Chapter One
Fifteen Years Later
“I say we just chop the ugly fucker up and use him as firewood,” Lindy said. “Come on, Jude, it’s the easiest solution.”
I stood in a thicket of woods with my sister, along with Damarcus, our employee and friend. It rained the night before, the baking sun of early morning heating the dewy forest, making it misty. It was barely the start of summer but already boiling hot, which would be good for business since our property sat right on the Gullport Salt Pond. But before we could get back to business as usual, we had a problem to take care of. A big, solid, heavy one.
The three of us stared down at the tree-sized, carved wooden beaver statue. It had, until recently, stood before the entrance up on the road, alongside the welcome sign that read ‘Beaver Tail Motel and Cabins’ with the byline ‘A dam good time!’
Twelve-feet tall, the cartoony, buck-toothed beaver carving was commissioned by my late grandfather when he’d first opened the motel, and had stood as a landmark for decades. Now the beaver was on its back in the woods, painted eyes staring at the sky, an enormous, splintered gash along its legs where a car hit it. It felt like a funeral with the three of us gathered round, staring solemnly down at our fallen comrade.
I looked up at the wooded hillside that led to the road where the beaver once stood proud. When the accident happened, I was away on a fishing trip, one of my rare breaks from the routine of managing the property, so I’d missed all the excitement. A drunk driver spun out in a rain storm and slammed into the beaver, knocking it off its podium and sending it tumbling down the hill where it found its final resting place in the woods. It was a blessing no one was out here when it happened, guests or staff alike, because one of the hiking trails passed right through this copse of trees. Someone could have gotten killed.
But the only victim was old wooden Bucky here. I could admit that Bucky the Beaver was a tacky, outdated representation of our family business, but objects of heartwarming nostalgia often are. The problem now was we had to decide what to do with the damn thing, and there was no agreement in our ranks. Mainly because of me. “Come on, Lindy, we can’t just chop up Bucky,” I said. “He’s an icon. Guests look forward to seeing him when they arrive for summer vacation. Can’t we hire someone to fix him and get him propped back up again?”
Lindy swiped her forehead with her wrist then swatted a bug away, the heat clearly doing nothing to temper her agitation. She’d been the one dealing with the accident while Damarcus and Gil and I were off catching cod and camping under the stars, so she wasn’t exactly open to my advice on the matter.
Where I’d inherited my father’s auburn hair, Lindy’s was black like our mother’s, and with it tied in a braid I could measure her impatience level by the rise of flush on her skin. It was currently about midway up her face, but once it reached her cheekbones I was in the danger zone. I got it. I was usually a quick decision maker but had kept Lindy and Damarcus in the woods debating the fate of the wooden beaver for half an hour.
“I’ve got my first group of kids arriving soon for the day camp, I don’t have time to argue about this,” Lindy said. “It doesn’t matter anyway, there’s a problem with the insurance since the thing already fell. It’s proven itself dangerous. Let’s just cut it up and haul it back. That’s hundreds of dollars’ worth of firewood right there.”
“This isn’t about money, Melinda.”
“I know, it’s about you acting like a babyman, Julien.”
“Stop.” Damarcus raised his hands. “Things always go downhill once you two start using full names. Jude, you really want to save the beaver? The thing’s pretty smashed up.”
I scowled, conflicted. “I don’t know.”
“Want me to go get the saw?” Damarcus asked. “Not trying to be an asshole but I’ve got work to do too. Boathouse opens in half an hour.”
“I don’t know.”
Lindy groaned and raked her face with her fingers. “For fuck’s sake, Jude! You’re killing me.”
I glanced at Damarcus, who looked nervous to be caught between two warring siblings. With his token floppy fishing hat and a literal peace sign on his tee shirt, Damarcus was often a mediating force at work. I liked to think of myself as the resident chilled-out guru, but in truth I was too often short-tempered to claim the title. Damarcus had a far better grip on inner peace than I did. He’d been with us for several years, and knew all too well that despite Lindy and my laidback natures, things could get ugly when tempers flared.
