Posted with the permission of and at the request of the publishers.
Andrew
We spend the entire day swimming and laying out on the beach. We watch the sun set over the horizon and eventually the stars, as they come alive in the darkness. Just an hour after nightfall we’re met by a group of people our age. They’ve been on the beach not far from us for a while, hanging out.
“From around here?” the tall guy with a full-sleeved tattoo down his right arm asks.
One of the couples sits down in the sand near us. Camryn, sitting between my legs, leans away from my chest attentively.
“No, we’re from Galveston,” I answer.
“And Raleigh,” Camryn adds.
“We’re in from Indiana,” the black-haired girl sitting down says. She points at the others she came with who are still standing. “They live here, though.”
One of the other guys wraps his girlfriend up in his arms. “I’m Tate, this is Jen,” he indicates his girlfriend, then points to the others standing nearby. “Johanna. Grace. And that’s my brother, Caleb.”
The three of them nod and smile down at us.
“I’m Bray,” the black-haired girl sitting by Camryn says. “And this is my fiancé, Elias.”
Camryn sits up fully and dusts the sand away from her hands by brushing them together. “Cool to meet you,” she says. “I’m Camryn and this is my fiancé, Andrew.”
Elias reaches out to shake my hand.
Tate, the guy with the tattoo says, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here. It’s a great party spot. Pretty secluded. You’re both welcome to join us.”
Camryn twists her body a little at the waist to see me behind her. We talk to each other with our eyes for a moment. At first, I wasn’t really up to it, but she seems to want to go. I stand up, helping her up with me.
I turn to Tate. “Sure. We can follow you out.”
“Kick ass,” Tate says.
Camryn and I grab our beach towels and the bag we brought packed with beef jerky, bottled water, and sunscreen, and we follow Tate and his friends off the beach and to the parking lot.
And now we’re back in the car being spontaneous again. I’m not so sure about this shit, maybe because it’s been so long since I’ve partied with anyone other than Camryn, but they seem harmless enough.
The so-called thirty-minute drive ends up being more like forty-five.
“I have no idea where the hell we are anymore.”
We’ve been on a dark highway and off the main freeway for the past twenty minutes at least, their Jeep Sahara coasting over the road in front of us at seventy-five miles an hour. I’ve got no problem keeping up, but I don’t usually speed like this in unfamiliar territory at night where I can’t spot the cops hiding on the side of road out ahead. If I get a ticket it’ll be my own damn fault, but I might still bust that Tate guy’s head for it just on principle.
“At least we have a full tank of gas,” she says. Then she laughs and hangs her foot out the window and says, “Maybe they’re leading us to a creepy cabin in the woods somewhere and plan to kill us.”
“Hey, that thought did cross my mind,” I laugh back at her.
“Well, I trust you to keep me safe,” she jokes. “Don’t let any of them cut me up into little pieces or force me to watch Honey Boo Boo.”
“You got it,” I say. “Which brings to mind number four on our list of promises: if I’m ever lost or missing, promise you’ll never stop looking for me until it’s been exactly three hundred sixty-five days. On day three sixty-six, accept that if I was alive I would’ve already found my way back to you, and that I’m long dead. I want you to go on with your life.”
She lifts away from the seat, bringing her foot back inside the car. “I don’t like that. Some people go missing and are found years later, alive and well.”
“Yeah, but that won’t be me,” I say. “Trust me, if it’s been a year, I’m dead.”
“OK, fine,” she says, slipping out of her seat belt and scooting over next to me. She lays her head on my shoulder. “Only if you agree to do the same for me. One year. Not a day more.”
“I promise,” I say, though I’m lying through my teeth. I would look for her until the day I died.
Camryn
23
It’s OK to lie about some things. This “promise” just happens to be one of them. There’s no way I could stop looking for him after one year. Truthfully, I’d never stop looking for him. This pact full of promises that we swore to keep is important to both of us, but I guess when it comes to some things, I’ll just have to openly agree and deal with things however I want if it ever comes to that.
Besides, I get the feeling he’s lying, too.
Andrew doesn’t know it, but that black-haired girl, Bray, I saw a couple of hours earlier in the restrooms not far from the beach. She ended up using my stall after me. We didn’t actually talk to one another, just passed each other with a friendly smile and that was it. I’m guessing that’s what motivated her to have her friends invite us to party with them.
