“IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR a hang eleven.” Beck laughed wildly, his long, wet, brown hair flipping in the wind as he lay stomach-down on his surfboard while riding a bomb wave. It was called dick-drag, and I hated when people did that. It was the equivalent of wasting a gorgeous supermodel on a drunken hand job. Truth was, every day when the beach was mostly empty was a good day to surf naked. That’s why every sea creature in SoCal knew the shape of my dick by heart. I laughed and watched as he pulled his shorts down, wrapping them around his wrist like a bracelet. My high school friend, Hale, was a few feet away, busting through the break zone, and my high school girlfriend, Edie, was right beside me, sitting on her surfboard, staring at the beach in a lull.
I followed her gaze and spotted her husband, Trent, and his daughter, Luna, building elaborated sandcastles with their shapers. Edie was my favorite, and consequently only, ex. She was also one of my best friends. That sounded complicated, but it really wasn’t. I liked people for who they were, regardless of my likelihood to fuck them. Edie—or Gidget, as I’d called her since high school—was unfuckable for me, but she was still Edie. Her forehead was crinkled in concern. I squatted down, straddling my Firewire Evo, and flicked her ear.
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Overthinking.”
Gidget scrunched her nose. “I’m just a little dizzy.” She sleeked her blonde hair back, squinting to the golden shore.
“You look pale.” It was an understatement, but not a very gentleman-y thing to point out. “Go home. The waves ain’t going anywhere.”
She twisted her head back. “Hey, Beck! My daughter is on the beach. Put your trunks back up, you creeper.”
I loved how she referred to her stepdaughter as her daughter. They’d only known each other for a few years, but this family was the realest thing I’d seen.
“What about you? Are you okay?” Edie moved her fingertips across the water.
“Never been better.”
“Still using a condom?” She arched a wet eyebrow. She’d been asking me this a lot ever since I decided I was open for business five years ago. I fought an eye roll and gave her surfboard a push with my foot. “You’re breaking the waves, Gidget. Surf or get the fuck out.”
I watched Edie paddling back to shore before I turned around to deal with Beck and Hale, only to find they were both straddling their surfboards mere feet from me.
“Show’s over.” I spat into the water. Beck jumped on his board—fucker had the core of a yoga instructor—and did the annoying groin-thrust dance douchebags do when they want to sexually harass everyone in their radius. He kind of looked like a young Matt Damon with long brown hair. He started singing “The Show Must Go On” by Queen, clutching his fist dramatically.
I’d taken Beck under my wing in hopes of making him the pro surfer everyone would drag their asses to competitions to see. He was Kelly Slater good, but he was also Homer Simpson lazy, so I was training him for his next competition in late September. I was pretty much the only person he was afraid of, so I figured if anyone could drag his ass out of bed every morning at five, it’d be me.
Hale shook his head. “Get a trim, asshole. Your crotch looks like Phil Spector.” He motioned to Beck’s dick. The latter laughed, his dong flipping like hair in a shampoo commercial. Hale turned back to me, and now the three of us were sitting like assholes, killing the waves. Peachy.
“This month’s my round, right?” The Round was what we called paying visits to the shops at the promenade, collecting protection money.
“Right.”
“Anything else I can do?” He plastered his abs to his stick. Hale had red hair, green eyes, and the soul of a self-destructive Holden Caulfield who’d been injected into the synthetic town of Todos Santos. Another thing he had that I didn’t: helicopter parents. He was getting close to finishing his master’s degree in philosophy and following his parents’ footsteps in becoming a professor. They wanted him to turn SoCal’s plastic souls into thinking individuals. But Hale didn’t want to be a professor, or even a teacher. He wanted to be a savage, like me.
“Be good and finish all your homework.” I laughed.
He splashed me like a five-year-old. “I want more responsibility. I want to be a part of SurfCity.”
Hale and I split the protection money fifty-fifty, which worked for me, because he did all the legwork. But he always pushed for more. SurfCity was my idea, my baby, my dream. I wasn’t going to share it with anyone.
“I’m serious,” he groaned.
“So am I.” I looked up and watched naked Beck paddling away, taking his hairy crotch with him. “I don’t need more help.”
“I have money. I can invest in SurfCity.”
“You can invest in getting the fuck out of my way and letting me surf.”
“Why not? You need the money, obviously. Did you find anyone yet?”
I wasn’t going to tell him about Darren and Jesse, because I wasn’t sure how shit was going to pan out, and anyway, I wouldn’t put it past Hale to try to fuck it up a little just for funsies. He was made out of the same cloth as the infamous HotHoles. Sometimes he liked to break shit for the simple reason of liking the sound of it cracking in his ears.