Damarcus had, for instance, witnessed a particularly heated clash last summer that ended with Lindy and I—two grown adults—flinging raw clams from a bait-bucket at each other. Nothing made maturity dissolve faster than being around siblings. Working with family was both a blessing and a curse. I could see by the look in Damarcus’s eyes that he was mainly losing patience with me, however, but I made one more plea to save the ugly wooden icon whose painted face I’d known since birth.
“But...what would Grampa say if we dismembered Bucky?”
“Oh come on,” Lindy said. “Bucky’s a piece of wood.”
“Hey, look at it this way.” Damarcus squeezed my shoulder. “Bucky will be used for campfires so he’s not going to waste. He’ll be like...reincarnated! Circle of life. Your grandfather would approve, I’m sure.”
Damarcus was trying to manipulate me by whipping out his hippie spiritual side, because he knew I was a sucker for that shit. I almost called him out on it, but his brown skin was dewy with sweat, and he was getting eaten alive by mosquitos, so I let it slide. “It just feels wrong,” I said, sighing down at the beaver. “Like we’re killing him.”
“We didn’t kill Bucky,” Lindy said. “Some drunk driver did. Can we move on? There’s work to do.”
“Fine,” I said, defeated. “Call Emmet and get the chainsaw. Load the wood in the shed near the rec center. I’m gonna go check cabins.”
“Mom wants to talk to you,” Lindy called after me as I trudged back through the woods.
“What for?”
“I don’t know but she’s already up and in the office. Said it’s important.”
I checked my phone as I made my way down the wooded path that led back to the motel. No text messages from my mother. Damn it, that was never a good sign. If it was mundane motel business she’d have texted. Instead, she’d sent for me like a Mafia don. She only did this when she didn’t want me to wriggle out of whatever discussion she meant to have with me.
I knew my mother viewed me as her reliable, responsible son most of the time. But my teen years always hung in the air like a ghost, invisible, but occasionally manifesting to let me know it was still there, and it remembered. That I was once an emotional basket-case, someone my mother needed to worry about. A grief-stricken, guilt-ridden kid who felt so responsible for my father’s death I went full Macbeth, cutting my hands with a razor blade, just to see the blood flow. I felt like I had blood on my hands, so I made it manifest—until the day my mother caught me and sent me to a shrink.
I was not that person anymore, and didn’t like the reminder every time she opted to probe into my personal life. It was like she was checking to see if I was really as well-adjusted as I presented myself, or if it was a façade. I needed to shake this maudlin mood before I met with her so she didn’t start looking at me funny again. I wasn’t sure why I was feeling out of sorts this morning. It was probably that damn beaver. A symbol of happier times. Something I’d thought was solid and unbreakable...the way I’d once viewed my father. Now fallen and shattered.
Determined to release any negativity, I stopped on the forest path, and as my mother taught me long ago, closed my eyes and raised my arms, taking a deep breath. Inhaling the energy of the forest. Letting the purity of the earth and woods cleanse and calm me. In with the good air. Out with the bad. Once, twice, three times I slowly raised then lowered my arms as I exhaled, flushing out the toxic feelings.
I instantly felt better. My mother was a huge proponent of using the mind to control the body’s emotional response. I used to mock her ways but found myself falling back on her lessons as an adult. Turned out mom knew what she was talking about. The emotional mind was powerful and could be a malicious tyrant if you didn’t learn to master it. She’d made me learn to do so after my father’s death, once she discovered the gravity of the situation, and just how much I blamed myself.
She was still a little overprotective even though I was an adult, but I tried not to let it annoy me. I suspected she had her own remaining pain over losing my dad, and assuring her children were happy, low-stress individuals was one of her coping mechanisms. Which was heartwarming even if she took it too far sometimes. Neither Lindy nor I showed any signs of the high blood pressure that led to my father’s stroke.
