I woke up the next morning, still without a text or explanation from Brooklyn. Nikki meandered into my room around 11 and sat cross-legged at the foot of my bed, furiously scrolling through her phone.
"I cannot believe he doesn't have one social media account!" She groaned. "I can't even find a god damn Instagram! Like, who doesn't have Instagram?"
"I guess he doesn't," I replied with an eye roll. "Why do you care so much, anyway?"
"Because I need the low down on who my sister is dating," she said flippantly. "I need to know where he went to preschool, who his best friends are, identify the thirsty hoes that comment on his photos...you know, the standard stuff."
I groaned in response and hit her with one of my pillows. "Reality check, please. We're not dating. We're just friends."
"Oh sure, just friends cuddle and watch movies and fall asleep together," Nikki gave me a coy grin and wiggled her fingers.
Despite the scare in the hospital the other day, it was back to overly dramatic business as usual for Nikki. Sometimes I wondered why I told her anything, and then I remember she was really the only person I had to tell things to.
"I didn't mean to fall asleep," I insisted. "I was comfortable, and the movie kind of sucked-"
"Wait, shush," she cut me off, pressing a finger to her lips. "I think I found something." She sat straight up, and something about her tone unnerved me. Whatever she found, she didn't like.
"I think you should read this," she said warily as she handed me her phone. An old article from ESPN illuminated the screen. The headline in big, bold letters read:
CLEMSON STAR TIGHT END BROOKLYN KELLER DISMISSED FROM TEAM FOLLOWING ARREST AT FRAT PARTY
"I started googling him, since I couldn't find anything on Instagram or Twitter, and that came up."
I heard Nikki's voice, but she sounded far away. My thumbs shook as I skimmed the article. Phrases like underage intoxication and intent to sell or distribute drugs stuck out sharply.
"Did you know?" she asked.
"Did I know what?" I echoed, still completely engrossed in the article.
"Did you know about this?" She grabbed her phone out of my hands and shook it at me.
I still didn't know what had happened with Brooklyn and his dad, but I knew it wasn't good, and I was overcome with an uncomfortable need to protect him, especially from people like Nikki who didn't know him. The real him. I knew there had to be an explanation, and I knew there had to be a good reason why he didn't tell me.
"Oh...uh...yeah," I gave her a quick nod. "Yeah I did. He told me."
"Okay," Nikki recoiled with a shrug. "I'm just looking out for you."
"I know," I nodded and swallowed the lump in my throat. "And I appreciate that. But I've got it under control. No big deal."
Lying for him felt more comfortable the second time around. Almost too comfortable.
Nikki sighed and flopped back on my bed.
"Anyway, are you sure you don't want to come this weekend? I promise we'll only be there for a few hours. Plus I heard that Diplo is DJing at Red's."
I sat myself down at the little white desk in the corner of my bedroom and carefully tended to my chipped mint green nail polish. "Who cares about Diplo?" I replied.
"I do," Nikki said flippantly.
I shot her a stony look before returning to my nail polish. Nikki groaned and flopped back on her bed.
"Anyway, you still haven't answered my question."
"What question?" I feigned ignorance.
"Are you coming to Shem Creek this weekend or not?" Nikki whined. "I refuse to let you sit around this house alone on Memorial Day."
Memorial Day was like Nikki's second birthday. It was the best excuse she had to party - this year on an actual beach - with no restraint and no pants. It was also the complete opposite of my idea of a good time, but that didn't stop her from insisting I join her anyway.
"No," I replied curtly.
"Why not?" Nikki pouted.
"Because I know you," I snapped. "Number one: we will not be there for a few hours, we're going to be there all day, and number two: I'm not in the mood to get grinded up on by sweaty, drunk guys and then have you yell at me when I don't go off to make out with them in the handicapped bathroom."
"So then invite your own boy," she said with a coy grin.
"For the last time, he's not my boy," I snapped, feeling a knot of rage inch up my throat.
"You keep telling yourself that," Nikki grumbled.
I inhaled sharply. "Like I told you last time you asked, nothing is going on between us. We're just friends. So let's drop it."
