I have time to think about what it might be.
12
And then it’s June 16. The day I’ve been dreading for months. Seventeen years since they laid Elora and me side by side in that bassinet up in Honey’s bedroom.
The rain is still falling. And that seems right.
My birthday has always been my favorite day of the whole year. Better than Christmas, even. Because Elora and I always spent it together. A holiday just for us. But now all those shared birthdays press against my memory until I’m suffocating under the weight of them. The matching party dresses we had when we were five. Yellow taffeta and lace that made us itch in the bayou heat. A pirate-themed treasure hunt when we were nine. A weekend camping trip up at Grand Isle when we turned thirteen. Finally teenagers. And last year. Elora’s eyes when she unwrapped that pearl ring and necklace.
Sera and Sander and Evie and Mackey all make excuses to drop by that afternoon. Sander gives me a sketch he did. Elora and me sitting side by side on the front porch steps. “He drew it from memory,” Sera whispers, and I manage to tell him that it’s perfect.
Mackey cracks jokes. Tries to make me smile. All Evie can offer is a half stick of gum, but I take it, because I can see how desperately she wants to make me feel better.
At least all of them have the good sense not to mention what day it is.
Honey honors my request and doesn’t bring it up, either. She gives me plenty of space all day, and I appreciate that. But there’s still this pressure building inside me.
I feel it when I touch the little blue pearl on the chain around my neck.
It swells every time I twist Elora’s ring around my finger. I keep thinking about what Zale said. About how it was the most important thing she had to give. Because it came from me.
By nightfall, that pressure is crushing me, and I need to escape.
Late that evening the rain finally stops, so I grab a flashlight and head out the door. Honey and Sweet-N-Low both look up, but they don’t ask any questions. And that’s good.
Because I wouldn’t have any answers. I have no idea where I’m going.
My feet know, though. They carry me through the blackness toward the downriver end of the boardwalk. Toward the old pontoon boat. When I get there, I see movement down below me, in the dark. Something big. I suck in my breath from the surprise of it and almost lose my balance.
“Careful, Shortcake.” I click on my flashlight. Hart is sitting in the driver’s seat, boots propped up on the railing. “That’s a long drop for a little girl.”
I slip off Elora’s ring and hide it away in my pocket before I stick my flashlight between my teeth and make my way down the wooden ladder.
When I step into the boat, it moves underneath me and I almost lose my footing again. Hart holds out a hand so I can take it and steady myself.
The old pontoon usually sits in the mud at the edge of the gator pond—but it’s high tide, plus the water is up from all the rain—so tonight it’s floating, tethered to the dock by a rusting chain. Like a neglected dog tied up in somebody’s yard.
Hart has a case of beer, and by the looks of the empty bottles scattered around his feet, he’s already well into it. He uses the base of his cigarette lighter to pop the top off one, then he hands it to me. He’s shielding his eyes from the flashlight beam. “Jesus,” he grumbles. “Turn that thing off, will ya?”
I click off the light and take the seat across from him.
Hart is sopping wet. Soaked through. I figure he’s been sitting out here for a long time. Since before the rain stopped, for sure.
All day maybe. Probably. Just letting the water fall on him.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask.
“Celebrating.” He’s drunk. If the empty bottles hadn’t told me that, the thick sound of his voice would have. “And waitin’ for you.”
I watch Hart shake out a cigarette and smoke it in slow motion between swigs of warm beer. Every time he reaches out to flick away the ash, my eyes trail after his hand. I’m half hypnotized by the glowing orange embers hovering in the dark.
Willie Nelson hisses loud and angry from across the pond, and the sound of an airboat drifts in from somewhere back in the bayou.
I hear Hart clear his throat, then he pulls a beat-up envelope from his back pocket and hands it to me. It’s bent in half and all wet. He flicks open his lighter and holds the flame so I can see. The envelope is purple, and my name is scrawled across it in pencil.
“It’s just a card. But I wanted you to have somethin’ tonight.” I can tell he’s embarrassed. “Picked it up at the Chat and Scat in Kinter.”
That actually makes me smile. A wet gas station birthday card. Typical Hart.
I can’t stand the idea of reading it right now, though. Even a cheesy Hallmark knockoff might be enough to sink me this evening.
“Thanks,” I tell him. And I slip the soggy envelope into my back pocket.
“You believe in past lives, Greycie?” Hart’s already working on another beer. He’ll be totally wasted before long.
“Why?”
He runs one hand through his wet curls before he takes another drink, and I feel that familiar itch in my own fingers.
“Somethin’ my mama told me. She thinks all of us—you, me, Elora, Sera and Sander, Evie, Mackey, Case, Ember and Orli—all ten of us—are linked like that.” I add Zale’s name to his list in my head. Mysterious number eleven. “That’s why we pull so hard on each other.”
Hart digs the cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket and shakes out another one. It’ll be a miracle if the thing is dry enough to light.
But he holds it between his lips.
Flick.
Whoosh.
Pull in air.
Slow burn.