Footsteps brought me out of my meditation, shattering my calm when I saw Emmet Barker coming toward me up the path. Carrying a chainsaw, Emmet’s posture was hunched, face wearing the same scowl it always did when he spotted me. Emmet was hired by my mother, not me, so I had to grudgingly accept his presence around the property, but at least he kept mostly to himself. We went to school together, and after Wally Cook tried to ruin me, Emmet was part of a large group of cretins that used to bully me. He’d been working at Beaver Tail for a year, and although I was a confident adult now and truly no longer gave a shit, Emmet’s weird attitude had kept us primarily on grunting terms.
If I was being honest though, I couldn’t really say Emmet’s presence didn’t affect me at all. It did once in a while when I’d find myself backsliding into unsavory memories. When he wasn’t grunting and avoiding my eyes, I’d sometimes catch him watching me with that old familiar sneer from when we were kids. Didn’t matter that I no longer had long hair he could pull. Didn’t matter that I’d grown into my ears so he couldn’t tease me about them sticking out anymore. Didn’t matter that I was a man now. When Emmet Barker gave me that sneer, I felt like a scrawny kid again, about to get tripped or have a mini-carton of milk thrown at the back of my head.
Once a handsome varsity soccer star, Emmet’s looks had faded in his late twenties. He was still a decent-looking guy, but there was something weathered about him now. Once vibrant blond hair was now the color of dirty dishwater, making me wonder how often he shampooed it. He had dark circles under his eyes like he rarely slept enough. I experienced a shameful, spite-ridden pleasure in knowing that where I had blossomed with age, Emmet Barker had wilted. His wardrobe was consistently sloppy, his once confident gait droopy and shuffling, and even his green eyes seemed faded, and perpetually narrowed like he was searching for something to hate.
I suspected he resented that I, the once weird little Jude Applegate, was now his boss. Like it went against the natural order of things.
“Hey Emmet,” I said as he passed by, averting his eyes as he usually did when we were in forced proximity.
Emmet mumbled a greeting and continued deeper into the woods. It was darkly apt that Emmet Barker, one of my childhood nemeses, would be Bucky’s executioner. Carving up and destroying the last outpost of my happy childhood memories.
I continued on toward the motel grounds, steadfast in my quest to dispel my uncharacteristic moodiness. Lindy was right about Bucky—he was just a piece of wood. Soon to be many pieces of wood. I flinched when I heard the chainsaw start up back in the distance.
The sound of children’s laughter and the ding ding ding of bells and whistles from electronic games drifted out of the open doors of the rec center as I passed, then I made my way to the motel office. The bell on the door jingled as I stepped inside, passing a family who’d just checked in, a young couple with a little girl. “Hello.” I smiled at the couple, who appeared cheerful, carrying trail maps and a key to one of the cabins on the water. “Have a great time.”
“Thank you,” the woman said, holding the little girl’s hand, who was literally jumping with excitement.
“You have fun too!” I smiled at the kid. “You gonna go swimming today?”
She grinned, missing a front tooth. “I wanna go in the recreation center!”
Her father groaned. “We’re here to enjoy the great outdoors, Bethany, not play arcade games.”
“I can do both!” She looked to me for reinforcement. “Right?”
“Make sure you enjoy the woods and the pond first,” I said. “But just in case...put your hands out.” Winking conspiratorially, I reached into the jar on the shelf and passed a huge handful of game tokens into her cupped hands.
Her eyes widened and she beamed. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome. Have fun.”
“I will!”
The family left the office, and my mother looked up from where she sat at her desk. “Can’t wait to see their Yelp review. Undermining parental authority. Nice one, Jude.”
“Thanks. I do what I can.”
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“I heard. What’s up, beautiful mother?” I sat across from her.
“Uh oh. Why you being nice to me? What’s broken? Just tell me.”
“Nothing that I know of. I thought you were gonna blame me for something.”
“Oh, so that’s why you’re being nice.”
I grinned. “Yes, that’s why. But you’re still beautiful.”
