CHAPTER 7:
BEN
I was semi-drunk. Already.
Okay…so I hadn’t had even a sip of alcohol since before I’d joined the Coast Guard. Which was over two years ago. I used to drink all the time in high school. Sonya and I… well, we used to party every weekend. I had the tolerance of a four-hundred-pound man.
Had.
Had the tolerance.
Now, apparently, I was a lightweight. I guess tolerance was one of those ‘don’t use it, you lose it’ kind of things. I’d had barely a quarter bottle of the Jameson, while Rhett and Lilly had been talking in the back of the restaurant, and already I could feel tingles under my skin. Give me another thirty minutes, and I’d lose all feeling in my face.
Finally Lilly reappeared, walking through the double doors that led from the restaurant’s kitchen. Rhett wasn’t far behind her. He returned behind the bar, while she came around to where I sat waiting.
Damn, Lilly was beautiful. So beautiful. That face, those eyes, that hair, those lips…and her ass. She had one hell of an ass. It wasn’t mine to think about, obviously I knew that, but get a little alcohol in me and for some reason it became all my mind wanted to dwell on. And I’d missed her in the time she’d been gone. It was lonely without her, and I suddenly felt much better now that she was back in the same room as me.
“Oh, God,” she said to me, taking in my newly inebriated state. “You’re drunk.”
“You’re beautiful.”
She rolled her eyes, grabbing my arm so that I’d stand. “Come on,” she urged. “We need to go. It’s almost eight.”
“Seriously, Lilly, you are,” I insisted. She needed to know that.
“I can’t leave you alone, even for fifteen minutes,” she scolded.
In my defense, running into Sonya hadn’t been easy. Far from it. I’d rather have poured salt in my eyes than to see her once more. One look at her and a million repressed feelings had come rushing right back to the surface. My grief over our past was something I contended with on a daily basis. That was nothing new. But seeing Sonya again made it feel that much fresher, like it had only been yesterday that she’d had her abortion and subsequently we’d broken up.
“You okay?” Lilly whispered to me, softly so that Rhett wouldn’t hear her.
“No,” I answered honestly. I wasn’t.
“Let’s just get out of here then.” She grabbed her purse and then my hand. “Bye, Rhett,” she called out. “So, you’ll pick me up for practice on Wednesday at four. Right? You know where Ben lives? I live next door to him.”
“Sure thing,” Rhett answered. “I know where he lives. See you Wednesday, Hugs.”
Hugs? Really.
“You’re still doing that?” I questioned Rhett, slightly annoyed. “Hugs? That’s the best you could come up with for her?”
Rhett had some weird thing where he always gave every woman he came in contact with a special nickname. And once a nickname was given, he’d forever use it and never change it, rarely even using a person’s real name. As a teen, I used to think Rhett was the shit. He graduated a few years before me and we’d both been a big part of the ‘Kill Devil Hills High social scene.’ I used to admire him—the way he could easily befriend anyone, man or woman, and the way he always had a different girl desperate to get in his bed. Plus, he’d been exceptional at baseball before injuring his elbow. He was easy to look up to, at least to an impressionable sixteen-year-old me.
Until I realized how pointless it all was. It was Sonya’s unexpected pregnancy and the loss of a child that changed me. The rose-colored glasses I used to see the world through were gone, and I saw everything around me as it really was. Pure bullshit. Rhett was part of that bullshit.
But that was the old Rhett.
I didn’t know what to make of this new Rhett. The only thing I knew was that he’d been dating Sydney Michaels for over a year. And Sydney was everything Rhett was not. It was all very confusing.
Rhett shrugged. “I think you’re going to find Hugs really suits your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I clarified.
“I’m not his girl,” Lilly added.
“If you two say so,” Rhett mumbled. He turned around, and started collecting the dishes from where Sonya and Logan had been sitting. Not wasting anymore time, Lilly and I left the restaurant. There was no point in arguing with Rhett. The guy liked to say annoying shit just to instigate arguments sometimes.
“Rhett can be a dick,” I told Lilly once we were safely outside. “But in general, I think he’s an okay guy.” I had to believe that since Sydney believed that.
“He gave me a job. I’m in his band.”
I found that hilarious and started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, but in my semi-drunk state I couldn’t help myself. “No way. His band is terrible. It’s been years since I’ve seen them play, but they’re complete crap.”
“Good,” she exclaimed. “Maybe no one will come to the shows and no one will ever have to witness me singing. I'm not a ‘center of attention’ kind of girl.”
I could see that about her. Although, she rapidly was becoming the center of my attention. And seeing her sing, I'd be interested in that.
I dug in my pocket for my keys, wobbling a little. I'd literally chugged a quarter of that bottle and the effects were settling in harder now. The Chancy Claw parking lot spun a bit. “You've got to drive. I need to get home,” I told her, handing over my keys.
I fell into another fit of giggles. That was the thing about drunk me—the first stage was always laughter. I was a fun drunk. Then I had a tendency to get sappy and emotional. I needed to pass out in my own bed before she ever saw me reach stage two. I figured I had a little time before that, though.
Once we were in the Jeep, I reclined all the way back in my seat. Then I sat up for a moment to open up the moon roof—or whatever you want to call it—above me. The stars were in full force already in the night sky. In California, they never came out, not like this—too many city lights blocking them out, I suppose. But here, in a rural area like this, on a clear night like tonight, they were incredible.
Before she could start the car, I reached over and stopped her hand. “Lean back, you've got to see this.”
“It's seven fifty,” she argued.
“I have time. Lean back.”
She signed softly, but then ultimately reclined her chair also, staring up at the sky with me. “I don't think I've ever seen so many stars,” she whispered after a moment.