“None of your business.”
“It’s really hard to read you, Protsenko.”
“Or,” I tilted my chin down, smiling, “maybe you’re just illiterate at reading people, Hale.” His nostrils were comically wide. He took off on his surfboard, his own version of slamming the door in my face. I laughed. Beck appeared by my side a few minutes later, his chest rising and falling with adrenaline.
“What’s up with everyone? Gidget is acting like a chick, and Hale is acting like a pussy. It’s like you’re everyone’s abusive daddy.”
I smirked, staring at the disappearing figure of Hale, my mind on SurfCity.
“So. Same time tomorrow?” Beck pretended to punch my arm, but didn’t actually have the balls to do it.
“Yeah. Let’s make it early; I have a plan for the afternoon.”
My plan had a name, a description, and an end game.
My plan was a nineteen-year-old girl.
What I didn’t know was my plan was about to blow up in my face in a spectacular fashion, making the same breaking sound that made Hale’s balls tingle.
The first thing I did was learn Jesse Carter’s routine. I use the term “routine” loosely, because weirdo wasn’t hot on leaving her house, or room, or…bed. Her name gave me déjà vu, but I didn’t think much of it. It was a small town. I’d probably run into her at some point. Maybe I was even in her at some point.
That would be a whole other brand of awkward.
Darren told me Jesse’s dad had died when she was twelve and that had fucked her up even before those boys finished the job. He also said that meeting her seemingly spontaneously was going to be a task akin to teaching a pig how to waltz.
“You’re going to have to worm your path into her world, becauth she doethn’t leave here often,” he said on the phone. “She goeth to therapy every Thurthday, that’th in downtown Todoth Santoth, and runth the track around El Dorado every noon and every night at around three.”
Twice a fucking day? Still, none of my business.
“Interesting hours,” I commented, my eyes on the paper.
“Leth human traffic.” Of course.
I wrote everything down on a piece of paper, trying to figure out where in the fresh hell I fit in.
“What else?” I snapped my gum in his ear.
“She visith our neighbor, Mitheth Belforth, often. Eighty-thomething. Thufferth from Alzheimer’th.”
Jesse Carter sure led an interesting lifestyle. And I was the lucky bastard who was going to lure her back to the outside world.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’th it.” He sighed.
“No one else? Boyfriend? Best friend? Shopping sprees with Mommy at Balmain?” It left me very little room for action. I couldn’t exactly drop by her neighbor’s house unannounced and pretend to bump into her. Well, I could, if I was in the mood for getting arrested.
“Nothing.” Darren gulped. “She’s got no one.”
I squinted at the paper I held in my hand. At how little I had to work with. It’s like the girl didn’t want to exist outside the realms of her house. There was one more thing I needed from Darren. He’d already signed the contract, and everything was set and in motion. There were two clauses he insisted on, that were highlighted in bold letters. One—Jesse Carter should never, ever, ever in her life know about this deal. And two—I would never, ever, ever have a sexual relationship with her. “Break one or both, and the deal is off.”
Truth was, I skimmed the motherfucker, because Darren struck me as such an impotent man, I didn’t really think he was capable of hurting a fly.
“Email me a recent picture of her. I need to know what she looks like, you know, so I don’t hit on a rando.”
“You’re not hitting on her,” he enunciated. “You’re helping her.”
Semantics, the western society’s favorite mistress. It didn’t matter how I did it—all that mattered was that Jesse Carter would leave her fucking house. I didn’t bother to search for her online. If I read this chick correct, and I thought I did, she wouldn’t have a Facebook, Snapchat, or an Instagram. She wanted to disappear from earth, so she had.
I was about to drag her back to society.
She could come alone, or with her demons.
I really didn’t fucking care.
The photo Darren sent me was grainier than Tobago Beach and I couldn’t make much of Jesse. It looked like he’d taken a picture of her when she wasn’t looking, which made my Creep-O-Meter ding a few times. She was sitting on a tapestry bench, a copy of The Captain’s Daughter by Alexander Pushkin clasped between her hands. Her face was buried inside. All I could make out was her raven hair, snowy skin, and long lashes. I had a weird feeling that I’d already seen her, but I shoved it to the back of my mind. Even if I had, she was business now.
Strictly business.
The kind of business I didn’t want to lose.
Especially after using five hundred thousand dollars of the three million Darren had transferred to my account for importing Italian furniture to my new boutique hotel. Oops.
