Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (4 page)

“Here.” He took a step to the left, displaying an empty corner of the bar. “You stand by me.”

“Thanks.” I slipped into the open spot and was safely barricaded from the crowd by the enormous Thomas Kragler. I sipped my beer, happy to finally be settled amid the chaos of the bar. Our house was chaos; the bars were chaos. The only solace this summer would be the beach.

“It’s too fucking crowded in here,” one of my housemates said. I recognized him, but I didn’t know his name, and based on the scowl covering his face, I was in no rush to introduce myself.

Tank kept smiling, bouncing to the music. He pretended the words had never been spoken, as if he could infect this miserable person with his own mood just by being near him.

“Stone, get me a beer,” another housemate yelled over the people above me to the miserable oxen next to me. She stood out from everyone around her. Her olive skin heightened the drama of her ice-blue eyes. I’d never seen anyone in person with such striking features. If I’d seen her on the cover of a magazine, I would have sworn she was Photoshopped. I stared at her because I couldn’t look away, and then she smiled so kindly I didn’t even try to hide my gawking. Her chestnut hair hung down her chest and covered most of her halter top, making it appear she was walking around topless. She practically transformed the aged bar just with her presence.

Stone didn’t hesitate before ordering another round at the girl’s request. He didn’t even roll his eyes. It wasn’t like he smiled. I already knew that was out of the question. But his anger turned to a quiet absence when she moved closer to him. He was five-ten and almost as wide as he was tall. His chest was broader than two men standing shoulder to shoulder. Stone was a compact wall of muscle with an expression of disgust permanently attached to his face. I let my sight linger on him as he gingerly handed the beer over my head and took a sip of his own. The blue-eyed girl calmed him, and for that she calmed me, too.

Heather tripped between me and Tank. She was angry, or drunk. It was becoming difficult to discern between the two. Heather had little to be happy about, and yet, nothing to be concerned with all at the same time. I glanced past her to the door.

I searched for Rob in the crowd. I wanted him to rescue me from Hateful Heather the way he had a thousand times before. She rolled her eyes at me. My mere presence was pissing her off. It was definitely time to go. Heather huffed and shrugged, spilling her cranberry-doused drink down the front of the girl next to her. The yelling began. It was a series of demands of an apology and insults all slurred together, making both parties look ridiculous. Tank stepped between the girls and tried to end the discussion with his brilliant smile, but the victim’s boyfriend became conscious of the situation and decided to get involved with some pushing.

Heather quietly stepped back from the turmoil she’d set in place. She was standing next to me and out of the way when Stone punched the girl’s boyfriend in the face, starting an all-out brawl in the packed corner of the Starboard.

To say we were ushered out was putting it gently. Stone, who was still running his mouth, was thrown out onto his head. Heather and I were relocated to outside the door, but only because it was a toss between the police and an ambulance, and the bouncers didn’t want to deal with the decision. Instead she was placed next to me with a stern word from the bouncer, suggesting she was now my problem to deal with.

I looked around for Tank. For help. Without hesitation, the blue-eyed brunette held one side of Heather up and waited for me to support the other. “I’m Mila, Mila Redd,” she said, seeming completely sober.

“Nora.” She didn’t ask for my last name. I was in no mood. I probably would have lied. Nora Murvine, Nora Miles, Nora Monroe, whatever. Heather slumped over between us, and Mila picked up more of her weight as we practically carried her down the main street.

“Heather traded conversation for mixed drinks in eighth grade and never really returned,” Mila said when we turned onto Swedes Street.

“You knew Heather in eighth grade?”

“Well, of course. We’ve all known each other that long. Stone, Rob, Heather and I have been together since kindergarten. We have the class pictures to prove it.” Mila ignored Heather and happily basked in the memory of age five for a moment. “Tank, Jack, and Blaire joined our group in high school.”

Heather fell to her knees. Mila and I caught her just before her face scraped the asphalt of the street.

“I’m worried about her,” she continued. “I tried to tell her it was too much last month when she was hysterically crying after a bottle of tequila and a dozen pills, and that totally pissed her off. She hasn’t been the same with me since.”

“She’s not into constructive feedback.”

“No.” Mila laughed, and I didn’t say another word. Heather wasn’t a good friend, but I never spoke of her or her excessive drinking to anyone. It hadn’t been an issue in school. I didn’t speak to anyone about anything of substance, because all roads of deep understanding always led me back to my mother, and
that
I wanted to forget. It should be the same way here. They all knew each other.
Talk among yourselves.
Leave me alone.

Mila and I dumped Heather on the chair before straightening and facing each other with looks of reciprocated gratefulness. Rob floated into the room, singing the latest insurance commercial at the top of his lungs. He turned it into a heavy metal rendition and then slowed it to a romantic chorus.

He jumped onto the couch for the finale and fell into a seated position with the air of a hawk settling onto a wire. Blaire came, handed him a beer, and nestled in beside him. Rob put his arm around her and pulled her close. It was as natural as breathing to him.

“You like him?” Mila’s question startled me. I must have been staring.

I shook my head quickly. All denials should be swift. “No.”

“It’s okay. We all like him,” she said and turned to watch Rob as he began singing a new song. This was the national anthem with electric guitar sounds in between the verses. “Just remember, you’re too good for him. Poor Blaire forgot, and now look at her.”

Blaire’s eyes scanned the room as she sat perched next to her magnanimous boyfriend. He would always eclipse her. She’d spend her life trying to identify the next girl he’d love. It must’ve stolen her sleep every night she’d lain in bed next to him.

