Friend Is a Four Letter Word (11 page)

“Work,” I say. “Being an adult blows sometimes. If I had it my way, I’d be out here every day. Surfing, grilling, covered in sand for the rest of my life.”

Shayna doesn’t respond, but stares up at the darkening sky and smiles.

I hope she’s taking it all in, appreciating how rad this place really is. I’ve been coming here for a few years, but I haven’t always taken the time to appreciate it.

It started out as a place to come with my buddies from school to drink until we passed out. Too many times I woke up Sunday morning when it was time to head back to campus still too drunk to roll out of my sleeping bag—sometimes with a random girl in it that I didn’t remember and then had to then make excuses as to why I wouldn’t call. I didn’t start coming out here alone until after a weekend of excess—a celebration of finals week being over. I woke up in a pool of my own vomit outside of my tent. My surfboard was gone, my friends said I tried to surf while drunk as hell and lost it. They had to come pull me out of the water, said I almost drown. Here. In this place where you have everything you could ever want, I chose to get so damn drunk I couldn’t see any of it. I couldn’t show my face around those guys anymore, I could barely stand to look at myself. It was the first time I really realized that I had a serious fucking problem. After that, this campsite became a place to get away when the cravings became too intense to stand back at home or when I felt lonely as hell, and knew that the one friend—the one girl I couldn’t stop thinking about for months was probably out with another guy.

But now she’s here.

I arrange the steaks on the fire and say, “Sometimes I feel like this is the only sane place left on earth.”

“I can totally see that,” she says.

“The waves can be better company than any other person I know.”

Shayna laughs softly. “Present company excluded, right?”

“That goes without saying,” I say and tip the rim of my Angels ball cap at her. “So, I wanted to talk to you about what I said this morning—”

Shayna’s eyes fill with immediate panic. “About the wetsuit? I don’t have one, just this bikini.” She gives a light tug on the knot at the nape of her neck. Not enough to untie it, but enough to get my attention. “That’ll be good right?”

She successfully changes the subject by forcing me to visualize teaching her to surf while she wears that tiny bikini, her skin slick with salty water, my hands all over her…

I swallow hard. “Yeah, of course, that’s… perfect.”

“Smells good,” she says, fidgeting with her hands.

I nod, trying to come up with something to clear the awkward silence.

“I’m hoping to get my mom to let my brother Mason come out at some point. I’d love to take him out here.”

Shayna smiles. “I always forget that you and Quinn have another brother. He plays hockey or something, right?”

“Baseball,” I say. He’s good. Crazy good. My parents have bred him to be. He has had a pitching coach, a batting coach, and specialists from all over the country to mold Mason into a major league player. Even though things at home had calmed down a lot after Mason was a couple of years old, he wasn’t shielded completely from the drama, and really, with all of the pressure put on him, maybe he had it even worse than Quinn and I. I keep waiting for him to snap, revolt, drop out of baseball… or worse. End up in the hospital after an overdose like Quinn…
or turn out like me.

“You have any siblings? I ask, realizing how little I actually know about Shayna, and how much I’d like to change that. I know that she’s more of a dreamer than she likes to admit. I know that she’s smart as hell, but plays it down. I know that she’s brave and flirty in a text message, but more timid in person.

She clenches her jaw before she shakes her head. “Nope, only child.”

I thought it was a pretty benign question, but so far, nothing I’ve asked has been the right thing.

I turn the steaks and then try again with something even simpler. “How do you like your steak cooked?”

“Medium rare is great.”

“Cool,” I say. Uncomfortable or not, I promised myself I’d figure out what’s really going on with Shayna so that I could try to help. She’s just going to have to let me in a little.

I keep my eyes on her, gauging her reaction and say, “If you go up to the rocks over there,” I nod my head in the direction of the mound of rocks. “You can get a decent signal, just in case you want to call home or something.”

She tips her chin high and narrows her eyes like little razors, slicing deep and making me want to crawl off to lick my wounds.

“I don’t want to talk to my parents. No matter how often you feel the need to continue to bring it up.” She crosses her arms over her chest and hugs herself tightly. It contradicts the anger in her eyes—in reality, she looks scared.

I experience my own version of panic when I think:
what if she took off and didn’t tell a soul? What if she’s got an entire search party after her while she’s sharing steaks with me at the ocean?

“I’m not trying to upset you Shayna, I’m really not. But you showed up on my doorstep—”

“I thought it was Quinn’s place. If you didn’t want me around, I would have left, Carter. You told me—”

I shake my head. “I’m not saying I don’t want you around. I’m just—I’m trying to understand how a girl winds up across the country with no notice, no place to go—you’ve got to give me something, you’ve got to help me understand a little.”

She takes a deep breath. “Do you have any beer or anything? Of course you do, right? Who comes camping without beer.”

Shit
. I spent forty minutes in the store this morning before I finally came to that same conclusion: that’d it look suspicious if I didn’t at least grab some alcohol. I was just playing my odds she wouldn’t ask for any.

“I—I do. It’s in the back of my Jeep, I’ll grab it.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got it.” She stands up and brushes the sand from her tiny shorts.

“It’s unlocked,” I call over my shoulder as she walks past me. It’s probably better that she get the beer anyway— if my hands never touch it.
Because it’s only been sixty-three days since I’ve had a drink, and I still want one every second of every damn day.

Shayna comes back smiling and plops back down in her spot happily. “How’d you know hard cider is my favorite?”

“Lucky guess.” But it wasn’t. I did assume she’d probably like it because it’s syrupy sweet and most chicks dig that, right? Mostly though, I grabbed it because I think it tastes like ass and though I’ve slurped down worse when I really wanted a drink, my hatred of cider beer at least set up a tiny barrier between me snatching a bottle and drinking it.

