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.
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 fiance, 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 fiance’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 fiance, I would not think twice about kicking her ass.
I wonder if Andrew noticed.
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.
