CHAPTER 5
________
EVA
Seven Years Earlier
School was out. That’s all I could think of, over and over as we drove down the coast. After twelve long years of compulsory education, we were all finally free. Now, the summer was ours.
Sure, we’d all be on our way to college in a couple of months, but that wasn’t the same. Going to college meant you were an adult. It meant that you could move away from home, out from underneath parental rules that you knew were there for your own good, but that felt oppressive and far too strict.
Weeks and weeks of sun, sea, and maybe even a little sex, were ahead of us. We were all thinking it. We’d been thinking of nothing else for a long time now, and my friends and I were all hoping for a little holiday romance. After all, who wants to go to college a virgin? That was the height of loser behavior. It was now or never.
“Do we have to have the top down?” Katy moaned. Her blonde hair was flying all over the place. Caroline only laughed.
“I didn’t choose to bring my new convertible for nothing,” she said. “Just let it all hang out. It’s the windswept look. Very closely related to the just fucked look.”
We all laughed. Well, all of us except for Katy, who sulked in the back seat between Hannah and Alice. When we’d drawn straws earlier, I’d won, and that meant I had the coveted front passenger seat, and would be riding shotgun. I sat with my long legs on the dashboard, wiggling my toes.
“I seriously hope I can get some semblance of a tan,” I said. “I’m tired of looking like a milk bottle.”
“I don’t know how anyone can have the hair of a Native American and the skin of a porcelain doll,” Caroline remarked. “I’d kill for your hair, but I couldn’t cope with looking like a lobster as soon as I stepped out into the sun.”
“Where do you get your color from?” Alice asked, leaning forward from the back.
“My dad,” I said. “He’s Irish, and he has the dark hair and the blue eyes. And the inability to get a tan, worst luck. My mom has beautiful skin, and she only has to look at the sun, and she turns brown, but unfortunately, I inherited my dad’s genes.”
“Still, that hair,” Alice said, enviously stroking it. I laughed and leaned to the side so she could get a better feel. I’ve always liked people stroking my hair. It’s thick and dark and runs down my back in glossy waves. I’ve always been proud of it. When I was a kid, I used to sit at my mom’s feet, and she’d brush it for hours. Her family was full of blondes, and to have such thick, black hair to brush, was something of a novelty.
I turned the music up, and we sang along loudly, throwing our hands up in the air during the chorus. Then we heard loud honks and turned to see a car pulling up alongside us on the highway. It was full of guys about our age, and they were waving and yelling. We waved back.
“You’re driving on the wrong side!” I called. “You’re going to kill yourselves!”
The driver didn’t seem to care. He kept an eye on the road for any traffic ahead, but was keen on shouting to us as much as he could. He wanted to know where we were staying and what clubs we were planning to visit.
Caroline played it cool, pretending she couldn’t hear them. She turned to me.
“He’s pretty cute, but you don’t buy the first thing you see,” she winked. She cupped her ear and leaned her head across me. “What? What are you saying?”
There was a loud warning honk as another car came toward us, and the boys steered quickly to the right, getting in behind us. They followed us for several miles, beeping and asking us to lift our tops for them. We rolled our eyes and managed to lose them in the next town when they pulled over for gas, and we kept going. They were as juvenile as the guys we’d just left behind in high school, but we had to admit that we’d enjoyed the flirty little exchange.
“I wonder if we’ll meet up with them later,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell them where we were staying?”
“Trust me. Where we’re going, you’ll have your pick of guys. And not just guys like that, but real men.”
I trusted her. We all trusted Caroline. She always seemed so much more worldly-wise than we were. Her father was a multi-millionaire, and she’d been jetting all over the world on family vacations since she was born. She just seemed to know what she was talking about. She had experience, and not just with life, but with guys, too. She was stunningly beautiful, and although being an only child and spoiled beyond compare, she was still an amazing person.
Where my parents had bought me a new phone as a graduation present, Caroline had been gifted a new car. And it wasn’t even her first. Only this one was a bright red convertible, with white leather seats and an engine more powerful than both my parents’ cars put together. It meant that driving down from our homes in Sacramento to Long Beach had been the best road trip we could have taken.
That evening, we pulled in at the campsite we’d booked online several months earlier. The party was already in full swing, with kids from all over the country having the same idea as us; party all summer, because tomorrow, we’ll all be grown-ups. We pitched our tent on a vacant plot and walked down to the beach, our bags filled with beers we’d managed to keep cold in Caroline’s trunk, thanks to her state-of-the-art drinks cooler built into the car for just such an occasion.
