EIGHT
It’s late by the time we get back and I get all my new stuff put away. These last twenty-four hours have been grueling, to say the least. I’m exhausted. Grief might even be catching up to me. And even though Sara and I shared an entire bag of chocolate donuts, I’m still hungry.
I go to the kitchen and find my father sitting at the table, a laptop in front of him and several books spread out over the table. He glances up when he hears me.
“Hey,” he says, straightening up in his chair.
“Hi.” I point to the pantry. “Just grabbing a snack.” I open the pantry door and grab a bag of chips. When I close it, I fully intend to sneak back up to my room, but my father has other plans.
“Beyah,” he says as soon as I reach the bottom step. “You got a sec?”
I nod reluctantly. I walk over to the table and take the seat across from him. I pull my knee up and try to seem casual. He leans back in his chair and rubs a hand across his jaw like whatever he’s about to say is going to be a little uncomfortable.
Did he hear about my mother? I don’t know that there are any people that connect them other than me, so I don’t know how he’d have found out.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go to your graduation.”
Oh. It’s about him. I stare at him for a moment, then open my bag of chips. I shrug. “It’s fine. Long drive for someone with a broken leg.”
He presses his lips together and leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “About that,” he says.
“I don’t care, Dad. Really. We all tell lies to get out of things we don’t want to do.”
“It’s not that I didn’t want to be there,” he says. “I just…I didn’t think you wanted me there.”
“Why wouldn’t I have wanted you there?”
“I just got the impression that you’ve been avoiding me for the past couple of years. And I don’t blame you. I don’t feel like I’ve been a very good father to you.”
I look down into my bag of chips and shake them around. “You haven’t been.” I casually eat another chip like I didn’t just deliver the worst insult a child could hand to a parent.
My father’s expression falls into a frown, and he opens his mouth to respond, but Sara spills out of the stairwell and into the kitchen with way too much energy for this time of night.
“Beyah, go put on your bathing suit, we’re going to the beach.”
My father looks relieved by the interruption. He gives his attention to his computer. I stand up and pop another chip in my mouth. “What’s at the beach?”
Sara laughs. “The beach is at the beach. That’s all you need.” She’s back in her bikini top and shorts again.
“I’m really tired,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Just for an hour and then you can go to bed.”
When we make it past the dunes, I deflate. I was hoping more people would be out here so I could be invisible, but it seems the crowd that was here earlier dissipated and the only two people remaining are Samson and Marcos. Plus a couple of people out in the water swimming.
Marcos is sitting by the fire, but Samson is sitting alone in the sand several feet away, staring out at the dark ocean. I know he hears us approaching, but he doesn’t turn around to look at us. He’s either lost in thought or making a concerted effort to ignore me.
I’m going to have to figure out a way to be at ease in his presence if this is how the summer is going to go—him always being around.
There are six seats set up around the fire, but two of them have towels draped over them and beers on the armrests, so they appear to be taken. Sara sits next to Marcos, so I take one of the last two empty chairs.
Sara looks out at the water, at the two people swimming. “Is that Cadence out there with Beau?”
“Yep,” Marcos says flatly. “I think she’s leaving tomorrow.”
Sara rolls her eyes. “Can’t wait. I wish she’d take Beau with her.”
I don’t know who Beau and Cadence are, but it doesn’t sound like Sara and Marcos are big fans.
I try not to stare at Samson, but it’s hard. He’s about ten feet away, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the waves claw at the sand. I hate that I’m wondering what he’s thinking about, but he has to be thinking about something. That’s what staring at the ocean produces. Thoughts. Lots of them.
“Let’s go swimming,” Sara says as she stands up and shimmies out of her shorts. She looks at me. “Wanna come?”
I shake my head. “I already showered tonight.”
Sara grabs Marcos’s hand and pulls him out of the chair. He swoops her up in his arms and runs toward the water. Sara’s squeal breaks Samson out of whatever trance he was in. He stands up and wipes sand away from his shorts. He turns to walk back to the fire, but I notice the pause when he sees I’m sitting over here alone.
I keep my eyes on Sara and Marcos, if only because I don’t know what else to look at. I certainly don’t want to look at Samson as he walks over here. I still feel embarrassed by the part of my conversation he overheard earlier. I don’t want him to think I hate Sara because I don’t. I just don’t know her all that well. But what he heard probably sounded worse than what it was.
