by Mindy Hayes
Do we really know what love is? Of course I love Brodee because he’s my best friend. But am I in love with him? I’ve never felt this way before. It’s more than infatuation. It’s more than what I felt for Tyler. I want to spend every moment with him. It guts me to think of not spending every day with him. I want what’s best for him, for him to be happy. Is that love? Maybe it is.
“I love you, too.”
His eyes glisten under the moonlight. I know his eyes better than my own. The subtle creases in the corner from squinting against the sun as he waits for a wave. The little brown flecks scattered across the green, matching the freckles dusting his nose. I could live in his eyes. They are my home. I realize that now. Wherever he is, I am home.
Brodee kisses my lips gently once more and rolls back to lie beside me under the stars, which we watch silently until I fall asleep with his arms around me.
I WAKE UP to a dog barking, which is weird because we don’t own a dog. My sleeping fog is drifting away as I feel a breeze rolling over my body, my body pressed up against another body. Brodee’s arm drapes across my stomach as his face nestles further into my neck. I lift my head to see the sun has just begun to rise above the horizon. A jogger with his dog acknowledges me with a head nod, passing by across the sand.
Instantly, my brain wakes up. “Brodee, wake up! We’ve been out all night! Get up now!”
He sits up quickly, then puts his palms into his eyes as if to keep from blacking out. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Morning. Five? Six?” I pull my cell phone from my back pocket. Fifteen missed calls from my mom and Tatum. Crap. “We have to get back to the house. Our parents are freaking out.”
We scramble to our feet. Brodee snatches the blanket, and we book it to the beach house. We don’t even have time to concoct a story before sneaking across the back deck and in through the back door.
“Peyton?” A voice comes from down the hall when the back door clicks shut. When I don’t answer, another voice calls out, “Brodee?”
Our parents round the corner, and relief washes over their faces as they rush to us standing guiltily in the kitchen.
“Morning,” Brodee and I timidly say at the same time.
“Where have you two been?” my mom demands, worry tainting her face. It pinches her forehead and tightens her mouth. “We were about to call the police!”
We hadn’t technically done anything wrong. I try to calm my mind. “We fell asleep on the beach,” I explain. “We were watching the stars and lost track of time.”
“We’re just grateful you’re okay,” Tatum says, relieved.
“That is unacceptable behavior,” Nick scolds, wagging his finger like we’re children again. “You’re old enough now that sleeping together is completely inappropriate. You two should know better. We’re not old enough to be grandparents. You need to be more responsible. You’re not children anymore.”
“Nothing happened—” I try.
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” Brodee retorts snidely. It’s so unusual for him to talk back; we all flinch.
Nick’s eyes are wide with disbelief. “What did you just say to me?”
“You heard me.” The venom in Brodee’s voice scares me. My eyes widen, taking in his stance. He stands a little taller, fiercer. I almost don’t recognize him. What happened to the boy on the beach?
“Brodee,” Tatum reprimands.
Nick takes a step, narrowing his eyes. “Watch your mouth, son. I won’t say it again.”
“Like you’re watching yours?” Something breaks inside of Brodee. I see it in his eyes like a dam rupturing, flooding with animosity. “Tell me. Does Mom know where it’s been?”
Nick goes white. What is happening? What am I missing? And that’s when I hear Brodee’s jaw crack as Nick backhands him.
“Nick!” Tatum screams and pulls him back. My mom grabs Nick’s other arm securely, holding him back.
I wrap my arm around Brodee’s waist to steady him. Brodee spits blood onto the wooden floor and holds his jaw. “Class act, Dad,” he breathlessly says. He’s not letting this go. “She doesn’t. Does she?” There’s no question is Brodee’s eyes. He already knows the answer. But none of us do.
What is going on?
“Nick, what is Brodee talking about?” Tatum tugs on his arm so he’ll face her.
My mom drops his other arm and steps away. Something in her eyes is off, registering the situation. Does she know? Are Tatum and I the only ones in the dark?
