by Kaira Rouda
WILL
Is this really happening? Will thought, hurrying to zip up his jeans and pull on his shirt. This can’t be happening. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Step out of the car now,” the officer said for the second time. The cruiser had blocked any sort of escape from the parking lot, not that he had it in him to make a daring getaway in his beloved Subaru. In his imagination, he could have though. The officer was a punk, a short kid with a militarystyle haircut, dark reflective sunglasses, and a bulky build like he went to the gym to pump iron every day after his shift. When he gets older, he’ll realize the virtue of cardio, Will thought. The officer’s name was Abelli, according to his name badge. Will needed to focus.
“Oh my God. You’ve got to get us out of this,” Lauren said while poking him in the forearm with her long fingernail. Her eyes were wild and her hair was messed up from sex, car sex of all things. They were acting like teenagers, and now they’d been busted like teenagers.
Will opened the car door, grabbing his registration from the glove box. He needed to talk himself out of this, get Officer Abelli on his side. He knew how many people read the crime report in the local Crystal Beach Independent. He could see it now: Will Parker, sexual deviant. He’d knock poor Snyder to number two in the most intriguing criminal in town to gossip about list. Oh, shit.
“Turn around, put your hands together behind your back.”
“There’s really no need for that, Officer,” Will said as the cop clicked the cuffs on him.
“Turn around. Do you know it’s illegal to have sex in a car parked on public property? Indecent exposure. Do you know how many kids go hiking in this park every day? The trail is right over there. It’s broad daylight. And you want to expose them to this sort of thing?” Officer Abelli said. Will could sense the disgust in his eyes through his Ray-Bans. He leaned into the Subaru and said, “Out of the car, Ma’am.”
Oh no, he’s making Lauren get out of the car, Will thought, but everything was in slow motion. He had no reaction time. He hadn’t eaten lunch. They’d decided to devour each other first. Now, he realized, that was stupid. He was an idiot.
He watched as Lauren climbed out of the car, barefoot with mascara-blackened tears running down her face. Her sexy orange dress was tight, meant to show off all of her curves, but she had pulled it back on a little crooked, the V-neck top pointing to her left breast instead of falling in the center. Why was he noticing all of this? he wondered.
“Hands behind your back,” Officer Abelli said to Lauren who complied, settling her hands on her gorgeous butt, a sob shaking her body.
Will looked beyond the squad car and noticed a group of hikers had gathered to watch the scene. He prayed none of them knew him. Or Lauren. Let them be day-trippers, tourists. Good news was the windows were beginning to defog, Will noticed.
“Please, Officer Abelli. You cannot arrest us. We are married. We just thought it would be fun, you know, try something new. It’s hard when you’re in the middle of life, married for as long as we have been, you know, to spice it up,” Lauren said. Will felt his head bobbing up and down in agreement. Yes, what she said.
“Your ID, Ma’am?”
“I don’t have it on me. But I’m his wife, Carol Parker,” Lauren said.
Will felt as if his head were going to explode. He heard himself make some sound with his mouth and both the cop and Lauren looked at him.
“My ID is in my back pocket, here,” Will said, using his cuffed right hand to extract his money clip.
“You two stay here. I’ll be back after I run this,” Officer Abelli said, shaking his head with disgust as he walked to his car.
“What were you thinking? Carol isn’t involved in this. Oh my God, I’m dead. Just shoot me now,” Will said.
“You’re such an idiot,” Lauren said. “This is all your fault for not wanting to get a hotel room. Like we’re teenagers or something. ‘Oh, it will be sexy. Come on, baby.’”
She was mocking him. He had said that, though. And it was sexy as hell, well, until now. But actually seeing her in cuffs was a turn on. Shit.
They froze as Officer Abelli rejoined them. “You do realize I could arrest you both for this? And I’d like to.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Oh my God, no.”
“But I’m going to give you a warning. I don’t ever want to see either of you in this park, not even if you’ve decided this is the only place you like to hike in all of Crystal Beach. This trailhead is off limits to the likes of both of you. Do I make myself clear? You work at a school and carry on like this?” he asked, glaring at Lauren.
