Millie glanced at Keme before saying, “They’ve had a lot of problems with vandalism. They put up the fence and the cameras, but it still keeps happening.”
Keme nodded.
As we continued into the camp, the gate rolled shut behind us. Ahead, buildings took shape in the darkness: frame structures with clapboard siding and dark shingle roofs. When the headlights washed over them, color popped in the night—doors painted bright reds and blues, shockingly vivid against the monochrome night. In contrast to the pristine new buildings, the surf camp’s grounds consisted of churned earth, spilled gravel, and weeds. There was no landscaping, no sidewalks, not even a proper parking lot. Millie ended up parking on a grassy strip where other cars were already clustered.
When we got out of the car, the sound of music came on the night air—I didn’t recognize it, but I figured it was probably called something like acoustic surf rock, and it sounded like it would appeal to a group (mostly men) focused on “chillaxin’” and indulging in recreational substances. Behind the camp’s central building, firelight flickered and sent the shadows dancing.
We came around the central building and found ourselves in a large, open square. The music was louder here—the voices too. At one end of the square stood a palapa. Under the palm-thatch roof, fairy lights illuminated a fully stocked bar, where several of the surfers were playing mixologist. At the other end of the clearing, a bonfire blazed; the heat lapped at me even from a distance, and a whiff of wood smoke came in on my next breath.
The party appeared to be in full swing, and it seemed to combine elements of beach hangout and Halloween bacchanal. A guy with long blond hair—his costume, apparently, was “lifeguard”—laughed as he staggered and fell, and then he laughed even harder. A girl in a “nurse” bikini—in total defiance of the October cold—was balancing an inflatable ring on her nose while her friends recorded her on their phones. A couple more of the long-haired types (maybe they came in a six pack?) were wrestling—apparently simultaneously trying to turn each other out of their Baja hoodies—and neither of them seemed sober enough to get the upper hand. At the edge of the ring of firelight, someone moved, and I thought I recognized Nate Hampton. After assaulting Gerry at the beach, the redhead had apparently found time to change into a hoodie and jeans, and he didn’t look too bothered by the earlier scuffle.
Keme took off into the scrum of bodies (he’d gone with “skeleton in a suit” for his costume, which apparently meant some makeup on his face and a suit that he looked really good in—I was fairly sure Millie had been the intended audience, and I had a sneaking suspicion the suit belonged to Deputy Bobby). Millie went with him. Fox and I lingered at the edge of the square. To their top hat and frock coat, Fox had added a monocle—again, ordinary Fox apparel, or Halloween costume? You decide!
As we stood there, voices came up the path behind us. It only took me a moment to recognize West.
“…because I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. Do you understand?”
And Deputy Bobby’s answer was quiet and even. “Yes.”
“And that’s scary for me. That’s terrifying, Bobby. Because I love you. And I know we’ve talked about this before, but that actually makes it worse. You promised me that when you were off duty, you weren’t going to do stuff like that. Get involved, I mean. And when you break your promises, it’s hard for me to trust you, and trust is the bedrock of our relationship. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
A moment later, they appeared. West was still in his hot-as-the-sun construction worker costume; if anything, he somehow looked even better, but I still had no idea how he wasn’t freezing to death. Deputy Bobby was a construction worker too, although, thank God, he’d managed to cover himself up a little more: boots, jeans, a white T-shirt, and then the hi-vis vest and hardhat.
“Pity,” Fox murmured. “I was looking forward to seeing your tongue fall out of your mouth.”
I shot them a furious look, but by then, West and Deputy Bobby had noticed us.
“Hey,” West said in that tone people use when they’re trying to pretend everything is great. “I didn’t know you guys were coming.”
“They made me,” I said.
For some reason, that made Deputy Bobby smile—just a quicksilver flash, there and gone.
“Keme and Millie are already out there enjoying themselves,” Fox said, jerking a thumb at the crowd. “I’ve been keeping an eye on the wallflower.”
“I hope someone said something to Keme about age-appropriate drinks,” Deputy Bobby said.
“Even though that’s none of our business tonight,” West said. He squeezed Deputy Bobby’s hand. “Because we’re here as a normal couple, right?”
Deputy Bobby said, “Right.”
“Indira talked to him,” Fox said. “I don’t know what she said, but his eyes were huge when he came out of that kitchen.”