“Tate,” Nick begins, placing his hands on her shoulders, at the same time as my mom says, “How about we have this conversation in private?”
When Tatum looks at my mom, the questions are circling. We? Why would my mom be in on this conversation?
“Liv?” Tatum whispers, and everything falls into place. Like glass vases being knocked over one by one. Smash. Smash. Smash. Each second ticks by, exposing more and more of Tatum’s recognition.
“No, no, no, no…” she murmurs, shaking.
Guilt. That’s what I see in my mom’s eyes. I thought my world had already come crashing down, but betrayal is just as lethal as grief. What has she done?
Tatum starts to cry. So does my mom. Nick’s trying to reason with them both, while I stand stalk still next to a shattered Brodee.
“How could you?!” Tatum cries.
“We can explain!”
“I trusted you! You’re my best friend!”
“Tate, please!”
Brodee finally drags me away when picture frames and treasured memories go flying across the living room, shattering against walls and wooden beams. Once we’re upstairs, Carter comes out of his room.
“What’s going on?”
“Go back inside your room, Carter,” Brodee orders.
“Why? What’s happening down there? Is Mom okay?”
“Carter, now,” Brodee barks, shutting him up. The yelling and crying carries up the stairwell, clear as day.
“Why! WHY! All of this time!”
“Tatum, please! It’s not what it looks like. Let us explain.”
“Explain? How! What is there to explain? I think it’s exactly what it looks like!”
Without another word, Carter shares an uneasy look with Brodee, then backs into his room and shuts his door. I inch away, drawn to the security of my bedroom. I can’t listen to them any longer. The animosity. The accusations. The anguish.
Brodee follows me and closes the door behind us. I walk straight to my bed and lie down on my stomach. I’m in shock. That’s the only way to explain my silence and tangled thought process. My brain is still trying to work through the scene. I curl into the fetal position, tucking my arms into my chest. My fists close in tightly. I know Brodee’s in the room with me, but he doesn’t lie down beside me.
I stare at the wall, at the canvas painting of a sand dollar on the shore with a receding wave. I’ve stared at it hundreds of times before. It’s never been anything more than a watercolor of the beach. All I see now is the wave washing the sand dollar up on the sand, abandoning it, leaving it to dry up and die alone as the wave returns back home.
Betrayal.
How can something so simple—one act, one decision—cause everything to shatter? Like our bonds were never strong to begin with. Made of paper, not steel. So easily torn apart.
I now understand why walls are built, cages are locked—so no one and nothing can penetrate the soul. Hearts remain unbreakable that way. If you have the right armor, are shielded from the pain, nothing has the power to hurt you.
“You knew?” I utter.
“Yeah.”
The emotions plastered on my sleeves want to crawl back inside to seek solace inside of my chest. Sorry to break it to you. It’s not any better inside.
I close my eyes, begging dreams to take me away. I want sleep, to wake up and for this to be one big misunderstanding. It has to be. My mom would never do this to Tate. To my dad. Nick is madly in love with Tate. He’d never do anything
to destroy their marriage. They simply need to explain what happened, and everything will be okay. Everything will go back to normal. We’ll finish this summer, savor the last few days we have, and appreciate our time together. Yes. It’ll be okay.
AROUND TWELVE O’CLOCK Brodee wakes me with the touch of his hand on my shoulder. “Pete,” he whispers. It’s a whisper that’s afraid to be heard. His eyes tell me he’s nervous to wake me. The beach house is silent. “I think they’re gone.”
He convinces me to follow him downstairs to get something to eat. I should be hungry. I’m not. It’s so quiet, either we’re going to stumble upon a murder scene or everyone did leave. Both options seem viable.
The wooden stairs creak with each slow step I take. When we reach the bottom it’s empty. There’s no blood, so that’s a positive sign. Even Brodee’s blood and spit mixture has been cleaned up.
“Are you hungry?”