How did he know Carol was principal of the middle school? Will wondered. And would he tell anyone?
“Thank you,” Lauren said, her sigh of relief carrying her words as Officer Abelli unlocked her cuffs before doing the same for Will.
“Yes, thank you,” Will said, relieved he wouldn’t die tonight at the hands of his wife. He’d already envisioned the scene, Carol arriving to bail him out of jail. “Indecent exposure?” she’d scream. He would have deserved it. He was being indecent, and not just here in the parked car. He knew it. And he wasn’t in the clear. If the officer decided to tell anyone else he knew about the sexy principal at Crystal Beach Middle School, his life would be over. He was on deathwatch, his life would come crumbling down soon, like a sand castle built too close to the lapping, curling, relentless waves.
As the squad car backed away, Lauren hobbled across the dirt parking lot and climbed into the passenger seat. Will pushed his hand through his hair and opened the driver’s side door.
“Really? Really, Will? You didn’t have anything to say?” Lauren said, her anger barely contained by sarcasm. She’d pulled the visor down and was wiping her face with a damp cloth she’d retrieved from somewhere inside her oversized purse. He knew she’d reapply makeup next, something familiar, a routine she always went through after they’d made love.
“You said you were Carol,” he said, aghast that his voice was so weak, so deflated.
“What else was I supposed to say? I’m Lauren Potts and we’re both married to other people, but we screw around as often as possible except he’s too cheap to get a hotel room so we’re here, like perverts. Is that what you wanted me to say, Will?”
“This is so wrong,” Will said, a stabbing pain shooting through his temple, crossing his brain. He was going to combust.
Lauren stopped applying lipstick and stared at him. “What is so wrong?” she asked.
He wasn’t sure of the answer, not exactly. Was it the two of them? Was it his marriage? Was it just him? He was fairly certain this was a midlife crisis, but he didn’t know what to do. What should he do?
“Will?”
Will realized Lauren had calmed down. In fact, she was all put together. Her dress V pointed straight down between her breasts. Meanwhile, Will’s shirt was still untucked and, he presumed, he had lipstick stains on his neck and elsewhere to clean off.
“Moist towelette?” she asked. Typically they’d laugh because she’d marked his body in her signature orange/red lipstick. Today, he just wanted her to get out of his car. “Come on. It’s over. Let’s go get lunch.”
He was hungry. He would go to lunch with her, and then it really would be over. He needed to end this. Focus on Marni’s last year in his house. She’d get a scholarship to a college somewhere, he knew. He couldn’t embarrass her with this type of behavior. But, he realized with a start, Marni’s departure would leave only two people at home for Carol to micromanage. Will swallowed and tried to remain calm.
As he backed out of the parking space, he looked to his left and spotted the group of hikers who’d been watching their near-arrests. One of the hikers, a man wearing khaki shorts and a white T-shirt, gave Will a thumbs-up as they drove past. Will felt a stab in his stomach that wasn’t necessarily hunger. It was pride. He still had it and that other guy recognized it.
“Well, guess we won’t be hiking there anymore,” Laure
n said, turning the radio to their favorite country music station. It was another thing they had in common. Country music. Carol hated it, and Lauren said her husband did, too. Was that the truth? he wondered.
“We never did hike there anyway,” Will said, to himself more than to her. He and Carol did like to hike in this canyon, though, and now he’d need to find a way to convince her this trail was off limits. “How’s David?”
“Why do you ask me that every time we’re together?” Lauren asked, her tone of voice turning angry again. “He’s fine. He’s fine for an almost seventy-year-old. An alcoholic seventy-year-old who is interested in the History Channel and a daily nine holes of golf followed by a lengthy amount of time in the stag room with all of the rest of the semi-functioning alcoholics.”
Will pondered a response as he pulled into their favorite lunch spot. It was two towns over, in San Clemente, a diner where they usually were the only customers. “It’s just that he seems like a nice guy, he’s loaded, and I’m not. You loved him once,” Will said, pulling the car into a spot. “I can’t figure out what makes a relationship fall apart. I mean, we both picked who we married for a reason. Right?”