He quietly takes his seat and stares at the fire, making no effort to speak to me. I look around us, at the incredible amount of space there is on this beach, and wonder how I can possibly feel like I’m suffocating right now.
I inhale a slow breath, then release it carefully before I speak. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. About Sara.”
Samson looks over at me with a stoic expression. “Good.”
That’s all he says.
I shake my head and look away, but not before he sees me roll my eyes at his response. I don’t know why, but even when he’s defending his friends, he comes off as an asshole.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I lean back in my chair and look up at the sky. “Everything,” I whisper to myself.
Samson grabs a stick that’s sitting in the sand by his chair. He starts poking at the fire, but says nothing else. I lean my head to the right and look at the houses that line the beach. Samson’s is by far the nicest one. It’s more modern. It’s stark white with deep black trim, boxy with lots of glass. But it seems cold compared to Alana and my father’s house.
It also seems lonely, like he’s the only one who lives there.
“Do you live in your house alone?”
“I don’t really consider that my house, but yes, I’m the only one who stays there.”
“Where are your parents?”
“Not here,” he says.
His clipped responses aren’t because he’s shy. He’s definitely not shy. I wonder if his conversations are like this with everyone or if it’s just me.
“Are you in college?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Taking a gap year.”
I laugh under my breath. I don’t mean to, but that answer is so out of touch with my reality.
He raises a brow, silently questioning why I’m laughing at his answer.
“When you’re poor and you take a year off after high school, you’re throwing away your future,” I say. “But if you’re rich and you take a year off, it’s considered sophisticated. They even give it a fancy name.”
He stares at me a moment but says nothing. I’d like to drill a hole in his head so his thoughts can pour out. But then again, I might not like them.
“What’s the purpose of a gap year, anyway?” I ask.
“You’re supposed to spend the year finding yourself.” He says that last part with a hint of sarcasm.
“Did you? Find yourself?”
“I was never lost,” he says pointedly. “I didn’t spend my gap year backpacking through Europe. I’ve spent it manning rent houses for my father. Not very sophisticated.”
It sounds like he’s a little resentful about that, but I’d give anything to get paid to live on a beach in a nice house. “How many houses does your family have here?”
“Five.”
“You live in five beach houses?”
“Not all at once.”
I think he might have just smiled a bit. I can’t tell. Could have been a shadow from the fire.
Our lives are so incredibly different, yet here we are, sitting on the same beach in front of the same fire. Attempting to have a conversation that doesn’t prove how many worlds apart we are. But we’re so many worlds apart, we’re not even in the same universe.
I wish I could be inside his head for a day. Any rich person’s head. How do they view the world? How does Samson view me? What do rich people worry about if they don’t have to worry about money?
“What’s it like being rich?” I ask him.
“Probably not much different than being poor. You just have more money.”
That is so laughable, I don’t even laugh. “Only a rich person would say that.”
He drops the stick back in the sand and leans back in his chair. He turns his head and makes eye contact with me. “What’s it like being poor, then?”
I can feel my stomach drop when he throws my own question back at me with a spin. I sigh, wondering if I should be honest with him.
I should. I’ve told too many lies in the past twenty-four hours, karma is sure to catch up with me. I give my attention back to the fire in front of us when I answer him.
“We didn’t receive food stamps because my mother was never sober enough to make her appointments. We also didn’t have a car. There are children who grow up never having to worry about food, there are children whose families live off government assistance for various reasons, and then there are children like me. The ones who slip through all the cracks. The ones who learn to do whatever it takes to survive. The kind who grow up not giving a second thought to eating a slice of bread they pulled out of a discarded loaf on the deck of a ferry, because that’s normal. That’s dinner.”
Samson’s jaw is hard as he stares back at me. Several beats of silence pass between us. He almost looks guilty, but then he glances away from me, giving his attention to the flames. “I’m sorry I said it wasn’t much different. That was a shallow thing to say.”
“You aren’t shallow,” I say quietly. “Shallow people don’t stare at the ocean as deeply as you do.”
Samson’s focus returns to mine as soon as I say that. His eyes have changed a little—narrowed. Darkened. He runs a hand down his face and mutters, “Fuck.”
I don’t know why he says that, but it sends goose bumps down my arms. It feels like it might have been a realization about me somehow.
