Depths (10 page)

I try to remember the phone call she’s talking about, but, instead, my mind flips to Maren in a bikini on the beach and short-circuits for a few quick seconds.

“I just hate seeing someone as rad as you are with someone…who’s an asshole. Your words, not mine.” I hold my hands up and grin.

She tries to grin back, but it falls flat. Suddenly she squares her shoulders and looks me right in the eye. “You know what? I sometimes hate being with him.”

I’m not sure how to respond, but it winds up that I don’t need to, because she’s plowing ahead.

“I sometimes hate him. I hate how arrogant he is. A year and a half ago, we had a good thing going, and then he got promoted, and he became this monster. I broke up with him, and promised myself I wouldn’t go back to him…I should have followed through with that.”

“Yeah?” I lean closer to her. “You think so?”

Her eyes crackle with a fire that makes her even more gorgeous, and, instead of answering me, she turns to the concession attendant. “I’ll take a hotdog, extra mustard and a beer. Lots of ice.” She must sense the horror on my face, because she turns towards me and puts a reassuring hand on my arm. “Don’t judge, okay? I’m not going to drink a beer with ice. It’s for… Well, you’ll see.”

And she winks. That wink tips everything to the side. I don’t give a shit if she has an almost boyfriend. I don’t give a shit if I was supposed to be here for a date with another girl. And I don’t give a shit if this is Maren, the cool girl I talk to on the phone at work and don’t want to mess things up with. That wink means trouble, and I intend to follow it wherever it may lead.

Especially if Maren’s hot little self is doing the leading with a stomp of her sneakers. I follow all the way to the bleachers where Jason has his mouth too close to Ally’s neck while her hand is on his knee.

Maren continues down the aisle and catches Jason and Ally off guard. She shoves the hot dog at him and I clench my fist, waiting for him to go off on her so I have an excuse to pummel this douche once and for all. But he doesn’t. He tosses the hot dog onto the cement and stands up, but not before grabbing the cup of iced beer and downing it in two gulps. The fire extinguishes from Maren’s eyes, and she seems to shrink a little.

Just when I thought my hatred for Jason couldn’t get any more intense, a whole new slew of justifications for kicking his ass erupt in my brain.

“This game blows. I can’t believe how bad the Angels suck tonight. We wanna go have some drinks and appetizers over at O’Briens.”

Maren’s top lip twitches upward in an obvious snarl. She’s seriously adorable, but has zero game face. “You guys want to leave?”

“Appetizers!” Ally yips and jumps up and down like a lap dog excited for its afternoon treat.

“Well, yeah, all of us. Let’s go chill and give Ally and Carlo a chance to get to know each other.” Jason stands up and rubs his hand along the small of Maren’s back. She doesn’t shrug away from his touch, and I don’t really understand why, but it’s not really my place to, I guess.

“It’s Cohen,” I say. For the love of fried cheese why is my name so hard for everyone to remember? “And, O’Brien’s shut down a few months ago.”

“What else is nearby?” Maren asks, her eyes trained on mine.

“They had the best potato skins,” Ally says. This girl really wants an appetizer something serious.

“My place isn’t far,” I say. “And, I have a house full of junk food.”

It’s a side effect of the breakup. I tossed all of Kensley’s wheat germ and tempeh, and, instead, stocked up on corn dogs and frozen pizzas topped with bacon. I’ve never eaten like this in my life, and I feel sort of gross doing it, but if it’ll get Maren over to my house—even with her asshole boyfriend—I’ll offer it up.

“Your place? Yeah. That’d be cool, right Jason?” Maren is slouched against Jason, his arms wrapped around her waist. It’s like she’s forgotten every ounce of anger she had for him just a few minutes ago.

This could be a problem.

When she looks up at him, though, his eyes are fixed on Ally’s rack.
“My place it is,” I say, reaching over and clutching Maren’s tiny wrist. Because I may be reserved, and not take chances, but Jason is an asshole and Maren is my friend, and now that I’ve met her, something about her tells me that she’s worth risking a little drama.
 