Nikki shifted to lay on her stomach. "Fine. Consider it dropped."
I watched her out of the corner of my eye, her face buried in her phone. She blew a piece of blonde hair out of her face that had fallen out of her messy bun. I wasn't sure if it was the smell of the acetone from the nail polish, or Nikki's ability to ask such smothering questions, but I needed fresh air. Desperately.
"I'm going for a walk," I said as I pushed myself away from Nikki's desk.
"You know what might make you feel better?" Nikki said as I turned to leave.
"What?" I replied.
"If you took out your notebook with you." She looked up from her phone and gave me a sideways glance. "Go write about all the things that have your panties in a bunch."
I groaned again. "I already told Aunt Mel, and now I'm telling you. This place has completely sucked my inspiration dry."
"Then you're not trying hard enough," Nikki retorted as I turned on my heel and shut the door behind me.
I took my time walking to the beach, letting the fresh air clear my swimming thoughts. I kicked off my sandals when I came to the space where the sand met the concrete of the sidewalk and treaded down the dunes. The sand was warm from the afternoon sun, and I inhaled deeply, letting the crisp, salty air fill my lungs. I trekked further away from the street to a more secluded part of the beach, cut off from the main touristy strip of the shoreline and was only ever populated by people from the neighborhood. There was an older man closer to the water, throwing a tennis ball around for his fluffy, bear-like dog.
I wove in and out of pockets of marram grass that grew tall on the dunes, delicately swaying in the gentle breeze. I found a spot to set my things down and took my notebook out. I felt a warm, familiar comfort with a pen in my hands, and as much as I hated admitting it, I knew Nikki was right, and I should have sat out here weeks ago.
I flipped to my most recent section of notes, which was just a hodge-podge of scribbles and random sentences. Do you know what love is? and Lost girl seeking meaning and fulfillment glared at me in bold, black letters. Too bad the sunrays beating down on my head didn't inject ideas into my brain.
I took a deep breath and shut my notebook. The ocean was usually a murky, deep green. But not today. Today it shined like crystal blue glass, with rays of sun bouncing off the tops of the waves, glinting like diamonds.
"Hey," a voice said behind me. Deep and gruff and all kinds of things that made my stomach flutter.
I looked over my shoulder to see Brooklyn standing behind me, with big black aviator sunglasses on and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. "Nikki told me where to find you."
"Well, here I am," I said curtly as I turned away from him and trudged further down the beach towards the water. I felt a tight knot in my stomach, unsure if I was angry or upset or some dizzying combination of both.
"What are you doing?" he pointed to my notebook.
"Working on my non-existent novel," I grumbled.
"Novel? You're a writer?" He paused and scratched the back of his neck with the brim of his hat. "How did I not know that?"
"Never came up in conversation, I guess," I replied with a shrug. "Besides, an unemployed writer is barely a writer."
My heart thumped so loudly I could hear it in my ears. Saying it all out loud to someone made it too real, and it made me ache. I glanced over at Brooklyn, who drew lines in the sand with the toe of his sneaker.
"Why didn't you say anything?" He muttered.
"Because it sucks, okay?" I bit back. "The whole thing sucks. I was fine in Georgia. I had a good routine going. I worked for a small editorial magazine, and I worked hard." I stopped to take a breath before a vein in my forehead popped. "I want to write stories that mean something. I want to travel the world and see amazing things. I figured I could start somewhere small, build my portfolio and if I worked hard enough everything would eventually just click. Then in April, the magazine I worked for went bankrupt, and then Nikki got approved for this clinical trial, so we moved, and I couldn't really get back on my feet." I paused and huffed out a breath. "But it's fine. Really. It's fine. It sounds really selfish when I say it all like that, and I don't mean for it to be."
Lie, lie, lie. How had I gotten so good at that?
Brooklyn looked like he was struggling to find a response. He plucked the still unlit cigarette from his mouth and rolled it between his fingers.
"I'm sure everything was fine," he said. "But just so you know, it's okay to not be fine too. And maybe you need to understand that you need to make time to take care of yourself too."
