Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance (30 page)
Read Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance Online
Authors: Toby Neal
In fact, that’s what I’ll do, right after this stupid meeting.
The leader gets us going with the Serenity Prayer, and then we are supposed to go around and share our “experience, strength, and hope.”
I don’t have much of any of the above, at eighteen, just moved here, and my biggest hope is to get everybody off my back as soon as possible.
I endure the stories. Sad ones, really. Kids ripping off their parents. Guys giving other guys blowjobs in parking lots for a few bucks to get high. I was never into any of that shit or did anything radical like that. In fact, I’d have been fine, would never have had to come to this meeting, if it weren’t for the Carver boys.
But who could resist the Carver boys? The only thing to do in that pothole in the road, Peterborg, on Saint Thomas. Yeah, it all started with Connor, but then there was Keenan. I shut my eyes and indulge in a little memory starring me and the Carver boys.
Someone elbows me. “Your turn.”
I sit up. The leader, a chubby lady with one of those soft do-gooder faces I’m too familiar with, gives me a hairy eyeball.
“Welcome to our meeting,” she says. “Is this your first time with us?”
I nod. “Hi. My name is Pearl.”
I’m supposed to say, “and I’m an addict,” but I don’t. I can’t. It would be a lie. I just barely got going with some hard stuff and everybody freaked the hell out, and now here I am enrolled in this “day treatment” daily meetings routine. It sucks. But at least I’m not in Eureka, Armpit of California, with Mom’s tears and Jade’s compulsive cleaning.
The group leader narrows her eyes a little that I haven’t said the catechism. I remember she has to sign my attendance sheet, though, as she says, encouraging, “Would you like to share your experience, strength and hope with us?”
“Not really, no. But thanks for asking.”
A titter goes around the circle, and the leader moves on.
There’s a guy across from me, long thick legs extended into the circle, his jeans just the way I like them—broken in, with split knees. He’s wearing black boots and a leather motorcycle jacket that looks like it’s the real deal, like he got here on a Harley or something. His arms are folded on a chest I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at, and dark brows are pulled down over eyes that look black from here.
I stare back at him, and touch my tongue to my lower lip. Then, I shut my eyes very slowly, and open them again, so he can see how blue my eyes are, how long my lashes. I uncross and recross my legs, so he can appreciate that mine are almost as long as his.
His face doesn’t change and he looks away with such a bored expression I feel heat rise up my chest under my hoodie.
Well, getting him to notice me will make the meeting a little more interesting. I push my hood back so my naturally curly blond hair tumbles out like Rapunzel sending down her ladder.
He doesn’t so much as glance at me, and I spend the rest of the meeting trying to get him to.
When it’s finally over, I get up from my chair, unzipping the hoodie so my black turtleneck showcases my curves, but he’s already walking out without talking to anybody, picking up a helmet from beside the door.
Well. That gives me something to look forward to tomorrow when I come here again, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. And maybe I’ll keep my hair blond for a while longer.
Unfortunately my antics have attracted someone else’s attention, one of those lumpish hockey-player types that think they’re God’s gift—not that I would know a hockey player from a pole vaulter, since we have nothing but soccer on St. Thomas.
“Hi.” He actually reaches out and picks up one of my curls, rubs it between his fingers like he wants to smell it or something. “Pearl.”
I yank my hair out of his hand and bundle it into my hood and zip it up again. “Howdy, fellow druggie.”
That puts him back a bit, rubbing his rash-roughened chin with a hand. “Need a ride somewhere?”
“No thanks.”
“I’m Steve.”
“And I don’t recall asking.” I turn and walk out. I can feel his eyes burning holes in my back, and I can feel the other girls hating on me. Everyone judging me, like they always do.
Well, if they’d walked a mile in my boots they wouldn’t envy them, I can tell you that. Not that I’m complaining. I’m not in Eureka, California, after all. Instead, I’m living in Boston with my sister Ruby and her hunky husband Rafe, and they’re pretending they have some idea how to deal with me.
I don’t need anything but to be left alone.
That’s what I tell myself as I walk home from the meeting. It feels lonelier and more pathetic than I ever like to feel, the wind cutting through my jeans and the last of the fall leaves rolling along the sidewalk. There’s a sharp wind off the Charles River, only a few blocks away from my sister’s sweet old Back Bay neighborhood. I go up the stairs of their brownstone with the sandstone lions that guard the door. I’ve nicknamed the lions Beowulf and Odin, and I pat their heads as I get my key out and go inside.
Yeah, every time I think I’m lonely or sad or get tempted to drink or hit someone up for a line or a hit, I have to think:
EUREKA.