“Aren’t you just full of shit this morning,” she said, but I finally got a real smile.
My mom, Toni Applegate, was a beautiful woman, with short black hair and ice blue eyes, and I wondered why she’d never remarried or brought a man home since my father’s death. Fifteen years was a long time to be celibate, and she certainly kept herself in good shape.
She probably did scratch an itch occasionally when she went to visit ‘friends’ on a long weekend, but she never shared such matters with me. It was sweet, really, like she didn’t want me and Lindy to see her with someone besides my father, regardless that we were both adults and could certainly handle it at this point.
I tried asking about it once, but she’d taunted that turnabout was fair play, and if I wanted to know about her dating practices, I had to tell her about mine. Which I refused to do. Mainly because there was never much to tell. An older man who’d stayed at one of the cabins years ago taught me it all in terms of sex, but I certainly wasn’t gonna tell my mom about that. Later on, there’d been a few random hookups when I got lonely enough to seek them out, along with a townie I’d briefly thought I was in love with until I saw him kick a cat one day.
My mom wasn’t stupid, though. She’d hit on the fact that I wasn’t much of a risk taker. I’d never felt very safe taking chances, not since the night my father died, and I knew full well I should probably be ‘over it’ by now. I was trying hard, but the subconscious mind tended to be a hoarder when it came to trauma, reluctant to release the protective deadbolts. I’d taken a big risk the night I climbed into Wally Cook’s bed, trusting him with my friendship, and my budding sexuality. And within an hour, I’d lost everything. That friendship. My dignity. Any hope of my first sexual experience being a positive memory. And of course, my father’s life.
This was why I didn’t exchange coming-out stories when my few non-heterosexual friends brought them up. Oh, your parents were disappointed when you told them you were gay? That’s adorable. My dad had a stroke. In front of me.
“How was your trip?” my mother asked. “I’ve barely seen you since you got back.”
“It was good. Did some cod fishing and camped out with Damarcus and Gil.”
“Glad you got to relax, honey. But now I’ve got some urgent business for you. You heard about what happened with the beaver.”
“Yeah. It’ll be chopped up by now, we took care of it. Sorry you had to deal with all that while I was away.”
She shrugged. “Could have been worse. Thankfully no one got hurt. Aside from the driver, who was knocked out in the crash, but I hear he’s fine now.”
“Some drunk, right?”
“Well, he was drunk that night. This is why I called for you. He’s going to be working here a few days a week, through the summer.”
I laughed. When my mother didn’t, I frowned. “You’re joking. He’s gonna be working here? Why would you hire some drunk who damaged our property?”
“I didn’t hire him.” She tapped a pen on a paper in front of her. “It’s part of his sentencing. Community service. I’ve agreed to it.”
My jaw dropped. “You agreed to have the drunk who killed...I mean crashed into Bucky, work here on the property?”
My mother rolled her eyes. “Don’t clutch your pearls. You hang out with Gil, who I’ve spotted drinking his breakfast from a paper bag at the general store.”
“Hey, that was Gil’s day off. He doesn’t drink at work.”
“And neither will our community service worker. There’s plenty around here this guy can do.”
“You agreed to this without consulting me? Thought I was the manager.”
“You weren’t here, I had to make a decision. And this is still my place, bossy. I honestly don’t know what you’re bitching about. It’s an extra hand and we don’t have to pay him. Anyway, he starts today. I’d like you to supervise him.”
“Today? Thanks for the notice. And why me?”
She smirked and pointed her pen at me. “You’re the manager.”
“So is Lindy!”
“It’s summer, Lindy has groups. And Lindy’s work is what qualifies us as a charity. The lawyer I spoke to said that played a part in this arrangement.”
“Oh, so you’re on the side of the drunk who crashed into Bucky.”
“I’m on the side of having a worker for the summer that we don’t have to pay. And I’m sorry, Jude, but I don’t care about that godforsaken beaver. It was old as dirt and probably had termites. The guy did us a favor by knocking it over.”