I think it’ll be fun. Andrew and I spend one hundred percent of our time alone with each other, and I think it’ll be good for both of us to step out for a while and associate with others more. And he didn’t have any objections, so I’m guessing he probably thinks it couldn’t hurt, either.
The drive to this “private” spot feels more like an hour.
Their Jeep turns left onto a partially paved road and the farther we follow, the bumpier the drive. Their headlights bounce through the darkness in front of us until finally the tree-enveloped road opens up into a wide area of rocks and sand. Andrew pulls up beside them and shuts off the engine.
“Well, it’s definitely secluded,” I say as I get out of the car.
Andrew comes up next to me, gazing out at the deserted beach. He takes my hand. “We can turn back now, there’s still time,” he taunts me. “Once they get us away from the car, it might be the last time we ever see each other.” He squeezes my hand and pulls me closer to him playfully.
“I think we’ll manage,” I say just as the last of them pile out of the Jeep and meet us at the back of the vehicles.
Tate opens the back of the Jeep and lifts out a giant ice chest and drops it in the sand. “We’ve got plenty of beer,” he says, lifting the lid and reaching inside.
He tosses a bottle of Corona to Andrew. Not Andrew’s first choice of beer, I know, but he won’t turn one down, either.
Bray and her fiancé, I can’t even remember his name, step up together beside me while Tate pops the cap on another bottle of Corona and hands it out to me.
I take it. “Thanks.”
Andrew pops the cap on his with the bottle opener he keeps on his key ring.
“If you’ve got any blankets to lie on, might want to bring one,” Tate says. His girlfriend joins him, passing me a smile as she walks in between us wearing her skimpy white bikini. “And I’ve got a kickass system in this baby,” he adds, patting the back of the Jeep with his hand, “so I’ve also got the music covered.”
Andrew pops the trunk and grabs the blanket he always keeps back there, the same one we used the night we tried to sleep in that field last July. Only now, thanks to me, it has been washed and doesn’t stink like oil and car funk.
“Where are my shorts?” I ask, rummaging around in the backseat.
“There right here,” Andrew says from the trunk. When I lean out of the car, he throws them toward me, and I catch them in midair.
“I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I say, slipping them on over my red bikini bottoms.
Overhearing, Bray says, “I’m glad I’m not the only one!”
I smile over the roof of the Chevelle at her and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before with them?”
Tate and the others are walking toward the beach now carrying the ice chest, beach bags, and other random items. They leave the doors open on the Jeep with the speakers blasting rock music.
“We did last night,” Bray says, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel pretty early.”
Elias, yeah, that’s her fiancé’s name. He shakes his head and gives her the sarcastic yeah-thanks-for-telling-everybody look.
Andrew and I walk alongside Bray and Elias, hand in hand toward everybody else already setting up camp not too far out, closer to the water. As we step up and lay our blanket out on the sand, Tate lights a match and tosses it onto a pile of tree branches. The flame ignites the lighter fluid he had already squirted all over the pile. A tall, searing rod of fire curls up over the top of the pile and illuminates the darkness all around us with a dancing orange glow. Already the heat from the flames are making me hot, so I slide our blanket a few feet farther away from the bonfire before Andrew and I sit down on it. Bray and Elias follow suit with two giant beach towels. Tate, his brother, and the other three girls all share a large quilt. I dig the bottom of my beer bottle into the sand beside me so that it sits upright.
Tate makes me think of those really blond, tanned California surfers. Like every guy here, including Andrew, Tate sits with his knees bent upward and his arms propped on them at the wrists. And as I’m quietly checking everybody else out, I catch something briefly in the corner of my eye that instantly puts me into territorial mode. The blonde sitting next to Tate’s brother, who I doubt is his girlfriend because they don’t act like they’re together, is watching Andrew with hungry eyes. I don’t just mean the innocent look-but-won’t-touch kind. No, this girl would try to sleep with him the second I walked away.
When she notices me watching her, she looks away and starts talking to the other girl beside her.
I don’t have anything to worry about where Andrew is concerned, but if she disrespected me knowing he’s my fiancé, I would not think twice about kicking her ass.
I wonder if Andrew noticed.
