The smell of suntan lotion became the smell of my sunscreen on Ben’s skin. The bright sun in my eyes as I sunbathed became the golden halo that illuminated the spiky crown of Ben’s wet golden-brown hair as he hovered over me. The harsh, salty seawater coating my tastebuds became the invitation for Ben to slide his sweet tongue in my mouth. Ben and I go together like summer and love.
“I know you’d never cheat on me. We’re a team,” I say, staring into the dark, sparkling pools of his eyes. “But your pain scares me. I wish you’d trust me enough to tell me what’s hurting you.”
He smiles and places a soft kiss on the tip of my nose. “Baby, you’re my world and you’re perfect as you are. I don’t want to put my bullshit on you.”
“But I want you to. I want to help you carry whatever’s weighing you down.”
He kisses the corner of my lips. “I don’t want it to change us. I love us.” He skims his mouth over mine, then places another kiss on the opposite corner. “Just promise me that you’ll never doubt how much I love you or us.”
I sigh as his mouth lands on my neck. “I promise… I’ll never doubt you.”
His mouth is on mine again, kissing me the only way I’ve ever been kissed. Ben was my first everything. He taught me how to kiss. He taught me how to listen. He taught me how to love, not just him, but how to love life. And if I’m reading into the hints he’s been dropping for the past year, soon he’ll be the first man to propose marriage to me.
I nip his bottom lip tenderly and he smiles. “That. I think that’s my favorite thing.”
“What? Biting my lip or the way it gets my dick hard as a rock.”
I laugh. “Both. Those are a few of my favorite things.”
He laughs harder. “Okay, Julie Andrews.”
I smile as I trace my fingertip along the beads of sweat on his neck. “Sweat drops on warm skin,” I sing softly to the tune of “My Favorite Things.”
Ben adjusts his hips as his erection grows beneath me. “Don’t stop.”
I place my fingertip in my mouth as I try to think of the next few lines. “Hmm… Okay, okay, I got it. Sweat drops on warm skin, you whisper, ‘Hey, kitten.’”
He shakes his head and whispers, “Don’t stop.”
I trace my finger along his bottom lip. “Shiny saliva on lips that I’ve bitten,” I continue, my other hand reaching down to massage his bulge. “Large, rigid packages hiding in jeans. These are a few of my favorite things.”
“Fuuuuck me,” he groans. “That’s so fucking hot.”
“I’ll fuck you after you sing a verse.”
He laughs as his hand slips down the front of my jeans. “I’ll sing a thousand verses for this,” he says, sliding two fingers inside me.
I moan as he slides them in and out. “Sing for me.”
He strokes me as he kisses my neck. His lips skate across my skin until they’re against my ear, whispering, “Pink-colored bra gets my highest approval,” he begins, his other hand reaching up to slide under the fabric of my bikini top. “Blue jeans and G-strings, all set for removal. Wild beast in my pants all ready to spring. These are a few of my favorite things.”
“Oh, my God,” I moan as my muscles contract around his fingers. “Fuck me.”
He chuckles as his teeth scrape my jaw. “Yes, kitten.”
3
Coming Home
Now
It’s easy to think your life will be better if you just move away, somewhere your troubles can’t follow. Well, we all know what they say about running from your problems. So, what do they say about coming home to face the music? Is it supposed to be honorable? Because I don’t feel very honorable right now. I feel scared. Scared as fuck.
The Uber driver pulls his Toyota Camry in front of The Dunk restaurant, and the first thing I notice is that Michelle’s family has renovated the place since the last time I was here three years ago. The small family restaurant on Highway 1 used to have a flat rooftop, where we’d sometimes hangout after the restaurant closed for the night, getting drunk and drying out after a long day at the beach. The roof is pitched and the peeling blue paint on the eves and trim is an emerald-green color now, like the water in the lake Charley and I swam in the last time we were together.
My pulse is pounding in my skull like a bass-drop on a loop.
