Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (13 page)

He should have hugged me or apologized. I’d been through a lot. He’d had his latest fight with Blaire, and I wasn’t going to let him take it out on me. I climbed under my sheet, and Rob huffed his way off my porch. He was selfish. I wasn’t impressed. I’d never been more grateful to be alone. I closed my eyes and thought of the sky. The stars, the moon, anything but Rob and Heather.

“I love your nightgown.”

I opened my eyes and turned to Jack. He was smiling, completely awake and beaming like he’d won a prize. The fact that he could still make a joke, combined with the kindness in his eyes, made me believe the world wasn’t all bad.

Without a word, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke to the sound of Blaire yelling. Their voices drilled through the house and out the door. I could hear them through the side windows near my pillow.

“Why are you so pissed off? She’s fucked up.”

“It’s not about Heather!” he screamed. I was sure the whole block heard him.

“What the hell is it about then?”

The car doors opened and slammed shut, and the house was returned to the calm Blaire and Rob always ruined.

Jack was asleep in his bed. His head was turned away from me and his tanned biceps held my attention for much longer than I’d ever admit to him. His feet hung off the end of his bed. It was as if last night had never happened.

I sat up in bed and straightened my nightgown that had ridden up on my waist. It had happened, all right.

I walked through the trashed kitchen and past the unconscious housemates strewn across the living room furniture and floor. I opened Heather’s door a few inches and poked my head in the crack. The room was empty. The windows were open, and a fan was blowing, trying to dry the floor and remove the odor of bleach from the scene.

I found Heather’s bag on the floor by her bed. I turned it over in my hands and, inconceivably, there was no vomit on it anywhere. I packed the clothes I knew were hers inside of it.

“What are you doing up?” Tank walked into the room and shut the door quietly behind him.

“I couldn’t sleep anymore.”

“I know the feeling.”

I opened the top drawer of the dresser and found six prescription bottles. Four with Heather’s name on them and two with the name
Cirillo
that I didn’t recognize. “I figured I’d go see Heather and take her stuff. She’ll probably want it with her.”

“Last night was crazy.”

“Yes. What should I do with this?” I held up a bag of weed and a bowl and a few small packs of white powder that Jack hadn’t found in his rushed cleaning of the house.

Tank stared at them in my hands. “Here.” He waved a hand at himself. “Give them to me. I’ll hold on to them until she comes back. You shouldn’t transport that.”

I handed him the drugs. “I don’t even know why I’m going. It’s just going to piss her off.”

“Why are you then?”

“Because she’s alone. She had a horrible night. I think she’ll want her stuff.”

“Someone else should take her stuff.”

“Heather and I go way back. This is our day-after routine.”

“Have you guys had a lot of those?”

“No.” The memory of her lying on the floor struck me. “She scared me.”

Tank pulled Heather’s bathing suit off the doorknob and folded her towel that was lying across the back of the chair in the corner. “Her shampoo and stuff are in the bathroom.”

“I’ll grab them on my way out.”

“You okay?”

“I’m not the one you should be worried about.”

“Yes, you are,” he said, and I turned to him. He was half smiling and all-knowing.

“I’m fine.” I walked out of the room with Heather’s bag in my arms.

SIGNS OF ABUSE

“D
id you ever see someone die?” I asked as Ricky and I walked the hall to our cells. It’d been a week since I’d found Heather on the floor. My foot was healing, but I wasn’t sure I could say the same for Heather. She didn’t even acknowledge my presence in her hospital room when I dropped off her things, and she hadn’t answered the two texts I’d sent her since.

“On television?”

“No. In real life. Like, someone you knew.”

“One time, my mother and I were sitting on Navy Pier in Chicago and we saw the police pull a body out of the water.”

I stopped walking, stunned.

“What?” he asked with both hands in the air. “You brought it up. I don’t know. No. I haven’t seen anyone die.” I shook my head a little and followed Ricky again. “It was totally gross. Some of his skin was coming off his face.”

I had three more hours before I could leave and drive to the beach. I sat on the bench and searched for apartments on my phone. If Rufus didn’t start opening up, he was going to need me to adopt him. I needed an apartment that would accept dogs. Really, I needed a dog. I thought I’d lived alone long enough.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Because my friend Heather was hospitalized for drugs and alcohol last weekend.”

“Sounds like a fun friend.”

“We’re not really friends. I don’t know if she has any.” I stopped reading and considered it. Heather spent most of her time away from anyone who knew her that well, and she wasn’t easy to get to know. Another reason we were so compatible.

“There’s something terrifying about a girl with no friends. People don’t want to take a chance on the person who’s alone, because deep down they know there’s a reason.”

Ricky’s words hit eerily close to home. “But what if it’s not their fault?”

“Not their fault, or not their doing?” I stared at Ricky, confused by his question. “You can’t control everything that happens to you, but you can control how you move forward.”

I turned my attention back to the safety of my phone.

“What are you reading?”

“I’m looking for a new apartment. One that will let me have a dog.”

“You can move in with me.” He tilted his head and grinned in his playful way.

“I only want one dog.”

I finished my shift and practically ran to my car. One stop to see Rufus and this girl was headed to the beach for the Fourth of July weekend. Janine met me at the front desk of the shelter. “Wait a minute before you go in,” she said.