Andrew
I hope Camryn didn’t notice the look that chick was giving me just now. Five seconds alone with that one anywhere out here, and she’d try to get me to fuck her. No way in hell would I ever entertain that, but this bonfire party just got a bit more interesting.
I’d bet my left nut she has slept with Tate and his brother already. Probably not Elias—he seems like the loyal type—but she’d do him, too, if he was up for it.
Shit, she just looked at me again.
I glance over at Camryn to keep from meeting the chick’s gaze and sure enough, Camryn’s got that telling smile on her face. Yeah, she definitely saw it.
I reach out, pick Camryn up, and set her between my legs.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I whisper into her ear, and then I kiss her neck to make sure the chick sees it.
“I’m not worried,” Camryn says, lying back against my chest.
She’s not worried about me, sure, but I can feel the territorial tension coming off her body. Damn, the thought of her throwin’ down on that girl over me…OK, I shouldn’t think about that. Fuck. Too late.
“Those are some wicked fuckin’ tattoos,” Tate points out.
Everyone is eyeing mine and Camryn’s ink now. Camryn lifts away from my chest to give them a better look.
“Yeah, no doubt,” Bray says, enthralled. She crawls across the sand closer toward us. “I’ve been curious about them.”
The blonde chick eyeing me moments ago sneers at Camryn, though Camryn doesn’t notice, as she’s too busy showing the tattoo to Bray.
I use this opportunity to my advantage. “Turn around here, babe, and show them how it fits.” I lift Camryn around on my lap and then lay my back against the sand, bringing her body down on top of mine.
The group watches closely, the blonde chick’s face turning faintly bitter when I look right at her while at the same time pressing my body against Camryn’s. We line up our tattoos to form a seamless picture of Orpheus and Eurydice; my Eurydice wearing a long, flowing see-through white gown pushed against her body by the wind, wisps of flowing fabric blowing behind her as she reaches out her arms to Orpheus inked along Camryn’s ribs. Bray gawks down at the detail, her dark eyes wide with awe. She glances back at Elias and now he looks nervous, as though he’s worried Bray is going to drag him to the closest tattoo parlor after tonight.
“That. Is. Awesome,” Bray says. “Who are they?”
“Orpheus and Eurydice,” I answer. “From the Greek legend.”
“A tragic tale of true love,” Camryn adds.
I squeeze my arms around her.
“Well, nothing seems tragic about the two of you,” Tate says.
I squeeze Camryn even tighter, both of us sharing private thoughts that are better kept to ourselves. I kiss the top of her hair.
Bray leans away, still sitting with her knees in front of her pressed into the sand. “I think it’s beautiful. And I guess it better be because I know that had to hurt like hell.”
“Yeah, it definitely hurt,” Camryn says. “But it was worth every hour of pain.”
Sometime later, Camryn and I have both gone through at least three Coronas each, but she’s the only one of us who shows it. She’s a little buzzed, but just enough that it’s making her more talkative.
“I know!” she says to the black-haired Bray. “I saw them in concert with my best friend, Nat, and they were amazing! Not too many bands who sound almost just like they do on their album.”
“Yeah, that’s the truth,” Bray says and finishes off her beer. “Did you say you’re from North Carolina?”
Camryn lifts her back from my chest and sits Indian style on the sand.
“Yeah, but Andrew and I don’t really live there now.”
“Where do you live?” Tate asks. He takes a long pull from his cigarette and holds the smoke in his lungs while he goes on. “Texas?”
Everyone turns to look at me when I answer, “No, we sort of…travel.”
“Travel?” Bray asks. “What, like driving around in an RV?”
“Not exactly,” Camryn says. “We just have the car.”
The blonde-haired girl who has been eyeing me all night speaks up: “Why do you travel?”
I notice the look in her eye right away, the one where she’s trying her hardest to get my attention, but I ignore it and answer, looking back over at Bray next to us, “We play music together.”
“What, you’re like in a band?” the blonde girl asks.
I look right at her this time. “Sort of,” I say, but that’s all I give her, and I turn my attention back to Bray.
“What kind of music do you play?” Tate’s brother, Caleb, asks. He’s been getting comfortable with the other girl since we got here. They’re probably not together, either, but he’s definitely getting laid tonight.
“Classic rock, blues, and folk rock, stuff like that,” I answer and take a swig of my beer.
“You’ll have to play for us!” Bray says excitedly.