“Can you wait here for a sec? I’m supposed to meet a friend, but I don’t know if she’s here,” I ask the middle-aged Asian driver.
He rolls his eyes. “I’ll wait ten minutes, but that’s it. I have to get back to Santa Rosa tonight.”
“Thanks,” I reply quickly as I exit the Camry.
Every step I take toward the restaurant feels like I’m marching toward the edge of a cliff. Every cell in my body is telling me to turn the fuck around and go home. But I don’t have a choice.
When my dad called me today, the last words I expected to hear were, “Son, I have lung cancer. Stage four. Doc says I have about four to five months.” My dad doesn’t even smoke. He quit after my mom died of stomach cancer when I was eight. Sometimes, I feel like fate has a fucked up sense of humor.
I had to come home to be with my dad in the last months of his life. I couldn’t even wait for my buddy — and bodyguard — Ponti to get his stuff together. I told Ponti and my buddies to meet me in Bodega Bay, then I took the next flight out. But I knew, as soon as I stepped off that plane an hour ago at Sonoma County Airport, I couldn’t go straight home. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try to see Charley first. I’m lucky her BFF Allie still has the same cell number.
While I’m fairly certain Michelle hates me as much as Charley does, Allie always had a way of staying objective when emotions were running high. I took a chance and called her, asking if she knew where Charley would be right now. Without telling her why I did what I did three years ago, it only took a few minutes to convince Allie to give up Charley’s location.
And now that I’m standing here, outside the glass storefront of The Dunk restaurant, I can’t believe she actually told me the truth. Maybe fate has decided to throw me a bone, after all. But this positive thought vanishes like smoke when I see Michelle staring at me wide-eyed, like I’m a masked man about to rob the place.
I turn to Charley, who’s sitting at a table near the counter, and my heart stops as she covers her mouth in shock.
“No!” Michelle shouts as she points at me, and I can hear her perfectly through the tempered glass. “Go away, Ben! No one wants you here! Go!”
Jesus fucking Christ. She’s shooing me like a fucking fly. Not that I didn’t expect this, but, man… I didn’t anticipate how fucking cold it would feel.
“I just want to talk, Michelle!” I shout through the glass.
“I’m calling the cops!” she yells back, then she shakes her head. “No, I’m calling Mason!”
Oh, fuck.
I turn to Charley, who’s now sitting with her eyes closed, probably trying to mentally check out. “Charley, I just want to talk! I’ll be quick! I promise!”
She doesn’t open her eyes. She’s either ignoring me or successfully blocking me out.
Michelle is on the phone now, glaring at me as she talks to someone at a normal volume so I can’t hear.
“Michelle, please!” I plead with her.
She ends the call and smiles. “Mason’s on his way!”
“Fuck!” I groan, barely stopping myself from punching the glass.
I’m about to turn around and head back to the Uber, when Charley stands up from the chair and begins making her way toward the entrance. It’s like watching an angel coming at me, but from the stony expression on her face, I can’t decide if she looks more like a guardian angel or an angel of death. Either way, she’s gorgeous: tall and slender, with hips that would make a grown man cry; her dark hair cascades over her shoulders in luscious waves; round, hazel eyes and full lips framed by soft cheekbones and a perfect oval face.
She always complained about the tiny bump on h
er nose, or that her top lip wasn’t as full as her bottom lip. I used to tell her that complaining about those things is like looking at a gorgeous sunset and complaining that the sun is too bright.
Michelle glares at Charley and says something that looks like, “What are you doing?”
Charley says something to her that I can’t make out, but Michelle shakes her head adamantly. Charley glares at her, then says something that looks like, “Do it.”
Michelle rolls her eyes and they both continue toward me as Michelle pulls a ring of keys out of her apron. My heart soars as I realize Charley is forcing her friend to open the door. Maybe she’s not as angry with me as I anticipated.