“Holy shit, Cohen, you live here?” Maren kicks her shoes off and holds them the rest of the way. “Like, you told me that you lived near the beach, you didn’t say
on
the beach. This is incredible.”

She sinks into the sand a little with each step and looks even tinier than she did at the ballpark.

“Yeah, man, this is pretty impressive,” Jason says. He’s the last person on earth I give two shits about impressing. “I bet you get a ton of play having a place like this.” He laughs, proud of his stupid joke.

I pause with my key in the door. Jason’s wrong, of course. Kensley was the only woman I’ve ever had here. Well, other than my sisters or Whit, but none of them count for obvious reasons. I bought this place with the money I made from last year's expedition with Deo. Deo’s dad does that sort of thing for a living and had a good tip, so Deo and I sailed up the Coast to Northern California in our crappy boat and dove for treasure like a couple of pirates. We didn’t expect to make out as well as we did, but it ended up setting us both up pretty well. Whit and Deo are spending a fortune on their upcoming wedding, and I bought this place and socked a good bit away. It feels awesome to be able to do it, even if financial security is boring according to Kensley.

“So, this is home,” I say as I push the door open.

It immediately feels strange to have other people here. Jason marches over to the shelves of alphabetized DVDs and starts pulling them from the shelves and cramming them back in wherever there’s an open space. Those spaces allow for more DVDs to be filtered in when I buy them
without
having to reorganize them all. He’s just made several hours of work for me in the two minutes he’s been here.

I hate him more and more with each second that passes.

Ally hunches awkwardly in the corner near the ship’s wheel that’s mounted to the wall. Her expression might pass off as bored, but I can see the daggers she’s shooting in Maren’s direction.

Maren.

She’s sitting at the island in the kitchen, hair mussed from the braids she’d pulled out earlier and the humidity in the air.

“Can I get you a drink?” I ask her.

She’s the only thing that doesn’t feel out of place right now. I had figured it’d feel weird as hell having another attractive girl here for the first time. But Maren, she fits right in. Probably because we’re friends. Longtime friends, technically, if you count all the time we’ve logged on the phone.

Yep. Just friends.

“I’ll have a shot of Jager if you have it,” Jason pipes in from across the room as he crams the
Godfather
boxed set in between
Pineapple Express
and
Pulp Fiction
. I cringe.

“Sorry, dude, haven’t kept that around since I was in college,” I say without a twinge of actual sincerity. Jason is one hundred percent predictable. What grown man shoots Jager at home with his girl around? I’d never have to have a drop of alcohol in me to appreciate Maren.

Fuck, I need to stop thinking like that.

“Wine? White?” Maren finally says. Her voice is soft, uncomfortable, and I hate that for her.
I nod, grab a chilled bottle of Pinot Grigio, and pass her a heavily poured glass.

“You okay?” I ask.

She runs her palm across the zebrawood counter top. “This is incredible. All of this, Cohen. You should be really proud of your home.”

I shrug. “Thanks. Though it was a lot of luck that Deo and I made out the way we did on that dive last summer. Otherwise, I’d still be squatting at Mama Rodriguez’s place.”

Maren lets out a tiny laugh around the gulp of wine she just drank. “Please. We all know you’re only working for your folks to help them out of a bind. If it weren’t for the economy tanking, you’d be off doing something you love.”

“I love my family,” I say before I can stop myself, because it sounds douchey and weak, but it’s true.

Her eyes are wide and this soft blue, like the ocean in the spring, right when the bite is gone from the water, and they flick to my face over the rim of the wineglass. Her words are half muffled behind it. “I know you do. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

Something. I need to say something to that, but all I do is nod like an asshole while she puts the glass down and runs one finger around the rim in quick, nervous circles.

“Ahoy?” Ally says from across the room, pointing to the ship’s wheel. “What is this thing for?”