Clearly, she’s about as buzzed as Camryn, and the two of them seem to get along good.
Camryn swings around on the sand to see me, her eyes wide and enthusiastic. “You could. You’ve got the acoustic in the backseat.”
I shake my head. “Nah, I’m not up to it right now.”
“Oh come on, baby, why not?”
There are those puppy-dog eyes and Camryn’s trademark whine, which never fail to make me do whatever she wants. But I play around with it for a moment longer, hoping maybe she’ll give in and say never mind.
Of course, she doesn’t.
“Yeah, man, if you’ve got a guitar with you and know how to play, that’d be awesome,” Tate says.
By now, everyone is looking right at me—even Camryn, who is really the only one of them I’m going to do it for.
Giving in, I get up, head back to the car, and return carrying the guitar. “You’re going to sing with me,” I say to Camryn as I sit back down beside her.
“Nooo! I’m too buzzed!” She kisses me on the mouth and then moves over to sit next to Bray and Elias, I guess to give me some space.
“All right, what do you want me to sing?”
The question was for Camryn, but Tate answers, “Hey, whatever you feel like, man.”
I run a few different songs through my head for a minute and finally choose this one because it’s so short. I mess around with the strings a few times, tune it real quick, and then start to play “Ain’t No Sunshine.” I began not really giving a shit about how good it was, but like always, once I start, I become someone else and put everything I’ve got into it. My eyes stay closed through most of the song, but I can always feel the energy of those around me, whether they’re getting into it or not.
All of them are.
By the second chorus, I lock eyes with Camryn as I strum the strings. She sits in the sand on her knees, her body swaying side to side. The other girls are doing the same, getting into the music heavily. I belt out the last chorus, and that one song is all it takes for me to want to play more. Bray can hardly contain herself, telling me how great it was and being very attentive to Camryn, which makes her all right in my book. Unlike the blonde who has her eyes on me a little more than before.
“Man, you weren’t fuckin’ playing’ around,” Tate says.
He lights up a joint.
“Play another one,” Bray says, lying against Elias again, as he wraps his arms around her from behind.
Tate passes the joint to Camryn first. She just looks at it for a second, unsure about whether or not she should. I see a trace of pain flash over her face; I know she was recalling her moment of weakness with the painkillers. She shakes her head. “No thanks, I think I’ll just stick to liquor tonight.”
I smile inwardly, proud of her decision. And when Tate offers it to me next, I follow suit, not because I wouldn’t mind a hit or two, but because I can’t bring myself to enjoy it when Camryn won’t.
I’ve never been much of a pot smoker, but it’s all right every once in a while. Right now isn’t one of those times.
I play a few more songs by the bonfire. Camryn finally does sing one with me, and then I just want to kick back with my girl and enjoy the rare high. I set my guitar down beside us on the blanket and pull Camryn onto my lap again.
Tate’s brother has been sucking face with that girl and feeling her up for a while. They don’t talk much, for obvious reasons. The blonde who had been eyeing me earlier has finally taken the hint, I think. Either that or she’s too stoned out of her mind to care about me anymore.
The music from Tate’s Jeep gets loud again, and he walks away from it carrying a bottle of Seagram’s 7, a two-liter of Sprite, and a stack of plastic cups. His girlfriend starts mixing the drinks and passing cups around.
“Have at it, man,” Tate urges us. “Don’t worry about having to drive anywhere tonight. Cops don’t even know about this place.”
“Yeah, sure I’ll have a cup,” I say.
I look to Camryn, recalling the look on her face when Tate passed her the joint earlier. “”I won’t if you don’t want to,” I say.
Aside from not wanting her to feel like she’s betraying herself by getting too drunk, I don’t want her getting so messed up she’s miserable in the morning, either.
“No, I’m good, baby. I’ll just have one cup, all right?”
She smiles sweetly up at me like she’s waiting on me to give her permission, which I find extremely fucking cute.
“All right,” I give in, not wanting to hurt her feelings, and she takes the cup from Tate’s girlfriend.
We all sit back, drink, and talk about all kinds of random shit for the longest time. Camryn is laughing and smiling and carrying on with Bray about tampons, which I have no idea how that topic came up, nor do I want to know, but we’re having a great time. Music by bands I’ve never heard of before carry loudly through the speakers not far away, and I find myself intrigued by the last few songs that have played, which I’m sure are the same singer.