I gasped dramatically. “How dare you!”
She chuckled.
“Why can’t you have this guy help you out in the office?”
“I don’t need help in the office. We need help on the grounds, and with cleaning and maintenance. There’s always work to be done.”
I sighed defeatedly and slumped back. “So this falls on me.”
“It does.”
My sister had gone away to school out of state and earned a science degree. I was secretly pleased she chose to come back to Gullport to work for the family business. Even though she drove me bananas sometimes, I liked having Lindy around. She led groups of kids through the summer, part of an organization that gave underprivileged youth more access to the woods and outdoor activities. She took them on hikes and taught them about surviving in the forest, what plants and bugs were edible and all that shit. Or she’d take them on canoes out to the marshes to learn about the wildlife.
“How old is this guy?”
Perusing the paper on her desk, she said, “He’s your age, so he should be strong. I’m sure you can find plenty of use for him.” The phone on her desk rang. “Oh, hang on, honey.”
While my mother spoke on the phone, I tried to shake off my grumpiness. Having to babysit some stranger on a court order wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind this summer. One of the things I loved about this job was I could work in solitude, pick and choose when I wanted to be around others. Maybe I could just delegate, find a way to pawn this off on Damarcus or Emmet. On the other hand, it might be nice to have someone to clean the toilets in the cabins or help out chopping and hauling wood. Yeah, I’d find work for the guy. Fucker killed Bucky.
“Okay, but just this once,” my mother said into the phone. “All right, we’ll see you soon.” She hung up and looked at me. “That was Walt.”
“Walt?”
“Community service guy. His roommate was supposed to drive him but there was car trouble. I said you’d go pick him up.”
“What?” I laughed incredulously. “Okay, you’re telling me that this guy, who drove drunk and damaged our property, now expects someone to go pick his ass up?”
“His license has been suspended. He swore it’s just for today and that he’ll get his transportation sorted out for next time.”
“Unbelievable. Why can’t he call a taxi or a ride service?”
“He says ride services won’t go out where he lives. He’s on the cliffside. And Jude, please stop giving me attitude and just do this. I love you honey, but your energy is pissing me off this morning. You need to meditate.”
“I did.”
“Not long enough.”
“Fine. What’s the address?”
She circled something on a page and slid it across to me. “That’s the address I was given by the lawyer.”
I scowled at the page. There was a lot of information on it, but I focused first on the address. “This is way out on the cliffside. What does he do for work?”
“He’s in real estate or something.”
“On the cliffside?” I scoffed. “What’s he selling, fishing shanties?”
Gullport was woodsy and sparsely populated, but the cliffside was more rural still, the very edge of Gullport’s coast. I knew only a few people that actually lived out there, mostly fishermen. A few famous actors had expensive homes on the cliffs, but it was mostly fishing and hunting cabins. The marshes overflowed a lot, making the roads a mess even in good weather. Gullport tourism didn’t genuinely extend to the cliffside, and even the most hardcore hikers avoided the craggy bluffs.
The idea of this guy maintaining a real estate career out on the cliffside sounded like bullshit. No one was building new homes on that swamp, and half the old seaside structures were abandoned, saggy and weatherworn. Maybe I was being unnecessarily pissy. I’d not even met this guy and already decided he was a loser. He was my age and he’d made a mistake, and now he was taking responsibility and paying for it. Had I never made a mistake? Shit, I’d driven tipsy before. I’d just never been caught.
Deciding to go into this with an open mind, I scanned the rest of his details on the page. The weird, negative energy I’d been feeling all morning, almost like a premonition, returned and blasted through me like a hot wind when I saw the emergency contact.
Maggie Buckman
The Cook Family Inn
Landing Center, Landing
I let my eyes drift to the top right of the page where his name was listed. The bagel I’d eaten that morning threatened to come up on me.