I can’t ask him about it because I spot the girl and guy walking out of the water toward us. Cadence and Beau.
When they get closer, I realize she’s the girl Samson was kissing in his kitchen earlier. She’s eyeing me as she makes her way over. The closer she gets, the prettier she gets. She doesn’t sit in a chair; she sits right down on Samson’s lap. She stares at me like she’s expecting me to have a reaction to the fact that she’s now using Samson as her personal chair, but I’m good at hiding what I’m feeling.
Why am I even feeling anything at all?
“Who are you?” Cadence asks me.
“Beyah. I’m Sara’s stepsister.”
I can tell by the way her eyes scroll over me that she’s definitely a locker room girl. She wraps an arm around Samson like she’s staking a claim. Samson just looks bored, or lost in thought. Beau, who was just in the water with Cadence, sits down next to me after grabbing a beer.
His gaze starts at my feet and slowly slides up my body until he’s finally looking me in the eye. “I’m Beau,” he says with an ambitious grin, reaching out a hand.
I shake it, but when I do, Sara reappears with Marcos from their swim. She groans when she sees Beau giving me attention. “Beyah is engaged to be married,” Sara says. “Don’t waste your time.”
Beau looks down at my hand. “I don’t see a ring.”
“That’s because the diamond is so big, it’s too heavy for her to wear all day,” she retorts.
Beau leans in toward me, staring at me with a smirk. “She’s lying because she hates me.”
“I can see that.”
“Where are you from?”
“Kentucky.”
“How long are you here for?”
“The summer, probably.”
He grins. “Nice. Me too. If you ever get bored, I live over—” He lifts a hand to point toward wherever his house is, but he stops speaking because Sara is now standing in front of us.
She grabs my hand. “Come on, Beyah. Let’s go home.”
I’m relieved. I didn’t want to be here to begin with.
I stand up and Beau rolls his eyes, throwing up a defeated hand. “You’re always ruining my fun, Sara.”
Sara leans down and gives Marcos a kiss goodbye. I glance over in Samson’s direction. All I can seem to focus on is the hand he has pressed against Cadence’s thigh. I start to turn to walk with Sara, but right before I do, Samson makes eye contact with me. He stares so hard, I feel it pinching my chest. I look away and don’t look back as I follow Sara.
“What’s up with Beau?” I ask as we walk back toward the house.
“He’s inappropriate in every way imaginable. Please don’t give him any attention, it’s the last thing he deserves.”
It’s hard to give anyone else attention when Samson is in my presence.
Sara and I walk past the dunes and everything in me wants to give one last glance back toward him, but I don’t.
“What about the girl? Cadence?”
“Don’t worry,” Sara says. “She’ll be gone tomorrow and Samson will be free.”
I laugh. “I’m not waiting in that line.”
“Probably for the best,” Sara says when we reach her house. “Samson’s leaving for the Air Force Academy at the end of the summer. As much as I was hoping I could set the two of you up, it would also suck if you fell for him right before he gets shipped away.”
I pause on the stairs when she says that, but she doesn’t notice because she’s in front of me. But that takes me by surprise. He didn’t mention what he was doing after his gap year was over. I don’t know why, but I didn’t expect it to be the military.
When we get inside the house, all the lights are out. “Want to stay up and watch a movie?”
“I’m exhausted. Maybe tomorrow night?”
She sits down on the sofa and grabs the remote. She leans her head back into the couch and looks at me upside down. “I’m glad you’re here, Beyah.” She powers on the TV and her attention is no longer on me, but her words make me smile.
I believe her when she says she’s glad I’m here. That feels good. It’s not often I feel like my presence is appreciated. Or even noticed.
When I get up to my room, I close and lock the door.
I walk over to the balcony doors and open them, wanting to listen to the sound of the ocean tonight while I sleep. But I also want to see what Samson is doing.
Marcos and Beau are still down at the fire. Cadence is walking away from the group in the opposite direction of Samson’s house.
Samson is walking over the dune crossing, heading toward his house. Alone.
Why does that make me happy?
I don’t want him to notice me up here, so I walk back into my room and close the balcony doors.
Before I crawl into bed, I take Mother Teresa out of the plastic sack she traveled in and prop the painting up on the dresser. It looks so out of place in this fancy room, but that makes me even happier that I brought it with me. I need a piece of home to remind me that this room and this house and this town are not my reality.