting my hope rise up, only to watch it get smashed back down over and over again.
Chapter Eleven
MAREN
I should have friends I can turn to right now, but the constant moving and the embarrassment of bringing anyone to my house has made it hard to keep friends. My own sister doesn’t even call me for months on end.
I’m just wasting gas, driving around with the radio turned up way too loud, praying none of my dad’s old songs will play on the local station. It’s so easy to forget how infuriating he is when I’m being blown away by his brilliance.
I need a distraction. Maybe I’ll call Jacinda, see if she wants to go to a movie. I snort at that thought practically before it runs through my head. I know my co-worker well— She never doesn’t have Friday night plans, and they’re never boring dinner and a movie type adventures. I’m willing to bet her night involves underground night clubs or swingers parties or something equally debauched.
I finally decide I’ll just bum out at the local bookstore in a cozy chair, reading the latest thriller by my favorite writer. If I can duck into Denny’s for the early bird fish and chips platter, I will officially spend this Friday night the way my nanny Josephine spends hers.
I trudge to the store when my phone beeps.
Cohen: If I told you you could save the coolest thirteen-year-old girl in the world from total heartbreak, what would you say?
It’s only been a few hours since I last told Cohen to forget the two of us dating. I hold to that— Dealing with my father today only cemented my resolve. But hard as it is to give up on the possibility of us dating, it’s impossible to imagine not being friends with him.
Maren: Uh-oh. Does she need dating advice? Because I may not be the best person for that LOL.
I close my eyes and groan over that text. What the hell am I doing?
Cohen: Kona is way too smart to get mixed up with guys. This is a surfing emergency.
Maren: A surfing emergency?
Cohen: Deo takes a class out for an overnight trip every season. Kona’s mom had to pick up an emergency shift. Everyone else has plans. We can’t take Kona without a female chaperone.
I think about an overnight trip with Cohen, and my first instinct is to throw my phone into the ocean and lock myself in my room, because there is no way I can resist that temptation.
Then I think about a bunch of surf-crazy teens watching our every move, and I relax. Plus I can’t say no to a fellow surfer. Kona has to go on this trip.
I don’t even really have to think about it in the end.
Maren: I’m in.
Twenty minutes later Cohen pulls up in a van full of screeching teenagers.
“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart and apologize in advance,” he says when he comes out to greet me.
Damn. That smile makes me feel like I’m melting.
“No problem,” I manage to croak out. “Nice van.”
“We rent them to fit all the brats,” he says. “Do you need to go home and pack anything?”
“I’ve got a gym bag in the car, and I never took my laundry basket into my place, so I’m ready.”
Little white lies. I keep a bag and a lock box in my trunk at all times because I’ve been through the hell of sneaking out of a place before a landlord can catch us more times than I can count— I’ve lost too many treasured possessions to risk it anymore. And I leave my laundry basket in the car because our apartment always reeks of cigarette smoke, and I don’t want everything I own smelling like that.
But admitting that is like saying, “I’m two steps away from living on the streets, and my current place is a dump so gross I can’t scrub it into shape no matter how hard I try.” That’s just not a conversation I’d like to have with Cohen.
He takes the bag I’m holding and opens the van door for me, his hand hovering at the small of my back. “You good?” he asks.
“I’m pretty sure I can manage the seat belt all by myself, thanks,” I say, throwing in a little eye roll for good measure.
He looks at the teens distracted with snapping pictures and arguing over the music, and then he leans close to my ear.
“I know how this looks, but I promise you, I planned to ask you on a date and take it like a man if you turned me down. I’m really happy you said yes to this for Kona’s sake, but it wasn’t some master plan. I’d never manipulate you like that.”
“Cohen?” I whisper.
“Yeah?” His dark eyes lock on my face, hungry, sexy.
I shiver a little and chew on the side of my lip. “You buckled my seatbelt for me while you were talking.”
He shakes his head and gives me a sheepish smile, taking a step back with his hands up, surrender style.
“I swear I’m just making sure you’re safe. If you want, you could drive over with Deo. Although… I’ve gotta warn you. He’s got our worst prankster shitheads in the car with him. They also reek of BO and think passing gas on a constant basis is the height of comedy.”
“Tell me again how you’re not manipulating me into hanging out with you?” I ask around a laugh.
“I promise, this is basically community service,” Cohen assures me, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
“Cohen, dude, c’mon! We’re gonna be setting up our tents in the pitch black!” a tall, rangy kid with homemade looking tattoos on his arms says.
“All right, ya little animals,” Cohen says, heading to the back with my bag.
“Yeah, flirt with your woman when we’re out on the waves, man,” a girl with a dark pixie cut and a sparkling nose ring calls out. “By the way, thank you so much. Not only are the waves gonna be sick as hell this weekend, when my dad heard Mom wasn’t gonna make it, he invited his best friend’s asshole son to a barbeque at our place.”