“Who is that?” I ask Tate.
He looks up from his girlfriend, who is lying with her head in his lap. “Who? The band?”
“Yeah,” I say. “They’re pretty awesome.”
“That, my friend, is Dax Riggs. Solo now. He started out in Acid Bath, I think—” He looks up in thought, as though unsure. “Well he’s been in a few different bands. Acid Bath and Agents of Oblivion are the best known.”
“Y’know, I think I’ve heard of Acid Bath before,” I say and take another drink of my gin and Sprite.
“Wouldn’t be surprised,” Tate adds.
“I’ll have to check out his stuff. Is he underground?”
Camryn, breaking free from her tampon conversation with Bray, moves back over next to me and lays her head on my shoulder.
“Yeah, he never went mainstream,” Tate says. “Good thing, though, ’cause mainstream is bullshit. It pisses me off to see great bands sell out by doing toothpaste commercials ’n’ shit.”
I laugh lightly. “Yeah, definitely. I’d never sign a contract with a record label, if I’m ever offered one.”
“I hear ya, man,” Tate says. “Once you do that, you’re their bitch. Your music is no longer yours, and you’re bending over for the jackoffs that sign your checks.”
I’m starting to kind of like this guy. Just a little.
“Andrew, I need to pee,” Camryn says.
I look over at her. Taking her cup from her hand, I set it on the sand. “I need to take a piss, too,” I say to her and Tate both.
Tate points to the left with another cigarette between his fingers and says, “Go around that way. There’s no glass and shit to step on over there.”
I set my cup down beside Camryn’s and help her up. We walk with her through the sand toward a dark patch of trees and rocks until we’re far enough away that no one can see us.
“We’re gonna have to sleep out here tonight. No way I can drive us home.”
She squats down while I piss a few feet over from her. “I know,” she says. “I guess we’ll finally get to sleep under the stars, huh?”
I’m laughing inside at her. My baby’s so damn drunk she’s slurring a little.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I say. “Though you should know it doesn’t really count because you’ll barely remember it in the morning.”
“Yes I will.”
“Naaah, you won’t.”
She almost falls over when she’s done and pushes herself back into a stand. I grab ahold of her arm and slip mine around her waist from behind. Then I kiss her on the top of the head. “I love you so much.”
I don’t know why I felt so compelled to say that in this moment, but just having her next to me and knowing that she’s in no condition to take care of herself tonight, I needed to say it. The words were there in the back of my throat and, I admit it, they were starting to choke me up. I would blame it on the alcohol, but no, even completely sober I love her just as fucking much.
She wraps both arms around my waist, nestles her head against my chest as we start to head back, and squeezes me. “I love you, too.”
24
As the night wears on, things happening in our small group begin to shift. People are talking less and making out more. Bray and Elias are lying down next to each other on one side of the bonfire. Tate and his girlfriend might as well be fucking already; only thing left to do is take off their clothes. Thankfully, the shady blonde chick is over me and is helping her friend feel Caleb up about eight feet away from Camryn and me.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have a feeling I know where this is heading. No big deal. It’s not like I’ve never been in a situation like this before, but this time my main focus isn’t trying to please two chicks at once. I just need to keep Camryn away from their shit.
Just as I start to roll over onto my side to talk to Camryn lying next to me, the whole fucking world comes out from under me. I try to lift my head. I think. My eyes feel like fairies are dancing on top of them. With them open.
“Oh shit…,” I say out loud, but then, maybe I didn’t. Maybe it was all in my head.
I raise my hand in front of my face and it looks like the moon is sitting between my thumb and index finger. I try to shake it off, but it’s too damn heavy and it weighs my arm down. I feel my elbow hit the sand like an eighty-pound weight.
My head is spinning. The color of the fire is blue and yellow and dark red. The sound of the ocean is tripled in my ears, blending with the crackling of the wood on the fire and someone moaning.
“Camryn? Where are you?”
“Andrew? I…I’m right here. I think.”
I can’t even tell if that was really her voice.
I squint my eyes tightly and reopen them again, trying to focus, but I realize I don’t want to focus. I’m smiling. My face feels so stretched out that I’m afraid for a second that it’s not gonna stop stretching and it’s going to rip my face in half. But then it’s OK.
