In Waves | ✔️

32 | boys and bonfires

We have to walk over a section of rocks to get to the cove, and I'm sure my boxes of pizza are going to go flying like UFOs until Matt holds my waist and steadies me. The light of the bonfire flickers in the distance, groups of silhouettes scattered around the sand.

As we get closer I see a volleyball net. I imagine a game happening at sunset, maybe people were swimming and exploring the rocks by the lighthouse, sprawled out catching tans. But now, well after dusk, it looks like things are winding down. Someone's strumming on a guitar, there's light chatter mixed with the crackling of the fire, drinks in hands, laughing. Mellow, as Nate had put it.

Matt slows when his phone rings, pulling it out of his jacket pocket. "It's Jay."

I look toward the horizon so he doesn't see my face harden.

"Hey... no, you know I'm with Lia tonight... yeah I did... Harris has them." I turn when he holds my arm, getting my attention. "You go ahead. I'll be five minutes tops."

"You sure?"

He nods, rubbing his eyes as soon as he lifts the phone to his ear again. "I'm not there, Jay. What are you talking about? Don't even start, man."

I walk along without him, hearing his exasperation growing behind me. I wouldn't be surprised if Carter's telling him how whipped he is, provoking him about not going out with the team tonight.

I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to naturally hang out with Carter, even in a group setting. It doesn't seem humanly possible. Time is supposed to make everything better, so maybe if enough time passes I'll forget the way he grabbed me and I'll forget his breath on my neck and my underwear in his pocket, and I'll have a normal relationship with my boyfriend's best friend. All it's going to take is time.

A few million years should suffice.

I trudge over the sand and head for the snack table, recognizing a familiar long-limbed figure grazing. "Hi Blake."

"Little DeMarco! Is that pizza?" He crunches on a chip, bloodshot eyes fixed on the boxes I'm holding.

I slide them onto the table. "Yeah, from our family's restaurant. There's pepperoni, and prosciutto, and margherita if you're vegetarian—"

"Sweet! Rob never hooks us up with restaurant food." He flips open a lid and takes a slice of the prosciutto e fungh, devouring half of it in one bite with a groan. "Fuck me that's good! Holy hellfire."

I watch him take a slice from each box and layer them on top of each other, in awe of his own towering creation. Not that I know what it looks like since Nate hadn't smoked that much at Rachel's party, but I have a hunch he's stoned out of his mind.

"Where's your boy? Nate said you might bring him," he says through a mouthful.

"He's down there on the phone." I point past a handsy couple heading into a shadowy cave. Not hard to figure out what's going on in there.

"Dope. Well here's the food, there's the drinks, a keg too. Help yourself to whatever your heart desires, Little DeMarco."

I can't help laughing at his breeziness. "Everyone here is underage, right? Aren't you guys worried about being busted?"

His eyebrows pull together and he suddenly looks like he's trying incredibly hard to make sense of what I've said. I get the feeling Blake has scarcely, if ever, used the word 'worried'.

"Never mind," I say before he triggers off a brain aneurysm.

He tucks his straggly hair behind his ears and carries on chowing down his pizza tower while I skim over the beach. I suppose this cove is sort of secluded by steep cliffs and thick brush. Unless someone reported a wild party, which this isn't, I doubt cops would come snooping around down here.