“Come on, man. You don’t have to drink or anything. Just come hang out. Quinn will be there. I don’t know who put you in this funk, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but maybe you just need someone to fuck her out of your system.”
The ‘her’threw me for a loop for a second until I remembered Turtle still thought I was exclusively into girls.
To cover up my weird reaction to what he’d said, I just sighed again.
“Fine.”
“Dope!” He clapped me on the shoulder jovially. “We’re gonna have a fucking blast, bro! This party is going to be arager!”
The partywasa rager. Almost all the staff for Sharkies showed up, and even some people from the neighboring town.
I only knew, like, a handful of people, and I more or less stuck as close to Turtle and Blake as I could.
Stars Cove Beach had a tiki bar they staffed for these events, and there was a line of three people deep trying to get drinks.
A DJ was bumping top forty hits, and as the sky got darker and the crowd got tipsier, people started to kick off their shoes and dance.
I was nursing a rootbeer, half listening to Turtle tell Blake all about some douchebag customer he’d needed to deal with at Sharkies, when some preppy dude in a polo and beige cargo shorts appeared.
“Hey, it’s the Turtle Man, how’s it hanging?” Preppy Boy grinned, flashing freakishly perfectteeth.
Like, they weresoperfect. I wondered vaguely if they were veneers. Dude looked like a ventriloquist dummy.
“Tully, myman, what’s going onnnnnn?” Turtle grinned in his usual good-natured way, clapping hands with the guy in a friendly manner. I didn’t know this guy, but his name sounded familiar.
“Nothing much, nothing much, just figured I would come and mingle with the common folk,” the guy,Tully, said.
I narrowed my eyes.
That was kind of an asshole thing to say.
Turtle didn’t seem perturbed; he just nodded, still smiling.
“Right on, brother.”
“Who’s this?” Toothtastic Tully asked, jerking his head to me but talking to Turtle like I wasn’t even here.
I wrinkled my nose.
This guy was giving me the serious ick.
“This is my best bro, Finn Summers.”
Tully’s eyes flashed, and his creepy, fun-land smile turned mean.
“Ah, yes. I heard about you. Quinn talks about you a lot.”
“Oh yeah?” I deadpanned, not even bothering to pretend I was interested in this conversation.
“Yeah. She says you have some dumbass dream of riding Leviathans. You know that’s only for the pros, right?”
He said it like he was implying thathewas the pro in question.
“Whatever, man,” I replied mildly, already scanning the crowd to see if I could come up with an excuse to get away from this dickwad.
“Hey, I see Blake. I’ll be right back,” Turtle said suddenly, disappearing from my side.
I almost shouted after him not to leave me alone with this douchebag, but by the time I opened my mouth, he was already gone.
