The Devil You Know (3 page)

“I'm actually from Maine,” Matt says. “But the car belonged to my grandmother who recently died. She lived in Savannah.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Thanks.” There's a hint of sadness in his half smile that makes me want to give him a hug, but I keep my hands to myself. “My family came down for the funeral, and afterward my cousin and I decided to road-trip south, camping and paddling our way through Florida. One last adventure before he shackles himself to the workforce for the next fifty years.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“So far it's been great,” Matt says. “Speaking of fun … anything around here we shouldn't miss?”

“Since you've got your own canoes, you can pretty much launch anywhere,” I say. “You could paddle from here down to River Sink, or you could launch from the outpost out on 441 and go downstream to one of the springs. Lily Spring is always interesting because of Naked Ed.”

“Naked Ed?”

“He's basically a nudist who takes care of the spring,” I explain. “He keeps a little thatched hut and wears a loincloth when people are around.”

“Yes! That's exactly what I'm talking about.” Matt's smile is like the sun, and it warms me all over. “Have you seen him?”

“I haven't.”

He nudges me gently with his elbow. “Maybe you should come with us.”

Maybe this is my chance for a little forward adventure. A small rebellion with a side of cute boy. I smile back. “Maybe I should.”

“So would it be fair to assume you don't have a boyfriend?”

My eyes go to Justin and Gabrielle—a stupid habit I can't seem to break—who are snuggled like birds on the tailgate of his silver pickup. They seem to be
incapable of keeping their hands off each other. It was never like that with Justin and me, and I have no idea why. Maybe because my hands were always full.

“If I did, I probably wouldn't be sitting here with you right now.” My dormant flirting skills seem to be warming up. “So that would be a very fair assumption. Of course, I might have a girlfriend.”

He laughs. Not in a mean way—like it's incomprehensible that I could be attracted to girls—but as if I've outsmarted him. “Do you?” he asks.

“No girlfriends.”

“That works out well because I don't have any girlfriends, either.”

I can't envision a world in which a guy as good-looking as Matt is single, but since he won't be in High Springs for more than a couple of days, I choose to buy what he's selling. “Perfect.”

He pulls his feet away from the fire and stands. “I'm going to grab another beer. Want one?”

“I'm good.” I hold up my original, mostly full can. “But thanks.”

I sit by myself for a minute or two, wondering if Matt expects me to wait for him or if he's moving on to someone else. Especially when Lindsey Buck approaches him at the beer trough and he gives her the same only-girl-in-the-room smile he gave me. I wilt a little,
embarrassed that I thought he meant it only for me. Embarrassed that I've lost touch with my friends to the point where my closest relationship is with Jason Kendrick. Embarrassed that even in a crowd of people—many of whom I've known since kindergarten—I'm alone.

I should go home.

Duane would come fetch me, but I haven't been here very long and I don't want to ask him to drive back already. To save some face and buy some time, I decide to take a walk down by the river.

“Hey, are you leaving?” Matt returns with a fresh beer—and Lindsey—as I'm hoisting my knapsack onto my shoulder.

“I, um … just need to go to the bathroom.”

“I'll walk you there,” he offers, but when Lindsey's smile droops, it's definitely time to go. I have no claim on Matt, and I'm starting to rethink the appeal of pajama pants and talking cartoon fish.

“That's really sweet,” I say. “But it's okay. I'll be back.”

I'm headed away from the party, frogs and crickets serenading me like I'm some sort of backwoods Disney princess, when I spot the '69 Cougar parked just a handful of campsites away. The canoe trailer is unhitched from the car, and there's a guy—Matt's cousin, I presume, unless they're getting robbed—bent over the open trunk. His T-shirt rides up, exposing a slash of bare skin and a pair of back dimples that sit just above the droop of his faded jeans. I slow my pace because it's the kind of back that deserves to be admired for a good long while. And because, apparently, my hormones are working overtime. Then he turns around with a big red cooler in his hands, and I'm so busted.