Walter Hughes Cook
I began scratching my stubble relentlessly as I stared down at the name, my skin growing flushed and itchy, like my body was reacting to the name before my mind could even process it. Wally fucking Cook? In Gullport? Wally Cook wouldn’t be caught dead living in Gullport. Not with us marsh rats. He came from one of the wealthiest families on the coast, and all of their businesses were in Landing.
But the evidence was right there on the page, staring up at me. I hadn’t seen Wally Cook since the night my father died, but that didn’t mean I didn’t remember everything about him. I’d crushed on him for an entire year in middle school, so yeah, I even knew that his middle name was Hughes, obsessed little pup that I was.
“Jude? You all right?”
My mother’s voice was distant and I didn’t answer, just read the name over and over again. Walter Hughes Cook. Wally Cook. The kid who betrayed me explosively then continued to lob grenades from a distance thereafter, making life hell for a good part of my young adulthood. My first crush, my number one enemy, the destroyer of worlds...and now, Bucky the Beaver’s murderer.
“Jude!”
I set the page down on the desk, then rubbed my face with my fingers.
“What’s the matter with you? You hungover?”
“Do you know who this is?” I pointed to the page. “Do you know who this is?”
“Who?”
“This...fucking guy you’ve invited into our lives. He’s a Cook!”
She frowned. “A cook?”
“No, Cook, Mom, Cook. It’s Wally Cook. From Landing?”
The light finally dawned in her eyes. She snatched up the page and looked it over. “Oh. Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“The boy you were visiting the night...”
“The night Dad died.”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes. “You were supposed to spend the night. But you got in a fight. Broke your wrist that night. I remember.”
“Yup.”
I never told her it was actually Wally’s father that broke my wrist. I knew it would turn into a big deal if I did, rightly so I realized now that I was an adult. But it would have forced me to contend with the Cook family once more. So to this day, I’d kept that particular lie to myself. It didn’t matter anymore. But my mother asking me to go out and pick up an adult version of Wally Cook, and let him work on our property all summer? That fucking mattered.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. Could I? The morning started with my sister calling me a babyman for being emotional over the beaver. I didn’t want to be a babyman now. But my pulse was racing. I was finding it hard to breathe. I was sweating. Just at the thought of having to see Wally Cook again after fifteen years.
My mother reached over and gripped my hand on the desk, her face laced with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Jude. The address was Gullport, and it’s a common name. I just didn’t put it together. Would you like me to call the lawyer and tell him it’s a no go? I know what a...hard time that was for you.”
I didn’t like her expression. It was a very particular expression that I hadn’t seen in years, but had seen often as a kid. It said that her son was broken, fragile, apt to shatter at any moment. She had good reason to think so back then. But a grown man shouldn’t have to see that look in his mother’s eyes. I recoiled from that look, standing and snatching the page off the desk. “I’ll handle it.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was a long time ago.”
Relief made my mother’s shoulders sag. “Yes, exactly! You were just kids. Babies, really.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. I’m agreeing to this but under protest. I hate that fucking kid and I’m always gonna hate him.”
My mother’s brows slowly rose. “Kid?”
I shrugged. “What?”
“You said kid. It was like you regressed to being fourteen again.”
“Shit, you’re right.” I sat back down, hanging my head. “Shit.”
“This is really triggering you.”
I looked up. “I’m not triggered. I’m just...it’s just bringing up bad memories.”
My mother was right, though. I was triggered, suddenly catapulted back in time. Feeling the old hatred, and the shame. I’d done nothing wrong, but that didn’t stop shame from bubbling up at the memory of being bullied repeatedly. Wally might not have been physically one of my bullies, but he was the one pulling the strings. The puppeteer. He was the only source those particular rumors could have come from.
“He might be a nice young man now,” my mom said. “He sounded nice on the phone.”
“Wally Cook was never nice. And even if he had the potential in him, anything that grew up in that house would have long since turned rotten.”
“If it’s too much—”
“I’ll handle it,” I said and stood again. “Thanks, Mom. Love you.”
“Jude? You sure?”
“I said I’ll handle it.”
