Authors: Monica Alexander
“See if Chase wants to go down to the beach with you.”
“Sure Mom,” I said, through gritted
teeth, causing her to smile.
Okay,
fine, so I would invite Chase. What could it hurt? He’d probably say no anyw
ay.
I would be the good daughter, as always
, and do what was asked of me.
Sighing, I headed out to the front hall to pick up my suitcase and
went upstairs in search of the room that would be mi
ne for the next two months
.
Noticing the explosion of Keely’s clothes on the bed,
I saw
she
had claimed the first room
on the right t
hat overlooked the front yard.
T
he
first
room
on the left,
I assumed was Chase’s, as the door was closed and
the industrial rock
music
he loved so much
coul
d be heard coming from inside.
That
left me the last bedroom on the left
.
Thankfully the upstairs bathroom separated my room from Chase’s, so it hel
ped to muffle the sound a bit
.
The room itse
lf was small
but very quaint.
It was decorated in typical beach fashion with white-washed furniture and little accents that would only look appropri
ate in a house near the ocean.
On the dresser there was a vase full of sea grass and over it, a
framed landscape of the beach.
On the nightstand was the quintessential sea shell lamp, although this one was more tasteful with the base being made out of sand and the sea shells appearing to be imprinted into it.
The color scheme was
grass
green and white, and the comforter on the bed was all white with gr
een sheets and accent pillows.
Under the window that overlooked the beach was a white wicker tru
n
k that I gingerly placed my suitcase on,
so I wouldn’t hurt the paint.
I was almost afraid to sit on the bed for fear of getting the comforter dirty, but then decid
ed what the hell and fell back o
nto the middle of it.
Over my head the ceiling f
an whirled around and around at
a
slow,
hypnotic pace
.
I watched it for a few moments, lost in thought before remembering why I was upstairs in the first place
an
d got up to change into my suit
so I could
get some sun before it set
.
On my way downstairs, I
remembered what my mother had asked and
paused outside Chase’s door, listening for a few se
conds.
The music was either turned down or off, beca
use I could no longer hear it.
All I heard was a sound I never heard – Chase laughing.
He was
genuinely
laughing, and not in the sarcastic way he usually did, but a real honest to goodness laugh that said he was a
ctually happy about something. I was shocked.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d se
en Chase happy about anything.
Okay, well, maybe I had, but it usually involved
sarcasm and mocking.
This
was different.
I knocked lightly on the door and waited for him to open it
, knowing he would have a
snarky
comment for me when he heard what I was going to ask him
.
On the other side
of the door
, I could hear him say ‘hold on’ to
who
m
ever he was talking to
.
“Yes,” he said, as the door opened to reveal him wearing
nothing but a pair of jeans
, his tattoo of a
green
Celtic cross, prominent
on his rib cage
.
His hair looked disheveled
, as if he’d been lying down
, but his cheeks looked flushed, like he’d been grinning and laughing for a few minutes
.
He still had his
phone to his ear.
“Who are you
talking to?” I asked, not
able to hold back what I really wanted to know.
I was curious about who was sparking
this uncharacteristic emotion
in him.
“No one
,” he said curtly
, as he
told the person to hold on and
muted his cell phone
.
“Fine, whatever.
I just wanted to see if yo
u wanted to come to the beach. Keely’s
the
re
and I’m heading down now.”
I tried to sound as disinterested as possible, like his going or not wouldn’t faze me in the least.
“What’s this?” he asked,
his voice dripping with sarcasm
.
“Princess Emily asking her druggie brother to hang out with her? Am I hearing this correctly?
Is this my reward for rescuing you last night?
”
He looked at me with an expression just past mocking.
“Because if it is, I’m not interested.”
“Fine, Chase, be like that.
I thanked you for helping me last night, but if I knew you were go
ing to hold if over my head for
ever, I would have told you to fuck off.”
“Wow, twice in two days,” he said, in refer
ence
to my use of the f-word.
“Fuck you,” I said, cocking my head to the
side and raising my eyebrows.
“There, th
at’s three – a new record.
Now, i
f you don’t want to come down
to the beach
, then don’t.
I was just trying to be nice,”
I said, turning to walk away.
I had no patien
ce for him when he was like this.
“Of course
you were,” he called after me.
“
You’re just the nicest person I know.”