His maple syrup eyes and nearly black hair are close
enough to Matt's that it's clear they fell from the same family tree, but this guy is a broken-in version. Older. And now that I can see the whole of him, he's made up of so many interesting parts I'm not sure what to look at first.

Maybe the Frankenstein scar, white and jagged against his tanned skin, that starts in his hairline and travels down his forehead, slicing his dark eyebrow in half. It's angry. Violent. Probably not the kind of scar that comes with a cute story about how he fell learning to ride his first two-wheeler or got hit with a baseball in Little League.

Or the colorful constellation of old-school nautical tattoos—sailing ships, anchors and ropes, bell-helmeted divers, and naked mermaids, connected by hundreds upon hundreds of tiny stars—that begin beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt and wind their way to his wrists.

My eyes travel back up to his nose, which sits off-kilter at the bridge as if it's been broken. To his hair cropped to peach fuzz. To the corner of his mouth that lifts in a grin that acknowledges that I'm checking him out—and God, do I want to know him.

He places the cooler on the ground, and his boots scuff up the dust as he catches up with me. “Hey, um—hi.”

“Hi.” He's so tall. The top of my head would fit perfectly beneath his chin, and that thought requires a deep breath before I speak again. “I'm Cadie.”

“Noah.” His big fingers tap the crackled Trojan All-Stars logo imprinted in the middle of his T-shirt. I want to know what this logo means. The significance of the string of wooden beads around his wrist. Where he comes from. What his mouth tastes like. I say hi again, then feel my face get hot with stupidity because we've already said hello. Because looking at him is like trying to stare at the sun and not caring that you might go blind. And because he's looking at me, too.

“Where you headed?” he asks, falling into step beside me.

“Just taking a walk,” I say. He doesn't have the same accent as Matt, but I don't tell him that because it might seem weird and stalker-y. Especially since he isn't aware that I know who he is. Not sure how to tell him that, either, so I don't. “Where you from?”

“Oakland by way of Maine by way of Savannah. Do you mind if I walk with you?”

“Sounds complicated,” I say, and I like that we're carrying on two conversations at once. I like that his honey-and-gravel voice seems to come from somewhere deep and secret and special. “And no, I don't mind a bit.”

“The short version,” he says, “is my cousin Matt and I are camping our way down the state toward Flamingo. Ever hear of it?”

I shake my head.

“It's a deserted town at the end of mainland Florida and surrounded by Everglades. Pretty remote,” Noah says.

“Whatever gets you excited.”

“Not a fan of camping?”

“Oh, no. I love camping,” I say, watching a grin kick up at the corner of his mouth, and it's like this invisible thread stretches between us, connecting us. Something in common. Even if it's just an affinity for sleeping on the ground. “But given the choice of Florida or not Florida, I'd always pick not Florida.”

“Where would you go?”

“Maybe Oakland by way of Savannah and Maine.”

My brazen-girl flirting works like magic, turning his grin into a full-on smile. And heat spreads through me, gathering in both the embarrassing and the important places.

Abracadabra.

If Matt was the Fourth of July, Noah is a summer thunderstorm, and I'm at a loss to understand why. I know that I'm suffering from a raging case of lust at first sight, but isn't that how it's supposed to start? We shouldn't just open up the boxes of our lives and dump them at each other's feet. We should lift the flaps one by one and peek inside.

“Are we headed somewhere in particular?” he asks.

“Not really,” I say. “The river's just up ahead, and there's a trail along the bank. If you're interested.”

“I am.” He nods. “I am very interested.”

With this admission, it occurs to me that Friday can mean something different for me now, too. I can lie on the log by the river with some other guy. I can kiss lips I've never kissed before. Of course, I could have reached this revelation at any moment since Justin and I broke up, but it's only now—with the possibility of kissing someone new walking along beside me—that assigning Friday a new definition seems like a step in the right direction.

“So … Oakland?”

“So, yeah,” he says. “I was born there, but got in some trouble in high school so my mom sent me to live with my aunt and uncle in Maine. She thought it would be more … civilized.”