“And that’s another thing.” I turned toward Fox. “Why didn’t Indira have to come?”
“Indira didn’t have to come because she’s an adult and a fully actualized human being.”
“I’m an adult. I’m a fully actualized human being.”
“Wearing a keyboard cat costume.”
“It’s not—” I drew a breath through clenched teeth. “You’re just saying that because you’re scared of her.”
“Of course I’m scared of her. My God, Dash, have you seen that woman debone a chicken thigh?”
“Okay, you two have fun,” West said. “We’re going to get drinks.”
Before I realized who he was talking about, he reached out and grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the palapa. I stumbled after him, glanced back, and saw a strange expression on Deputy Bobby’s face—like the quicksilver smile, there and then gone, only this hadn’t been a smile. Worry, maybe. Or something adjacent to worry.
West led me under the palm-thatch roof of the palapa, and we got in line for the makeshift bar. The crowd around us seemed evenly split between guys who had made a modicum of effort to dress up for Halloween (a cowboy, a police officer, Where’s Waldo?), and others who had clearly decided that going as a surfer was costume enough—lots of board shorts, flip-flops, and hoodies. Most of the women, on the other hand, had put a little more work into their getup. I counted two Playboy bunnies, one girl from Stranger Things, an evil (but sexy) clown, and no fewer than three Wonder Women. The clink of bottles mixed with the swell of voices, and the music was louder here—more of that acoustic surfer rock. I figured I could stand about ten more minutes of it before I started looking for a power cord to chew on.
“Am I making a mistake?” West asked.
I glanced over at him. His eyes were wet, and he was blinking rapidly, staring straight ahead.
“With Bobby.” His voice broke as he added, “Am I screwing everything up?”
“What?” I looked around, but aside from a lot of drunken surfers and one Wonder Woman who was trying to climb on a cowboy’s shoulders, there was nobody who could help me. “I don’t—”
“I love him so much. But I keep feeling like I’m—like I’m messing up, you know? And you know how Bobby is. It’s impossible to read him. He never says what he’s thinking. And then I ask him, and he says he loves me, or he’s happy, or—I don’t know. And I just want to scream.” Some of the tears spilled, and as he wiped his cheeks, he ducked his head and said, “Never mind.”
I could run away, of course. I could pretend I hadn’t heard him. I could simply let the conversation drop—he’d made it possible. I could hope that drunken Wonder Woman fell on me and her armor crushed me to death. (It looked like a possibility; that cowboy was definitely not off-roading material.) But West was still wiping his cheeks and sniffling, and he just looked so…miserable.
“I’m all in favor of screaming,” I said and touched his arm. “And crying, for the record. So if you want to do some screaming, we can walk out to the beach, and you can scream your head off. And I’ll hold your drink. And then we’ll get more drinks. And then I’ll hold your hair while you puke. And someone will take pictures of us passed out next to the toilet.” The line moved forward, and I said, “I’ve never actually done this before, so I’m mostly basing this off of movies.”
A tiny laugh made his shoulders tremble. He looked up. His eyes were red. (And the really annoying part was that it didn’t make him even one percent less gorgeous.)
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “Is this about, uh, the thing at the beach?”
“No.” And then he said, “Yes.”
“You sound like me.”
We both laughed.
“I don’t know,” West said as we moved forward again. The song changed, but the music didn’t. Eight minutes to power cord. “I mean, yes, we argued about that. I argued about it. That’s—that’s the whole problem. He just agrees with me. And he apologizes. And I know he means it, but—” He was breathing rapidly; the hi-vis vest made it easy to see how his chest and belly rose and fell with shallow breaths. “I don’t think he wants to move. And I don’t think he’s happy. And sometimes—sometimes I think I’m ruining his life. But when I ask him, he says he loves me, and he wants to be with me, and everything’s going to be okay.”
The couple in front of us stepped aside, and we found ourselves stepping up to the bar. The guy behind it had sleepy eyes, lots of interesting muscles, and a tiny pair of black trunks. It was starting to feel like the Twilight Zone. Was I the only person who got cold anymore?
“What’s up, kitty cat?” he asked. And then somehow he managed to lean on the bar in a way that made a LOT (cue Millie’s voice) of muscles pop in his arms. Like, some of those muscles I hadn’t even known existed.
West started giggling.
“Uh,” I said.
That made West giggle harder.