I don’t have to go there. And I need to be grateful.
Up in my girly-pink bedroom, I turn my radio to the rock station and flop backwards on the bed, listening to the Top 40 of 1989.
I really am grateful to be here.
Rafe and Ruby didn’t have to take me in, make me the third wheel to their two-person googly-eyed love fest, especially now that Ruby’s pregnant. Right on cue, Ruby knocks on the door and then opens it. “How was the meeting?”
Ruby’s so pretty. She has green eyes and long dark red hair, and the kind of heart-shaped face with blushy skin that makes guys want to protect and take care of her, when nothing could be further from what she’s really like: stubborn as a mule and smart as hell. She just got her law degree, and the only person who can sometimes beat her at an argument is me.
“It was fine.”
“Where’s your paper?”
I got so distracted I forgot to have the leader sign my attendance sheet. “Dammit, I forgot to have it signed. But Ms. Betsy can sign it next time.”
Ruby comes all the way into the room. She’s about three months pregnant and just beginning a little pooch of belly. “Pearl, come on. You promised. Let me see your arms.”
I push up the sleeves of my hoodie, biting down on all the ways I want to tell her to back off. She and Rafe trying to lay down rules is really kind of funny, when Mom and Dad never could get me to obey anything.
I’m the original rebel without a cause. I don’t know why it’s always my first instinct to do the opposite of what everyone wants.
She sits next to me. “I hate this, Pearl. I hate having to hold your feet to the fire like this. But I just don’t think you get how serious things are.”
“Oh, I get it.” I pull my legs up under my stretched out, comfy old hoodie. “I do what you and Rafe want or you ship me back to Mom.”
“I guess that’s the bottom line, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I just don’t think you get how worried we are about you. You have a problem.”
I can’t take it anymore, and surge up off the bed in a waft of anger.
“You don’t get how it’s really not a big deal and never was.”
“Mom and I talked. She said she’s thought a lot about how things started going bad with you and traced it back to a Christmas party two years ago that you went to at the Carvers’ house. Did something happen there? Something bad?”
Yeah, I remember that party. What I remember is that I don’t remember.
“You know what? If I’m too much trouble, send me back already. I’m sick of the inquisition, of nothing I do being right.”
I slam out of the bedroom, feeling tears at the backs of my eyes.
If only Dad hadn’t died because of me.
I could have still turned things around if he hadn’t died when he did. How he did. I jump on the smooth walnut railing and slide down the long curving stairs to the entryway.
I’m not a total nutcase. I grab a coat. Boston in November is pretty damn chilly at night.
Out on the street it’s quiet. I head for one of the walking bridges that crosses over the freeway to the park that runs along the Charles River. I just want to walk, to clear my head. I’m not looking for trouble.
But trouble has always seemed to find me.
Look for these Toby Neal Titles
Contemporary Fiction/Romance:
Somewhere on Maui
:
(a Somewhere Series Romance)
Somewhere on St. Thomas
(a Somewhere Series Romance)
Somewhere in the City
(a Somewhere Series Romance)
Somewhere in California
(a Somewhere Series Romance)
Mystery:
Nightbird
: a Jet World Novella
Lei Crime Series:
Blood Orchids
(book 1)
Torch Ginger
(book 2)
Black Jasmine
(book 3)
Broken Ferns
(book 4)
Twisted Vine
(book 5)
Shattered Palms
(book 6)
Dark Lava
(book 7)
Fire Beach
(book 8)
Rip Tides
(book 9)
Bone Hook (book 10, 2015)
Lei Crime Companion Series:
Stolen in Paradise
: a Lei Crime Companion Novel (Marcella Scott)
Unsound
: a novel (Dr. Caprice Wilson)
Wired In:
(Sophie Ang) Coming 2015-16
Middle Grade/Young Adult
Wallflower Diaries: Case of the Missing Girl
Nonfiction:
Under an Open Sky: a Memoir with Photos on Traveling and the National Parks
Children of Paradise: a Memoir of Growing Up in Hawaii
Sign up for news of upcoming books at
http://www.tobyneal.net/
About the Author
Toby Neal was raised on Kaua`i in Hawaii. She wrote and illustrated her first story at age five and credits her background as a mental health therapist with adding depth to her characters—from the villains to the heroes. She says, “I’m endlessly fascinated with people’s stories.”
Toby began her writing with mysteries, and has a well-established reputation in that genre. She decided to try contemporary fiction when she discovered that she couldn’t write a book without including romance. “I’m a hopeless romantic and I want everyone to know what it’s like to be deeply loved.”
Toby lives with her family and dogs in Hawaii.
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