I left the office, bell jingling as the screen door closed behind me. I started past the rec center, down toward the pond, where I’d take the path along the water that led to my house. When I was nineteen, right before I finally came out to my family, I’d been planning to move into an apartment nearby, needing my space. My mother tried to transfer ownership of the big house up on the hill, the one I’d grown up in. Claiming it was too big for her to live there all alone, she offered to move out instead. She wanted me to have it. When I pointed out that the family home was too big for me to live in all alone as well, she teased about me filling it up with children one day.
That was the moment. I’d hidden my sexuality from her and Lindy for years, holding fast to the promise I’d made to my father. That I’d tell no one until I got older. Bigger. Maybe I took my promise too far, as I’m sure he didn’t intend to include family in that equation. Either way, at nineteen, I was older, bigger, and had had enough of lying to my family. I’d told my mom then that I’d never have a wife. And likely would never be filling the family home up with children. And then I told her why.
Now, years later, my mother still lived in the big house, and I’d taken up residence in one of the cabins that dotted the shore. We had twelve cabins in all, eleven that we rented out. The other one I’d renovated and now lived in. It was the farthest cabin along the shore, far enough away from the others, and from the motel that I could claim some independence. Some semblance of a life separated from work and family.
But as I headed that way now, the sudden appearance of Emmet Barker reminded me that my life was currently experiencing a violent loop of the past crashing into the present. On an ATV with a wagon full of wood trailing behind it, Bucky’s decapitated head smiled at me from the top of the pile. Emmet glanced over and gave me his token sneer, and I offered my token fake wave.
He must have assumed I wanted to speak with him, and slowed the ATV to a stop, watching me with wary eyes. “It’s done,” he said.
“I can see that. Just load it all on the woodpile.”
Emmet wiped his brow with the flannel he had on over a tee shirt. “Okay but then I’m taking a break. It’s hot as fuck and I just cut up that whole damn beaver.”
“Yeah, of course, do what you need to.” I frowned as he wiped his face with the overshirt again. “Why are you wearing a flannel? It’s eight thousand degrees out.”
Emmet stiffened and avoided my eyes. “Your mom wants me to keep the trails clear and sometimes guests throw trash in the woods. When I pick through I get thorns scraping my arms.”
“Oh, okay. Well, you’re out of the woods now. You should take it off, looks hot as hell. Don’t wanna get heatstroke.”
Turning his head, Emmet eyed me strangely.
“Something wrong?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Why you asking?” he snapped.
Good question. I wasn’t sure why I was choosing to engage Emmet Barker in conversation. I was usually content with our mutual pretense that the other didn’t exist. Maybe I was testing my resolve, proving I could deal with someone from my horrid past, and be fine with it. Practice for Wally Cook. And shit…did Emmet still know Wally? Had they stayed in touch? I couldn’t imagine anyone, even nasty Wally Cook, wanting to hang out with Emmet, but I was getting ahead of myself. I needed to handle one traumatic blast from the past at a time.
Taking a deep breath, I did my awkward best at extending an olive branch to one of my childhood bullies. “No need to get defensive, Emmet. You’re an employee, and I don’t want anyone getting heatstroke.”
He continued to eye me skeptically. “You got a problem with me, Applegate?”
I took another deep breath, getting hold of myself. I was touchy after the news from my mom, and didn’t want to take it out on Emmet just because he was an easy target. Olive branch. You can do this. “I have no problem with you. It’s just that you always seem a little angry. Tense. I hope it’s not because of me. I have no issue you with you working here, if that’s what you think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your attitude, Emmet. Objectively speaking, it sucks.”
“What do you mean? Someone complain about me? I do my job, don’t bother anyone.”
“No one complained. I just noticed that you seem unhappy a lot.”
He shrugged and cast his eyes down. “Yeah. Well, okay. I understand. Maybe I have been moping around some.”