“Yeah, man, what are you, a pirate or something?” Jason makes a hook with his finger and squeezes one eye shut, and he and Ally explode into laughter that I don’t fully understand.

Which is a relief. Something tells me not quite grasping their humor is a good thing.

Maren rolls her eyes, and I just smile at her, loving that there’s this feeling when she’s in the room, like she belongs and always has. Like I never want her out of this room again.

Her boyfriend is sitting right across from me. I gotta turn that kind of thinking off and fast.

“It’s like a talisman,” I explain, and leave it at that.

Or I intend to leave it at that. Except Ally and Jason stare back at me, blinking. Stumped.

“It’s, you know, for good luck, or  hope. It’s supposed to bring good fortune,” I say, hoping they’ll understand at least one explanation.

“Right, and he lives at the beach, so you know, it sort of goes,” Maren says, her voice dripping with annoyance.

“If you say so.” Jason shrugs and raises his eyebrows. “Hey, if it’s supposed to be a good luck charm, maybe it’ll bring you a babe like Maren.” I cringe as he reaches over and squeezes her ass. “How about that drink?”

I hand him a glass of Maker’s Mark. There’s no way I’m wasting the Pappy’s on him.

“I think it’s beautiful,” Maren says, cupping her glass close to her chest and looking at the ship’s wheel like she’s feeling exactly what I’m feeling: that she wishes we could hop a boat and sail away from these assholes.

“You’re beautiful, doll.” Jason crosses the room and sets his already empty glass down on the counter next to her.

“Hit me with another, bro,” Jason says without looking my way as he taps his glass with his knuckle. My fist curls around the neck of the bottle tight enough that I have to force myself to loosen it.

If I need to kick this prick’s ass later, it’ll be easier to do without a bloody palm.

“You don’t want to slow down?” Maren says under her breath, her lashes shadowing her eyes.

Jason ignores her.

“Sure thing,” I growl as I hand him his drink and offer one to Ally, who declines. I hand her a bottle of water anyway.

I fill my own glass with bourbon and toss it back quickly while I watch Jason trace circles on Maren’s back. Ally is on the couch looking somewhere between bored and pissed. What am I doing?

“You guys want to go out back?” I ask, but Jason’s already walking across the room and picking up one of my gaming controllers.

“You got the new
Call of Duty
?” he asks, and Ally perks up. Maren groans.

“Yeah.” Deo and I play. Not obsessively. Sometimes obsessively. It’s not necessarily something I drag out when I have a girl over. For one thing, there’s only two controllers. I point that out.

“That’s alright. Maren hates this kind of stuff anyway,” Jason says, flicking on the TV and grabbing a controller. “You wanna play, man?” he asks reluctantly, eyeing Ally.

How kind of him. To offer to let me play my own game at my own house.

“Uh, no thanks. Help yourself though.” I glance at Maren, but she’s looking like she might be making a wish that involves huge holes and getting sucked into them.

Weird, but the thing I hate the most about Jason is the way Maren seems to feel like she has to apologize for him.

“Get over here, Al,” Jason orders, and Ally giggles, plops too close to him on the couch, and takes the controller he holds her way, bumping his shoulder as the game loads up, the volume turned on high.

She’s not my girlfriend, so the whole scenario doesn’t bother me. Or shouldn’t. The thing is, Jason is Maren’s boyfriend, no matter how much I wish he wasn’t, and it’s just dick the way he’s cozied up to Ally right in front of Maren’s face.

We watch in silence for a few minutes. Jason was wise enough to drag the Maker’s Mark over to the couch, so, with a cheap girl at his side and some cheap liquor in his glass, the douche seems like he’s content to make a night of it in front of my video game console.

I look over at Maren, her face a perfect blank.

“Hey, you want some fresh air? My head’s pounding,” I say.

She glances at Jason and narrows her eyes, then smiles at me. I usually love seeing her smiles, but this one reeks of revenge, and there’s no way I’m cool with being her ammo against Jason.