Broken Fairytales (43 page)

“You okay?” I asked her, thinking maybe she wanted to talk about what was bugging her.

She looked up at me slightly startled, but it was so
subtle that only someone who’
d known her as long as I had
would have been able to
pick out that she was a little
on edge. 

Realizing that I was on to her, she gave me a wide smile that I could tell wasn’t fully genuine, and said, “Let’s
go to the beach.
I’m dying
to lie
in the sun and relax. C
an we?”

“Absolutely,” I said, wanting to pry, but knowing that it was better to let her tell m
e in her own time. I knew that when it came to Rachel, I had to exercise patience. “The beach is
pretty much all there
is to do here.”

“And sleep
with hot guitar-playing
guys,” she said coyly
,
and was instantly back in the moment.

“Ha, ha,” I said, thinking that
sleeping
with a cute guitar-playing guy
named Zack was one of the top three things I’d done that summer, so I really couldn’t argue.

“I still can’t believe you
cheated,” she said. “I mean, I know I’ve been the biggest advo
cate of you breaking up with Ben
, but you were so set against it, and then wham, you’re here two
week
s and
it’s game over.
Shit, you made Ben wait a year before you slept with him, and Zack had to wait, wha
t, less than a week?
”

“Rach, you know I love you, but you also know y
ou’re not exactly in a position to judge me.”

Sh
e put her hands up in defense.
“I’m not judging,” she said, shaking her head.  “
I’m freakin’ proud. My girl’s all grown up!”

I had to
laugh at her before opening
my mouth to
tell her to get her butt moving if she wanted to hit the beach, but i
t was then that I noticed the int
ricate marking that encircled Rachel’s
belly button.
It looked like some kind of tribal design
with lots of twists and swirls in all black
.  She had
definitely not had that when I left for vacation

“Um, excuse me, but is there something you’d like to tell me?” I asked, pointing at her stomach.

She looked down,
noticing her tank top had
slid up to reveal her new tattoo
.
“Oops,” she said
, guiltily
.
“
Yeah, so,
I
also
got a tattoo.”

“Um, yeah, I can see that. I thought you were going to get one while you were here?
”

“I didn’t wait. When I told Michael about it, he sor
t of designed this for me, and we went while he was visiting.”

“Is he a tattoo artist?
I thought he was an economics major or something.
”

Rachel laughed. “
Environmental Biology,” she said. “But he’s also an artist.
”

“Yeah, I can see that,
”
I said, leaning over to inspect it. The artwork was beautiful.

“Can you see it has my name twisted throughout?” she asked, trailing her fing
er along
the letters hidden in the design. I
f
you didn’t know they were there, you couldn’t see them.

“That was so sweet of him,” I said, thinking how much this guy must really like her. I wondered what her plans were once school started. He didn’t exactly liv
e near Chapel Hill
, but
I guess
the distance
was
better than that what they’d been dealing with all summer.

I
walked over to the dresser to grab my latest acquisition – a red string bikini that looked fantastic with the deep tan I’d acquired.

“These are so
cute,” she said, and I turned around to see her clicking thro
ugh the pictures on my
iPhone
.
She held up one of me and Zack.
“He’s gorgeous.”

Zack and I had been messing around taking pictures of each other the day before afte
r getting back from the beach.
We’d take
n the one self-portrait of us l
ying side by side
on my bed, our heads touching.
We both look way too s
miley and happy. Even i
f we didn’t keep in touch after
the summer, I’d always have a me
mory of just how great our time together
had been
, but I a part of me really wanted to keep seeing him
.

“Yeah, I know.” 

She set
the phone on my
nightstand and got to work switching her bra for her bathing suit top.

“You’re glowing by the way,” Rachel
said, as she tied the strings to her black bikini.

“I know,” I said
again and grinned
widely. “Zack is amazing. You’ll love him.
He’s meeting us at the beach.”

“You never looked this way with Ben – not even in the beginning.”

“I know,” I said,
sounding like a parrot, but tho
se were all things I’d already thought about, so they weren’t a surprise to me.

We both turned around up
on hearing a knock on my door.
“Come in,” I said, looking around for my beach bag.

Chase opened the door
and leaned against the door
jam, but didn’t come
into the room.
He was wearing black and gray boa
rd shorts and carrying a towel.
He still had an
apprehensive
look on his face.

“Hey. W
e’re almost ready.
”

He nodded his head once and looked at the floor, shuf
fling his right foot slightly. I wondered what was with him and
noticed that he was sober
and had
actually
b
een all day. It
was a first, and maybe it was the reason he was
being so weird.
Maybe weed
really did calm him down
.