The whole time Michelle is unlocking the door, I keep my gaze focused on Charley, willing her to look at me and give me some kind of smile or nod or something to let me know I’m right. But her eyes are trained on Michelle’s hands. Finally, the door pushes out toward me and Charley emerges with an expression on her face I’ve never seen before. I can’t explain it any other way except a stone-cold lack of emotion.
“Charley, I just want to talk to you. Just give me five minutes.”
Her expression doesn’t change. “I don’t want to talk to you, Ben. You should leave before Mason gets here.”
“It’s probably better that he’s here. I owe him an apology, too,” I say, taking a step toward her.
Michelle steps sideways, half her body shielding Charley now. “That’s close enough.”
Charley puts her hand on Michelle’s arm. “You can go inside. I can handle this.”
“Are you sure?”
Charley nods and we both watch in silence as Michelle shoots me one last burning glare before she heads back inside. “Look, Ben, I’m sure you’ve probably made up some kind of excuse that justifies what you did to me. But there’s nothing you could say that will make me understand or forgive what you did. So, once again, I’m asking you to leave. I really don’t want to see what Mason will do to you when he gets here.”
The cool expression on her face and the even tone in her voice chills my blood. What have I done to her?
“You know damn well Mason’s never been able to take me.”
“He’s been rage-lifting,” she replies coolly, using the phrase I made up for when I would take my aggression out at the gym. “I don’t want him to get in trouble with the cops when he kicks your ass.”
I suppress my laughter, so I don’t further piss her off. “Baby, I’m not here to get in fights or make excuses. And—”
“Don’t call me baby.”
I pause for a moment and take a deep breath. “Look, I don’t expect you to forgive me. Not tonight, anyway.”
She clenches her jaw and lets out a puff of laughter through her nose. “You really are just as cocky as always if you think I’d ever forgive you.”
I close my eyes for a second to collect myself as anger roars inside me. “You…have no fucking idea why I did what I did.”
“I don’t care why you did it!” she shouts, her stony expression crumbling. “You broke us! I don’t want to see you ever again. Go back to L.A., Ben.”
I step forward and grab her elbows. “This isn’t over, Char.”
“Don’t touch me!” she yells, wrestling her arms from my grip.
I’m close enough to smell her now, that sugared-strawberry scent I remember so fucking well it makes my arms ache to hold her. “You have no fucking idea how sorry I am.”
“Are you drunk? I can smell alcohol.”
I blink at her question, standing my ground as I see the headlights of a car approaching.
She glances toward the lights and her eyes widen with panic. “Go home, Ben. Please. As much as I hate you, I don’t want to see you hurt.”
I shake my head. “It’s too late for that.” I reach into my back pocket and pull out a business card for her. “This is the best lawyer in California when it comes to custody battles. Give this to Mason. I already talked to the guy and everything’s taken care of. Mason won’t have to pay for any of it. Will you give it to him?”
She rolls her eyes then nods reluctantly as she takes the card from me. But the way her expression has changed from raw anger and fear to sheer pity makes me want to crawl under a fucking rock and die.
“This isn’t over,” I remind her one last time before I drag myself into the back seat of the Uber and slam the door shut. “Take me to 281 Beach Ave.”
The driver glares at me. “You have to input the address in the app or I won’t get paid.”
I glance out the window as what I assume is Mason’s black truck pulls up next to us. “You might want to get the fuck out of here if you don’t want your car destroyed. I’ll pay you cash. Your choice. I don’t give a fuck.”
And with that, the driver peels out of there, just as my former best friend emerges from the truck. Mason’s face is a fiery-red storm of rage, his hand tightening around the end of a baseball bat as he watches us drive away. Judging by the red grip-tape, it looks like the bat I gifted him for his eighteenth birthday, right before he went to play for Sonoma State.