“No,” I say, but it sounds so far away I’m not sure I actually said it.
“We need to eat, Pete. I’ll make us some sandwiches.”
While Brodee moves around the kitchen, I leave him and go outside to the back deck to lie in the sun. I’m not sure how much time passes before I hear the back door open and shut.
“Peyton.” I can count on one hand the amount of times Brodee has called me Peyton. He says it with a quiet caress that tingles my skin, but I don’t want to feel that tingle. I want to rub the tingle with sandpaper until it rubs me raw so he can no longer affect me. Until I bleed him out of my system. I lift my head from the reclining beach chair as Brodee sets my plate on the table next to me. “Can we talk?”
“I don’t really want to talk right now, Brodee.” I lay my head back down and close my eyes. And I certainly don’t want to eat.
“This feels like something that we should talk about.”
I hear the sliding of chair legs as he moves to be next to me. I keep my face blank and breathe.
“Will you please look at me? We need to talk about what happened this morning.”
“No, we really don’t.”
“I didn’t mean for it to come out then, but I couldn’t stand watching him get away with it, being so hypocritical, when he’s the one the finger should be pointed at.”
Abruptly, I sit up. “And you thought outing our parents like that in front of Tate was a good idea? Do you really think that’s how your mother deserved to find out? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you keep that from me?”
I watch the pain settle in his eyes, but can’t bring myself to feel guilty. Everything is ruined. All I can think now is that everything we were, everything we are, will become a memory.
“You betrayed me,” I say.
“I know. I know!” He roughly rubs his hands down his face. “It was stupid. So stupid. After I walked in on them, I should’ve gone straight to you, but I was still trying to process it. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. Your mom and my dad have been affectionate before. They’re best friends. Like you and me. That’s all I thought it was at first…until it wasn’t.”
No. NO. I shake my head and cringe. “Stop. I don’t want to picture it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to be left alone. Please, Brodee.” I lie back down and drape my arm across my eyes, shielding me from the brightness, from him.
He takes a deep breath. I’m not sure if it’s out of aggravation or determination. “Have you ever wanted something so badly you were afraid of it? You didn’t want to believe it could be possible because it could be taken away or be just out of reach? Or wanted something, but the timing was off? You knew that it was the end game, not the starting line or even the right course.”
“Say what you mean. Stop talking in riddles,” I mumble.
“I want us to work so badly. I knew their affair would ruin everything. That it would tear us apart. That it would tear our families apart. So I kept it to myself. This morning I snapped. I wish I could take it back. I wish I never said anything. Then you and I wouldn’t be here.”
I remove my arm from my eyes. “Whether you said something or not, it eventually would’ve come out. It was only a matter of time. We were destined to fail from the beginning.”
“Don’t say that. You don’t mean it.”
“How long have you known about them?” I ask.
A few seconds pass before he responds, “A few days.”
“Unbelievable. I knew something was off! On the beach, when I found you sitting alone after you’d gone inside. You saw them then, didn’t you?”
He nods.
“You looked me in the eye and lied to me, over and over. What else can you lie about?”
“That’s not fair, and you know it!” He glares at me. “I couldn’t just drop a bomb like that on you. I was trying to find the right time.”
I sit up. “Right time? Right time! There is no right time! Nothing about this is right! Your dad and my mom are having an affair. In what world would that kind of information ever have perfect timing?”
“This is exactly why I kept it from you! It’s already destroying us, and you and I didn’t even do anything wrong!”
I keep my voice low and surprisingly steady. “You think it was easy for your dad, preying on a woman who’s already at her lowest?”
Brodee’s jaw clenches. “Your mom is just as guilty as my dad. It takes two, Peyton.”
“Your dad didn’t lose his spouse less than a year ago. My mom is probably desperate for any kind of affection. She wasn’t thinking straight enough to say no.”
Why am I defending her?
“My dad would never have done anything with someone who wasn’t willing.”