She twists at the bottle before frowning and handing it to me. “Can you open this?”

I suck in a breath before I twist the cap off and hand it back to her, but still, when I breathe again I can smell the beer across from me as if it’s a soaked rag of chloroform under my nose. It’s strong and I know I shouldn’t breathe it in, but I can’t help it. The sweetness isn’t as off putting as I’d hoped. Instead of turning up my nose, the smell is invading my nostrils, sliding down my throat where it leaves a fiery burn in its path.

Shayna takes a few long pulls from the bottle and I watch her lick the last droplets from her bottom lip. Like I needed another excuse to taste those lips.

“Can I do anything to help?” she asks.

“Huh?”

She widens her eyes, knowing I’m not paying attention. “With the food. Is there something I can do?”

I shake my head to clear it. “Oh, no. It should be just about ready.”

“Good,” she says. “I’m starving.”

We eat in near silence which is only slightly less awkward than having Shayna stare daggers into me for daring to ask about her family.

I’m clearing the last of our trash and Shayna is starting on her second beer when she says, “It’s been months since I’ve had a drink. Maybe even longer.”

That stops me dead in my tracks.

“Why?” I ask. “Gave up drinking?”

She shakes her head. “I gave up basically everything. Here, sit.”

She pats the spot on the sand next to her and I sit down. The smell of the ocean air on her skin is stronger, more intoxicating than the smell of the remains of her beer in the glass bottle. Shayna next to me is a salve to my burning need for the booze. Sitting next to her, I’m no longer thirsty.

“What do you mean you gave up everything?”

Shayna smoothes the fabric of her shirt down and then stares at it, avoiding my eyes. “It’s sort of a long story.”

I motion around the empty camp site. Nothing but crickets and waves crashing and stars. Not another soul around for miles. “We’ve sort of got all the time in the world, doll.”

“Right,” she says softly. “I guess we do.”

She peels the wrapper on the beer bottle for a few minutes before finally saying, “I think you’re right about something, Carter.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“I think this may be the only sane place left on earth. I don’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed while I was still basically sober.”

I so know that feeling. It’s why I spend so much time out here, but I can’t exactly tell Shayna that.

“It’s nice, right?” Is all I say.

“I feel like… for the first time in a long time, I made the right decision. That maybe coming here wasn’t the stupidest thing ever. At least I hope it wasn’t.”

“I think everyone needs a break.”

I watch her take another sip of her beer, I can’t help it. She notices. “Do you want one?”

“No,” I say firmly. I work my neck back and forth. “No, I’m okay. Thank you. Why… why’d you start drinking?”

“Ah, digging deep tonight are we, MacPherson?” she teases. “Good thing I’ve already had a couple or I might not be so apt to answer your questions.”

“You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to.”

“I actually like it. I like the taste. But I didn’t start with drinking,” she says. “The first time I did anything was smoke pot… after my cotillion.”

“Sounds classy,” I joke. “But that’s not what I asked.” I reach over and brush a strand of blonde hair that matches the color of the sand out of her face. She leans into my palm for the briefest second before straightening back up.

“Before that. What changed to make you go from typical minister’s daughter to…” I let my words drop off. I was going to make a joke, but stop myself short. I wish I could take back the entire statement.

Shayna looks down at the sand. “I know what you’ve heard about me—what they say…”

“That’s not—I wasn’t going to say anything about that. I was going to make a stupid joke. It was… stupid.”

“It’s fine, Carter.” She waves me off. “I’ve dealt with the comments most of my life. Since middle school at least. And up until that point I
was
the typical minister’s daughter.”

“So what changed?”

“Isn’t that just what kids do? I mean, why did
you
start drinking? It’s not all sinister or anything.” she tries to smile, to downplay what I’m asking—maybe I’m pushing too much, psycho analyzing her the way I feel at meetings. But I know there’s more to this girl. There’s more to why she does what she does and who she is.

Shayna closes her eyes.

“I guess I’ve always felt different in some way. Like I didn’t fit in. But in seventh grade, that’s when everything went to hell. That’s when I perfected the game—when being someone else became my favorite past time. It’s so stupid, but when my small circle of friends—girls from church, girls that lived on my street—they all turned against me—because isn’t that what you do in middle school? At least with girls, I think that’s pretty normal. There was no reason really. I didn’t steal anyone’s boyfriend. I didn’t break any cardinal rule of middle school friendship. They just decided one day they hated me. We were at recess and they handed me a piece of notebook paper then ran off, leaving me standing alone. They’d taken a vote, “Who wants to still be friends with Shayna?” it read. There was only one ‘yes.’ To this day I don’t know who the yes was, but they’d given their answer loud and clear by leaving me on that blacktop alone.

For the rest of the year I felt alone. I never resorted to eating lunch in a teacher’s classroom or the bathroom or anything, but I’d sit with whoever let me. I made small talk and picked at my food while my old friends laughed. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but I never quite felt like I fit in at home, either. I didn’t believe the things that my parents did as fiercely. When my parents asked where all of my friends were on weekends, I couldn’t tell them. I was afraid they’d assume that I did something to lose all of those good girls as friends. So I’d have Mom drop me off at the mall, telling her I was meeting everyone there. Instead, I’d wander around for hours by myself.

I acted out. I wasn’t very nice to people, and really, what difference did it make? I had so few friends that it’s not like I had anything to lose.”

She opens her eyes and looks startled, like she hadn’t realized she’d been speaking the words out loud. That she just confessed something to me she maybe had never told anyone before.