“No one around here really knew what happened to him,” A.J. says. “And it keeps stupid kids off of my carnival grounds. Sometimes Vin sends funnel cakes over there to him. They were his favorite.”
A.J. leans forward against the railing and squeezes his eyes shut. I want to cry too, just like the last time I was here and couldn’t fight the salty tears as Reed told me about Shark’s death. I wrap my arms around A.J., and for once, someone here doesn’t push me away. He buries his face into my shoulder, and I can’t really make out everything he’s saying through the tears. Something about hating how Alston is now, how he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, and he doesn’t want me to go back to North Carolina.
At sunset, we’re still here, sitting in the spinning teacups. A.J. has told me all about the legend behind them, about the two feuding kingdoms who were merged together after the princess fell in love with an assassin, went insane, and then murdered anyone who didn’t follow her. The maroon and gold cups belonged to her kingdom, the blue and black to her cousin’s.
A.J. prefers the blue and black, unlike me. I’m all for the princess who went after what she wanted. She chased her forever down before the two kingdoms’ teacups were stolen in a pirate raid, cursed by a gypsy named Cornelia, and washed ashore to become part of a traveling carnival. At least that’s what the legend says.
A.J. climbs into the maroon cup with me. He has his serious face on again.
“You really need to listen to Vin,” he says. “He’s looking out for you, for real, even if you think he’s just being a jackass.”
I wondered how long it’d take before someone brought up the morning of the storm, the whole “get out while you can” remark that was so clearly aimed at me. I guess this is that moment.
“What’s his deal?” I ask, hoping A.J. will spill something to change my mind about Vin. I feel like there’s so much more that I don’t know, so much about Shark and Colby and how Vin is twisted into the middle of it.
“He cares,” A.J. says.
I try not to laugh at him the way the tourists laughed at me and Linzi the first time we hit The Strip.
“Cares? He has a damn good way of showing it,” I say.
I push off of the golden rim at the top of the cup and start walking toward my car. I can’t deal with A.J. feeding me this craziness. Vin doesn’t care. He never has, and I don’t foresee him having any major change of heart before I leave California.
A.J. runs behind me. “Haley!” He grabs on to me and won’t let go until I face him and listen. He looks so incredibly desperate, and damn it, I care about A.J. too much not to listen.
He exhales like it’s his last breath, exhausted and emotionally drained.
“Look, you’re one of my favorite people in this world,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s only been this short time. You’re for real, and you have been the best friend I could’ve ever asked for. Hell, I don’t want you to leave. But the truth is, Vin knows what he’s talking about. He knows things that you don’t, and he knows you’re going to get fucked over just like the rest of us. He doesn’t want to see that happen to you.”
“Why do you listen to him?” I ask.
I get it – Vin took A.J. in when the world kicked him out. But still. He puts way too much faith in a con artist with a million secrets.
A.J. shrugs. “Vin’s one of my favorite people in this world too.”
I feel like I’m standing under a slew of blue and black flags, waiting to surrender to the maroon and gold, just like the princess’s cousin’s kingdom did so many centuries ago.
“Forget it,” A.J. says. “Just be careful. I don’t want to see you get trapped like we did. C’mon, we have to get ready for tonight.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulder and leads me toward my car. I question what’s happening tonight.
“Pre-competition party?” A.J. says, seemingly surprised that I’d forgotten.
“On a Tuesday night?”
“Um, yeah,” he says. “You’re in California, babe. It doesn’t matter what day it is.”
Of course. The party to celebrate Colby Taylor, Drenaline Surf, Shark’s legacy, and the upcoming sponsorship. God, I don’t even know what to wear, and Linzi will look cuter than me anyway because she’s totally doing up this whole beach babe thing to perfection. But I’m not leaving that guest house until I’ve brushed every bit of tiger’s blood out of my mouth.
CHAPTER 16
I check my teeth one last time in the visor mirror, and Reed laughs from the driver’s seat. A group of girls in short shorts and bikini tops pass by, and I realize I’m totally overdressed. I leave my T-shirt in the Jeep and hold back any smart remarks for Reed’s laughing at me since he had the decency to wait for me to brush my teeth four times. Linzi bailed on me long before.