I felt my nostrils flare as I walked away from him, his comment driving into my very core.
He didn’t buy it, and a
fter the way I
’d acted toward him for most
our
adult lives
, he didn’t believe I w
as nice. Well, good.
I
was sick of being nice anyway.
Hauling off and hitting Ashleigh had been stupid, and I had a sore hand to prove it, but
it had been totally worth it.
It had felt good to not just stand by and let her get away with the crap she us
ually got away with.
Maybe I needed a new outlook on life.
Maybe I needed to stop being so nice.
Rache
l got away with being a bitch.
Chase could be an
asshole to whomever he chose. Ashleigh
g
ot to hit on my boyfriend, and before last night
I’d never said a word to her
about it
.
I’d
just l
aughed. Ha, ha.
Well, I wasn’t laughing now
.
Nice.
The word sounded like nails on a chalkboar
d to me.
I was over being nice.
What
did I gain from it? Not much.
I go
t walked on a lot of the time. Much more was expected of me.
Half the time, I justified that being nice was better in the long run, but it usually made me feel like
crap in the short term. Blah.
Being nice sucked.
I wanted
to be bad for once in my life.
I just wasn’t sure how to even go about doing that.
I dropped into the chair next to Keely and stared out toward the ocean
, contemplating something that would be bad
enough
that
it
would break my stigma of ‘nice girl’
.
No one knew me in the small beach town that would be
my
home for the next two months. I could be whomever I wanted.
Maybe I would be bad.
“Hey,” Keely
said, cheer
fully, taking out her
ear buds
and sticking them in her beac
h bag. “Took you long enough.
You got suckered into talking to Mom, didn’t you?”
I shot her a glare, something I only every used on Chase.
“Whoa,” she said, taken aback by the aggression on my face.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” I said, sighing and leaning my head back against the chair.
“I’m not.”
And I really wasn’t.
I
t
was like all the good energy
I’d gained from my morning make-up
session with Ben had dissipated, and I was just angry
again
.
For the next week I considered
myself somewhat of a recluse.
It wasn’t like I holed up i
nside the house or anything.
I definitely experienced all that the beach had to offer, but it was more lik
e I’d retreated inside myself.
I had my iPod on most of the time, thumbing through my entire collect
ion of songs to find ones that fit my melancholy mood.
It made for good therapy and made it easy to not have to engage in
an
actual conversation with anyone.
Ben called
me every night, and by the following weekend
,
he was getting under my skin
again
.
I was like every emotion I’d been feeling when I’d thought I lost him was slowly
slipping away.
All the irritating things he did were now at the forefront and were staring me in the face, mocking me
, asking
me why I’d been so eager to take him back
.
He kept telling me how much he missed me, how it wasn’t as fun without me around and insisted on rehashing every party he went to, so I
wouldn’t miss out on anything.
It got to be that every wor
d he said grated on my nerves.
He commented once on how quiet I was being, but instead of telling him the truth, I’d just told him it was because I missed him.
I was a big, fat liar and a chicken-shit.
I talked to Rachel
a few times
, but s
he was just as moody as I was.
She said she was missing
Michael
and
was
sad that s
he wouldn’t see him for weeks. They
tal
k
ed regu
larly, but it wasn’t the same.
I half-jokingly offered up Ben as a substitute
,
which had only earned me a half-hearted ‘ha, ha’ in return.
I looked for something that I could
do to break out of my funk
, but
I couldn’t think of anything.
Then I realized that, ironically, just being in a bad mood had turned the heads of the people I knew best
, and t
hat
sort of made me smile
.
My mother was the first to bring it up, asking me why I was
‘angry, sullen
,
and moody’
al
l
of a sudden.
She asked me this direct question
after I slunk down to
the breakfast table on our fifth
day at the beach,
and
I
didn’t offer my usual cheery
‘
good morning
’
.
In fact, I’d been pretty silent ever since that first day, but she
hadn’t said anything, most likely chalking it up to
me missing
Ben
.
When my bad mood went on
for
five
days
, she got suspicious.
Sul
len was not something I
was known for, so when I refused to smile or engage in conversation with her and Keely, I was pulled aside and asked what was wrong.
My response?
“Nothing.”
To which my mother crossed her arms, gave me a knowing look and sai
d, “Emily, don’t give me that. Something’s wrong. I can tell.”