I can’t stop thinking about him.
I can’t stop thinking about the pact.
***
The next morning I wake up with a raging hangover. It’s not exactly how I thought I’d ease into my thirties but then again, it’s par for the course by now. Of course, I used to be able to polish off a bottle of white wine and some cocktails without feeling too bad but now I’m hurting. Maybe hangovers are more of a bitch to deal with in your thirties.
On the plus side, I don’t wake up to anyone I regret. Aaron is sleeping soundly beside me, his snoring soft, and I spend a few bleary-eyed moments staring at him as I try to wake up.
He really is a great-looking specimen. It’s as if God decided to create a man who was destined to model surfboards and swimwear and that’s how Aaron came to be. He is tanned and smooth nearly everywhere. He doesn’t even manscape, though I know it’s popular among his model friends, because his body hair is dark blonde and usually bleached from the sun, and his shaggy hair has all these perfect highlights. His eyes are the kind of green that make you do a double-take and they shine with the clarity of jade.
He’s full of easy-going, boyish charm. He’s full of fun and games. He’s full of youth and possibility.
I am lucky, I really am.
Is it wrong that I have to keep telling myself that?
I slowly ease out of bed and go into the bathroom, the only en-suite in the house. I splash cold water on my face and examine my pores for a few moments before swallowing two Advil dry. I have a few beauty products stored in the medicine cabinet so I rub on some tinted moisturizer and swipe cream blush on my lips and cheeks. I still look like I was hit by a truck.
When I’ve slipped on one of his checkered shirts and pulled on a pair of boxers, I make my way downstairs and blink in surprise when I see a bunch of people passed out all over the place. The last thing I remember from last night was blabbing to Penny about how much I love Michael Keaton as Batman before someone must have ushered me off to bed.
Penny herself is sleeping on one of the couches, with James on the floor right beneath, lying on a bunch of coats. The other couch is occupied by Dan. I don’t see Linden anywhere and wonder how he got home. I can’t really remember him leaving except feeling acute disappointment when he did.
I have to say I’m a bit relieved. From the weird tension between us earlier it wouldn’t have been very good if he did stick around. Maybe I would have been talking to him about Michael Keaton instead of Penny and then what would have happened? Drunk thirty-year old Stephanie might be a force to be reckoned with.
In the kitchen I put on a giant pot of coffee and am done drinking my first cup, between bites of a browned banana, by the time everyone else stirs. They all gravitate toward me like zombies, reaching with outstretched limbs for the coffee mugs, mumbling incoherently, their faces pale.
Penny’s heavy eye makeup from last night is smudged all over her face but she’s the most chipper of the lot.
“So, when are we going camping?” she asks me.
“What?” My brain turns over on itself to try and figure out what she’s talking about. It’s slow going.
“Last night, we talked about how awesome camping is and that we should go on a couples camping trip.” She looks at James. “Don’t you remember?”
He nods though he’s frowning much like I am. Man, I must have been pretty drunk to be talking about camping.
Penny goes on. “Anyway I was thinking more about it this morning-“
“You just woke up,” James tells her.
“And,” she continues, “I think I know just the place. Have you ever heard of Sea Ranch, just south of Mendocino?”
“Yeah, of course,” I tell her. Sea Ranch is like this rustic resort right above the angry Pacific. I’d never been but had often passed by the area on the few times I’ve gone up Highway One.
“My co-worker has a vacation rental there and we could easily use it for a weekend. I think we should all go.” She quickly eyes Dan. “Except for you, Dan, because you’re single and I don’t know you. But everyone else. You and Aaron, me and James and Linden and Nadine.”
Dan shrugs and pours himself a cup of coffee, seemingly glad to not be included in this messy bunch.
“I don’t know,” James says warily. His hair is sticking out from all directions, like it’s hungover too.
“Oh come on,” Penny says, elbowing him in the gut. “It would be really cheap, maybe even free, and fun.”
“It’s not really camping though,” I point out, not sure how I feel about the whole thing either.
She scrunches up her nose, displaying her septum ring that matches James’s perfectly. “We’re all beyond camping at this point. This is how grown-ups camp.”
“What about work?” James asks.
“Dan will cover your absence, right Dan?” she asks and Dan, silent Dan, just nods.
“But what about Stephanie’s work?” James adds and I know he’s right. It’s only me working and there is no way I could hire someone in a rush for this. Not only would I be stuck with someone that probably isn’t a good fit, but I’d have to leave them in charge of the store. Not happening.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “James is right. I’m the only employee. I have to work.”
“So close the shop for the weekend,” she says. “When is the last time you’ve had a proper break? Even a weekend?”
I try not to think about that because I know the answer. I go up to see my mom on some Sundays. Other than that, I haven’t gone anywhere for a year.
A whole fucking year.
“I know. But that’s the way it is,” I tell her. “The working man is a sucker.”
A few days go past and I’m just about to close up shop when I end up getting a text from Linden. I hadn’t heard from him since my birthday, not even the day after. I’d learned that Nadine had come to pick him up while we were all doing karaoke and I guess she’d been watching him pretty closely after that.