Rob loved her. Of that I was sure. He’d told me once. We’d drank too much and stumbled home to Heather’s and my apartment because it was closer than his or Blaire’s house. So much with Rob was locational, like a toddler whose playdates were scheduled based on convenience without regard for affinity. He’d said, “I love her. I really do. Life just feels unnecessarily long with her.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I’d wallowed in the disregard attached to it. I wanted him to choose me, but I’d never tell him that was an option.

“I’m glad to know you,” Mila said and disappeared down the back hallway to the room she shared with at least three people this weekend.

When I glanced back into the living room, Blaire was staring at me.

“Good night,” I said and made my way past the now raging beer pong game in the kitchen. I took off my shoes and makeup and dropped onto my mattress still wearing my dress. My pillow was only inches from the floor. The heat surrounded me. It was thicker than the hint of air blowing from the box fan perched on a wooden chair by the doorway.

Welcome to summer.

JUST FRIENDS FOREVER

“I
think we should have sex in the shower.” Ricky leaned into me at our lunch table. The cafeteria was packed today, and we were sitting with an entire shift that would leave in two minutes to return to their phones.

I kept eating as if Ricky hadn’t spoken.

“Like, you can go in first, and I’ll meet you in there after you’re all wet.” He bounced his eyebrows. It appeared he was imagining the entire scenario in great detail. “I could
wash
you.” He was kind of a comedy skit. He forced me to acknowledge him with the threat that he’d never stop.

“I think we should be just friends forever.”

“Please don’t ever say that again.”

Sharon walked into the cafeteria and sucked the joy from the room. Her gait was stilted by too-high heels that she could barely walk in. Her skirt was four inches shorter than appropriate, but her lipstick was perfectly intact. She smiled and laughed with the cafeteria staff as she paid for her lunch. The only thing more disturbing than
normal
Sharon was happy Sharon. Her laugh was too loud and felt darker than a theater the moment before a horror film began.

“She’s a scary lady.” Ricky shook his head and swirled his spoon in his chicken rice soup. We both watched as the broth circled the paper bowl. “I think she needs to have sex.”

“You think everyone needs to have sex.”

The guy sitting across from us glanced at the time on his phone and announced to the others that lunch was over. They stood, leaving Ricky and me sitting next to each other and staring out the windows. It was sunny out there in the place people could go who weren’t given only thirty minutes to buy and eat their food and then use the bathroom before returning to their desks.

“You should have sex with me.” He never stopped.

“I don’t have sex.”

“Yesterday, you told me you were a lesbian.”

I’d forgotten. I smiled at myself. It was a good one. “I’m a sexless lesbian.”

“Is that like a cell phone with a dead battery? What is the point?”

I pushed my tray a few inches away and leaned back in my chair. “You’re like talking to a child.”

“You don’t mean that.” Ricky leaned back, too. “How is your beach house? Are there a lot of beautiful lesbians in it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying again. You should invite me down. We can go for a swim, take a nap on the sand, and then make love in the moonlight. I’ll bet everyone is having a lot of sex down there.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Of course they are. It’s summer at the beach. It’s a giant party with sex. It’s perfection.”

“It wasn’t really like that.”

“In my country—”

“What country?” I sat up and looked at Ricky, who was smiling in the warm sunshine. “You’re from West Chester, Pennsylvania. There is no ‘my country.’”

“As I was saying, in my country we’d be making love at the shore.”

I didn’t want to check, but the time on my phone was calling me. I could feel my last seconds of freedom slipping away, and the thought of putting the headset back on my head dragged my spirits down. I reached for my phone, and Ricky grabbed my hand and stopped me.

“Not yet.”

I closed my eyes again. “I don’t want to be late.”

“We won’t. I promise,” he said.

I didn’t have to go back to the beach. I wanted to, and no one was more surprised by that fact than I was.

I ran out of my office building at four fifteen. My bag was already in the back of my car. My mind was already at the beach. Everyone would be cracking open a beer or riding the last waves of Saturday, making me one of the few stragglers racing there to catch Saturday night and Sunday day.

The steering wheel was warm to the touch, and the seatbelt buckle nearly burned me. It took my car ten minutes to cool off even with the air conditioner blasting, but by the time I pulled into the one stop I had to make, it was bearable. The animal shelter closed to visitors, even volunteers, at five on Saturday. Rufus wasn’t going to like how the beach house affected our schedule.

“He’s waiting for you,” Janine said when I walked in the door.

“Sorry. I had to work today.”

“Tell him that.” Her smile put me at ease. Janine loved animals more than humans, and the longer I lived, the more I understood it.

I passed the other dogs as they barked at each other. A few stayed silent at the edges of their spaces, but most had something to say. Rufus, who was housed in the very last cage in the row, was huddled in the back corner. His chin lifted as soon as I sat down outside of it, but he didn’t move an inch to greet me.

“Hey, buddy. How’s it going? Have you made any friends?” His black fur was long. He was some unknown mix of a Collie, or Golden Retriever with a Black Labrador. He was beautiful and he was terrified. If he didn’t find a way to engage with people, no one would ever adopt him. “I brought a new book for you.”

The dog in the cage next to Rufus stuck his nose out and begged for attention. He’d be gone by the next week.

“It’s
Scooby Doo and the Phantom Cowboy
.” I looked back at Rufus, who’d returned his head to the ground but kept his eyes on me. “I mean, who doesn’t love a cowboy?”

I read the book and stopped at each page to show Rufus the pictures. When I was almost to the end, Rufus stood and moved near me. He wasn’t close enough to touch, but he was making an effort. I kept reading and when I said, “The end,” he came and stood at the edge of the cage. I gave him a treat, and his tail wagged.

“I’ve got to go. I’ve got a beach house for the summer and I won’t be able to come on Saturdays anymore, but I promise I’ll be back.” Rufus tilted his head as I spoke. “Be exactly like
this
when families come. You’re the best dog here, and nobody knows it but me.”