I decided the best course of action was to corner Jesse when she visited her therapist. I waited across from the glitzy building where the clinic was located. I sat in a coffee shop at Liberty Park and gawked through the glass wall. She parked her Range Rover in front of the building and stepped out. Her slumped shoulders looked like broken wings; her overcast eyes were where your soul went to fucking die.
My first thought seeing her was that she was nowhere near Quasimodo-ugly. She was beautiful, and that was the understatement of the fucking century.
The second thought was that I’d already seen her. I didn’t need her to gather those inky strands of hair up to see the Pushkin tattoo. A girl like that, you don’t forget. It was years ago, on the beach, but I remember how carnal the need to conquer her had been. How pissed I’d been when I’d seen her pasty-ass teenage boyfriend fondling her as soon as she’d collapsed on the sand in her little red bikini next to him. Luckily, I’d held myself back from stealing her out from under his nose.
Now that she was collateral, there was no way I’d ever touch her with a ten-foot pole.
Jesse was wearing a pair of shapeless jeans in an attempt to hide her banging long legs, a tangerine shirt—long, baggy, and depressingly modest—and an open black hoodie over top. She had a ball cap on—Raiders, my kind of chick—and the shades she clutched in her fist were the size of her entire face. She clearly wanted to fly off the radar as much as possible. Unfortunately for her, for six mill, I was not only going to notice her existence, but celebrate and build a shrine to it. You know, so to speak.
She disappeared inside the building, her head ducked down, the no-eye-contact policy in full effect. She had an hour at the therapist’s. That was plenty of time for me to saunter over, unscrew the core from the valve stem of her back tire, and watch as it slowly hissed out air. After I did that, I walked two blocks down to get my vehicle— a billion-year-old red Ford truck I’d rarely used—and parked it directly behind her Range Rover.
As expected, Jesse reemerged from the building an hour later, powerwalking to her Range Rover. A perceptive little thing, she noticed the flat tire before she climbed into the car. She squatted, sighed, and then shook her head. I pushed my driver’s door open, hopping to the ground a few good feet from her. Darren mentioned she wasn’t hot on men getting near her. No problemo.
“Everything good?” I asked. She snapped her head up and scowled, like my talking to her broke approximately seven hundred social rules. She didn’t answer, bringing her small hand to the tire and feeling for the valve stem frantically. She knew what she was looking for, and that surprised me. Not that it mattered. To change a tire, Jesse needed someone to grab her spare one, and not to be a sexist pig, but that shit weighed a ton. She was tiny. It was simple physics.
Such a lucky coincidence that I was there, right?
“Your tire is flat,” I stated the fucking obvious, taking a tentative step toward her. She nearly jumped out of her skin treading backward. The look in her eyes was of pure horror. It was my educated guess that the beard, tats, and my six-two frame didn’t help matters much.
“Don’t,” she barked, her voice shaking.
“Don’t what?”
“Touch me.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” I said. And man, was that the truth. She could have paid me 5,999,999 dollars and I still wouldn’t give her a peck on the cheek. I stepped back, raising my palms in surrender.
“Let’s try again. Can I help you change that tire? I have a jack in my truck.” I jerked my thumb behind my shoulder. “You can stand a good five feet from me. I promise not to touch you. Hell, I promise not to look at you, either. I hate orange.” I cocked my head to her shirt. Another truth. The color reminded me of that fucker, Hale, and his auburn hair.
She stared at me long and hard, like my real intentions were going to seep from my eyes on my next blink. I gawked right back, using every ounce of my self-control not to turn around and walk away. I got it, she had her reasons, but she was goddamn strange. I didn’t do difficult, or different, or weird. I kept things simple on that front. Don’t get me wrong—she was beautiful, but she looked like a dazzling tragedy, specially designed to fuck you up.
“My insurance covers it,” she stumbled over her own words. Like she wasn’t used to talking to strangers. I popped my cinnamon gum loudly.
“They’re also going to take an hour. I can get you going in fifteen minutes, and spare you the paperwork and headache.”
“I’m fine with paperwork and headaches. Leave.”
“Fair enough. Call your insurance company.” I folded my arms over my chest.
She could search for their number online, but it would probably take her twenty minutes. There was close to zero reception in that part of downtown Todos Santos. It was located in a valley so low, we were practically neighbors with hell. She tried searching for the number, squinting at her cell phone, huffing at the scrutiny she was under. Then she stumped her foot.
“What’s in it for you?” Jesse tilted her chin toward me, giving up on her spotty internet. Talk about complete opposite from her stepfather. While they were both anxious, he was passive and weak. She was a spitfire, ready to claw your eyes out if you got anywhere near her.