As the Uber pulls up in front of my dad’s tiny two-bedroom beach house, the state of the slate-blue wood siding makes me shake my head. I keep sending my dad money to get the house fixed up, because I know he’ll never leave his beach house. He’s never admitted it, but even though he claimed he didn’t want to leave Bodega Bay because his house was paid off, I knew it was because he couldn’t leave behind the home he shared with my mom.
Love has a way of keeping people rooted in a past they can’t stop longing for. But it can also send a person, like me, into fight or flight mode, destroying everything in their path as they make their escape.
Charley was wrong when she said I broke us. I didn’t just break us. I nuked us. And coming back to face the fallout is as fucking gruesome as I expected it would be. But I’m not giving up. If I have to, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it right. That’s what you do when you love someone.
And seeing Charley tonight, getting close enough to touch her and smell her, confirmed what I’ve known for three years. No amount of alcohol or twisted logic or sex can numb my feelings for her.
I love her more now than I ever have.
4
Obsessed
Now
After the breakup, I became obsessed with social media. I checked Ben’s Insta profile at least ten times a day, watching his post-Charley life unfold with a new snapshot every six to twelve hours — the optimal interval for Instagram posts, according to Ben. My obsession culminated with a two-day social media bender, where I stayed in my bedroom for more than forty-eight hours, watching YouTube makeup tutorials and testing out hairstyles I’d found on Pinterest. Trying to remake myself.
There should be a happy medium between that psychotic level of obsession and my refusal to go anywhere near a social media site. My dad would probably say, “People can get addicted to anything, possum. Even things we think of as healthy, like exercise and leafy green vegetables. Everything in moderation. And when you can’t handle that, that’s what people like me are for.”
Just one little app. Just Pinterest. People only use Pinterest for food, fashion, and photography, right? No harm in that.
In the garage, I throw my bodyboard into the trunk of my ice-green Volkswagen Beetle, then I head back inside to grab my beach bag and fill my thermos with ice-cold water. I find my dad in the kitchen, fixing himself a bowl of his special “gruel,” which consists of gluten-free organic oatmeal with wheat germ, chia seeds, and homemade almond milk. After he had a mini-heart attack last year, he started taking his health very seriously — as serious as a heart attack, as he likes to say. He still enjoys a thick steak every now and then, but only on special occasions.
“Hey, sweetheart. Your hair looks awfully nice. You going to the beach?” he asks as I plant a kiss on his cheek.
“Yep. Allie’s not coming back today, so it’s just me and Michelle. Where’s Mom? I didn
’t see her car in the garage,” I say, grabbing my thermos out of the cupboard next to the dishwasher.
“Christine has an appointment today, so your mom offered to cover for her at the shop for a few hours. She should be back soon.”
Christine Bradford is my mom’s best friend, and also happens to be Mayor Tom Bradford’s wife. While Tom is busy finding new ways to squeeze money out of tourists, Christine runs a literal tourist trap called Beach Candy Gift Shop. Like Christine, the shop is gorgeous inside and out. Even a girl who hates shopping, like me, can get lost in there for hours.
“Do you need me to pick up anything on the way back from the beach?” I ask, unscrewing the cap on my thermos.
“I don’t think so, but you might want to text Mom before you head back,” he says, opening the refrigerator to get the jug of almond milk. “Is everything okay with Mason? I thought I heard him slam his door last night, and when I went in to check on him he said he wanted to be left alone.”
My stomach tightens at the thought of our encounter with Ben last night. “He’s just stressed out about the upcoming court date. Did he look really upset? Do you think I should take Gracie with me to the beach to give him a break? Does he work today?”
My dad laughs as he pours some milk into his bowl. “That’s a lot of questions, possum. But I’ll give it the old college try. Let’s see. Sure, taking Gracie to the beach might be a good idea. Nope, I don’t think your brother works today. And, yes, he looked really upset last night. I think Louisa’s been trying to make your brother jealous lately. She’s been posting a lot of pictures on Nastygram.”