“Yeah, me neither.”
For a couple minutes we both lay there, looking up, not saying anything. There was a buzz of electricity between us—or maybe that was just me being drunk and imagining something that wasn't there. Either way, it felt nice relaxing with her for a brief moment.
“What does everyone mean when they talk about your death? Or when they make some back from the dead comment?” she asked. “What happened to you?”
The question hit me in the stomach. It wasn't something I wanted to answer in my current state. Or ever really. What would she think when she found out the truth? About the hell I'd purposely put my family through? All because I couldn't cope with the consequences of my own actions.
I glanced at the clock on the car's console. “It's seven fifty-five now...we should go,” I told her, deflecting her question.
“Okay,” she said, moving her seat back up. There was a hint of aggravation in her voice. I'd tell her about my ‘fake death’—just not now, not when my thoughts weren't completely in focus, not when we were getting along so well as friends.
The drive was short and silent.
When she parked in my driveway and we left my car, I knew I had to be pressing my luck on the time. But some part of me was desperate to keep this night going, to stay with her just a little while longer. “Want to come in? It will only take me a moment to call.”
“I’d rather not. I’m not feeling super social at the moment.”
Okay? “Will you wait one minute while I go call?”
“Sure,” she said, hugging her bare arms. “Shit,” she exclaimed all of a sudden. “I forgot my sweatshirt at the restaurant.”
Her eyes went wide with terror. It was just a sweatshirt. A very large, very unflattering one at that. But I could see the panic on her face. Maybe it meant something special to her somehow. “Take the car,” I suggested. “Or I can call Rhett and ask him to keep it for you.”
“Okay.” She still seemed uneasy somehow. “Would you call Rhett? I’ll walk up there tomorrow and get it."
My eyes narrowed. Had I said something wrong? She seemed super off suddenly—perhaps sad. Was it pregnancy hormones hitting her? I mean, shit. I swear to God it looked like she might cry. Over a sweatshirt?
But...whatever was bothering her would have to wait. I needed to go call in. Now. I couldn't postpone any longer. I left her, hurrying inside for the landline upstairs. I made it in time and quickly made my calls—one to Jack and one to Rhett at the restaurant. Rhett had found her sweatshirt, and he said he’d keep it for her in the lost-and-found until she came to get it.
When I finished on the phone, it had been several minutes. I'd left her outside and wasn't even sure if she'd still be there when I returned. As I rushed back down the stairs, I found my heart was pounding.
What the hell was I doing with her?
I didn't mean just tonight, I meant in general. She was pregnant...with some other guy's baby. If I helped her through her pregnancy, it wouldn't magically repair the wounds I still had from the baby Sonya and I chose to abort two years ago. Was it a fantasy to somehow think helping her could fix that, could heal me?
No. Either way, something would always be broken inside me because of that loss. Helping her wouldn't change that.
And that wasn't even the issue here. The real issue was that I couldn't deny it a second longer, I had started to form feelings for this girl. And they were needy and vulnerable as fuck. I was needy and vulnerable. I guess that was what running away, almost drowning, and going to prison would do to a person. Make them desperate and starved for love.
I recognized that. Was it even her I liked? Or the idea of her? I'd kind of already done the same thing once with Sydney Michaels, Rhett's girlfriend. For a moment, before my trial and prison sentence, when I’d first let everyone know I was still alive, for a moment I'd thought I loved her too. Turned out that my feelings had been based on nothing but desperation and a need to fill the mile-wide hole inside my chest.
Was I about to do the same thing all over again?
I couldn't let myself do that. Not to Lilly. Because she was at a vulnerable point in her life, too. Whatever happened, the only thing I could be was a friend to her. Nothing more. Not ever.
“Hey,” I said to her as I came back outside. She hadn't left. She'd waited on me. I suddenly wished she hadn’t done that.
“You okay?” she asked me.
“Fine,” I lied. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I'm fine.” It was very apparent she was lying, too. Her big eyes screamed that she was the opposite of fine. And the desperate, needy, vulnerable, semi-intoxicated, part inside me wanted to kiss her because of it, as if that would somehow heal us both.
But I was smart enough to know better.
“Ghost crabs,” I said, an idea hitting me—a very safe, neutral idea, that might cheer her up. One a hell of a lot better than kissing.
“Excuse me?” She stared at me blankly, still holding her arms close to her body.
“Remember when we used to catch them together as kids? We should go try to catch some…for old time’s sake.”
“Okay,” she breathed, and for a moment I felt like an idiot for suggesting it.
But she’d been so passionate about the game when we were ten. Surely, it would lighten the tension between us now. Did life have to always be so serious? Plus, it was a beautiful night. Those were hard to come by in February. “Give me one second,” I told her, then I left and disappeared back into the house.
Inside, I grabbed her one of Ellie’s sweatshirts off the hook and a couple flashlights from the bathroom. Then I hurried back outside to her.
“Here.”
She took the sweatshirt from me, putting it on, and grabbed one of the flashlights.
Ellie’s sweatshirt was purple and said OBX across the front—not much different than her Washington D.C. one. That had to please her, being back in something comfortable.
I started hunting around in our carport and the storage space underneath the steps for a bucket. There were several to choose from. I found the biggest one and handed it to Lilly.
She still had a ‘deer-in-headlights’ look on her face.
“Come on. This will be fun.”
She chuckled. “If you say so.”
I laced our fingers together and started leading her around the house, along the path that cut through the sand dunes. “You’ll have to be the one to grab them, though. You were always so fearless at that. Not me, they still freak me out a little.”