She’s lingering around a lit up palm tree with Alston once we push through the crowd and onto the deck behind the beach house. I scan the crowd for A.J. I’m certain he’s here somewhere, but I don’t see him.
“Hey!” Linzi squeals out. She rushes over and hugs me like we’re long lost friends, and I’m starting to feel like we are. She wasn’t pulling me out of the ocean when A.J. flipped our jet ski. She wasn’t fighting through the stinging sand with me after it stormed and we all thought Colby was dead. And she definitely didn’t do me any good when it came time to sell raffle tickets for Reed. The only thing she’s done worth a damn is keep Alston from getting in my way.
Her eyes sparkle under her silver eye shadow, but her face is serious. “We need to talk,” she whispers.
She tells Alston over her shoulder that we’ll be back and pulls me through the mass of partiers with a grip on my wrist. I can’t imagine what’s wrong. Maybe our parents found out we’re here or Colby found out or Alston ratted us out to the surf star and hell is going to explode tonight or God I can’t even think.
We walk out about twenty feet from the house, and she sits in the sand while steadily twirling that purple flower ring in and out of her blonde hair. I pull my knees up close to me when I sit, and I wait for the worst.
“Why are we still here?” she asks, her eyes on the dark ocean. It swishes like black paint, trying to decide what abstract design it wants to splatter onto the canvas. Swishing back and forth, back and forth.
I don’t have a real answer for her. We have time to kill. And I don’t want to leave. Not this weekend, not this summer, not ever.
“Better yet, why haven’t you mentioned Colby Taylor in like…the last three days?” She turns to face me now. “I know I’ve been hanging out with Alston and all, but wasn’t finding Colby sort of like our purpose for being here? Wasn’t this trip all about finding him?”
It was. When we followed a gum-stained receipt and a left over coffee cup, it was. When we stalked a band into a dark alleyway with a broken streetlight, it was. And when we crossed the California line and saw him on the billboard and listened to Enchanted Emily talk about his bodyguards, it was. But now…
“I thought it was,” I say. “But now I think it’s really more about finding myself.”
“How poetic,” Linzi says. She stares at me with this look of confusion and what-the-fuck-are-you-serious. “So we’re just chilling and you’re not concerned with finding him after we lied our way across America? Hell, you even made it through A.J. You’re the first. Isn’t that some sort of cosmic sign that you’re supposed to find Colby?”
I trace circles in the sand with my finger. I haven’t made it through Vin. Isn’t that some sort of cosmic sign?
“Maybe. Or maybe I was supposed to get through A.J. because he needed a friend. Or maybe… I don’t know,” I admit.
Music thumps from behind us, and someone attempts to tune a guitar. The speakers screech across the night, and Linzi cringes at the same moment I do.
“Let’s head back in there before it gets too crowded to find the guys,” I suggest. “Alston’s probably already having withdrawals from your absence.”
She la
ughs and jumps up, fairy hopping back toward the house and assuring me that whatever mission I’m on, whether it involves Colby or not, she’s totally on my side. Reed is busy doing his public relations for Strickland’s Boating, so I don’t interrupt. Instead, I follow Linzi back to Alston, who is talking about surfing and parasailing with a group of guys he says he knows from school. He introduces Linzi, slips his arm around her, and she’s back in paradise while I hang back outside of their little clique. These two minutes stretch onward, allowing me to listen to all of the random conversations passing me by – “Did you see what she’s wearing?” “Oh, I know he didn’t just kiss her.” “This beer tastes like horse piss.”
Salvation! I spin around the instant I hear his voice, and in the process of grabbing A.J.’s arm to get his attention, his horse piss beer spills across the wooden floor of the deck.
“Thank God!” he says as he drops the beer can into a nearby trash bag. “I’ve been walking this deck all night, looking at all these skanks and idiots. About damn time you got here. C’mon.”
He pulls me right back toward the steps that Linzi and I just left behind, but we don’t head back into the sand. Instead, we round the house and walk out to the group of people sitting around a blazing bonfire.