“Like maybe you and Elora were mother and daughter once. But another time, you stormed the beaches at Normandy together.” He slaps at a mosquito. “Shit. Maybe Case was my goddamn grandpa in another life. Or my boss.” He laughs low and quiet. “For all I know, Evie coulda put a bayonet through me during the War of Eighteen fuckin’ Twelve.”
I finish my first beer and immediately get handed a second one.
“I like that idea,” I tell him. “All of us recycled over and over in each other’s lives.”
“Me too.” Hart looks up toward the dark sky, then he takes a long drag off his cigarette. I wish he could breathe out hurt, the way he breathes out smoke. “Maybe next time I can save ’er.”
We sit in silence while I finish my second beer, and Hart offers me a third. But it turns out there aren’t any more. Which is probably good, because my head is spinning now, and Hart’s words sound sloppy. But I can’t tell if it’s his tongue that’s not working right, or my ears.
He stands up and moves toward the back of the boat to rummage around under one of the seats, then he holds up a half-empty bottle of whiskey and grins at me in triumph. “For special occasions,” he announces. And I guess the saddest birthday party in the world counts, because he unscrews the top and turns to pitch it into the dark like a baseball player. Then he tips the bottle up and takes a long swig without even flinching.
“Hart.”
He doesn’t respond. He just stands there for a long time. Staring out at the water.
Still.
Watching.
Waiting.
If it weren’t for the whiskey bottle dangling from one hand, he’d remind me an awful lot of Willie Nelson.
Finally he turns around to look at me.
“Don’t come back here, Greycie. Next summer.” I stare at him. “Elora didn’t want you here. That’s what last summer was all about. At least mostly. All that shit that went down between the two of you. She didn’t want you to come back here. Ever. She didn’t want you to have any reason to.”
I feel stung. Like he’s slapp
ed me hard across the face.
“She wanted to get rid of me.”
Hart shakes his head. “Dammit, Greycie. You aren’t listening. She wanted to save you.”
I hear the words, but my brain won’t process them.
“Save me from—”
He cuts me off midquestion. “From this godforsaken place.”
“Why?”
“Jesus.” He lets out an exasperated sigh, and it makes me feel stupid. “Because she was scared for you. Of what you might become if you came back here.” He washes the words down with another long swallow of whiskey. “Because she fuckin’ loved you.”
Something Zale said last night swims up through the beer and the confusion to bob up and down on the surface of my memory.
This town is poison, Grey. Elora knew that.
That night on the dock, at the end of last summer, things had gone so wrong. It was my last night in town, and I’d wanted us to spend it together. Just the two of us. Like always. That was our end-of-summer tradition. Elora had been acting so weird for months, but I figured . . . if we could just have that one good night . . . then everything would be okay. Then she’d run off somewhere for most of the evening. And when she finally showed back up, she was evasive and distant. Not in the mood to talk. So I accused her of being selfish, and she accused me of smothering her.
Grow the fuck up! We’re separate people, Grey! We’re allowed to have our own lives! I’m getting out of here soon. I promise you that. And don’t expect me to ever come back to this shithole town. Not even for you!
Her words tore my heart out. And the hurt of it set me on fire with rage. I called her a bitch. And then I said the worst thing of all. The one thing I knew would cut her to the bone. I told Elora that she’d never get out of this place. Not if she lived to be a hundred. Because she’d never have the guts to face life out in the real world.
Not on her own.
Especially not without me.
I looked my twin flame right in the face and told her that she’d die here. In La Cachette. And there was nothing she could do to change that.
And that’s when she called me a pathetic liar. And punched me. Right in the mouth.
It was her fist that caused the bruise under my jaw, but it was her words that drew blood.
There’s nothing special about you, Grey. And there’s nothing special about us. A few years from now, I won’t even remember you ever existed.
For almost a year, those parting words have been the first thing I hear when I open my eyes in the morning, and the last thing I hear before I fall asleep at night. They ring and echo in my head every single second of every day, like Evie’s wind chimes.
They’ve been the rock in my rock bottom.
And now Hart’s telling me she didn’t mean them. Not really.
And I don’t know where that leaves me.
Except drifting.
Hart makes his way back to me. He squats down low and puts a warm hand on my bare knee to steady himself. “You shouldn’t have come home this year. I shouldn’t have let you.” He tips his head way back and drains the very last drop from the whiskey bottle. “But I needed you so bad, Greycie.” His voice cracks, and my heart cracks right along with it. “God, I fuckin’ needed you.” The pain in his eyes makes me ache. “I needed to be with someone who loved her as much as I did. Ya know?” He wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. “But you got no business bein’ here. There’s nothin’ good here anymore.”
Hart’s face is swimming back and forth in front of me. I try to focus on him, through the alcohol and the tears that are welling up in my eyes. He’s the only anchor I have left. And I finally let myself reach out and touch those beautiful curls.
“You’re here,” I tell him, and I guess I’m not too drunk to get embarrassed, because I add, “And Honey. Evie. All the others.”