"Yeah, well I could say the same to you," I muttered as I fiddled with the spiral binding on my notebook.
He gave me a slight grin. "I was getting to that."
"Well, I'm listening."
Brooklyn took deep, strained breaths as he lowered himself onto the beach next to me, wrapping his arms around his legs. I kept my eyes on him as he finally lit his cigarette and took a long drag, as if he tried to finish it off in one breath.
"My dad," Brooklyn said as he finally exhaled, blowing a thin stream of smoke out of his mouth. "He's overly sensitive about me, and he wants to be in my business and in my space all the time. I feel like he doesn't think I'm trying to stay sober and get my shit together. It just..." He let out another deep sigh. "He just gets under my skin."
I recognized the all too familiar hurt in his voice. I gently placed my hand on his shoulder. "I hope by now you know I'm the last person that's going to judge you for having family drama. My family is an open, festering wound of drama."
"I feel like he's just upset I'm not like him," Brooklyn muttered. "Not just the successful part, but all his alpha male personality traits I didn't inherit from him. He's scrappy. He's aggressive. He doesn't play nice, and he doesn't really give a fuck what anyone thinks."
"And you do?" I raised an eyebrow.
Brooklyn shrugged. "I always care too much about what other people think of me."
I sucked in as much air as my lungs would allow. I thought back to that morning, and the way my heart lurched when I read the article about Brooklyn's arrest.
"Is that why you lied to me about what happened at Clemson?" I asked. "Because you thought I would think worse of you if I found out you were selling drugs and got kicked off the football team?"
Brooklyn looked at me, and his eyes darkened. "Nat, I swear I was never selling drugs," he pleaded. "I'd be the worst drug dealer ever, I'd just do all the drugs."
It felt wrong for laughing at that, but I did, and when he laughed too, it felt so right.
"So then do you want to tell me what happened? The truth, this time."
Brooklyn nodded and took another drag of his cigarette before speaking. "What you have to understand is the catalyst that set all of this off. My freshman year, I tore my ACL in the ACC Championship game. Six years ago that kind of injury could have been a death sentence to your career. I was a standout freshman. I started every game. If I got hurt, I was going to lose all of that." His voice began to crack, and he casually slipped his sunglasses back on despite the clouds rolling in. "I had surgery that week and was almost immediately pumped with Oxy to manage my pain while I was in the hospital. By the time I was ready to play the next season, I was just being funneled Vicodin and shot up with Cortizone during games so I could play. I mean, I had a great season, so I never thought twice about it. Nobody did. That's just the norm in high level sports to keep the star athletes on the field. But before I knew it, football season was over and I...I couldn't go a day without them. I was eating them like candy. Add in some adderall to finish my schoolwork, Xanax for my fake anxiety, and...I liked the way it all made me feel. Like I wasn't failing."
Brooklyn died his cigarette out in the sand, and without thinking I gently placed my hand over his.
"Fast forward to the end of my sophomore year. I was at a frat party. Me and a few of the guys on the football team bought a bunch of pills and some coke from a guy in the frat. I had a backpack with me, so we just jammed all of our stuff in it. The cops busted the party, and since we were all still underage, we ran. I was in a bathroom on the second floor, I was drunk, and I thought it would be smart to jump out of the window...while it was still closed."
He held out his wrist, running his fingers over the scar that twisted up his forearm. I glanced up at the one on his chin.
"Needless to say, jumping out of a window gets everyone's attention," he continued. "Including the cops. They dumped my backpack, and when you're caught with that much shit on you, they get you for selling, even if you weren't actually going to. So I got arrested for intent to sell controlled substances, kicked off the football team, and blacklisted from every other Division I school in the country. Those assholes who wrote those articles were the same exact guys who were singing my praises my freshman year. One minute they put me on a pedestal, and the next minute they bury me."
Hurt seeped its way through every crack in his voice. I used to think I knew what being in pain felt like. Every time I thought about my sister's illness, and thinking about losing her like I lost my parents, my chest ached every time I tried to breathe. But Brooklyn's was a different kind of pain. This was pain so deep, I couldn't see the bottom. This was a black hole, and it didn't hurt like mine hurt. It was just empty.
