Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (19 page)

“Why?” Tank asked, and I hung on every word.

“Because it takes a perfectly good meaningless sexual encounter and makes it . . .”

“What?” I asked.

“Mean something,” Stone answered as if the words tasted bad in his mouth.

“Did you like her chewing on you?” Tank returned again to the teeth marks on his neck.

“Fuck no. I couldn’t relax. I’m all for creativity, but there should be some sense of safety when fucking. I was scared to death she’d bite my balls.” Stone ate a fork full of his Famous Eggs Delmarva and surveyed the Starboard. He leaned into the table, and the three of us followed. “Then, right before she was about to come, she screamed at me to choke her.” He shook his head. “Fucking. Freak.”

“At least she wasn’t crying,” Jack said. His words were low. This was a private meeting.

“It’s a goddamn freak show out there after midnight.”

We ate the rest of our breakfasts in silence. There seemed to be nothing more to talk about. The world was full of freaks, more so when you took your clothes off with them. Finally full and after three pitchers of water and another round of Bloody Marys, we dragged ourselves back to the street. You couldn’t force a beer down my throat Monday through Thursday. I saved all my alcohol consumption for the forty-eight hours I spent at the beach every weekend. It was the only way my liver survived.

Stone stopped on the corner and pointed down the street to the store with the overwhelming collection of rafts for sale. “I’m going in there to see if they have anything to cover this.” He pointed to the bite marks.

Chairs the color of the sea lined the sidewalk with pinks and reds dotted in between them. There were blow-up pools leaning against the wall of the building and plastic torsos with T-shirts hanging from a sign behind the chairs. Even from two blocks away, we could see the second-floor balcony with rafts of all different sizes and varieties hanging from it. I’d had an American Flag raft when I was little. What hung from the sides of this building were giant, two-person happy faces, pretzels, ducks, swans, and Tabasco sauce rafts. It was difficult to take it all in, and almost impossible to imagine Stone as a part of it.

“You’re going in there?” I pointed to Jeremiah’s.

“Yeah.” He, as usual, acted like I was stupid.

“Get us a raft,” Tank said and then walked across the street without another word.

“Where the fuck is he going?” Stone asked. We all watched Tank stroll toward the beach, completely oblivious to the fact he’d just left us without saying good bye.

“I don’t know,” Jack said. He seemed scarred from the night before. “Get us a raft, though. Something fun more than one of us can float on.”

“What am I? Your dad? Get your own fucking raft.” Stone walked down the street and disappeared into the cloud of blow-up rafts, and Jack and I turned back toward our house in silence.

I wasn’t sure what to say. It didn’t appear Jack wanted to talk about last night, and I definitely didn’t want to talk about any of it. Whether he liked her. If she was a virgin. What that meant to him. We stopped at the next block, and he smiled at me the way he always did. I forgot what I was worried about. It was Jack.

“Did you have fun last night?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “I drank too much, though.” The heat was making me feel sick. The walk was too long. “I’m never going to feel hydrated again.”

“You will. I’d stay out of the sun until you do, though.”

I basked for a moment in Jack’s concern. “Where do you think Tank went?”

“Something caught his attention. It happens with him.”

We turned the corner onto our street. The rest of Dewey was rising from the dead and venturing out for breakfast.

“Jack?”

He stopped and turned to me without any recognition of the heat. He had plenty of time for me.

“Tank said some things to me last night that I’m not sure I understood.”

He smiled and kept walking. He nodded for me to follow him inside. “You’ll wilt out here.” Once we reached the shade of our porch, he turned the box fan on high and pointed it toward my side of our porch. “Do you want water?”

I shook my head and collapsed onto my bed. “I have some.”

Jack laid down next to me. “Was he cruel to you?”

“No.” I wasn’t sure if I’d heard him right. “What?”

“Sometimes Tank gets into a . . . a mood, and it can be a little scary.”

I shook my head. “No. He’s never scared me.”

“Good. Tank’s different. Not always in the most common ways.”

“I know.” I left it at that. I didn’t want to speak negatively about Tank. He was the kindest person I’d ever met, but last night’s conversation left me feeling responsible for something I didn’t understand.

I rested my head on Jack’s chest. He was warm, too. I closed my eyes and traced back over the memories of the last few days. Tank wasn’t the only thing I didn’t understand. I fell asleep on Jack and didn’t wake up until after lunch. He was the most comfortable place in the house.

I felt like a truck had hit me, but then I thought of Mr. Howe’s claim, and I closed my eyes again. The depth of his loss stunned me in the afternoon light. What would fill the hole his son had left behind? I rolled over, away from Jack, and slowly my eyes focused on an enormous Popsicle raft covering Jack’s entire bed. It was a rainbow pop, and I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of it.

I sat up and shook Jack’s arm. “Jack. Jack, wake up.”

“What?” His voice was heavy, swarmed by exhaustion.

“It’s time to go swimming.” He pulled me back down next to him and spooned me. “Look at your bed.”

He lifted his head above my shoulders and said through squinted eyes, “What the fuck?”

I laughed at the sight of it. “Stone’s a good dad.”

STUPID. FUCKING. VIRGINITY.

T
he street in front of the house was empty. The driveway was barren except for Jack’s motorcycle. The entire town had fallen into quiet time at the preschool. The seagulls squawking in the air above the back bay were the only disturbance to the tranquility. It was the hangover of the beginning of the summer. It was the calm before the storm. It was Thursday night.

Rob and Blaire were at her roommate’s wedding. Heather might never be back. Tank had said he had to work all weekend because his father was enduring the prep for a colonoscopy on Monday. Mila and Stone had offhandedly said they were coming down tonight, and there were always a handful of half shares I still hadn’t made the effort to learn the names of who’d arrive tomorrow. It’d been nine weekends since Jack had appeared in my room, replacing the inevitable revolving door of half shares with his likeable self. I was thankful. I wondered if he felt the same.