“Yeah. Well, don’t come back for me.” Hart lurches to his feet and throws the empty whiskey bottle with everything he has. It slams into the boardwalk piling behind me and shatters into a million pieces. “Because I’m gonna end up a piece-of-shit loser in the end. An abuser and a filthy drunk. Worthless and mean and alone.” There’s cottonmouth venom in his words. The low warning hiss of a snake that’s let itself get cornered. “Until somebody finally puts me down. Like an old rabid dog.”
“Hart,” I beg him. “Don’t.”
“Just like my mama had to do my old man.”
The boat moves and I feel seasick. Because that isn’t what I want for him.
“You could leave,” I tell him. “You could get out of here and go somewhere different.” Hart shakes his head.
“This place is a riptide. And we’re all caught in it. Nobody ever gets outta here.” He looks down at me. “Well, nobody but you. The rest of us, we’re stuck here. For good.” One corner of his mouth twitches up. “Except for maybe Sera. I could sorta see her going to college somewhere. Studyin’ French literature and drinkin’ eight-dollar coffee at some hole-in-the-wall place full of stuck-up, pretentious assholes.”
He’s trying to make a joke of it, but I can’t stand to listen to this. “Hart—”
“Nah.” He cuts me off again. “I’ll never get outta here. And we both know it. There’s no place else for me to go. It’s too crowded out there. Too many damn people in the world.”
Too many damn feelings in the world. That’s what he means.
He’d never survive all their pain. He hadn’t even been able to go to school up in Kinter. Becky pulled him out halfway through kindergarten so she could teach him at home. The little cinder block building packed full of big emotions had been too much for him to handle. He’d started hurting himself. Slicing at his little arms with chunks of broken glass and sharp bits of plastic. Pulling his hair out. Chewing the skin off his lips.
I push myself to my feet. The boat rocks under me, and I lay a hand on Hart’s chest to steady myself. I feel his rhythm. That constant thumping under his ribs.
The boat rocks again, and we both stand there trying to find our balance together. It feels like forever since I’ve stood on solid ground.
The night presses in, heavy and wet.
Hart studies me with dark eyes, and everything inside me melts together into a solid lump that settles somewhere low in my stomach. I feel the sudden heat of it.
He grins and cocks his head to one side. I blush in the dark and try to take a step backward, but I’m too late. He grabs my hand and my heart races.
Shit.
The bemused look on his face tells me that he knows exactly what I’m feeling. No use trying to hide it.
Hart hooks a lazy finger through my belt loop and pulls me against him. His other hand reaches around behind me to snake its way under my tank top. Rough fingers on my skin. I gasp out loud as my bones dissolve.
“Greycie.” My name catches in his throat as he bends low to brush his lips against mine. It’s not much of a kiss at first. More of an accident born of closeness. Like we’re both tumbling toward each other, and it’s our mouths that break the fall.
But then he pulls me harder against him. And I don’t resist.
He tastes different than he did at thirteen. Back then, he was all Dr Pepper and Big Red gum.
Now he’s seventeen.
Jack Daniel’s and Marlboros.
And it turns out his tongue definitely works.
Hart presses himself into me. Wet clothes and hot skin.
We take our time with each other. Slow but not gentle. I feel his teeth on my neck. Biting and sucking and pulling at me. Dismantling me bit by bit.
Stubble burns my cheek and his palms press hard against my back, sliding around to my sides to let his thumbs play over my hip bones.
I pull his bottom lip into my mouth, testing it with my teeth, nibbling on it as my fingers tangle in those sexy curls. I hear him m
oan, and a deep shiver runs through his whole body. He pulls back for a second to look at me.
“Fuck, Grey,” is all he gets out before we’re on each other again.
We kiss until my lips are swollen and my arms ache and all I feel inside is this desperate wanting. It swells and builds like a cresting wave. And that is so much better than anything else I’ve felt lately. It beats that broken feeling all to hell.
Because I’m not thinking about Elora. Or about my mother’s haunted eyes.
I’m only thinking about what I need. And what Hart needs. What feels good. And this feels good. Hart feels good.
Hart is what I need.
We need each other.
So bad.
When we finally stop to breathe, Hart untangles himself from me and takes a few steps backward. He’s blinking at me now. Almost like he’s trying to remember who I am. His mouth opens and closes like a fish when it’s pulled out of the water. Then he sinks down to sit on one of the peeling bench seats.
And I don’t know what to do. I’m not sure what he wants from me in this moment. So I sit down across from him and wait for my heart rate and breathing to drop back to normal.
That good feeling is slipping away fast, and the lost, hurting feeling comes rushing back in to fill in the void. Except it’s different this time.
It’s bigger.
Deeper.
It’s like we let ourselves feel one thing, and now everything is more raw. Even closer to the surface.
Elora’s absence stretches out between us like the Grand Canyon. Hart’s sitting inches away from me. I can still feel his lips on my neck. His fingers against my skin. But I don’t know how to reach him.
His breath hitches, and this strangled sound tears its way out of his throat. Hart drops his head to his hands, and I see his shoulders shake.
But no tears leak out.
I’m watching him build a wall, brick by brick, to try to hold them in.
“She’s gone, Greycie,” he finally chokes out. “Dead.”
I cringe hard and my stomach twists. But I give him the honesty I know he needs from me right now.
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 11