"I don't think badly of you," I said. I watched his face soften, and the lines on his forehead faded. "I'm only upset that you lied."
He looked up at me and offered me a weak smile. "Look, I'm really sorry I lied to you. If you couldn't tell, I'm not exactly the best at handling real emotions. I'm only good at pretending I don't have them. I'm supposed to be the cool funny guy. Not any of that other stuff"
"Brooklyn, I understand." I gave his hand a squeeze. "It's a hell of lot easier to act like you're not hurting."
Brooklyn lit another cigarette and looked out to the ocean. "What a pair we are, huh?"
I bumped his knee with mine. "Not too bad of a pair, all things considered."
My heart swelled when he smiled at me. A real smile this time.
"Walk me home?" I asked him, feeling my own smile tug at my lips.
"Yeah, of course." Brooklyn groaned as he stood up, his breaths still labored. He coughed again before extending his hand to me. I took it, with much less caution than I did the day we first met.
He glanced down at the notebook I still had clutched in my hands. "Write anything good?"
I shrugged. "My aunt always says creating is making something out of nothing, but I think I've just been making more nothing out of nothing."
Brooklyn laughed. He gave me a sideways glance and went to make a grab for my notebook.
"Don't touch my shit." I snapped and swatted his hand away.
"Come on Nat," he stuck out his bottom lip. "I won't judge you or anything. I just wanna look."
I narrowed my eyes at him. He yanked the notebook from my hands before I could protest any more.
"You do know it's just a bunch of notes and scribbles, right? What did you think you were going to find?" I asked.
Brooklyn started flipping through the pages. "No idea. I didn't think I would get this far."
He handed me back my notebook, and when our hands brushed against one another, I caught sight of a tinge of pink creeping up his cheeks. He quickly pulled his hand away and cleared his throat.
"So...uh, you have Memorial Day plans?"
"Nikki wants me to go to this bar on Shem Creek," I groaned. "Honestly, I hate places like that and I really don't want to go, but I feel like it's in my big sister contract to keep an eye on her."
"Ella and I are going to the carnival downtown, if you'd rather come with us," Brooklyn said. "I know it's kind of childish, but it's actually a pretty good time. Less drunk people, too."
"Maybe Nikki will come to that instead of going to Shem Creek and risk contracting an STD just by breathing," I grumbled. Or worse was the secondary thought - one I didn't dare say out loud.
I was relieved to hear Brooklyn laugh. It made things feel less hopeless, and when I was with him, sometimes I forgot about all the bad stuff. Brooklyn gave me something to believe in. I didn't know what, but it wasn't anything tangible. It was just in the air.
As we walked back up from the beach to my house, our hands brushing against each other every so often in a fleeting moment that I begged to hold onto for more than just a second, I felt the pull. I felt the gravitation I had to him, and it made me dizzy. We had only met two months ago - two months that felt like a whirlwind that swept me off my feet and refused to bring me back down to the ground.
"You look lost," Brooklyn's voice pulled me back to reality.
"I'm just thinking," I replied.
"Well don't think too hard or you'll hurt yourself," Brooklyn said with a chuckle.
I rolled my eyes, but then playfully shoved his arm. The crisp air dried the sweat on the back of my neck, and I wrapped my cardigan tighter around me.
When we rounded the bend to my house, I nearly tripped over my feet when I saw a tall figure standing on my porch.
"Oh no," I mumbled.
"What?" Brooklyn asked.
I shook my head. "I'll see you this weekend, then?" I tried to steer him towards his car at the curb, but it was too late. His eyes were locked in on the man standing on my porch.
"Hey Nat," the figure said.
I huffed and crossed my arms tighter over my chest. "Kevin," I replied curtly.
Kevin sauntered down the steps of the porch. His wavy chestnut hair had been cut short since the last time I saw him, but his green eyes still burned holes in my skin with his glare. But then I realized he wasn't looking at me - his gaze went right over my shoulder and landed on Brooklyn.