Fear gripped me. I should have come back on Monday. “Is he still sick?”

“No. He’s better. There’s a family in there.”

Janine and I watched from the window in the door. The little girl and her parents walked slowly in front of the cages and stopped to talk to several dogs. When they reached Rufus, all three of them tried to coax him to the front. I knew he was huddled far away.

Janine’s head shook in frustration. “That doctor we recused him from should be executed.” He’d kept Rufus chained outside and barely fed him. The shelter had found out about him when the neighbors called because the doctor was shooting BBs at him.

“Poor guy.” I wanted to kill the doctor, too. The little girl walked back to the Chihuahua three cages down from Rufus. “I’m trying to find a new apartment so he can come live with me.”

“You might be his only hope.”

There were bodies everywhere. It was an exact replication of Memorial Day weekend. I sipped my beer in the corner of the kitchen because there was no place else to stand. These weekends I was grateful for our porch. No half shares would dare sleep out there. Even atrocious was good, if it was only yours.

The leaves of the old wooden table had been extended once again for a beer pong tournament that would have no end. The results would be forgotten as soon as the music was turned down and the house emptied into the bars down the street.

I’d heard the name of Heather’s rehab facility once and forgotten it immediately. I didn’t care where she was. If I searched hard enough for an emotion that pertained to her, it was exhaustion, and now that she was gone, there was only relief.

It was a four-day weekend for everyone but Tank and me. I’d requested it off and had shockingly been granted the time, but then Sharon had decided we’d open the claims unit on Sunday and put me back on the schedule to be on the phone by ten. Tank had to make the donuts Sunday morning, so he’d leave Saturday night.

“And then there were seven,” Tank said, surveying the room. It felt more like seventy now that every half share was down for the weekend, but without Heather there were only seven full shares left.

The refrigerator door had the recycling schedule, a magnet for Grottos Pizza, and three pictures from my housemates’ youth. They were the kindergarten class picture of Mila, Stone, Rob, and Heather, a high school graduation picture of all of them in their caps and gowns, and a picture of the king and queen of the prom—Jack and Mila. It was impossible to look at them and not smile.

“Girls’ night. Girls’ night. Girls’ night,” a few of the half shares chanted. One stood right in front of me, smiling and pumping her fist.

“Tonight, we’re going out just girls,” Mila leaned around the half share and said.

I want to stay with the boys.
Tank lounged on the couch, taking up the room of four people, and I should be sitting next to him when Girls’ Night walked out the door.

“I’ve almost talked Blaire off the ledge. It took forty minutes to convince her she could exist without Rob’s presence.”

It’d been years since I’d had the freedom to just be with him without the ever-present ominous cloud of Blaire around. I wanted him to be the way he used to be instead of the ass he was down here. I missed the way he made me feel in college. He was the only safe place for me to hide and still feel the sunlight on my face.

They wouldn’t let me bow out of girls’ night, and eventually I was herded out the door. We arrived at Taco Toss when the line was just forming. I texted Jack and let him know the male contingency of our separate parties should move soon. The entire town would be a giant line by the end of the night.

I followed the girls to a sliver of space by the railing of the outside deck of the Lighthouse. Mila came and stood by me. Together we downed a round of shots and were engulfed by the group of guys standing next to us. There were only five of us and at least eight of them. I stayed close to the edge of our group. I was almost invisible. The world was an amusement park, and I was trapped, watching the merry-go-round. The guy to my right spilled his beer down the side of my shirt. I still preferred it to small talk, or any talk.

“Oh man. Sorry,” he said and swiped his hand across the beads of liquid that hadn’t soaked in yet.

“It’s okay.” I stepped back from him into the few inches not occupied behind me.

“‘Trust no one,’” he read from the front of my shirt and smiled at me as if the directive was some inside joke. “I’m so sorry.” He was stricken and genuine.

“Really. It’s fine. You barely got me.”

“Let me get you a beer.” He walked away and ordered two beers. He wasn’t my type. He wore a button-down shirt and khaki shorts. He wasn’t too buttoned up, but he definitely wasn’t the slightly dirty, band T-shirt, long-haired Rob I’d adhered my obsession to for the past few years. This guy was corporate or maybe an attorney. He was different.

“Here. I owe you at least one more, too.” He handed me my beer. “I’m Derrick.” I smiled to put him at ease. “The guy who spills liquor on you.”

“Nora. The target.” Knowing the questions would begin—the getting-to-know-you series of torture—I went on the offensive. “Where do you live, Derrick?”

“DC.”

I nodded in appreciation, and Derrick smiled slightly. He was quiet, which I liked. “And what do you do in DC?”

“I work for Senator Aldrich.”

“Now, that’s interesting.” I meant it. I couldn’t stand the constant discussions with my mother about gun laws, global warming, health care, and terrorism, but with anyone else I was fascinated. Especially someone close to my age. My Uncle Dick had always spouted off about the Democrats as he drank too much Scotch during the holidays. The only value to his visits was watching my mother boil from his claims. As Derrick chatted on, I realized quickly he had a passion for politics and had been raised in a family of activists. I’d been raised in a lie. My mother was an activist when being one made for provocative dinner conversation.

“Are you down here for the summer?” he asked.