Kidd makes a face, like he wants to hear this long story, but he doesn’t ask Holden anything more. He just says. “Get in. I’ll drive ya home.”
Holden doesn’t move right away. His hesitation piques my interest and causes me to slow almost to a stop. Kidd and Holden were like brothers when we were teenagers. Holden’s reaction now makes me think something might have happened to change that. But then Holden shrugs and starts around the side of the truck.
That’s when Kidd notices me. His dark beady eyes lock with mine and I look away and start walking again, quickly. I want to get out of his line of sight because the look on his face was one of recognition, and I don’t want him telling Holden who I am and then the two of them attempting a conversation with me. But I’m not that lucky.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Kidd crane his skinny neck farther out the open window. “Hey! You’re a Braddock chick aren’t you?”
I think about ignoring him and just walking faster but the idiot will probably follow me with the truck. So I stop momentarily and look up again. Now Holden, who has climbed into the passenger seat, is leaning forward to look at me too. I stare back at him for a second and I can practically see his brain working, trying to grasp the reality that he does in fact know me. I turn my gaze back to Kidd. “Yep.”
I start to walk again. But Kidd yells out. “Which one are you again? You all always looked like triplets to me.”
I glance up again, my feet still moving, my suitcase wheels squeaking as they frantically turn. I zoom right in on Holden’s silvery gaze. “Larry.”
I turn on the first cross street. Not my street, but I don’t give a shit. I just want away from the two town goons. I can hear Kidd let out a hoot of laughter and Holden tell him to shut the fuck up, but I don’t turn around and a second later I hear his tires screech as Kidd drives off. I’m so fucking glad they aren’t going to pretend we’re long-lost friends.
Holden decided, when I was thirteen and awkwardly tall for my age, battling bad acne and very frizzy hair I hadn’t learned to tame yet, that my sisters and I were the Three Stooges. Dixie was Curly, Sadie was Moe and I was Larry. He referred to us by those names anytime we ran into him in town. I didn’t even really know who the Three Stooges were, but I asked my dad and from the way he explained them, I knew it wasn’t a compliment.
God, I think as I finally reach our family cottage, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea if those two are going to be hanging around town. Ocean Pines is small and like Cat already mentioned there aren’t a lot of people here in the off-season. Moving back to Toronto and forcing myself to make it work with Ty might be easier than running into those two jackasses every time I leave the cottage. Then again, I’m probably not leaving the cottage much anyway. I unlock the door and flip on the lights on the porch. I look right out at the dunes at the end of the block that border the seven-mile beach. The sun is almost completely gone, but it’s painted the clouds a lovely pink color. I open the door into the main part of the house, and leaving my suitcase and purse on the porch, I head into the house and straight for the wine rack. I grab a bottle of merlot, turn around and head outside again.
I walk to the beach, drop down in the dunes and open the wine. Drinking straight from the bottle, I watch the waves crash against the shore, take a deep breath of cool salty air, and wonder what the hell I am going to do now.
3
Holden
I wake up to the manager of the campground pounding on my door. Hard. I flip over and open my eyes, slowly, painfully. I blink until I can read the alarm clock on my night table. It’s only seven in the morning. Jesus. What the hell is his problem?
“Hendricks! Time to move this hunk of junk!”
“It’s fucking early, Jaime!” I bark back, lifting my head to direct my angry yell toward the door but not bothering to get out of bed. “Checkout time is noon!”
“Not on the last day of the season, Hendricks! It’s eight a.m.”
Is he fucking kidding me? Who the hell does anything at eight in the freaking morning? I groan but give in and throw back the covers, then grab my pants off the floor and tug them on, swearing the entire time.
I walk through the ancient Airstream trailer to the front door and swing it open. He frowns at the sight of me in nothing but my jeans, like I’m somehow offending his sixty-year-old senses. Fact is, I could be dressed in tux and tails and this guy would still look down his nose at me because he just doesn’t like me. Because he remembers when I was a kid and my dad used to run this place. Back then he was just the maintenance guy.
“You have to go,” he says firmly.
I give him a smile. “Sure thing, Mr. Moutis.”
Calling him “mister” always takes his disdain down a notch. It’s the sign of respect I should have shown him when I was running around this place as a kid. But back then I called him Marsh-Breath Moutis. To his face. Because I was an asshole.
He looks at his watch and back at me. “Twenty minutes.”
I nod. “Yes, sir. Just gotta call someone to tow me out.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“I lent it to someone who needed it more than I do.”
His watery eyes sweep from one end of my Airstream to the other and lands back on me. “Doesn’t look that way to me.”
He shakes his head disapprovingly and stalks off, back toward his office, which is also a trailer. I watch him go, squinting against the offensive way-too-early morning light and sigh. Fuck. This feels like yet another sign that you can’t come home again…and maybe I was an idiot for trying. Maybe I really burned all my bridges here and there is no way to rebuild them.
I sigh and head back into my trailer to find a shirt. As I dress, wash my face and tidy up as quickly as possible, I rack my brain to figure out who I can ask to tow my trailer besides Kidd, but I come up empty. I’ve been living in Ocean Pines for three months and have miraculously managed to avoid him, and all my other previous partners in crime. And I mean partners in crime. I don’t blame these guys for the fact that I ended up in juvenile detention for two years. That was all on me. But they certainly didn’t help me make good choices.
Since I’ve been avoiding the people from my past and working my ass off all summer long, I haven’t met new people. I’m stuck. I grab my phone off the tiny counter by the sink and dial the number Kidd insisted I take when he drove me home yesterday. He picks up on the fifth ring and sounds like a bear being woken from hibernation.