“So
Chase,” Rachel said, and I could hear the
start of a taunt in her voice.
“I hear you have a girlfriend.”

Chase
looked up at her for a second, turned bright red
and
then
looked down at the floor
again
.
I looked between the two of them, seeing
how visibly uncomfortable my brother
looked and how satisfied Rachel look
ed that she’d embarrassed him.
She was playing into his weird mood,
and I knew it.
She’d known him way too long
not to pick up on it, and
being
so
true to form, she was taking advantage of the situation.
Poor Chase.

“Yeah, I do,” he mumbled
.

“Amy, is it?” Rachel asked.

“Yeah.”

“Who apparently he did not cheat on with Molly, even though they spent two nights in a hotel together,” I said, still not believing that my brother had been faithful to his long distance girlfriend.

Chase shot me daggers.

“Aw, that’s so sweet, Chase. I always knew you were one of the good guys,” Rachel said. She
shook her head,
stood up, grabbed her
bag and started for the door. “Of course, that blows my plans of hooking up with you this week completely out of the water, but
I gues
s I missed my chance.”

I watched Chase’s face turn bright red as she
smacked his cheek lightly a few times, stunning him as she walked past.

“So adorable,” she said, teasing him as
s
he glanced over her shoulder, smiling wickedly.

“Eww, gross,”
I called after her
.

“Totally kidding,” she called from down the hall, not bothering to turn around.

“Thanks,” Chase
said sarcastically
to me
.

“No probl
em,” I said as I walked past him, smacking him on the chest as I did. “Quit being so weird. You’re freaking everyone out.”

I left him standing in my doorway, as
I followed Rachel downstairs.
Chase eventually caught
up with us when we hit the sand, but then he veered off to the side of the house.

“Where are you going?” I asked him.

He pau
sed and turned halfway around.
“I
’ll meet you down there.”

“
Have fun
,” I sai
d, hoping smoking would mellow him out. I turned back to Rachel.
“Come on, let’s go.”

“Can you give me a sec?” she asked.

“What for?”

She glanced in t
he direction Chase had walked.
“I fe
el bad that I made fun of him.
I just want to apologize.”

My ey
es went wide. “To who? Chase?
You think he feels bad that you made fun of him?”

She shrugged. “He seems a little on edge.
I just want to make sure
he knows
that
I was only joking
.”

“Okay, but I’m sure he’s fine,” I said, thinking she might b
e just a little oversensitive.
My brother was
not easily rattled.
Rachel’s comment shouldn’t have gotten to him.

“I’ll be down in a sec,” she said, already walking toward the side of the house.

I decided not to try to stop her since I could see
Zack walking toward our
beach s
pot with his cousins
and some tattooed guy I’d never met
.
I ran down to meet them
, losing sight of ever
ything else, as I did whenever Zack
was around.

“How’s today,” I asked, as soon as I reached
him and gav
e him a kiss
. 

He shrugged.
“A six,” he said, using his one to ten rating s
cale on how his Mom was doing.
“She got up and had breakfast, watched a little TV and went to the grocery store, but when she came home, she said she was exhausted and has been napping for the past three hours.”

“Well, I’m sure she’s okay,” I said
, spreading my towel out in the sand
. “
She probably just needs some rest.
She had a pretty full morning.
”

He nodded, drifting away from me for a few s
econds before snapping back. “Em, this is Derrick. He’s a friend of mine from Durham.”

He let m
e turn around in his arms but kept
a
hold of my waist, as I shifted my attention to the blond with sleeves of tattoos on both his arms
and half of his stomach
. He looked vaguely familiar to me. I figured I might have seen him out around town before. It was really too bad Rachel was taken, since this guy was exactly her type.

He just nodded once in my direction. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself,” I said, figuring he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

“So
,
where is this
elusive best friend
I’ve heard so much about?”
Zack asked, as
he
pulled me back against his chest.
“
Is she here yet?”

I grinned
and
turned to look
up at him. “She’ll be down in a second.
She made Chase upset or something, so she wanted to apologize.”

“I can’t wait to meet her,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss me, making me forget that we were surrounde
d
other people
. 

I got lost in the kiss,
and everything around me dropped
away until I heard Molly say, “Okay, enough. Get a room, or I’m getting a crowbar.”

I felt my face turn bright red, as I pulled away f
rom Zack and looked up at him.
He grinned sheepishly at me and leaned down to kiss my nose once. 

“You changed it out,” he whispered, noticing my new ring.