Abel
At an hour where neither my brain nor my body has fully roused, a fist slams itself over the door again and again. The entire boathouse shakes and the sound resonates like a jackhammer, mostly because this miniature tin can is made to echo with the wind, let alone the aggression the perpetrator is demonstrating.
“Crap,” I grunt, pulling the pillow over my head momentarily. Looking into places for a short-term rental in an elite vacation resort proved impossible. Plenty of leases were available, but even most of those wanted a full six months. Loveless isn’t interested in harboring tourists. That’s what day camps and the two five-star resorts are for at the south end of the lake. No, Loveless is very much in the business of luxury real estate, and my little stint here will be carried out in a boathouse that smells of dying carp and algae.
“Abel,” a deep, decidedly male, voice murmurs from the other side of the door. Zoey blinks through my mind with those big blue eyes the size of silver dollars, those pale tits that required an act of God to stay inside their low-cut boundaries last night. She was sending out the invite pretty hard, which, in turn, made me pretty hard. But after spending thirty-two years on this planet, I’m well aware that handling a hard situation on a whim is never a good idea. Besides, that’s not what I came for. I crack an eyelid at my laptop sitting abandoned on the Frisbee-sized kitchen table and roll over.
The knocking picks up again, this time at the window just above my head. “I know you’re in there. I’m buying breakfast, so get your lazy ass out of bed.”
I pull the curtain up a notch just enough to give my brother the finger.
After a quick shower, tossing on a pair of jeans and a fresh T-shirt, we head over to The Corner Store just like we used to all those summers go. When we were kids, our parents would ship us off to Loveless to spend a couple weeks with our uncle. Once we were older, Caleb kept coming up on his own. Turns out, there was a girl involved in that motivation and not his hankering for our aunt’s Texas potatoes, a casserole that involves crushed Corn Flakes and still to this day evokes a film of nostalgia in me.
“It’s been a week and no call.” Caleb holds the door open for me. The Corner Store is bustling with its early morning patrons. Deep inside the outward shabby appearance gives way to freshly painted walls, white with blue trim along the ceiling that emulates waves. Neva, the tall brunette who seemingly runs this place like a one-woman show, hitches her thumb toward the back and lets us know she’ll get to us when and if we behave.
“The usual,” Caleb calls out as we head on back.
If Loveless is about anything, it’s about cultivating its laidback, pretentious, and very much coarse lifestyle. I can see why it appeals to Caleb and to our lesser relation, Warren. The latter of which has chosen to break the law time and time again rather than serve it. And if he keeps up his accosting spree, his servitude will include time behind bars—much like my brother Solomon, but that’s one family member I decide to push out of my mind for now.
“How’s Kennedy?” My voice comes out groggy, strained, no thanks to the hangover I wasn’t allowed to sleep off.
“Beautiful, anxious to see you.” Caleb blinks a dry smile. It’s Caleb’s way. When my brother isn’t happy with you, he can’t seem to hide it. Kennedy is his fiancée, the girl he spent summers pining over, stalking from a distance if you will. Despite how Caleb likes to spin our stories, it was never me receiving all that life has to offer on a silver platter, including a heart-shaped destiny with the girl of my dreams. No, that would very much be my doppelganger of a brother.
“I’ll stop by sometime and say hello.” It’s mostly a lie, but lies like that are necessary to keep family ties alive and their nosy interests at bay.
“Dude.” Caleb kicks my foot from under me. “Get a grip,” he seethes as if my personal turmoil somehow managed to offend him. “I’m headed to the office in an hour. You should come with me.” He winces because my brother of all people understands what that might entail.
“What part of I’m taking a break—an indefinite leave of absence—don’t you understand?”
“The part that entails sleeping in until noon and trying to drown yourself in the lake at night. Look, I get it. You were shit on, but there are other far more attractive fish in the sea. Kennedy is having a little get-together tonight. Just a few of her sorority sisters. You can bed or wed any of her sorority sisters, and I’d thank God just to have you back among the living.”
“I don’t do intimate gatherings. I’m taking a break from those as well.”
Neva brings two overflowing servings of pancakes. The pancakes are so huge they literally hang off the dinner plate they’re served on. What The Corner Store lacks in charm it makes up for in heaping carbohydrates.
“And would you stop with the unattractive bullshit?” Elizabeth was, is beautiful. She’s a natural beauty, one who chooses not to adulterate her features with what she called the exploitation of women by the Western World. Yes, she was plain, but she made up for that with integrity, at least in the beginning. Zoey is the anti-Elizabeth, a blow-up doll version of a woman whose features could easily grace the covers of a magazine. I didn’t sleep around all that much before Elizabeth, but even with the handful of women I’ve been with, there hasn’t been one who has even come close to Zoey’s viral beauty.
“I’m talking about the nuts and bolts of that malfunctioning brain of hers.” He grips his hand over the top of my head and gives me a good rattle. “You’re a good guy. Get that thing screwed on straight and get back to the land of the living.”
“Land of the living, huh?” Zoey and that body bounce through my mind. “What do you know about my neighbor, Zoey. She says she’s Gavin’s sister.”
“No.” He doesn’t hesitate with the put-down. “She’s not stable. She’s got shit she’s dealing with, and the list seems to be a mile long. Kennedy hangs out with her now and again, and she doesn’t even know what’s going on. Gavin said she dropped out of school and hit the bottle. The girl needs help, and I’m talking intervention.”
“Sounds like a sad case.” My heart wrenches for her. And now I feel like an ass for taking her to a bar of all places. I would have taken her to dinner if I had known, but at the time dinner felt more like a date. A date is the last thing I need.
“Speaking of sad cases. You up for going over a few of mine? I can use some advice.”
A howl of a laugh emits from me. “You are a liar, you know that? Look, I promise I’m not going to drink my days away—or sleep them away for that matter. But you will not be plotting any sort of intervention with me any time soon. I’ll be off this mountain and back to the daily grind in a few short weeks.” I manufacture a short-lived grin. “Now, get down the mountain and get to work. Tell Dad I said hello, same with Sol.”
“Done.” Caleb gets up and swats me on the back. “Hope to see you tonight, buddy.”
“You will.”
He takes off, and my affect melts to a sour expression as I contemplate how so many lies just spewed from my lips. I used to tell the truth. Hell, I used to be in the business of the truth, and now that my life, my heart has unraveled, I don’t know if the truth even matters anymore.
* * *
After finishingboth my breakfast and Caleb’s, I trek my way to the boathouse as the sun bites over the back of my neck. The heat is picking up. The air hangs heavy and humid. I walk slowly past Zoey’s place, but it’s shuttered up, unfriendly in general, and her car is missing. I come upon my own door, only to find a note taped to it.
