“Not quite.” Miller jerked his chin at James. “How long will he wait?”
“As long as I need him to.” I lit a clove cigarette and waved away the smoke and their curious stares. “But fear not, James is being well-compensated for his time.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Miller and Ronan led me down and isolated stretch of beach that grew increasingly difficult to navigate. Cliffs loomed over us, and the path became narrow and strewn with rocks. Water lapped at my boots, ruining them with sand and salt.
Maybe they’re going to murder me and dump my body in the ocean.
After the insanity of the party, I wouldn’t have been too surprised.
Eventually, the path led away from the surf and became easier to navigate. After climbing over a particularly large porous rock, we arrived at a small fisherman’s shack, built against a heavy boulder. It had its own stretch of beach and a bonfire pit that faced the ocean, now a safe distance back. Rocks that had spilled down from the cliffside blocked the way farther east, protecting the shack from interlopers.
I peered inside the small space. Not much to see. Moonlight poured in from a window roughly cut into the wall, illuminating a wooden bench and table.
“Not bad. Could use a few upgrades.”
Ronan lit a bonfire while Miller crashed heavily onto one of the three rocks that ringed the firepit like makeshift chairs. He rummaged in his backpack and poured a few gummies into his palm.
“CBD?” I asked. “Sharing is caring, Stratton.”
“Not CBD. Glucose. I have diabetes.”
I sank down on my own rock-chair, the news hitting me surprisingly hard. I barely knew the guy but something told me he suffered enough already. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Thanks,” he said as Ronan got the fire roaring with a bottle of lighter fluid. “What did you do to piss off River Whitmore?”
I put him on the spot, like an asshole.
“I pissed off a lot of people tonight. You’ll have to be more specific.”
“The quarterback. When you were playing that Seven Minutes game.”
“Ah, yes,” I said and cast my gaze to the black ocean bearded in white froth as it crashed and retreated. “Don’t remember.”
“You sure?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was hoping you kicked him in the nuts.”
“Do tell.”
Miller thought about answering for a moment, then shook his head tiredly. “Not tonight.”
“Fair enough,” I said, glad that the subject was dropped.
Ronan went inside the Shack (with a Capital S) and emerged with beer bottles in his hands. I gratefully took one, but Miller passed.
“Still feeling low,” he said and took a bottle of orange juice from his backpack.
Twenty yards away, the ocean crashed and retreated, and the wind was cool and bracing. Calming.
An ocean, I decided, wasn’t like a lake. An ocean was alive and moving—energy flowing through it, rising up and crashing, washing against jagged, broken rock and leaving it smooth.
A lake was sinister. Still. Its cold, black water suffused your every pore, and if it sucked you down, it wouldn’t leave a trace.
I shivered and tried to do what Dr. Lange had always suggested—to ground myself in the present moment where the past couldn’t touch me.
“It’s nice here,” I said. “Really fucking nice. Like I can just…breathe.”
Miller nodded. “Same.”
“Same,” said Ronan from his rock chair on the other side of Miller.
On the drive over, I’d learned that Ronan had recently moved to Santa Cruz from Wisconsin, which meant he and Miller had only known each other for a handful of days and yet were already perfectly at ease. I glanced around at the fire, the Shack, the ocean, and the two friends sitting in companionable silence.
I have all the money in the world, but the things I want most cannot be bought.
“Do you guys hang out here a lot?”
“All the time,” Miller said. “You’re welcome to come here too. Anytime. Mi casa es su casa. Except it’s not a house. How do you say, our shitty shack is your shitty shack in Spanish?”
“Nuestra choza de mierda es tu choza de mierda,” I said quickly to cover the swell of happiness that threatened to turn me into a puddle of goop the way Beatriz tried to do with her lunch.
Miller’s brows rose. “You speak Spanish?”
“And French. Italian. A little Portuguese and some Greek.”
“You some kind of genius?” Ronan asked.
“So they say. My IQ is 153.”
Miller whistled his disbelief.
“Sounds as if it could be helpful, right?”
“Helpful?” He scoffed. “That’s like having the answer key to life.”
“If only,” I said, relishing how easily I fell into conversation with these guys. “As far as I can tell, it just means the nonstop thoughts in my head are more cunning and can torment me in multiple languages.”
A short silence fell, and I held my breath, waiting for ridicule or for them to kick me off their beach.
“So,” Miller said finally. “Do I email you all my homework assignments directly or do you prefer hardcopy?”
Warmth flooded me. “No chance, Stratton.”
“Worth a shot.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty damn perfect, right here,” I said after a few minutes. “Like we’re at the edge of the world and no one can touch us.”
“Yep,” Miller said, and Ronan nodded.
I sucked in a deep breath. Here goes nothing. Or everything.
“I’m gay,” I said. “I just wanted to get that out there. In case it wasn’t obvious. Is that going to be a problem?”
Miller’s brows came together. “No. Why would it?”
“Ask my parents,” I said, hope rising in my chest. I looked to Ronan. “How about you?”
Ronan downed the rest of his beer and threw the bottle aside. “No, I’m not gay.”
Miller and I exchanged glances then and our laughter came