Before I can tell her it was no problem, that I’m actually happy to come along and help, a quiet guy in the back scowls. “That jerkoff whose dad owns the landscaping business?” he sneers. “He giving you shit again, Kona?”
Kona’s skin goes deep pink. “That’s the one, but I got it, Darren. I’m sure he’s still got bruising on his ribs from the last time he tried to get fresh with me.”
Darren cracks his knuckles. “I swear to God I’ll murder that shithead.”
Cohen hops into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. “No murder!” he calls out cheerfully, then turns to me. “Ready?”
I glance over my shoulder, intimidated by the dull roar coming from the back of the van. It’s a happy roar— They’re singing along to some punk song.
“I hope so,” I murmur.
“Maren?”
His words are almost lost in the chaos.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you’re here.”
He turns his eyes to the windshield and drives. And I, the queen of chicken-shits, never get up the courage to tell him there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.
Chapter Twelve
COHEN
The kids in the back are screaming so loud they’d give a saint a migraine, but Maren doesn’t seem to mind. When I picked her up, there was a sadness in her face that put me on edge. I hate seeing that look in her eyes— The look that means someone, somewhere hurt her.
I know she wants distance. I know she wants just friendship from me, and I’m trying like hell to take things slow. But I definitely think any friend worth his salt would punch the shit out of someone who hurt his friend.
Right. Who
am I kidding? I’ve got a crush on her as obvious as Darren’s crush on Kona. And as useless. If Maren says no, I can’t just push her until she says yes. I have a feeling she’s spent her life being bullied, and I’m not about to add to that.
We coast along Route 1, windows down, Maren’s dark hair whipping back like a flag. Her face is tilted back, and she drinks in the sun with a smile.
She’s beautiful.
Take away the soft gold light and the Pacific backdrops, and she’s still the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen. Funny how the day we met, I compared her to other girls and thought she wasn’t as sexy or as stunning— After that one night we spent wrapped around each other, everything bared, it’s like hers is the only face I see in focus anymore. Everyone else is just a blur I’m trying to deal with as fast as I can until I can get back to her.
That night with her… I can’t get it out of my head. I don’t want to. Or, if I do manage it, I want it to be because I’m replacing it with even more incredible nights. Is that possible?
I’m determined to make sure it is.
“It’s nice of you to help Deo out like this,” she says suddenly, breaking me out of my thoughts, which have turned pretty damn inappropriate.
“Yeah,” I say, stretching out my shoulders as we head into our second hour on the road. “Deo put this whole surf school together for Whit’s brother, Wakefield. In honor of his memory.”
“Whit’s brother died?” Maren asks, her eyes soft with sympathy.
“He enlisted straight out of high school,” I explain. “He was in Afghanistan. And his Humvee ran over an IED.” I keep it simple.
It isn’t my story to tell— One day Whit and Maren will be friends, and Whit will tell her everything. It’s weird how sure I feel about that, like it’s a truth I can’t deny.
“That’s—” Maren swallows hard and tucks her dark hair behind her ears with shaking fingers. “That’s so sad. How terrible.”
“He and Whit were tight,” I tell her. “And Deo wanted to do something to give respect to what a cool guy he’d been. He loved being outdoors, surfing, all that. So Deo set this whole surf camp up, and it’s like his pride and joy.”
“It’s incredible that Deo did that for Whit. I just… I can’t even imagine losing my sister,” she says, her voice so low and sad it’s almost like the words don’t match her tone. Like she already lost her sister.
“You just have one sister?” I hope I’m not prying.
“Yeah.” Her smile is all about manners, no real feeling behind it. “Rowan. She moved with my mom after my parents divorced. I definitely miss her. A lot.”
I nod. “That’s gotta be tough. When you’re one of five, you never seem to run into that problem. There’s always at least one sibling hanging around, annoying the crap out of you.” I’m encouraged when she laughs. “I remember when I first moved into my place being a little freaked out by how damn quiet it was.”
“I guess it was probably a nice change,” she says as she runs her fingers over her bare knees. Her shorts are tiny, so I can see every inch of her smooth thighs. My gaze runs down her legs, remembering how good they felt wrapped tight around me.
Focus, Rodriguez. Take it slow.
“Actually, only for the first few weeks.” And then I confess something I’d never admit in front of my asshole siblings. “The truth is, after a while, I started looking forward to going to my parents’ place every Sunday. I thought I’d love quiet, but I guess after so many years of living with constant noise, I can’t get used to it.”
“I think I prefer noise, too,” she says, turning in her seat so she’s looking at me. She’s loosening up, like a cat stretching in the sun. “When I first moved in with my dad, he’d have all these people over, jamming—he’s a musician—and it helped. It really did. The company, the music, it helped us forget how much it sucked to not have Rowan and Mom around.”
“Your dad is a musician?” I ask, and a little of the relaxed feeling fades, replaced by a stiffening of her muscles.