Finally, some actual human feedback from the man. I’d hit on something. Maybe Emmet was genuinely depressed. Since I was on a ‘practice being the bigger person’ mission, I said, “Hey, how about you leave early today. Take the afternoon off. Go grab a beer or something. It’s hot as hell and cutting up Bucky was a big job.”
Emmet stared at me, brows lifted.
“Does that sound good?”
“I don’t swing that way.”
“You don’t...excuse me?”
“I don’t swing that way,” he repeated. “I like women.”
I blinked, then a laugh barked out of me. “Do you think I’m hitting on you?”
His already pink face flushed red. “Well, I don’t know! You asked me to take my shirt off, then you asked me to go out drinking.”
“Oh, my God.” I closed my eyes, and counted to five. “Emmet, no. I just thought you looked too hot, and tired, and that maybe you could use a few hours off today. Jesus! I wasn’t asking you out. Trust me, you are not my type.”
“Oh. Sorry. It’s just I...remember what I heard about you. When we were in school.”
An invisible fist punched me in the gut. Rage blew through me so hot I had to take a step back so I wouldn’t reach for Emmet’s throat. It took several deep breaths to calm myself before I forced a smile, and said, “Fuck you, Emmet. I hope you sweat to death.”
His eyes widened. “Am I fired?”
Rubbing my temples, I growled. I wanted to fire Emmet, I really did. But it wasn’t my call. And I was too damn nice. I couldn’t take his job away. The man had to eat, after all. “You’re not fired. But right now, I need you out of my sight. Get the fuck out of here. Go home. You’ve got the rest of the day off.”
“Thanks.” He let out a relieved sigh. “I really appreciate it.”
“Don’t. It’s only because if I see you again today, I’ll probably kill you.”
He frowned, then nodded. “Got it.”
So much for that olive branch. Emmet had taken it, turned it around, and whipped me with it.
I didn’t wait for a response, just turned on my heel and walked away. I heard the ATV rev as Emmet headed toward the woodshed. Through the haze of anger, it took me a moment to realize I was heading back toward the motel office. But I wasn’t altogether surprised. My emotional reaction to Emmet’s moronic comments was evidence enough. I would not be able to handle spending the summer with Wally Cook. I couldn’t do it. If stupid Emmet Barker could still knock me off kilter with a few words, if that level of rage was still hiding inside me? There was no way I could handle this. Because it wasn’t just Wally’s betrayal that night when he asked me to touch his dick at age fourteen. It was what he’d done later. It was what Emmet had been referencing just now with his what I heard about you when we were in school.
Blessedly, Wally Cook hadn’t returned to school in Gullport the following year. But he’d left something behind. Rumors about me. Suddenly, none of my old friends wanted to hang out with me. Kids would whisper behind my back that I was a pervert. Hide their bodies from me in the locker room. Tripping me in the hallways. Spreading lies that I tried to touch their ass, or that I offered to blow them.
Words scrawled on the bathroom walls. ‘Hide your junk! Jude Applegate will try to grab it.’
The kicker of it all was I had no idea why. Wally wasn’t even returning to our school, so why had he seen fit to leave such ugly lies about me behind? Why would he do that to me? He’d already crushed me. Wally had already won. He'd broken me. He’d humiliated me. So why wasn’t it enough? Why the extra kick when I was already down? A kick that lasted two years until I finally hit my growth spurt, and became a less appealing target for bullying.
But I was never going to find out the reason why. Because I would never put myself in the position to ask. I never wanted to see Walter Hughes Cook again. I would accept the babyman title if need be, but I couldn’t handle this. This community service arrangement, simply could not happen.
When I stepped through the door, my mother looked up from behind a filing cabinet. “What’s up, honey?”
“I can’t do it.”
She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed, nodding. “Okay.”
“I just can’t. Not with him. Not him.”
“I understand, Jude.”
Ignoring the painful sympathy on my mother’s face, I nodded, then left. Certain that this time, I’d made the right decision.
That certainty lasted until an hour later, when a stranger showed up to try changing my mind. At least, I thought he was a stranger.