“A cup of coffee. Black. None of that soy shit,” I said, rolling my sleeves up to my elbows and turning my back to her to grab the toolbox from my truck. I swaggered back to find her rooted to the ground, her expression caked with distrust. I dumped the toolbox on the sidewalk and popped her trunk open, feeling her eyes on my face like the barrel of a gun.
She didn’t want to talk to me.
But she didn’t want to spend the afternoon baking under the SoCal sun and waiting for the tow company to arrive even more.
“Feel free to get me that coffee any minute now.” I didn’t even spare her a look, pretending to feel the tire to see what went wrong. Did I mention I didn’t like coffee? Because that shit was poison, and I was a semi-pro surfer with very clean-eating habits. She shifted, looking around, like I was going to tackle her into an alleyway.
“How do you take your coffee again?” With a shot of vodka. And no coffee.
“Surprise me.”
“Surprise you?”
“Yeah. It’s when you do something shocking and spontaneous. Like, you know, smile.”
“Who are you to judge me?”
“I’m your new best friend. Now, go.”
She shook her head gravely and started toward the Starbucks across the street. Downtown Todos Santos was dead for a Thursday evening. Another blessing for yours truly. I didn’t need people recognizing either of us. Jesse was as uptight as a tampon as it was. I did my thing, pushing to the back of my mind the fact that she was like a siren calling to my desires.
She is also a rape victim.
She is also a lucrative business deal.
Oh, and she is also a fucking teenager, you twenty-five-year-old perv.
Jesse came back with a steaming cup of coffee and held it out to me like it was a dead body.
“Leave it on the hood.”
My greasy hands were busy plucking the scissor jack and placing it under the frame rail. Being an only child to a single mom, I’d learned how to do everything short of performing open-heart surgery by myself. I could change all of Jesse’s tires and make okroshka soup from scratch while she filed her fucking nails. Right now, I needed her to see that she could trust me. She was still staring at me, bewildered, like she, herself, had no idea why she was letting me help her.
Then, as if to confirm my suspicion, she blurted, “Why are you helping me, again?”
“I wanted coffee.”
“You can afford coffee.”
“How do you know that? Do you have laser vision that goes straight through my pocket and into my wallet?” I grunted while lifting her spare tire. Couldn’t she have a little fuck-me-missionary-style Mini Cooper like all the other rich chicks in town?
“Do I know you from somewhere?”
I hope not, because it’s either from being a beach bum or the unofficial town whore.
I looked up at her, wiping my forehead and smearing grease over it in the process. “Do you?”
“You’re Roman Protsenko.” She rubbed her worried forehead, and there it was—the look of sheer fear and disgust.
My heart beat faster, even though it shouldn’t have. I reminded myself that I didn’t care…only I did, because I’d already spent some of Darren’s money. “So you do know who I am. What do you make of that?”
“I make nothing of that. It doesn’t matter if you’re the pope or Justin Timberlake. I don’t date.”
“Me neither, so stop acting like I’m hitting on you,” I said honestly. Her spine relaxed a little, and she gave me a curt nod. I had a feeling that was her version of a smile, and I didn’t hate it. California girls smiled like the whole world was watching. Jesse’s movements were private, quiet.
“And what’s your name?” I asked, because I wasn’t really supposed to know.
“No one. Are you done?” She nodded toward her tire.
“Almost, No One.”
I was, in fact, nearly done. But I wanted to prolong her departure, because she was about as compliant as a toaster. I wasn’t sure when the next time I’d see her would be. I also knew that, in some fucked-up, fate-ish way, I wanted to help her. I had a dog in this fight. I knew a thing or two about rape. Hell, maybe that’s why I was such a whore. It didn’t feel right to say no when so many women hadn’t had the choice. Then again, I couldn’t leave Jesse hanging there for hours.
“All yours, Snowflake.” I stood up, wiping the grease on my cargo pants. She nodded, still several feet away from me, pointing at the coffee sitting on her hood, so she didn’t have to come closer.
“Snowflake?”
“Your name can’t be No One, so I choose Snowflake.”
“Is that some political commentary on me?” She narrowed her eyes.
I tried not to roll mine. “No political assumptions here. You just look like a snowflake.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re pasty as fuck.”
Because I found you in the dirt that’s called life, and you stood out. Like an opportunity I cannot miss.
Her gaze flicked to my face for the first time. Her eyes were terrifyingly expressive. The color of the ocean. I realized how corny that sounded, but shit, it didn’t make it any less true. “I…well, thanks, I guess.”