Lauren gave him a sharp look and pushed the car door open, slamming it behind her. Clearly, she didn’t want to be philosophical at the moment. He watched her walk up the steps of the diner and wondered if he could just drive away. He supposed he could. She would just call a cab or more likely, an UberBLACK. She’d be fine. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, squeezing as hard as he could. The stab in his temple was back, piercing his brain. He dropped his head, turned off the motor, and pushed open the car door.
He needed to eat. Then he’d deal with this.
DANE
Kiley Potts drove killer cars—she had her pick from her dad’s five dealerships—and this one, a Mercedes sports car, was no exception. Dane hung on to the car door as she punched the gas pedal to the floor when the light turned green on Coast Highway.
“Geez,” Dane said as the g-force pushed him against the seat and she threw her head back laughing. Even though Kiley affected a Goth look—hair dyed black, purple lipstick, various piercings, and even a tattoo on the inside of her wrist—Dane thought she was pretty normal. He noticed she bit her fingernails, too, a look made even more disgusting by the black fingernail polish she’d attempted to apply. She was an anomaly in their class. The girls weren’t threatened by her and the boys all genuinely liked her. Dane suspected if she rinsed the dye from her hair and took out some of the piercings, she’d be cute—hot even. But with all the black leather and attitude, he couldn’t tell for sure. He wondered what her life was like at home. All he knew was that her dad was really rich and really old.
“I don’t think I’m going to college. I’ll just work in one of my dad’s dealerships, and when he dies I’ll inherit one-fifth of everything, just like my step-siblings, and travel,” Kiley said. She seemed serious. “You can come with me, Stud.”
Since he’d moved to Crystal Beach, she’d called him Stud. Even when he was being bullied, on his worst days, she’d walk past him in black combat boots and spiked hair and whisper, “Hiya, Stud.” There wasn’t anything she could have done about his acclimation, or lack thereof. He’d had to deal with all that himself. He would have been welcomed in her group, but it wasn’t the crowd for him. If anything, her outlier status would have made his situation worse back then. But now it was senior year and if they wanted to go to lunch together, they could. It wouldn’t even cause a gossip ripple.
“I’m thinking about just moving to LA, giving the music thing a go,” Dane said. “I mean, if I don’t get into a music college. I just can’t imagine four more years of prison.”
“I get it,” Kiley said.
“It’s so weird, last weekend I visited Seth at college and it’s just like high school, only more kids,” Dane said. “I love my brother and everything. He’s popular, having a blast, even likes his classes, but it’s just not my scene.”
“You’ve gotta be you. You’ll get into music school, Stud,” she said. They reached the school entrance and Kiley flew into the parking lot, kids scattering to avoid being run over. “I love the power of a car, don’t you? It’s why us teenagers die in car crashes. It’s the only place we feel free and in control. So we push it.”
Dane thought she might have a point, but decided next time they went to lunch he was driving. “Ah, thanks for lunch,” he said, relieved they’d come to a stop.
“Anytime, Stud,” she said, pulling out a cigarette and offering him one.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’ll see you back inside prison.”
She smiled and lit up as Dane turned to walk back into the school. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the new kid, Doug Winston, leaning on the car next to Kiley. She’d better not call him Stud, too, he thought, feeling protective of his nickname.
He crossed the street and walked into the quad. It was the end of September, but here, it was just another sunny day, 72 degrees. Just another perfect day in paradise, Dane thought, yanking hard on his backward lock and smiling as it popped open. As a senior, he was past all of the overt bullying of the first two years in this idyllic town. “Everybody wants to live here,” his mom would tell him as he forced himself to endure another day of hell freshman and sophomore year. The only thing that made his time at school bearable had been Seth.