The screen door screeched as I pulled it open. When I stepped inside, I was met with the sight of Jack asleep on the couch with a book on his chest. He was peaceful and beautiful, and I wanted to spend the rest of my days near him just like this.

“Hey,” I said as he opened his eyes. “Sorry to bother you. Keep sleeping.”

“No. What time is it?”

I checked my phone even though I’d just seen the clock in my car. The beach stole time from you. “It’s five thirty.” I wasn’t sure if it was the silence of the house or the calm of the town, but I felt like curling up with Jack. He was as inviting when he was quietly reading as he was when he was flexing his muscles as he threw the football in the sand.

“I have to get up.”

“Why? You’re on vacation.”

“Because I’m hungry and I want you to go out to dinner with me.”

The concept was foreign. Breakfast? Yes. Dinner? “Huh?”

“We’re never going to have this place to ourselves again. Let’s play house.”

I scanned the mud-colored room and listened to the deafening silence. “We’re alone all night.”

“Just until Mila and Stone get here. You seem excited. You are, right?”

“I’m fine.” I straightened up.

“Oh, I know, Nora Hargrove.” He stood up. He was shirtless and beautiful. When I looked up from his chest, he was grinning at me in the naughtiest way.

“The house I play in is abstinent.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wow. Sounds like a fun house. Let’s see where it goes.”

“I’m just making sure we’re properly managing your expectations.”

“Or crushing my hopes?”

“Either way.”

“Let’s go to the Rudder.”

I used the bathroom, left my bag on our porch, and met Jack out back. He was sitting on his motorcycle revving the engine. I stood still on the back concrete stairs as he checked the gauges in front of him, oblivious to my presence.

“Ready?” he said when he finally looked up.

“We’re not riding that.”

“Sure we are. I have a helmet for you.”

“Do you know how many people die on motorcycles every year?”

“Do you know how hot you sound when you quote death rates?”

“I’m serious. Over four thousand people died in motorcycle accidents last year, most of which were single-vehicle accidents at night.”

“Wow. You’re a ray of sunshine. Can you be just ‘fine’ and get on the back, please? I think you’re going to like it.”

I took a deep breath. He handed me the helmet, and I put it on. Jack helped me straighten it and then put his own on.

“Watch your leg,” he said. I was happy no one was around to see my less-than-graceful mounting of Jack’s motorcycle.

“Please don’t kill me.” I tightened my arms around him.

“Lofty goals.” He reached back to my thighs and pulled my body closer to his. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

We took off out of the driveway of our shack. Jack made a right into the oncoming traffic on Route 1 and merged onto the road. We rode the few blocks to the Rudder slowly and cautiously. Jack maneuvered the motorcycle with the care reserved for eggs in a shopping cart.

He stopped near the entrance of the Rudder and lowered the kickstand. I climbed off, happy to be safely standing on the ground.

“Why didn’t we just walk?” I asked.

“After dinner I want to go ride some rides.”

“Isn’t this enough of a ride?”

“You’re a thrill seeker. I can tell.” He extended his arm, asking me to lead the way.

I’d never been to the Rudder before the band went on. The usually mobbed dance floor was filled with tables. There was a steel drum being played on the opposite stage, and an air of a tropical oasis pervaded the patio. It was serene, completely different than what I was used to, and the perfect complement to our empty beach house.

The hostess led us to a table in the middle of the floor. She pulled my chair out and handed me a menu as Jack sat in the seat next to me at our table set for four. “The specials tonight are mussels in a red diablo or white wine sauce and fish tacos.”

“Thanks.” This was a real dinner. Like, dangerously close to a date. There were napkins, and a waitress, music, and somewhat of a view, and about a hundred other couples to which this was definitely dinner. My attention wandered to the table next to us where a couple sat holding hands and sipping oversized tropical drinks. Their presence was disturbing.

“Hey,” Jack said, drawing my attention back to him. “You okay?”

“Totally fine.”

“Why do you lie so often?” His question threw me.

“I never lie about anything important.”

“I think you lie about how you’re feeling and what you think, and those are the
most
important.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

Jack looked down at his menu, only slightly defeated. “Of course.”

“So why did you become a teacher?” I’d played this get-to-know-you game before, and I always won.

Jack stared at me, making me fear I might not prevail this time. He leaned in, suggesting he was going to share an intimate detail with me. “I knew I had to work immediately after graduating, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and my roommate was an education major.”

“Oh,” I said. Jack always seemed to know what to do. “So you didn’t grow up wanting to teach? You weren’t born to work with children?”

At this he laughed loudly. “No. I like it, though. But I like construction more.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you going to keep teaching even though you don’t love it?”

Jack stared at me with a mix of confusion and disgust. I’d somehow insulted him, and it was the last thing I’d meant to do. “In my family, you work whether you like your job or not. I’m the first person to ever graduate from college. We
work
.” I didn’t move. He wasn’t done. “You should hear my mother talk about how proud she is of me. It’s never about teaching, it’s about having benefits and a pension.”

My mother and father both had degrees. My mother had her doctorate in psychology, and my father was an engineer. In my family, we talked about our passion.

“I’m going to keep contributing to my pension fund and after twenty-five years, I’ll consider my passion.” Jack’s voice was light again. He wasn’t offended. He was Jack.

“That seems like a long time.”

“Mere minutes with the love of a good woman.”

He had fully returned. We both ate fish tacos and talked about Jack’s experiences at Bama. It sounded like he’d studied just enough to graduate and find a job. The rest of his time he’d wandered from bar to girl to the Alabama countryside on his motorcycle.