Odd word choice, but I jump over it with a joke. “Kind of like the Fresh Prince in reverse.”

Noah doesn't laugh, though. He just nods and says, “Something like that.”

“Was your trouble the kind that leaves scars?”

“Pretty much.” He runs his fingers over the pale jagged skin on his forehead. “I, uh, got hit in the head with a broken bottle.”

My chest feels too tight for my lungs, and my brain wages a small battle over whether I should turn around and go back to the party. I was right about the scar, but maybe too right. “Did you … um …” Even as I try to keep
my tone light, I stumble over the words. “Did you at least win the fight?”

“Shit.” Noah skims his hand across the top of his head and down the back of his neck. I catch a glimpse of embarrassment in his eyes before he fixes his gaze on the ground in front of us. “I scared you. I'm sorry.”

“What did you do to the other guy?”

“I don't really …” Noah's words just drop off, and I think he's not going to tell me. He doesn't speak for several steps, leaving the crunch of gravel and the birds to fill in the blanks. “Look, Cadie, it happened a long time ago, and this is not a story I want to tell when I'm trying to make a good first impression. I'd rather tell you who I am now.”

He looks at me with maple-syrup-brown sincerity and, better judgment be damned, I believe every single word.

“You can't say something like that and then leave me hanging,” I say. “I still want to know.”

“I, uh …” He runs a hand over his head again, and his expression is so pained I almost take it back. “I broke his cheekbone with my boot.”

“You kicked him in the—”

“Yeah.” The word is made of quiet remorse, but my stomach still churns at the mental picture of his dusty Doc Marten turning someone's face to pulp. Boys around here get in fights, but it usually doesn't go beyond a lot of
posturing and a couple of swings before someone breaks it up.

“Why would you do that?”

“I thought he was going to kill me,” Noah says. “I was young and stoned and scared shitless and—I don't know—went into kind of a red rage, and when it was over, I was bleeding and he wasn't moving. One of my friends stitched me up with dental floss because I was afraid if I went to the hospital, I'd end up in jail.”

I don't know how to process this. How to imagine a life in which that kind of violence is necessary. The lens through which I first saw Noah has shifted, and I don't know the right response. “Who started it?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“Maybe.”

“I was defending myself.” His shrug is helpless, not careless. “But that doesn't make it right.”

“Well, you weren't wrong about that story.” “I shouldn't have told you. I'm sorry.” “I guess we all have history.”

“Yeah? What's yours?”

“My mom died of pancreatic cancer three years ago, leaving me with a dad who is barely functioning and a baby brother I've had to raise like he's my own child,” I say. “And I haven't really had a life since.”

So much for lifting the flaps.

Our histories swirl in the dust that rises with our steps. The thing is, despite being unsettled by his story, I'm still attracted to Noah. Not out of some misguided bad-boy fantasy, but because I haven't been this attracted to anyone since Justin. I'm not sure what that says about me, but I want to give Noah the benefit of the doubt.

“Let's change the subject,” I say, hoping he won't apologize for my mom being dead. I hate more than anything when people do that. “Socks? Cheese? Favorite board game?”

“None, Colby Jack, and the game that has the popper in the middle.”

“You mean
Trouble?
”

“Oh, shit.” He laughs. “Is that really what it's called?”

“It really is. But I'm more interested in your choice of identity-crisis cheese.”

“There is no crisis,” Noah says. “It's two cheeses in one. Double delicious.”

I laugh, he smiles in a way that makes me feel as if I might not even be walking on the ground right now, and something inside me is set right again.

We've nearly reached the bend in the river, where the swing bridge spans, when the crunch of tires on the road steals up behind us. We move to the edge as Justin's truck rolls up. Gabrielle is pressed against him as he drives, and Jason hangs out the passenger window like a dog.

“Hey, Sparkles, it's skinny-dipping time,” he says. “Hop in.”

The bed is jammed with people, which would be dangerous if Noah and I weren't walking as fast as the truck is moving. Jason swings open the door to let me in, but I shake my head. “We'll catch up.”