“Wait,” I said, dumping the toolbox to the ground with a thud. “Now I owe you a coffee.”
She stared at me like I’d grown a second head, one that was green and had a hat in the shape of a dick. “That’s not how things work.” She frowned, incredulous.
“Who are you to say how things work?” I parked my hip over her vehicle, squinting under the sun.
“Who are you to say how things work?” She widened her eyes, her anger outweighing her distress.
“I own a coffee shop. I know more about coffee etiquette than you, and I owe you a coffee. Let’s have it tomorrow.”
She grabbed the untouched coffee from her hood, walked over to the nearest trash bin, and threw it with purpose. Then she sauntered to her SUV and yanked the driver’s door open. “There. Now you don’t owe me anything.”
“You still paid for it,” I said, not entirely sure I wasn’t fucking it up, but not having much choice, either. She was a hard nut to crack. I was so used to charming my way into women’s panties, I forgot how to worm my way into their hearts. Normally, it was embarrassingly easy.
I flexed my tatted arms, picking up my surfboard.
Gathered my wild, blond hair into a bun.
Curled my fingers and stretched on a yawn, displaying my six-pack.
Stick a fork in them. Boom. They were fucking done.
With her, I was off my game.
She slid into her seat and reached to slam the door in my face. I had to do something, anything, because I was feeling less and less in control of the situation, and I hated it. Jesse Carter wasn’t responding well to my advances, and wasn’t that an ice cold bucket of shit right into my face? I slid my foot between her door and her car.
“Wait.”
Note to self: never put your limbs anywhere near Jesse Carter when there’s a door in the vicinity. She slammed the door on my foot. Fuck.
I pulled my leg away at the same time she yelped in disbelief. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. Instead of jumping up and down and praying to hell she hadn’t broken any bones, I simply flashed her my cocky grin.
“I didn’t mean to slam it that hard.” She winced, and I think she meant it. The contrast between her black hair and fair skin was shocking. She looked like a painting. Not a weird-ass, provocative painting, like a Peter Paul Rubens. Rather, like a Disney princess. One that was drawn by a horny sixteen-year-old who gave her a pair of fantastic tits.
“Yeah? Make it up to me. Coffee. Tomorrow. Call it a job interview. I need a new barista, Snowflake,” I hissed out the words, knowing they were desperate and not giving much shit.
“I’m not looking for a job.”
“Do you have one?”
“It’s not really any of your business.”
“Good point. Let’s establish a friendship first. I’ll lure you into the position later. For now—coffee.”
“No.”
“What would it take for you to say yes?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. There’s always something.”
“Nope. Nothing would make me have coffee with you, Bane.”
“Think harder. You seem like a bright girl. I’m sure we can come up with an idea.”
She sighed, staring up at the sky like the answer was there in skywriting. “Maybe if you saved my life, and I owed you in some fundamental way. Otherwise, I don’t date.”
“You’re not listening. I want you to work for me. And to be your friend.”
“I’ll never work for you. And why would you want to be my friend?”
Because your daddy will pay me six million bucks for the pleasure.
“Because you seem like a cool chick. Because you’re funny. And quick-witted. And not the worst to look at, despite that shirt. But I don’t date. And I’m not interested in sleeping with you, either.”
Told you I was a goddamn liar.
“Are you gay?” Her eyes lit up. I might as well have pretended to be gay. I let plenty of guys suck my cock when I was younger, to see if I liked it. Then again, there was no point in lying to her more than absolutely necessary. She looked almost hopeful, chewing on a lock of her hair nervously. Like what was standing in our way of friendship was my lack of love for dick.
“No. But my job doesn’t allow for a girlfriend. It’s a long story.” I wiped my forehead again, knowing I was sweaty and greasy and ruggedly delicious to every single woman in the universe who wasn’t Jesse Carter.
“So you just want to be friends?” she asked. She was sitting in her car, and I was trying hard not to look down at my foot to see if it had fallen off, and it was goddamn sweltering. I didn’t want to be her friend at that moment. I wanted to shove my foot into a bucket of ice and curse her into next week.
“And a barista,” I added. “Two birds, one stone.”
Jesse mulled the idea for a few seconds, worrying her lip, before saying, “No.”
Then she threw her SUV into drive and bolted down the road, toward Main Street, probably up to El Dorado. I watched the back of her Rover in the same way I’d watched her ass all those years ago, with a mixture of longing, annoyance, and awe.
She really did remind me of the snow.
Just like it, she was going to melt on my tongue.