"I see you two have met?" Reed asks from across the table. He traces the rim of his menu with his index finger.
"We're acquainted," Vin says. He shoots another cold glance my way, and I turn my focus to A.J. and his paper octopus to avoid the chill.
Silence engulfs our table like a monster wave swallowing the shoreline and the tiny children playing in its sand. Seconds feel like hours until we're saved by the waiter who brings us our food in three separate trips. He lingers for a moment before turning his attention to the con artist next to me.
"How's business?" he asks. He folds his arms and stares at Vin with this stupid prideful smile. I nearly lose my appetite on the spot. How can anyone ask a con artist how business is?
Vin devours a few fries. "Pretty damn good," he mumbles. "With the season and all, you know."
The season? It's summertime – tourist season. God, the nerve of these people. To just sit here and talk about it like it's okay that he rips off tourists and pretends to be a mechanic on the side!
"Just keep doing what you're doing. It's obviously working," the waiter tells Vin. He places another bottle of ketchup on the center of the table and disappears.
The red bottle serves as battle lines – Linzi on Team Not-So-Dangerous and me on Team I-Have-A-Death-Wish. Her flirty eyes with Alston are a day and night contrast with the soul-crushing stares Vin continues tossing my way. Someone should've told me to pick up some armor during our road trip; I'll need it to survive this fight.
"Don't you love when you order onion rings and you find a random French fry in there?" Reed asks, waving his lone fry and breaking my thoughts of battle plans and survival techniques.
"Man, Strick," A.J. says as he stashes the paper sea creature under the table. "It's kind of like when you go to buy weed and you open the bag and there's–"
"Hey!" Vin shouts in my ear. "Hush."
A.J. obeys the order and gnaws into his hamburger before he can argue with Vin. It's probably something he learned in bodyguard boot camp – to keep your mouth shut – and General Con Artist has trained him impeccably.
I catch Reed's stare over my plate, the way his eyes gravitate between mine and Vin's, like he's searching for answers or trying to see through us. But we're not transparent. And there's nothing I can do to ease the fears that Reed has built up in his mind since the moment Vin sat down and called me Sunshine.
*****
Spirals of smoke swarm together in a white-gray fog above us. A.J. turns his head to the stars and blows into the night. His cigarette smoke lingers just briefly before riding away across the ocean air with the rest of the fog.
He races across the parking lot, jumps on the hood of a car, and uses it as a stepping stone to stand atop the lid of the giant green dumpster.
"I am the dragon lord!" he screams out, raising his arms to the sky. "Fear my fire!" He flicks the lighter in his hand and exhales another cloud of smoke.
"Idiot," Alston mumbles.
Reed shakes his head. "Get down!" he shouts across the lot to A.J.
A.J. leaps forward and blends into the shadows below the dumpster. Metal trash can lids clang together. "I'm okay!" he calls out.
"I think it's time to call it a night," Reed says. He glances at Vin then back at me, and it's more than obvious he has questions that no one wants to answer.
"Spit it out, Strick," Vin snaps. "What is it?"
My chest tightens, and I pray Linzi doesn't begin explaining the hair dye incident. She'll more than likely just piss Vin off even more than we already have. Like it or not, I'm going to have to deal with him to ace Chasing Forever 101.
Reed hesitates for a second. "How do you guys know each other?"
"He called me a psycho bitch about fifteen minutes before I met you," I tell him.
"No," Vin says, circling around Reed and closer to me. "I said you didn't have to go all psycho bitch, not that you were a psycho bitch. There's a difference."
He pushes past me and revs up his motorcycle. He's gone before anyone else speaks. A.J. breaks the silence once he reaches us.
"What's his deal?" he asks. "Never mind. It's Vin."
I'm starting to think maybe A.J. isn't nearly as terrible as Reed and Alston hoped I'd think he was. He's the only one of the bunch who seems open and honest. He may be reckless, but at least I know where I stand with him and what to expect.
"We need to get back anyway," I say. I glance over at Linzi and dread having to detach her from Alston. "I have to reserve our room for a few more days."
"Don't," Reed says. "You guys can stay at our guest house. Two bedrooms, one bath, free of charge."
The thrill of being in their world every second of the day excites me even more than knowing who all four bodyguards are – not that I really consider Vin to be exciting, though. Being in their household means being involved in every moment and aspect of the lives of Colby Taylor's bodyguards. If they contact him at any point, Linzi or I will be there. We can keep tabs on them like I bet no one ever has.
But they can keep tabs on us now too.
"Are you sure?" I ask, hoping I don't sound too eager. Linzi is a lost cause; she's already planning the rest of our time here with Alston.
Reed nods. "Definitely," he says. "I owe you that much. Anyone who gets on a jet ski with A.J. has earned it."
Back at the hotel, Linzi can't pack her things fast enough, as if we are leaving tonight. I make the routine phone call back home and tell my mom how great all of these colleges are, and I feel guilty for not feeling guilty about lying to her. As soon as the obligatory parental call is over, we finish packing everything except tomorrow morning's necessities and Solomon and Sofia, our incredible (thus far) spirit guides.
I reach over to turn off the lamp when I see him smiling up at me from the nightstand. All of my options have been exhausted. I hold up the photo and ask Linzi one of the many things I still don't know. "Who the hell is the blonde?"
*****
A.J.'s face pops up when I slam my car's trunk shut. He grabs my extra bags and hauls them inside without bothering to say 'good morning' or 'hello' or even 'what the hell are you doing?' Instead, he asks a stupid question.
"Why don't you have a shell necklace like Linzi's? It's badass," he says. He drops my bags onto the hardwood floor of one of the bedrooms of their guest house.