Oh my fucking God…I’m trippin’. What. The. Fuck. Did they give to me?
I try to stand up, but when I think I’m standing I look down and see that I haven’t moved at all. I try again with the same result.
Why can I not stand up?!
“Holy fuck, Tate,” I hear a voice say but I can’t even make out if it’s male or female. “This is some good shit. Ho-ly fuck. I’m seeing rainbows and shit. It’s the Reading Fucking Rainbow…”
Then whoever just said that starts singing the Reading Rainbow song.
I feel like I’m in Crazy Town, but I don’t really wanna leave.
Finally, I lay flat on my back and double-check my position by patting the sand on either side of me with the palms of my heavy hands. Then I look up at the star-filled sky and watch the stars move back and forth across the blackness in a poetic pattern.
Camryn’s face appears on my chest like a ghost out of mist.
“Baby?” I ask. “Are you all right?”
I’m worried about her, but I can’t stop smiling.
“Yeah. I’m goooood. I’m good.”
“Lay by me,” I tell her.
I shut my eyes when I feel her head on my chest, and I smell the shampoo she always uses, but it’s so much stronger than before. Everything is stronger. Every sound. The feel of the wind on my face. Dax Riggs singing “Night Is the Notion” in the background somewhere that my mind tells me is far away, but it’s so goddamn loud it’s like the Jeep is right next to my head. I can almost smell the rubber from the tires.
And I can’t help it. I start singing “Night Is the Notion” as loud as I can. I don’t know how I know all the words already, but I know them. I fucking know them. And it feels like the song is going on for hours and I don’t care. Eventually, I stop singing along and just close my eyes and feel the music move through me. And I don’t care about anything right now except the moment. And I’m horny as fuck. It takes me a second—I think—to realize that my dick feels the same breeze that my face feels. And it feels good.
“Camryn? What? Yes.”
I don’t even know what I’m saying, or if I’m really saying anything at all. My mind tells me that I need to make sure she’s not so messed up that she’s giving me a blow job in front of these people, but at the same time I don’t want her to stop.
My breath catches and my head falls over to one side. I see Caleb on top of one of those chicks, her naked thighs crushed around his thrusting body. I look away. I stare back up at the sky. Traces of light move back and forth as the stars move. I shudder when I feel my dick hit the back of her throat.
I look down. I see blonde hair. I reach out to touch it, part of me wanting to pull her away, the other part wanting to force her to take it deeper. I end up doing the latter, but when I throw my head back and see Camryn’s face lying next to mine, I snap upward from the shoulders.
“Get off me, bitch!” I manage to get out.
I kick her off of me and the high does a one eighty. I’m not enjoying it anymore.
I force myself to sit upright. I try smacking myself in the head with both hands hoping to jar myself sober, but it does jack shit. I manage to get my dick back in my shorts, and I look across the sand through the fire to see that slutty bitch already passed out next to Caleb. I don’t know how much time has gone by, but everybody is passed out but me.
I’m panicking. I can’t fucking breathe. What the fuck just happened?
I roll over onto my side and grab Camryn, forcing her next to me, and I don’t let her go.
And that’s the last thing I remember.
Camryn
I feel sick. God, I’ve never, ever, had a hangover like this before. The early morning sun and the breeze coming off the ocean wake me up. At first I just lay here because I’m afraid if I move I’m going to throw up. My head is pounding, the tips of my fingers are numb, the rest of my body a nauseous, trembling mess. I moan and open my eyes the rest of the way, pressing one arm horizontally across my stomach. I know there’s no way I’m getting off this beach without puking for a good five minutes first, but I try to hold it back as long as I can.
My cheek is pressed into the sand beneath me. I feel grains sticking to my skin. Very carefully, I reach up a finger and shuffle it away before it gets inside my eye.
I hear a thwap followed by a cracking noise and shouting.
Against the argument from my stomach, I roll over onto my other side facing the ocean.
“Get off of him!” I hear a girl scream.
That wakes me up even more, and for a split second I realize just how out of it I really was. But I’m wide awake now. I raise my head from the sand to see Andrew pummeling Tate with his fists.
“Andrew!” I try to shout, but my throat is sore and my voice is hoarse, so I only manage to croak out his name instead. “Andrew!” I say again, gaining more control over my voice.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?!” Tate yells.