“Of course she was willing! Nick’s the closest thing she has to my dead dad!”
Quit defending her!
Brodee flinches. “Stop! What are we even doing? Why are we fighting about who’s more in the wrong? This isn’t our fight!” He breaks. Softly, he says, “You and I didn’t do this.”
I stop. He’s right. The only sound is our labored breathing as we try to calm down. There’s nothing left to say. This isn’t something you can come back from. This wrecked us, smashed us to a heap of unfixable parts. There is no salvaging the pieces.
As the pieces fall to the ground, they find new homes, new revelations. “This is why you want to go to USC, isn’t it? It had nothing to do with me at all. You just wanted to get back at him.”
“Don’t twist that, Peyton. Of course I want to go because of you. I love you.”
As I bring my legs to the side of the lounger, I grip the edges on either side of my thighs. “Then tell me. Please enlighten me. How long after you saw them together did you decide you no longer wanted to go to Duke?”
He can’t respond.
I shake my head—fight back tears. “That’s what I thought.”
“What can I do to make this right?” he desperately asks.
“Nothing.” I don’t mean for it to come out as bitter as it sounds. It’s the simple fact. The truth hurts. Nothing will ever be the same. Nothing can fix this. I’ll never be able to look at him the same. Or Nick. Or my mom. Or even Tate. Not because Tate did anything wrong, but because it’s my mom who destroyed her marriage. Her best friend—aside from her husband—she’s one person Tate should’ve been able to count on. We’re family. Family doesn’t do that to each other.
“I can’t lose us.” Brodee’s voice cracks.
“Right now there is no us.”
Silence tugs and stretches the reality until it’s the only thing between us. What we built is gone. It’s over.
I watch his retreating figure on the boardwalk and regret what I said, but I can’t take it back. I can’t take back what our parents did. I can’t change what happened to us. Even as my heart softens, I can’t even call him back to me. I don’t know where to go from here.
AFTER A COUPLE hours of lying there I go back inside. When I close the door quietly behind me, my mom is coming d
own the stairs. I halt and nearly backtrack. The waves and their security are calling to me.
“Peyton,” she tries and takes a step toward me.
I shake my head to stop her. I can’t look at her, let alone have her touch me.
“Stop where you are.” She nods. Tears fill her eyes as she hovers below the last step. “I want to hear it from you. Tell me what Brodee saw was a misunderstanding—that it was a moment of weakness or not what it appeared to be at all. Tell me you’d never do that to Dad, to Tate, to us.”
“Honey…” Her hands fist against her mouth. “I…I…”
“You can’t, can you?” I choke. “You and Nick?”
“It’s so complicated, Peyton.” Her hands drop to her sides, and she tries to move toward me again. I put up my hands, stopping her. She stays put. “You know Nick and I go way back. We have this history that was never dealt with, never explored. It just happened. We’re in love. I know that’s hard to hear, but if this wasn’t something real, we never would have risked it.”
“So what, Dad dies, and Nick thinks he can take a shot with you now? All bets are off now that the husband is out of the picture.”
Her sad eyes transform to fury. “Peyton Jane.”
“No,” I snap. “You don’t get to reprimand me right now. You screwed up. Not me!”
“I am still your mother, and I deserve respect.”
I nearly choke on my laughter. “Just like you respected this family? Like you respected Tate and her relationship with Nick? You don’t get to reprimand me about respect. You’re such a hypocrite! How do you think Dad would feel about this?”
“Don’t,” she warns.
It’s as though I don’t even hear her. That, or I don’t care. More likely the later. “You think he’d understand? That he’d give his blessing.”
“Stop,” she says.
Nothing can stop the truth. “You think he’d be okay with you sleeping with his best friend?”
“That’s enough!”
I bite my lip, holding back more words, more truth. “Truth hurts, doesn’t it? I think I’ve had enough too.” I shoulder past her, up the stairs and slam my bedroom door behind me. I lock it for good measure.
