Inseverable: A Carolina Beach Novel (2 page)

Mason who tends to be the most serious among us just shakes his head and laughs, because that’s what we all do around Sean.

Becca backs away toward the driver’s side, keeping her grin as she points to our boys. “Alex Pettyfer, Nathan Owens, Channing Tatum, y’all got the back,” she tells them. She grabs my bag and tosses it onto the floor of the passenger side. “You, get to ride with me, cutie.”

I almost ask to switch with Alex Pettyfer, aka Hale. But I’ve known Becca long enough to know something’s up. So I hop in the front, barely snapping my seatbelt in place before she shifts in gear and tears out of the lot.

We catch the road leading out of the resort. Masontugs on my hair just like Hale had, just to say “hi”. Like most men I meet, he thinks I’m cute. As in a kid sister or a BFF cute. Not cute as in, “hey how about you let me rip off your thong with my teeth?” You know what I mean? The kind of “cute” that really matters.

I’ve pretty much resolved myself to BFF status, even though I wish I could be more.

Hale, whether because of what I said, or because he realizes time is running out for him to make a move, leans in between the seats, his attention fixed on Becca. Unlike me, that’s not sand filling out the cups in her swimsuit.

“Hey, Becks, how about we catch dinner Tuesday after work? Maybe even a movie?”

Becca’s wild hair—highlighted in alternating shades of blonde and blonder—slaps around her gorgeous features as she grins. “I don’t know. The boss may not like me dating a co-worker.” She looks at me then. “Isn’t that right, Boss?”

I crack up. All my lifeguards can do whatever they want during their time off. But these four in particular? These four that have been my friends since before any of us learned to read, swim, or cuss. I know they’re a good bunch. I know they have my back. For all we joke, the minute their toes dig into that smooth white sand, it’s on.

I perch my legs up and over the dash and cross my arms behind my head. “As your fearless leader, I hereby let that be your call, ma’am.”

Okay. Maybe I’m not so fearless. And “leader” is a pretty loose title considering all I do is run a few drills each day and make sure everyone has a shift.

“I’ll think about it,” is all Becca tells him.

Hale is a good guy. Good enough to slink back and give her space. Like all my male besties, he’s had a crush on Becca since he hit puberty and his male parts saluted her in celebration. Capable of stirring erections with a single glance was Becca’s super power. Mine is the ability to make people snort drinks through their noses at my jokes. I adjust my head beneath my hand after another glance at my beautiful friend. We all have our gifts, and if mine includes making others smile, I can’t complain.

Her grin widens as she takes the road that leads to Your Mother’s Coconuts, better known to the locals as “Your Mother’s”. Once off the resort we’re no longer lifeguards expected to abide by the rules. We’re just fresh college grads ready to run amuck, do some skinny-dipping, and partake in all the fun our young selves demand.

In less than a minute, Becca is screeching to a halt at the far end of the half-filled lot. It is a quarter to eight on a Friday and our work week is done. With a hoot and a few hollers, our buddies jump out the back, rousing the other lifeguards who beat us here to do the same.

“Where the hell have y’all been?” the new girl calls out. “I’m thirsty.”

Sean holds his hands out. “Then what’re you newbies waiting for? Order up the first round.”

“Us?” she asks, looking at her friend. “
We
have to pay?”

“Damn straight, yeah,” Sean says like it’s obvious. “Everyone knows virgins always buy the first round. Ain’t that right, boys?”

The rest of my team, even those loitering on the outside deck, start chanting “virgins, virgins, virgins,” pumping their fists in the air.

“Aw, hell,” her friend says. “Come on. Let’s go get our cherries popped.”

They walk in, but we don’t follow. Becca’s made no move to slip out so I know she means to talk. I smile softly. “What’s up?”

She looks to the ocean, where the waves sweep in to bathe the sand with all its salty heaven. But I doubt she really sees it, even though like me, Kiawah is a part of her. She crinkles her nose and then takes my hand. “Last summer,” she says.

“Yeah, last one,” I answer quietly, knowing how she feels because I’m feeling it, too. I squeeze her hand, my tone mirroring all the emotions fluttering inside me. “Time to grow up, right?”