He’s trying to back away from Andrew, but Andrew just keeps coming. He punches him again and again, this time knocking Tate on his ass in the sand.
Then Tate’s brother joins in and spears Andrew from the side. They both fall off of Tate and roll several feet. Andrew grabs Caleb by the throat and lifts him over his body, throwing him hard against the sand, and is on top of him in seconds. He punches Caleb three times before Tate is behind him, pulling him backward and away.
“Chill the fuck out, man!” Tate screams.
But Andrew rounds on him catching his chin with an uppercut, and I hear another stomach-turning crunch. Tate stumbles backward, holding his hand over his jaw.
“You drugged us! I’ll fucking kill you!” Andrew roars.
I finally manage to get to my feet, though I stumble once before I make it over to him. Just as I go to grab his arm to try pulling him away, I’m pushed hard on my ass from behind. I don’t even know what happened, but for a second it knocks the breath from my lungs. I look up to see Caleb on top of Andrew. I must’ve been caught in the crossfire of Caleb’s attack on Andrew from behind.
I raise my body back out of the sand and see Elias coming our way.
In a panic, I look to both sides of me and back at Elias seemingly in slow motion. Are all three of them about to gang up on Andrew? Oh no way in hell! I start to grab Tate while he and Caleb are punching Andrew, but I’m pushed out of the way by Elias.
“Move!” he growls at me.
Andrew manages to hold his own well against Tate and Caleb, he’s still on his feet and he’s still returning punches with both of them, but if Elias joins in, I don’t think he’ll be able to fight all three of them.
Elias jumps in, and I can’t tell who’s hitting who when a pair of hands grab me underneath the arms from behind.
“Stay back here with me, girl,” Bray says.
Amid my confusion and dread, I see Elias punching Caleb and relief washes over my body, though it’s short-lived.
Andrew’s mouth is bleeding. But then all four of them are bleeding somewhere. I think the fight is going to go on forever, and with each blow Andrew gives and receives, I wince and shut my eyes, just wanting to block it all out of my head. I’m sitting in the sand with Bray’s arms wrapped around me from behind, because she still thinks I’ll try jumping into the fight myself. But I’m right back to feeling like I’m going to puke, and I can hardly move. Sweat is beading off my forehead. The back of my neck feels clammy. The sky is starting to spin.
“Oh no. Bray…I think I’m—”
I lose it right there. I feel my body heave violently out of her grasp and my hands come down in front of me, digging into the sand. My back arches and falls, arches and falls, as I vomit over and over and over again. Oh God, please make it stop. I’ll never drink again! Please just make it stop! But it seems like I never stop. The more I vomit, the more my body reacts to the smell of it, the sound of it, the taste of it, and it just makes me vomit that much more. I can barely hear the fighting in the background anymore over my own noises and the dry heaving when there’s nothing left in my stomach to come up. Finally, I fall over onto my side. I can’t move. My body is shaking uncontrollably, my skin is both cold and hot and now clammy all over. I feel Bray sitting next to me.
“You’ll be all right,” I hear her say. “Wow, that stuff really messed you up.”
“What was it?” I ask, and right when I do, pieces of my memory from last night start to come back to me.
I don’t even hear if she answered my question, or not.
I remember that everything was fine, just a normal kind of drunk, until shortly after we started drinking the gin. And then out of nowhere, I couldn’t see anything directly in front of me because it was way too close. I kept focusing my eyes at things farther out, the ocean and the stars and the light from the boats moving across the water in the distance. I remember thinking that a ship was coming toward us and that it was going to crash onto the beach. But I didn’t care. I thought it was…beautiful. It was going to kill us all, but it was beautiful. And I remember hearing Andrew singing this sexy song. I laid my head on his chest and listened to him sing. I wanted to crawl on top of him and get naked, and I would have if I could’ve moved.
And I remember…
Wait.
That blonde bitch. She asked me…wait.
I raise my body from the sand.
“I think you need to lay still for a bit,” Bray says.
My fingertips come up to my forehead.
I remember her sitting next to me and Bray. She was as messed up as the rest of us, but I didn’t feel jealous of her anymore. She talked to us for a while, and I didn’t mind.
As it’s all coming back to me, my body is starting to shake more.
She tried to kiss me. I think I kissed her back…
I think I’m going to be sick again.
