“I’ve had moments like that, as you all know,” Logan pipes in calmly as he turns into the restaurant parking lot to drop me off. Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror again. “But just don’t let it become too familiar, okay? Being alone. Because putting yourself out there isn’t easy but neither is loneliness. Physical or emotional.”
There’s a heavy silence in the car suddenly and I’m desperate to break it so after I unbuckle my seat belt I lean forward and grab Logan’s shoulder. “You need to stop reading Terra’s old textbooks. One therapist in the family is all I can handle.”
Everyone laughs and I’m thrilled I got something right. Finn finally looks at me again and I smile. “Also, your question about types earlier… the answer is blonds. I’m mostly into blonds. But I’d make an exception. Like if the brown haired guy looked like Chris Evans or the red head looked like Prince Harry.”
Finn grins and I say good-bye and get out of the car before this conversation starts to make me uncomfortable. “Prince Harry?!”
“Declan’s got a royal kink!” Finn laughs.
“Night, guys!” I shut the car door and walk away smiling, because even if they punch all my buttons sometimes, I love my brothers. I can hear Logan’s car leave the parking lot before I reach the stairs to the apartment. I still can’t think of it asmyapartment. It’s a temporary shelter. I keep promising myself I’ll be in a different space by fall. I don’t like living above the restaurant for a million reasons — the lack of privacy, the fact it used to be Finn’s, how old and rickety it is. But until that medical bill is paid, I’m stuck.
And tonight — right now — I don’t want to go up there. I feel wired and restless and it’s a muggy night. There’s no air conditioning in the apartment and I don’t feel like lying in that bed, listening to the fans buzzing and trying not to move so I don’t break out in a sweat. I can hear the waves hitting the dock. If I walk the little rocky footpath that skirts the edge of the dock for a hundred feet, I’ll reach the beach. The seven mile beach where my parents took us as kids on their rare days off. Where I learned to surf. Where I used to run every morning in high school. Where I shared my first — and last — kiss with Abbott.
Before I know it, I’m tugging off my shoes and sinking my feet into the cool, velvety sand. I take a deep breath of humid, salty air and I start to walk.
7
DECLAN
It’s almostmidnight and the beach still has people on it, but not many. There’s a couple on a bench near one of the boardwalks. There’s a bunch of teenagers on the edge of the dunes lying on a blanket laughing and carrying on. God I miss those days. But as I hear their laughter, and remember doing it myself, I also remember I didn’t feel the level of happiness I thought everyone else was feeling. I had this nagging feeling of emptiness inside… until him.
I glance back at the teens one last time and keep moving. I don’t know where I’m going. I guess to the rocks that border the beach where it curves in and the sea cuts through and turns into a saltwater creek that runs the town limit of Ocean Pines. And then I’ll walk home. I just need air and the crashing sound of the waves to drown out my thoughts about Gael.
He’s like those fits of laughter I never fully enjoyed as a kid… I mean he’s seemingly perfect, like those moments were, and yet I didn’t feel what I was supposed to feel. Back then, it was my undiagnosed depression fucking with my feelings. Now…? I’m on the right meds, so that isn’t the problem. I’m sure of it. I even have a big medical bill to prove I’m on top of my depression. So why can’t I feel things for nice guys at bars? I sigh and stop walking. The rocks which border the end of the beach are a distant shadow about a hundred yards away. I don’t want to walk to them because they remind me of Abbott, and he’s the last person I want to be thinking about tonight, so I walk closer to the tide.
It’s darker closer to the water as the only lights are on posts by the dunes at the boardwalk. It’s high tide and the waves are looming dark masses that crash with a loud rumble. I inhale the salty spray and close my eyes as the mist hits my face.
“Any closer and the waves will ruin your shoes.”
The voice is unmistakable. I hear it in my dreams. “Abbott. What do you want?”
“To get some air. Try and get my brain to stop thinking so I can get some sleep,” Abbott replies. “Also, I kinda live right there so…”
I turn to face him but make my eyes focus on his house just over his shoulder instead of on his face. The house is a blob, just past the dunes. He didn’t seem to leave any lights on, except one weak pink beam in the top right window, which I assume must be Andie’s nightlight. And his face, now that I look at it, is shadowed. An occasional moon beam riding a crashing wave slices across his face. It reminds me of that time we fooled around in the back of his car, tucked into a logging road in the middle of nowhere off the turnpike. Headlights sliced through the trees, illuminating him in almost the same way. I was almost eighteen, I was madly in love, and it was my first orgasm caused by someone else. I was also in a losing battle with depression and catholic guilt that would end in a suicide attempt four months later.
The memory makes me angry. “I didn’t realize that you owned the beach in front of the house too. I’ll go.”
“Come on Declan,” Abbott snaps as I start to walk away. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Deserve what?” I ask and turn to face him, digging my toes deeper into the cool sand in anger. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re angry at me and I don’t know why,” Abbott says and walks right up so we’re standing about a foot apart. He’s got his broad shoulders back and his chin up. I’ve seen this look on his face before. When he’s on the ice during a game and he’s chirping with a player from the opposing team. “I was worried sick about you when you took off. I tried to be there for your family. For Nova.”
“I never asked you to do that,” I bark back, and I can feel my anger swelling, like the waves to my left. “Didn’t it make you feel like a hypocrite?”
“No. I was usually too drunk to feel much of anything,” Abbott confesses and that kind of knocks my anger on its ass a little bit. Then he tips his head, and his shoulders loosen a little. “Anyway, why would I feel hypocritical? You told me to fuck off, more than once, and I listened. When we were kids and last fall.”
Well now my anger has recovered from the earlier blow and is up and ready to take swings. Because Abbott did listen to me. I warned him not to fuck with my marriage and he let me be a ‘happily’ married straight guy. So I shouldn’t want to punch him. But I do. Because even though he didn’t try to get me to break up with Nova, I did it anyway. And he… he’s still Abbott Barlowe, Maine’s best, pretending-to-be-straight hockey player.
“I’m not angry with you. I’m angry with myself.” I want to walk away but my feet aren’t moving. “But yeah, you’re still a hypocrite. We both know that has nothing to do with me.”
“Declan,” Abbott says my name with such longing. Even when I’m being a dick to him. “I miss being your friend.”
“I don’t need your friendship,” I bark back and pause to take a deep breath. I shove my hands into my pockets and feel my phone. “I have new friends. Like the one I met tonight at Dorothy’s.”
“You went to Dorothy’s? In Portland?” Abbott’s voice drops, and it’s not just the level of his voice, it’s the tone. It plummets like a rock in the ocean. “Tonight? Finn got you to go?”
“Yeah. And it was fun,” I say and a particularly big wave slams into the beach. I turn and watch the tide come precariously close to both our feet. He’s in shorts, shirtless with bare feet. I notice the tattoo on the top of his left calf hasn’t changed yet. He got the outline of the Stanley Cup there when he was eighteen and announced he’d put dates under it once he won. It was so cocky and bold it made Mrs. Green’s trashy Ocean Pines gossip column. I remember being impressed by how much Abbott believed in himself and wishing he would have been that bold when it came to us. But he wasn’t and he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t be able to change that for a very long time. “I mean, I didn’t hate it. And I met a guy. And he gave me his number.”