His older brother had made best friends the minute he’d walked on campus. It was uncanny and unfair. They’d both come home for lunch on their first day—Dane snuck out because he didn’t have open lunch as a freshman and he didn’t care—and Seth was already talking about how great Crystal Beach High School was, how friendly the kids were. When Dane opened his mouth to disagree, it was the first word he’d spoken all day. He was invisible to everyone here, an Ohio ghost.
“How’s it going for you, bro?” Seth had asked as he drove them home for lunch on their first day of school at Crystal Beach. Even from the side, and with sunglasses on, Dane had registered the worry in his eyes. The two of them had always been tight.
“Great,” Dane had said, picking at his left thumbnail.
“It’ll get better,” Seth had promised.
And of course it did for Seth, but for Dane, it was just like prison—every day filled with monotony, passive aggressive teachers, loneliness, and then, once the bullying started, abuse. The cliques were well-formed, from preschool. That was the case back in Ohio, too, but he’d been in them, not the outsider. Their first weekend in town, Seth had gone to a party every night. Dane had stayed home with his parents, watching as his mom poured wine while convincing herself she was helping him with her alcohol-induced insights and his dad tried to assure him with too many “champs” and pats on the back. Their over-helpfulness reeked of pure pity. He was the loser and Seth was the winner. You get one of each, folks, he remembered thinking, enjoy it before he leaves for college and all that’s left is me.
“Two years of just me and them. I beg you, take me with you,” Dane had said to Seth as he was packing for college a year and a half later. By then, Dane had made friends thanks to Collin, a Crystal Beach native who’d thankfully decided Dane was funny and that he’d taken enough abuse. With Seth’s rising popularity and Collin’s support, Dane had achieved a tentative level of social status, one he was certain could be yanked from him by any small infraction. He had to be on his toes, he knew, and it was stressing him out. The shrink his parents made him see once a month told him it was social anxiety. So what was he supposed to do about that? His entire social life revolved around high school and it sucked. Was he anxious? Well, yes, that would be one way to put it.
His hold on social status was as certain as the marine layer. The fog surrounding him lifted at the start of junior year, and kids started to see him for himself, and most found him acceptable. The thought of the fog bank returning, though, kept him on edge and his fingernails bitten to the quick.
And now, it was senior year. The pre
ssure was intense, lingering in the air around them even thicker than the fog of social hierarchy. He knew he wasn’t alone. They were all expected to finish strong, to use this first semester of senior year to get into a college worthy of graduates of Crystal Beach High School and the offspring of the titans of Crystal Beach. Truth be told, his dad didn’t make him feel that way. No, that was all his mom’s doing, he thought, grabbing his econ book and slamming his locker closed. It was going to be one heck of a year.
“Hey,” Collin said, bumping into him as he stood up. “Want to hang out after school?” Dane took in Collin’s wet hair—he’d been surfing until lunch—his deep dimple and his always-smiling eyes. His friend was confident, bordering on cocky. At the end of last year, the last day of school, Collin and Dane had come back from lunch at the beach barefoot and the principal had boomed across the loudspeaker an all-points bulletin to find them and give them a detention to be served at the start of the next school year. The school counselor, Dane’s biggest supporter through his first year of bullying and beyond, had rushed up to them, grabbing them both and said, “Leave. Happy summer. Don’t end it with a detention. See you next year.”
They’d run out of the school with her permission, the warm feeling of a summer away from this place like a rocket propelling him. But now it was September, and he was back. Dane realized how much he’d missed his first real friend in this town.
“Sure, what’s up?” Dane said, as they walked together to their only shared class.
“Doug, the new kid, wants to shoot baskets, just hang. I thought we could do it at your place,” Collin said. “My mom’s in her manic state, so I’m not going there.” Dane knew Collin’s mom was some sort of screenwriter who would swing from being the best single mom in the world to a mom who thought she lived alone. All the guys thought she was hot, something Collin found disturbing and Dane didn’t blame him. Collin’s dad—a famous actor others had told him, though Dane hadn’t asked—died years ago of a drug overdose. Dane knew Collin felt responsible for his mom, like a parent. “Sometimes she forgets to eat and shit when she’s on deadline,” he’d said.