Hey baby blue. Penny just messaged me asking if me and Nadine wanted to stay at Sea Ranch with her and James next weekend. I think you should come.
This was news to me. I didn’t think they’d still go camping if I wasn’t going but there you have it.
Hey yourself, cowboy. I told Penny I can’t go. Working.
She told me that. But I still think you should. Just close the shop for the weekend. Close early Friday and you only lose the Saturday.
Saturday is the busiest day here. I’d lose a lot of money.
It can’t all be about money. You have to have a life too.
Easy for you to say, I think.
I know but this is what I signed up for. I knew I’d have to make sacrifices.
You are going to work yourself into the ground, Steph. Please. I’m worried about you. You need a bloody break, a chance to relax.
There is a pause and I see that he’s writing something else. I hold my breath and wait.
It appears: It would make me very happy if you came. Please. I miss you.
My breath gets sucked down my throat even more. Linden is not normally like this. He’s the solid, unemotional, unsentimental rock. He’s not the type to tell anyone, I don’t care who they are, that he misses them.
He doesn’t say anything after that so I know he’s waiting for my response. I don’t really have a choice.
Okay, I text back. I’ll close the shop for the weekend. Only because you’re right, I need a break.
That’s all I wanted to hear.
I exhale slowly and see the last person leaving the store, empty-handed. It’s going to hurt me for sure to close it down for a day but I guess I could do more damage to myself if I work myself into an early grave. If I could get past the guilty feeling, maybe taking a break will be better in the long run.
I quickly text Aaron and tell him the plans, not even knowing if he’d be able to get off work. Naturally, though, he can. He just has to forgo another party. Poor boy.
So, I gues
s I’m going on a couple’s trip after all. A ball of pin-prickling nerves forms in my gut and I realize my reservations have nothing to do with actually closing down the store but something else.
It’s almost as if this trip is more than just a trip. This is a weekend where absolutely everything could change.
CHAPTER NINE
LINDEN
“Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
“Oh my god, it’s so pretty!”
“Fuck, we have to stop guys. Guys! Oysters! We need oysters! James, why aren’t we stopping?”
“Linden, remind me again why you didn’t fly us all in a helicopter? We could have avoided this long road to hell. I feel like I’m Chevy Chase in charge of some pain in the ass National Lampoon family.”
That’s Aaron, Nadine, Stephanie and James, respectively, yammering to each other as we cruise up the coast to Sea Ranch. The trip so far has been beautiful, even more so than when I’ve flown above it, but it’s a long, tiring, winding road and by the time deep azure of the Pacific meets the windswept hills outside of Sea Ranch, the six of us are dying to escape James’s Suburban.
We don’t seem to be so lucky with the weather but that was to be expected. Late October can be hit or miss on the coast and as we unload our stuff from the vehicle and into the modest, two bedroom rancher set back on a low cliff, the fog is as thick as my nana’s stew and obscures everything except a few feet in front of you.
“Fuck! It’s cold,” Steph swears as an icy, damp breeze riles up the hair around her face. Her nose is already a shade of red, which is just too fucking cute.
“Aren’t you glad we aren’t camping?” Penny yells, pulling her leather jacket close to her as she runs back to the car for something else.
My own leather jacket, thanks to Stephanie, is doing a fine job of keeping me warm even though it does feel like you’re walking through a winter cloud out here. I’m tempted to take it off and drape it over Stephanie’s shoulders but Aaron comes out of the house and tells her he’ll bring the rest in. For a moment I’m almost impressed because that has to be the most gentlemanly thing I’ve heard the young fuck say to her so far but I don’t let myself get carried away.
I still don’t think he’s the guy for her and I think after this weekend, I’ll have no doubts about that.
I don’t know why I care though. There’s nothing I can do about it at this point.
Once we all bring everything inside, there is the fight for the bedrooms and privacy. Aaron immediately calls one bedroom and I’m about to call the other when I decide Penny and James should have it since she’s the one who organized this whole thing. The cottage is a co-worker’s and we’re staying the weekend for free.
Nadine groans loudly from beside me. “I can’t sleep on a couch,” she mumbles, gesturing to what looks like a really nice pull-out under skylights and before the wide expanse of the fog-shrouded Pacific. “My back.”
She sometimes has back problems. They seem to have stemmed from around the time she had her appendix out, so I have no reason to believe she makes this shit up to get her way sometimes. You know, so she doesn’t have to do the dishes or take out the garbage or go to her job. I can’t count the number of times I’ve left her in my bed and gone to work while she stays at home and of course there’s a scramble at the charter company because she’s my girlfriend and now they have to hire another temp to cover reception.
Nadine didn’t even want to go on this trip. When we’d first started dating she’d been very adventurous and sporty. We did a lot of road trips to go hiking, went stand-up paddle-boarding, we even got into weekly rock-climbing at a gym. But in the last couple of months, she’s changed a wee bit.
I want to say it’s for the better but…it’s not. She’s more suspicious of me and what I do, especially when it comes to other women, especially when it comes to Stephanie, and her nag-o-meter is turned to eleven. She badgers me more about the future and the more that the future approaches, the less certain I am about it.