“His band was doing really well in the late eighties and into the nineties. They were kind of precursors to grunge, but also kind of folk. My dad always says they were a little ahead of their time and a little late to the game all at once. I’m sure you never heard of them. ‘Blame Your Lies on Me’ was their big breakout hit.”
I lift my hips off the seat and fish for my phone, then pop open my music library. I connect it to the auxiliary cable and flick my thumb over the song.
“Oh, no, really you shouldn’t—” Maren stutters, panicked.
Before I can stop it, the opening chords blare out, and there are whoops from the back of the van.
“Is this Zero Mile?” Kona asks, clapping her hands. “Classic! My old man has this on vinyl. Did you know Customized Punch sampled this song?”
“I do,” Maren says, her lips pulling up in a tight smile. “My dad bought me a car with his split of the royalties from that song.”
“Wait, your dad is in Zero Mile?” Kona yelps, straining against her seatbelt in excitement.
“Was. They broke up years ago,” Maren corrects as the wails of the guitars rise up and drown out all other sounds in the van. From the back, the kids all chant the lyrics, fists in the air.
Blame me for your lies, drop kick my trust, deaf to my cries, slave to your lust.
“Uh, now that I know that’s your dad’s song, it’s kind of weird to listen to the lyrics,” I say quietly, watching her withdraw, wishing I’d never played the damn song.
Is it her father who’s bullying her? A rage that is not my place to feel burns through me.
“He co-wrote it with his drummer,” she says, closing her eyes in a way I can’t read. Is she trying to get her bearings? Block out the song? “She was going through a really shitty breakup at the time.”
“Well, if you ever talk to her, let her know that song was my anthem when things went south with my ex,” I say.
“It is a great breakup song, right?” she says with a half smile. “I mean, I know it’s my dad singing, so I could never really listen to it when some stupid asshole broke my heart, but I get why so many people love it.”
“Does your dad still make music at all?” I ask. I don’t know much about Maren, I realize. It’s strange how much I feel like I know. Is that just because we’ve spent so much time on the phone, or is it because the second I met her, I felt like I’d known her my entire life?
“Not really. Sometimes for fun he’ll jam out,” she says, then takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. I reach forward and fiddle with the speakers to redirect the music to the back so it’s quieter up front. “My father has some…addiction issues. He never really adjusted after the band broke up, and then when my parents divorced, he just fell apart. Slowly.”
She speaks carefully, like any of these confessions could be a landmine that could blow her entire world apart. I know it’s a big deal she’s sharing with me, so I try to be cautious when I ask the next question.
“Does he get help for it?” I clear my throat. “I don’t know a ton about addiction, but is he talking to a counselor? Maybe going to AA?”
She shakes her head. “I think it’s progressed so slowly he’s not really admitting what’s going on to anyone else.”
“Anyone other than you?”
The words hang in the air between us. Maren looks over at me, and I can see the whites all around her eyes, which makes her look wild. Unhinged. Like she told a secret she shouldn’t have.
“It’s not…he’s just… We’re doing fine with—”
“Cohen, that’s our exit up ahead!” Javi yells from the back. I focus on the road, switching lanes smoothly, then getting off the exit without a hitch.
Maren jumps into action, asking the kids for the name of the beach, figuring out one of the side roads is washed out, and redirecting us like a boss. She pours herself into it, making sure she and I don’t have another chance to acknowledge the elephant in the van.
When we
pull up, Maren is the first one to leap out, helping to haul gear, get the tents set up, drag the boards down to the beach. I’m shadowing her, picking up a huge cooler she’s trying to drag with the full strength of her buck-twenty soaking wet frame.
“I got it,” she pants, reaching for the handle.
I hit the gym four times a week on the regular and spend my work days helping haul furniture. I’m not a small guy, and this cooler is making my arms shake.
“No, you don’t,” I say.
For a second we stand, our feet in the sand, the wind whipping our hair, staring at each other. Her lower lip trembles, but she catches it between her teeth.
“I could have dragged it,” she says, her words stubborn.
“Maybe,” I agree. “But why not let me help?”
There’s so much more to this back and forth than we’re letting on, but before things get any more intense, Kona runs at Maren, arms flapping, and points to the tent that’s about to blow away. They run to ground it, I drop the cooler at Deo’s feet, and he raises his eyebrows at me.
“How was the ride?” he asks, then snorts. “I meant the drive down, not the ride Maren took on the C-train last week—”
“Deo, shut the hell up,” I growl. “I swear I have no clue why I tell you anything.”
“Because you need someone honest and smart and hilarious to tell you that what you two have doesn’t look like some one night stand.”
I watch Maren, her head tilted back, laughing hysterically with Kona as they drive the stakes into the sand, the tent flaps whipping around them. I want to go help, but after the cooler standoff, I figure I’d better hold back.
“The thing is, that’s all that night was to her. She’s made that crystal clear.” I cross my arms over my chest, proud when a few of the guys abandon some excellent looking waves to run back and help the girls get the tent in place. They’re good kids, no matter how tough they act.