“I wish we didn’t have to,” she mumbles, keeping her stare on the sea as if trying to gather some strength from it. “You still serious about applying to the Peace Corps?”

I was hoping we didn’t have to have this conversation any time soon, but I’ve kept things from her long enough. “Iapplied over winter break, Becks.”

Her mouth slowly falls open. “I told you to wait—to not do something drastic just because of what those doucheheads did to you.”

The “doucheheads” she’s referring to are Hunter, my ex-boyfriend, and Blakeney, my ex-friend. They once held my heart, until I caught them in bed and they ripped it from my chest.

Her words chip away at me. Not because I’m not over Hunter, or Blakeney. I am. I’m just not over their betrayal. I could never hurt anyone I claimed to love or called a friend. But they didn’t feel the same.

I try to smile, knowing Becca needs my reassurance. But I can’t quite manage this time. “You know I’ve always talked about going and serving. Ever since I was little.”

“So you’re telling me, if he’d stayed faithful and been a real man instead of a little bitch—if you’d agreed to marry him like he kept talking about—that you still would have signed up to join the Corps? Come on, Trin. Finding him fucking Blakeney was like a pen being slapped in your hand, forcing you to sign on that dotted line.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I insist.

I don’t want tonight to be about the bad things of the past. Not with the five of us together after too many months apart. But here we are, focusing on things I’ve tried hard to forget. “Becks, as much as I thought I loved Hunter, and as much as I believed that he wanted to marry me, I realize now we never would have worked out. I’m going into the Peace Corps, exactly like I’ve always planned. But knowing who he is—who he
really
is—he wouldn’t have waited for me, and he sure as anything wouldn’t have joined up just to be with me.”

Even through her sunglasses, I can tell Becca’s eyes are narrowing. “He’s still a douche head, and so is she.”

“I won’t argue with you about that,” I tell her. My head falls against the seat rest. Do you want to know something about Becca? She’s sweeter than maple syrup and about as kind as people get. Until you hurt someone she loves. I’m among the lucky few she loves. But it’s because she loves me, that she reacts the way she does.

She pushes her sunglasses up to her head, pegging me with enough disappointment to make me ache. “When do you leave?” she asks.

“September. But I won’t know my placement for another few weeks.” I answer so softly, I’m not sure if she hears, but her tensing posture assures me she does. “Daddy used his connections at the UN and arranged it so I’d have time to take my boards and have one last summer here with all of you.”

“So from Princeton to the Peace Corps. From rich kid, to just another volunteer."She sighs in that way she does when she’s trying not to cry. “Nice,” she says, not that she means it.

My attention falls to our hands and to how hard she’s holding me. “It’s the right thing to do, Becks,” I tell her.

“Helping people
is
the right thing to do. Signing up for twenty-five months with no way out, that’s above and beyond.” She shakes her head. “Hunter and Blakeney are assholes for what they did to you.”

They are. But she needs to know that’s not why I applied. “Becks, it’s time to grow up and move forward, and to do the things we’ve always planned.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Her voice splinters and tears glisten her eyes. “What if none of us do? I don’t want life to go on without the five of us together—you, me, Sean, Mason, and Hale—especially you, Trin.”

Like me, she wishes she could stop time, and that somehow things could be different. But somethings can’t be helped, and this is one of them.

Her parents and mine had offered to send us backpacking across Europe, but we chose to come back here. Back home to spend one last summer doing what we loved, and to pretend to be forever young, forever free of life’s demands, forever friends. As I look to my pseudo sister, I swallow hard and hope that the latter stays true.

Tears trickle down her cheeks, causing my eyes to sting. But Becks doesn’t need me crying with her. Right now, she needs my strength, and maybe a little of my humor.

“
Trin
,
Becks
!” Sean hollers from the deck. “What the hell? We’ve got shots waiting and horny women who can’t wait to have a piece of me.”

“Sorry!” I yell, hopping out of the jeep. “Becca dared me to spell my name across her belly with my tongue and I couldn’t refuse.”

Instead of taking it for the joke it is, Sean freezes. “No, shit,” he says.

Becca doubles over, practically falling out of the driver’s side seat. I hurry around to steady her and lead her forward. Sean continues to stare at us, his eyes clouded with whatever dirty thoughts are swimming through his mind as we stumble into Your Mother’s.

