“I can suddenly see why none of you ever left.”
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “Some days I kind of forget to look at it. But the expression on your face just reminded me.”
Something warm shot through her, across her face and down into the pit of her stomach. She swallowed hard, fought against it. It was a good feeling, but weird. Deeper than the kinds of feelings she was used to.
And she wasn’t sure she liked it.
“Anyway, I have to get out and help Connor for a while, so I’ll drive you back.”
“I’m fine walking,” she said, suddenly feeling the need to escape again. To feel a little sunshine on her face and some wind in her hair. “I mean, really, I want to walk.”
He shrugged. “All right. Suit yourself. See you around.”
She climbed out of the truck and tried to ignore the somewhat fuzzy feeling his casual, and not at all hostile, goodbye carved out in the pit of her stomach. Right in the middle of all the warmth.
“Yeah,” she said, “see you.”
She hopped out of the truck and breathed in deep, the air sweet from the flowers and salty from the nearby sea. She looked up and closed her eyes, letting the sunshine wash over her. And even though she wanted to, she didn’t look back at Eli. Not even once.
CHAPTER EIGHT
NEVER HAD ELI been so glad for Jack to draw the short straw. That made him the designated driver for the evening, and it meant that Eli could drink some beers. Because he really, really wanted to drink some beer tonight.
Not that he would drink to the point of public drunkenness, since he had a reputation to uphold. And the legacy of being a worthless drunk’s kid. But something to take the edge off the Sadie Miller knife that was digging into his gut would be nice.
Just a little haze. That was all he required.
Jack was still sulking because he had to stay sober, Connor had already gone to the bar to order beer and Eli was leaning back in his chair, enjoying being in town in plainclothes. Enjoying sitting back and watching people do things without feeling like he was on duty at a day care.
The bar was packed, but it was Saturday night and there were a limited amount of activities in town. There were average-quality restaurants, very expensive seafood restaurants, a movie theater with five screens and a local dinner theater. The bar was one of the more popular choices for obvious reasons.
Alcohol, darts and pool being some of the most obvious.
“Don’t sulk, Jack,” Eli said. “It’s not a good look on you.”
“Drunk isn’t a good look on you,” Jack returned, his arms crossed over his chest.
“I haven’t been drunk since I was twenty-one. On my birthday. And never again.”
“You’re such a cliché.”
Since this was the second time he’d been accused of this recently, he was starting to wonder if it was true.
“Aren’t we all?” he asked. “We’re in a bar on Saturday with nothing better to do.”
“Looking to get laid,” Jack said, turning and taking a Coke out of Connor’s hand as he returned to the table with drinks.
“Speak for yourself,” Eli said.
“Oh, right, you don’t shit in your own yard.”
Eli grimaced and took the pale ale Connor was offering him. “Not my favorite way of putting it, but the principle is sound.”
“Liss isn’t coming?” Jack asked Connor.
“Not tonight. She said something about painting her toenails and watching old movies. And that is where having me as her best friend tends to not pay off.”
“You don’t want to put the little toe separators in for her and blow on her feet until the polish dries?” Jack took a drink of soda to disguise his smile.
“I thought I’d come here and see if you wanted to throw darts at my balls instead,” Connor said, tipping his beer bottle back and taking a long drink.
“If I were drinking, I would absolutely take you up on that,” Jack said.
“Remember the time we were hanging out at the house,” Connor asked, “and we thought we’d play darts? But there was nothing to hang the board we found...and you, you put the board in your lap? And told me to hit the bull’s-eye?”
“I still have a scar on my thigh,” Jack said. “So yeah, I remember.”
“We did really dumb stuff.”
“You two did dumb stuff,” Eli corrected. “I mainly watched.”
And told no one because there was no one who would have cared. Jack’s mom was too exhausted from work to look his direction more than once a week, and the Garrett patriarch was usually passed out in his own vomit by 6:00 p.m.
They used to joke that if their parents got married they could be the world’s most fucked-up version of the Brady Bunch.
That hadn’t happened, because their individual parents had been too busy wallowing in their problems, but Jack basically lived at their house anyway, simply by virtue of the fact that it was bigger and there were more places to find trouble.
Jack liked trouble, and trouble liked him. Typically, female trouble.