Someone had built a bonfire, and there was no better feeling in the world than sitting in the cool of the evening, the sound of waves crashing behind us, and talking with your besties until the early hours of the morning. We made new friends, kept an eye on our old friends to make sure they didn’t drink too much, and only went to bed when we had no energy left to do anything else. It was the perfect night.
The following day, I woke early while the others girls were still fast asleep and decided to take a walk down on the beach. Outside some of the tents, people sat looking a little worse for wear, and they smiled watery smiles at me as they sipped coffee and debated whether they needed to throw up or just keep on drinking. I walked down along the sandy beach path to the sea, took off my flip-flops and walked in the surf along the coast. It was the best hangover cure there was.
On the way back, I caught sight of some guys surfing, and decided to sit down and watch them for a while. I’d always been fascinated by a surfer’s ability to stay upright on a surfboard. The whole activity looked impossible to me.
In the distance, I caught sight of a gorgeous guy on a bright white board. He was wearing nothing but a pair of blue swimming trunks, and he had a beautiful body.
The surfboard shifted back and forth under his feet, and even though he was obviously the one making it move, the board appeared as though it had a life of its own. The waves weren’t too high at this time of year, but I certainly wasn’t one to judge. From what I saw, he could’ve been the best surfer in the world. And thanks to the wonder of sunglasses, I could watch him without making it obvious.
His blond hair was wet from the water, and he brushed it out of his eyes when it flopped down over his face. He seemed to be moving in slow motion. This is what Caroline had been talking about when she mentioned seeing real men. This surfer guy was a real man, for sure. He seemed a little older than the boys I’d seen around camp since arriving. His body was ripped and well-defined, with broad, swimmer’s shoulders and that beautiful, deep V at his hips that disappeared beneath his swim shorts. I found myself getting rather hot and bothered just watching him and his friends, although he was the only one I paid any attention to. The only one I couldn’t tear my eyes from.
The girls would soon be waking up, and they’d be wondering where I was, so with regret, I stood up and brushed the sand from my legs. I walked back up the path to the campsite to find Alice sitting outside the tent with a mug of coffee in hand.
“Want one?” she asked. “I just made it.”
“This isn’t like camping when I was a kid,” I remarked as I sat down beside her and filled myself a mug. “We couldn’t just plug in a kettle like this. If we wanted hot water, we had to light a fire.”
“Was this when you were prospecting for gold too?” Alice teased. “What, did all the Kents sit around and eat beans out of a can as well?”
“Very funny,“ I said, making a face at her. “I’m not complaining. I’d much rather be at a campsite like this where I can at least charge my phone and have a hot shower when I want. And at least Katy can straighten her hair now, right?”
“Where were you?” Alice asked. “Did you go for a walk?”
I told her about how beautiful the sea was, but I omitted any mention of the surfer down in the waves. I don’t know why, but I felt that I wanted it to be my moment alone, looking at a gorgeous guy, and wondering if anyone so beautiful would ever look at me the way I’d looked at him.
We had a lazy day, and that evening we had a cookout on the beach. We’d become friends with the girls in the tent next to ours, and we sat in a group of eight, laughing and talking while drinking beers. Local residents knew that we were underage, but the police turned a blind eye as long as we were respectful of the area. After all, we were high school kids having our first real taste of freedom.
“There’s a party on a boat tonight,” one of the girls, Sarah, said. “I’ve got a date with the guy who’s organized it. I’m pretty sure it would be okay for y‘all to come. The more, the merrier, right?”
We all looked at one another, excited. A party on a boat? We weren’t about to turn down a chance like that. We rushed back to the tents. I slipped into a short blue dress and wedged sandals, carefully applying my makeup as neatly as was humanly possible when there was only one mirror between five girls.
We walked through the campsite to the highway and flagged down a cab, which took us to the marina. It was easy to see where the party was. There was a massive yacht at the end of a long pier, and the thud of the music could be heard all along the dock.
“Are you sure we’re going to be allowed on?” I asked Sarah.
“Don’t worry,” she assured me. “This guy’s been trying to get a date with me for the last week.”
And, just like that, my friends and I were at a party on a yacht. The music was loud, the champagne was flowing and all around, people were dancing and having a good time. Sarah’s date was thrilled to see her, sliding his arms around her waist, pulling her close as they started to dance. I stayed close to Caroline, a little out of my depth, but she laughed and told me to relax, pressing a glass of champagne into my hand.
After a couple of drinks, I began to feel less self-conscious, and we made our way onto the deck. The song playing was a new song, released just in time for summer vacation, and I couldn’t help but move to the beat. My hair swayed from left and right, and I was dancing with ease.
Looking up, I froze, because ahead of me, stood the surfer I’d seen that morning, looking right at me.
And he was grinning.