“This is where the real deal people are,” A.J. says. He steps over a log and motions for me to sit on it next to him. I glance around and see a few familiar faces – Hooligans. A.J. grabs a beer bottle and chugs a fourth of it.
Kale walks around from the fire and sits on the other side of me. A blue Hawaiian lei hangs around his neck. “You’re kidding, right? Gonzalez? You know he ain’t nothing but trouble,” he says. He looks over at A.J. with this goofy smile.
“A.J.’s my best friend,” I inform him. “And he hasn’t been in any trouble since I’ve been here.”
Kale wraps his arm around me and leans in to keep anyone else from hearing him. “At the rate he’s going tonight, he’ll be drunk and in trouble before the hour’s up.”
I shrug away his assumption, along with his arm, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s actually quite charming, I’d have ruled him off as a creeper the first day I met him. His face runs pale, and before I can apologize for possibly offending him, I follow his gaze and see the Hooligan jackass himself – Dominic.
And he’s looking at me.
“You really need to keep better company,” he says, like it’s any of his business who I’m friends with. “A.J. was bad enough, but Kale too? Really?”
He’s had a few too many drinks, not that it really matters in his case. I lock my arm with A.J.’s just in case he’s thinking of doing something stupid. Dominic has a good five inches and probably twenty pounds of muscle on A.J. But I think A.J. could take him. Still – it’s not a fight I want to witness. I’ve already seen one Hooligan brawl. I don’t want to see A.J. on the opposing side.
Dominic stumbles a little, and I secretly wish he’d tumble ass first into the fire then run off to the ocean like a drunken firefly. He so doesn’t deserve a sponsorship from anyone, especially Drenaline Surf. Shark would die a second death if he knew his store was at risk of being dragged through Horn Island’s muddy shoreline by this guy.
“I need another beer,” Dominic mutters.
He reaches toward A.J.’s half-empty bottle. A.J. swings it back, slinging beer across the sand and himself, and poses like he’s about to score a winning homerun.
“I will bust this over your head just like last time, motherfucker,” A.J. says as clearly as the Crescent Cove waves wash over the sand.
Tension swallows our breathing air for a moment, then releases a deep breath when Dominic sits with some girls on the other side of the fire. I start to tell A.J. that we should go back inside, but Topher interrupts, telling us to come back on deck. He talks with his hands, and that blue bottle of Ocean Blast Energy sloshes with his every movement. I’ve yet to see another person in the cove drinking that stuff. I’ve rarely seen Topher without it. And he definitely doesn’t need it.
A local punk rock band, Sapphires and Sunsets, is in the middle of introductions when we walk back up the wooden steps. Summer Snow Alex is on bass, and I recognize the lead singer as Jace, the Hooligan who so profoundly stated “Fuck Dominic!” regarding Kale’s honorary status.
A string of bikini tops line the bottom of the stage, and I feel so icky. I turn back to A.J.
“I have to find Reed. I seriously want my T-shirt,” I tell him. He laughs, nods, and motions toward the patio at the back of the deck.
I follow the edge of the crowd until I can cut through to Reed. He’s talking to Vin. Damn my unlucky paper stars. I wait for that cold iceberg stare that slices through me and sends chills over my skin, but it’s more of the what-the-fuck-are-you-serious face that Linzi gave me earlier.
“Hey,” I say to Reed, trying my best to ignore Vin. “Can you let me get my shirt out of your Jeep?” I gesture to my lime green bikini top. “This just isn’t really me.”
Reed fishes into his pocket for his keys, and Vin strips off the black Drenaline Surf jacket he’s wearing.
“Here,” Vin says. “It’s a long walk to the Jeep.”
I say ‘thanks’…or at least I think I do. I’m not sure. The words were somewhere between my voice box and my mouth. For all I know, I might’ve hallucinated saying them, and he thinks I’m an ungrateful idiot now that I’m in his jacket and two steps behind Reed on our trek to the Jeep. Why did I even take my shirt off in the first place? I’m not Linzi.