"It's a tourist trap," I say.
Reed is standing in the middle of the bedroom, and A.J. abandons us. I'm glad I don't have to go into great detail about the tourist trap associated with those stupid necklaces.
"I have to head to work, but the other room is right around the corner – Linzi's room – and the bathroom is in between. That screen door out there goes straight under the awning and into the kitchen, so we're close by," he explains. "A.J. and Alston can show you the ropes while I'm out."
My mind is between unpacking – again – and doing laundry as Reed is walking out the door. But I stop him. Actually, the beer-drinking blonde hiding in my purse stops him.
"Who is he?" I ask, holding up the picture.
Reed laughs. "You stole that from Great White?"
"I'll put it back," I say, hoping he can't see the lump in my throat.
He shakes his head. "It's cool. Keep it." He glances around, though we're alone, and checks outside of the door before he speaks. "I'll tell you, as soon as we have some time alone. Just don't mention it to the other guys, okay? I swear, I'll tell you. It just has to be later."
I nod and watch him disappear between the guest house and condo. I hide the blonde one more time. By nightfall, I'll at least know his name. Or else.
A.J. walks back into the room, falls onto my bed like he's dying from exhaustion although it's barely ten A.M., and tells me that Linzi and Alston are headed to the beach.
"So, what do you want to do?" he sits up and asks.
"Laundry," I say, dragging my bag of dirty clothes across the floor.
"This way, darling," he says.
*****
My clothes smell like pineapple, and I'm beginning to wonder if all of Crescent Cove bathes in this scent. The Strip is busier today than the first night Linzi and I scoped it out. Tourists and families crowd the sidewalk and blanket the sand. A.J. and I have yet to spot Alston and Linzi, but A.J. doesn't seem to mind. He gnaws on his blue raspberry snowcone like a starved dog who's just been tossed a few scraps from the dinner table.
"They're probably off fucking somewhere," A.J. says as nonchalantly as he would've said that it's hot out here or that his flip flops are full of sand.
I attempt to smile at the mother next to us evil-eyeing A.J. I push him along and change the subject to an extent.
"How'd you and Alston become friends anyway?" I ask. I'm hoping that I can start with this grain of sand and build my way up to the sandcastle of Colby Taylor.
A.J. licks his blue lips. "We met in kindergarten. We were only friends because we were the only kids who looked like us. I didn't know he was Asian. He was just the only other brown kid, so we became friends, and by the time we were old enough to know better, we were kind of stuck with each other," he says.
He tilts his head back and rakes the last drops of blue ice from his Styrofoam cup into his mouth. I'm suddenly thankful that piña colada snowcones are clear and that my entire mouth isn't blue. Then again, I'm more vain than A.J. I don't think he even brushed his hair today. He tosses his cup into a nearby trash can, but I keep mine, even if it's nearly empty. As long as I pretend to eat, he'll keep talking.
"Reed and Alston started hanging out in junior high. They were into the boating, surfing, fast cars kind of stuff. Alston's parents hate me. You know he's adopted? Rich white people. They love Reed. So I was thrown to the wolves and rescued by Reed's dad's mechanic," he says. He looks at me like I should understand. "You know, Vin?"
"Oh," I say. "Vin works for Strickland's Boating?"
A.J. shakes his head and stops to look at a rack of sunglasses. "Not anymore. Just at that time. He got a better offer and quit. He's got other things in the works, so he needed some free time."
Of course. Working on cars takes away from his hair-dye-selling time. I shove my spoon into my mouth to keep myself from speaking ill of A.J.'s salvation from abandonment. He studies himself in a mirror, modeling different sunglasses at the vendor booth.
"The four of us just kind of stuck together. But then I dropped outta high school," he says to the mirror more than me. "Reed graduated early to help at his dad's store. So we crashed at the condo with Taylor for a while, before he moved out to that rich kid beach house of his. Alston moved in after grad, and his parents can't say a damn thing about me living there."
I fight the smile that wants to crawl across my face. This is where Colby Taylor enters the story. A.J. and Alston were childhood 'brown kid' besties until Alston met Reed who he had more in common with. Then Alston ditched A.J., and Vin rescued him because he worked for Reed's dad and obviously felt some sort of personal attachment to the criminal kid. It all makes sense. Except Colby.
But all of my excitement, hope, and progress vanishes in the shadow of a monster whale that's being driven by tiny legs, swim trunks, and little sandals. I can't pull A.J. out of the way in time, and in three seconds flat, the rack of sunglasses crashes to the sidewalk.
"What the fucking hell!" A.J. screams.
He plows his fist into the giant inflatable whale like he's some kind of underwater ninja in a video game and his arch nemesis is the orca.
The little boy wails like a siren, but I can't see him. I can't see beyond the plastic whale that's thrashing before me. Sunglasses snap and crunch under the fight as A.J. tries to untangle himself from the rack and the whale. I grab his flying fist and pull him to his feet, but I can't stop the F-bombs from dropping off his tongue.
The boy's mom grabs him and his whale, apologizes to the sunglasses vendor, and gives A.J. that inevitable squished-bug look of disgust. Warranted or not, it pisses me off.
"You need to watch where your kid is going!" A.J. screams at her. "Fucking parents these days!"
My grasp on his arm becomes a death grip as I pull him down the sidewalk. He mutters about the woman and the whale and spits out a few comparisons to Alston's mom, and I know all talk of friendship and history is over. Just another detour on the long road to the forever-chasing surfer. I block out my disappointment with a visual image of the beer-drinking blonde.
Tonight's the night.