I draw my knees up and rest my elbows on top of them, burying my face in my hands. I’m still so dizzy. I still feel like I’m not done puking. I don’t have that great feeling of relief after vomiting. No, the need to be sick just intensified, this time brought on by my nerves.
The rest is coming back to me and even though I want to force it out of my mind, I don’t.
She asked me if she could sleep with me and Andrew. Yeah, I remember now. But…oh God…I thought she really meant to sleep, but I realize now that I was so high I didn’t know she meant it sexually.
I told her I didn’t care.
Then I remember her…
My breath catches. My hand flies to my mouth, my eyes are wide and stinging from the breeze.
I remember her giving Andrew a blow job.
Trying to push myself to my feet, I feel Bray’s hand on my back.
“Girl, come on,” she says, pulling me back down on the sand with her. “Don’t go over there. You’ll just get hurt.”
I jerk my wrist from her hand and try to get up again, but the sudden movements mixed with the frayed nerves just sends me back into a dry-heaving episode.
Then I hear Andrew above me.
“Shit,” he says to Bray. “Will you run to my car and get a bottle of water out of the ice chest in the back?”
Bray takes off to do it.
Andrew rolls me over onto his legs just as I stop dry-heaving. He brushes my hair away from my eyes and my mouth.
“They fucking drugged us, baby,” he says.
My eyes open a crack to see him above me, his palms resting on my cheeks.
“I’m going to kill that bitch. I swear to God, Andrew.”
The look in his eyes is that of a person being stunned. He probably didn’t know that I knew. “She’s still passed out. Baby, I’m…”
The guilt in his face cuts through me. “Andrew, I know what happened,” I say. “I know you thought she was me. I saw what you did.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, gritting his teeth. Moisture is forming around his eyes. “I should’ve known it wasn’t you. I’m so fucking sorry. I should’ve known.” His hands tighten a little around my face.
I’m about to tell him to stop blaming himself when Elias comes over to us.
“I’m sorry, man, we didn’t know. I swear.”
“I believe you,” Andrew says.
Bray comes back with the water, and I’m already regaining some of my strength. I lift myself up and sit upright, lying against Andrew’s bare chest. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me so hard, like he’s afraid I’m going to get up and run away.
Then he reaches out and takes the bottle from Bray. He twists off the top and pours some in his hand and wipes it across my forehead and mouth. The coolness of it instantly soothes me.
“Look man, I’m sorry,” Tate says, coming up behind us. “We thought you wouldn’t care. We just dropped some in everybody’s drinks. Being generous. We didn’t bring you out here with any fucked-up intentions.”
Andrew manages to carefully move away from me, though still so fast I barely felt his absence and he punches Tate again. A nauseating crunch echoes through the space around us.
“Please, Andrew!” I shout.
Elias grabs Andrew and Caleb grabs Tate, holding them off of each other.
Andrew lets Elias hold him back, but he shakes him off and turns back to me, helping me up from the ground.
“Let’s go,” he says. He starts to carry me, but I shake my head at him, letting him know that I’m OK to walk on my own.
He grabs his guitar and I grab our blanket, and we head toward the Chevelle.
“Maybe we should give Bray and Elias a ride back,” I say.
Andrew tosses the guitar in the trunk and takes the blanket from me, throwing it back there with it. Then he walks over to his side of the car, lays his arms across the roof and then his head in between them. He takes a deep breath and then slams his fist down on the metal. “God damn it!” he shouts and hits it again.
Instead of trying to talk some sense into him, I decide to let him cool down on his own. I look at him with a kind expression from the other side of the car. And then I get inside and close the door. He stays there for a minute longer until I hear him say, “I’ll give you two a ride back if you want.”
Elias and Bray, carrying their stuff, approach the car and get in the backseat.
Andrew
25
I don’t even know how I find our way back so easily. I think at one point, I didn’t care much if we got lost. But I get us back without a wrong turn or having to pull over and ask for directions. Not much is said between the four of us. And the little that was spoken, I don’t remember any of it.
We pull into the parking lot of the hotel and part ways with Elias and Bray. Maybe I would’ve thanked Elias or wished them luck on the rest of their trip, or maybe even invited them with us somewhere tonight, but given the circumstances all I can do is nod when they thank us for the ride.
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