I want to make this work. I don’t want all this time I’ve put into this relationship to go to waste. I’m at an age now where you’re not supposed to still be finding the one. Hell, aside from my core group here, most of the people I know are already married with children.
I don’t want to break it off with Nadine and discover that we could have worked through it, that it was just a rough patch, that she could have changed back to the way she was, to the happy, fuck-filled days we used to have. I don’t want to give up.
Not without a reason.
My eyes trail over to Stephanie and I know what she’s going to say to Nadine’s complaints. I want to tell her no, she doesn’t need to do that.
“That’s okay,” Stephanie says, smiling at Nadine. “Aaron and I can take the couch, we don’t mind.”
And even though Aaron is the one who called the room, he really doesn’t look like he cares. He shrugs in his slacker way and says, “Yeah, no worries, man.”
“Thanks,” Nadine says quickly and without really looking at her. Stephanie knows that Nadine doesn’t like her and is usually trying to bend over backwards to fix that. I want to tell her there is no point, that Nadine is jealous of our relationship and no amount of sucking up and being nice is going to change anything.
The funny thing is, Stephanie isn’t really sucking up either. She just wants people to like her. It’s one thing I’ve watched with her over the years, something she still hasn’t really grown out of. She has confidence in so many things but she’s still screaming for approval. Sometimes I just want to pull her aside and tell her that she doesn’t need to be the daughter that’s filling the void that her brother left behind, or the best business on the block, or the best looking girl in the room. She is already all of that and more and her own approval is the only one she needs.
I try and meet Stephanie’s gaze but she’s busy bringing her metallic duffel bag over to the couch. She plops down on the cushions and bounces up and down, smiling at Aaron as if to say the couch was a better option anyway. Her breasts, which are looking more spectacular every single day, jiggle all over the fucking place and I avert my eyes before anyone notices. They’re more hypnotic than a lava lamp.
When we’ve all settled in and put our stuff away, we gather around the large table beside the kitchen and crack open the beer and wine. It’s already dark outside – we had to leave the city right at five thirty p.m. since Stephanie had to close up her shop. The nearest grocery store is in Gualala, which is only about ten minutes away but no one wants to move out in that cold, thick fog.
Thankfully we all got take-out on the way up here, so we’re happy with just the jars of homemade salsa that Nadine prepared and bags of tortilla chips.
For some reason, maybe because all three couples rarely hang out together like this, but it’s sorta awkward just sitting around the table and drinking. Usually James and I can shoot the shit but he’s being weird and quiet too. Maybe he’s just tired and worried. He rarely leaves the bar for the whole weekend and I know he’s thinking about the staff he left in charge.
“How about strip poker?” I suggest brightly.
Nadine rolls her eyes. “No one wants to see you naked.”
“Excuse me?” I raise my brows. That’s a new one.
“I do,” says Penny eagerly.
I grin and tip my beer at her. “There’s a good girl, thank you Penny.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” Stephanie says to Nadine with a wry smile. “Linden is the master of poker. He’ll be getting your clothes off if anything.”
Nadine seems rankled by that. I know it’s because she feels she should know me better than Steph does.
“I’m down,” James says and he heads over to the stack of games they have on one of the shelves by the fireplace. “Or we could try Monopoly?”
“Only if you want everyone to turn against each other,” says Penny and everyone murmurs in agreement. So many fights started and friendships te
sted over the movement of little metal hats and thimbles.
I look to Steph and waggle my brows. “Too bad there is no Happy Days game,” I say to her and she giggles. When we were twenty-three or twenty-four, she’d broken her ankle and had been more or less on bed rest. I’d come by with James a few nights a week and we would just binge watch the show Friends, going through all seasons even though we’d both watched the show religiously when we were teenagers. One of our favorite episodes (along with ‘Pivot’ and Ross’s leather pants) was the one where Joey suggested they play strip Happy Days game because they had no cards.
Alas, James does have cards but as he throws them down on the table, nearly knocking over a beer, he looks at all of us and says, “Actually, this is kind of like a Friends situation right now. Three girls, three guys. Most of us great friends.”
“Well, we all know James and Stephanie had a little affair when they were young and stupid,” Penny says but she’s not bothered by it. She smiles her big gap-toothed grin at them and then turns her bright eyes to me. “What about you, Linden? You tap that too?”
Normally when someone questions the platonic validity of my friendship with Stephanie, it’s easy to laugh it off. But here, tonight, it’s fucking awkward. I can feel Nadine’s eyes boring into me, Steph is actually blushing and looking away and James has that same murder face as he did when he caught me and Steph talking at her birthday party.
“You mean James, right?” I manage to joke. It’s a safe joke.
Penny isn’t impressed. “No. Though I do wonder about your late night talks sometimes,” she says and then wiggles her fingers in James’s direction before turning back to me. “You and Stephanie never hooked up?”
“No,” I tell her, then I scrunch up my face. “She’s gross.”
“Shut up,” Steph lobbies back. “You couldn’t get with this even if you tried.”
Okay, now I’m tempted to play a little ball here. “Is that so?”