My laughter fades as I look to where the rustic blue double doors open up to the rear deck. But I’m not staring at Hale as he points to his raised shot glass filled to the rim, or at Mason who’s smiling politely at the women admiring his muscles. And my, I barely notice Sean shooting past us.

I’m too busy gaping at the smoking hot bartender with the Army Ranger tat inked to an arm as thick as my thigh.

Holy Baby Jesus in a manger sleeping on a bed of hay
.

“Hmm,” Becca says in a purr. She leans in close to whisper in my ear. “Who do we have here?”

Brown strands of wavy hair spill around his strong features and startling light eyes, and a thin beard lines a jaw I could probably pound horseshoes on. If I knew anything about horseshoes. Or horses. Or, pardon me, what was my name again?

Not to be rude, or inappropriate—I do have morals, after all—but that tight blue shirt stretching across his broad chest is one pec flex shy of ripping in half. Or me ripping it in half when I straddle him.

“You want to straddle him?” Becca asks, a delighted gleam fixing on her face.

I look at her, realizing I spoke out loud. “No?”

She busts out laughing. This time, she’s the one dragging me forward. “Come on, Trin. Time to have fun.”

We stroll toward the hot guy. Or as I call him, ‘my future baby daddy’ because for the first time in too long I’m looking—we’re talking full-out gawking—at a man. He has my attention and whether he means to or not he’s not letting go.

I smile his way, not because of what he looks like, but because I can’t seem to help myself. I think maybe Becca smiles at him, too. But “sex in a tight T-shirt” isn’t impressed by her charm, and he sure isn’t captivated by mine. He scowls—as in
scowls
—which of course earns him a wink from me.

Hey, sticks and stones, or whatever, I’m going to get this guy to smile. Even if it’s clear he doesn’t want to smile at me.

Chapter Two

Callahan

I mutter something that’s supposed to be a curse when Jed nudges me.

“What’s up, Callahan?” he asks.

“Is this the way it’s going to be?” I reply, motioning to the group of lifeguards and locals chatting it up and arguing about which song’s next on the old jukebox.

Jed laughs. “Partner,” he tells me. “It’s only end of May. The season hasn’t even started. Things are going to heat up fast come the second week in June.”

“Christ,” I mumble.

When I pictured Kiawah, I pictured a real island. Something secluded and quiet, tucked away from the rest of existence. And when I first took over my uncle’s place it was. But that was March. Back then, feeling like I was—hell, like
I am
—the sun rising and setting along the South Carolina shore was the only proof I had that the world continued to spin even though I no longer felt like I was part of it. Now, with temperatures rising and the increase in traffic along the back roads, Kiawah is anything but quiet, especially the moment this bunch walked in.

The young woman, with the long dark hair is especially loud. And perky. Lord, I hate perky. I know her type, pretending no war is going on while kids younger than her have their limbs blown clean off. She smiled when she walked in with her friend. What in the hell did she have to be so happy about?

I glance up in time to catch her rip a dollar out of an old man’s hand and wave it in front of him. The guy reaches for it, grinning as he tries to snatch it back. “Uh, uh, uh, Mr. Perrington,” she practically sings. “Fair is fair. One Cupid Shuffle in exchange for one Electric Slide.”

“You tell ‘em, Trin,” the lady next to him says.

The brunette shimmies, that’s right,
shimmies
all the way to the jukebox even though the song is long over and nothing’s playing. She slides the dollar in, hits a few buttons, and the music starts. But that’s not enough, she motions everyone forward. And when I mean everyone, I mean every last person here.

Like a herd of sheep they follow. I wouldn’t follow her anywhere except to the door, and only then to lock it behind her.

The base of this crap song is heavy enough to rumble my shit kickers. It takes all I have not to mutter another swear. But seeing how even Jed has jumped into the horde of people hopping back and forth instead of mixing that prissy drink on the ticket, I curse anyway.

I make the drink and head to the rear storage room, taking longer than I need to rearrange the kegs closer to the door and haul back a case of Corona.

With my attention ahead and away from the dance floor, I return to the bar, lowering the case to the floor in front of the fridge. I don’t think I’m done shoving half of the beers in when I hear, “Excuse me. Excuse me, sir?”