"No way, Brooklyn Keller?" The curiosity in Kevin's voice only amplified my worry. My breath hitched.
Brooklyn rolled his eyes behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses. "You know me?" He sounded bored, like it was a question he was tired of asking.
"Yeah I know who you are," Kevin said. "You were big shit at Clemson." Kevin paused, and a smirk crept up on his face. "Although, I heard recently you were in jail, so I guess I'm just surprised to see you out in the open."
"Why you fucking-" Brooklyn lifted his arm to take a swing, but I quickly grabbed his wrist, desperately trying to pull him away from Kevin, who just continued to smirk. I finally pulled his arm down and dragged him away. I put my hands on his chest, feeling his heart beating furiously against his ribs.
"Let me talk to him," I said softly. I looked up at him, seeing the veins on his neck pulse. "Please, just go inside."
"Fine," he spat. He turned away and sauntered up the steps of the porch, slamming the front door behind him.
I turned back to Kevin, my eyes burning into his skin.
"You!" I pointed at him. "Who the hell do you think you are coming to my house, completely uninvited and unannounced?"
Kevin shrugged, and a frown pulled at his lips. "Well maybe if you had answered my calls or texts I wouldn't have been unannounced. I drove almost three hours."
I groaned and raked a hand through my hair. "Well, I didn't ask you to do that."
"I wanted to," Kevin insisted. "Because I want to know what the hell is going on, Nat. I get that you had to move, but you just leave me high and dry with a bullshit text? You owe me an explanation."
Guilt wracked me hard, like someone was taking a baseball bat to my bones.
Kevin raked his hand through his brown hair and shook his head. "Come on Natty, why are you hanging around that loser? He's a burnt out junkie."
"Don't Natty me," I snapped. "You don't even know him! He happens to be a decent person, and he also happens to be my friend, Kevin. The only friend I have right now, because you turned all of our friends against me!"
My borderline hysterics did nothing to deter Kevin's arrogance. He just chuckled.
"Your friend?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you sure about that?"
I huffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Natalie, I saw the way he looks at you. You'd have to be dead between the ears to not see he's got a thing for you."
In another world, maybe another plane of existence, I might have been happy to hear that. But not here, not now.
"Come on Natty, stop being so naïve," Kevin continued. He reached up to touch my cheek, but I smacked his hand away.
"Don't touch me," I snapped.
"You know, I came here to ask you if you wanted to go out to dinner or something," Kevin's tone became hushed. "So we could talk like civilized humans, work things out and forget all that shit happened."
"You have no right," I sighed, reeling myself back. "I broke up with you and that was two months ago, you can't just..appear unannounced and expect me to do what you ask as if I'm still yours to boss around."
Kevin sighed and rocked back and forth on his heels. "Alright, alright. I'm just trying to look out for you. I know you'll have a hard time seeing this, but that manipulative shithead has you under his thumb. He's bad news Natalie. Guys like him don't change, and eventually he's going to be back on the corner selling dope to prostitutes."
"I don't need anyone to look out for me, I do that myself," I snapped back. "And the only person who's thumb I've ever been under was yours. Brooklyn is a much better person than you'll ever be, and at least he's trying. But you? You're always going to be a chauvinistic asshole, because guys like you don't change either." I shouldered past him, stomping up the steps to the patio and retreating into the house, slamming the door behind me.
When I was sure he was gone, I exhaled.
"Okay, that was so awesome," Nikki squealed. Her and Brooklyn had been perched on the couch facing the window. Nikki bounced up and down, grabbing my arms and twirling them in the air.
"I think I should go," Brooklyn said as he rose from the couch, wiping his hands on his black basketball shorts.
"No, don't. Stay," I said softly. I reached out for his hand, but he moved towards the door.
"Yeah, we're ordering pizza," Nikki chirped.
"My mom is probably waiting for me. I'll call you later," Brooklyn mumbled before shuffling out the front door. I watched him out the front window trudge to his car, lighting a cigarette and speeding away.
✗✗✗