Reed passes my ocean blue Strickland’s Boating shirt to me, and I trade it out with Vin’s jacket. This time, I practice saying ‘thanks’ in my head over and over and over until I know I won’t screw up when I say it. I’m glad Reed isn’t forcing conversation. But I’m not as glad when he parts ways with me at the deck and leaves me to return Vin’s jacket alone.
He’s still in the same spot on the patio, leaning back against the bar. He stares off at nothing, and I wonder what he’s thinking. Is he thinking about surfers or how much he doesn’t seem to trust Colby or who is going to win this sponsorship and be the next poster boy for his dead best friend’s store? I swear, my heart breaks for him in the same second that he pisses me off with his harsh blue eyes.
Deep breath, Haley. I walk over with his jacket already halfway extended (God, I’m an idiot). “Thanks,” I say. This time I know I said it.
And he smiles – a real, genuine smile that I’ve hardly seen from him.
“Gotta have a little respect for the girl who wants to cover up when every other girl here wants to strip down,” he says. He pushes a strand of my hair back behind my ear, and I wish I knew what to say to him.
The crowd cheers at the end of the song, buying me a few seconds since he wouldn’t be able to hear me over them anyway. He reaches behind him for the half-finished bottle of Pepsi, takes a swig, then recaps the lid.
“You’re not drinking?” I ask. I regret it as soon as I say it.
“Do I look like an alcoholic?” he asks.
Stupidstupidstupid. “No.” I try to find something else to say, but God, the stars are out of alignment tonight. The one time I’ve got this guy in a half-decent mood, and he’s being freaking nice to me, I find every way I possibly can to insult him.
“I don’t drink,” he says. “Never really could acquire a taste for it. And, you know, I like to remember what I did the night before when I wake up in the mornings.”
I nod, all bobble-head like, and say, “Plus someone’s gotta bail A.J. out of jail, right?”
He laughs. “You are exactly right.”
He focuses his eyes on Jace and follows his movements across the stage. We wait with silence between us until he finally says, “A.J. and Linzi both came back here looking for you while you were getting your shirt. You should probably go find them.”
Great. He’s running me off. I fight the overly dramatic girly sigh that’s building up in my chest. “Are you just going to stay back here alone?” I
ask.
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m going to go talk to someone. Go have fun.”
He smiles one more time and slips back into his jacket, even though there isn’t much of a breeze tonight.
I take a few steps into the crowd, but I stop and look back. I watch him make his way into a shadow of the deck with some old guy in a faded Drenaline Surf T-shirt. They hug like old friends, and he motions for Vin to sit down with him. I release the energy in my chest with a huge sigh of relief that he wasn’t actually ditching me to go talk to some fully dressed girl.
And it bothers me that I actually care.
An hour later, I’m certain of a few things. One, white guys are the worst dancers. Alston and A.J. have proven that. Two, Jace isn’t a half bad singer. And three, Kale was wrong – A.J. is still out of trouble and that hour was up long ago.
“Look at you, going all Virgin Mary,” a voice says from behind me. “I liked you better with the shirt off.”
Certainty number four – Dominic is the world’s ultimate asshole.
He grabs the bottom of my T-shirt, and it slowly finds its way up my back while I fight to pull away. A.J.’s arms tighten around me before the shirt comes off, and he slings me back behind him.
“I will fucking kill you!” he screams. “Back the fuck off, you got it?”
Dominic slams both palms into A.J.’s shoulders, but A.J. barely falters. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do when his fist lands on Dominic’s right eye.
It’s all such a crazy blur – Dominic falling, A.J. cursing, and people running everywhere around us. Security hauls A.J. outside, telling him to leave the party or they’ll call the law, and they return – without A.J. and with an ice pack for the jerkoff who deserves that shiner.
And even in all that chaos, I’m alone. I assume no one realized it was A.J. and Dominic, but I feel like word travels fast here, especially when the sponsorship nominee Dominic is involved. Reed is the first to find me after word spreads around the deck. I give him a super quick rundown of what happened, and he bolts to defend A.J. against the idiot security guards who are most likely friends with that Pittman guy.
Chasing Forever Down (Drenaline Surf Series) Page 14
