The Fixes (6 page)
Authors: Owen Matthews
“I'm not feeling so good,” Eric tells Ann. He fakes a cough. “I think I'd better go home for the day.”
Ann squints up at him from her workstation. She doesn't look like she believes him.
“I'll have to tell your dad,” she says.
Eric feels his phone buzzing in his pocket.
“I'm sorry,” he tells Ann. “I just really have to go.”
“We need to adjust your nomenclature if we're going to hang out.”
Jordan's waiting outside the law firm beside his cherry-red BMW. He smiles wide behind his Wayfarers as Eric comes out the front door. Hits him with the
nomenclature
bit.
Eric glances back into the office. “Huh?”
“Your name,” Jordan says. “What we call you. Eric Connelly is so, you know,
Student of the Year
. We need you to loosen up a little bit. Do you agree?”
“I mean,” Eric says. “I mean, yeah. Okay.”
“Agreed. Perfect.” Jordan steps back. Holds his hands like a picture frame. “What we have here is . . .” Beat, then he smiles, satisfied.
“E.”
Eric blinks. “E?”
“E,” Jordan says. “Simple. To the point. Badass. From now on you're E, got it?”
He's climbing into the BMW before Eric can answer.
Jordan isn't alone. Paige Hammond and Haley Keefer are sitting in the backseat of the Bimmer.
“Ladies, say hello to E,” Jordan tells them as Eric slides into the passenger seat. “E just saved my academic career. We owe him a good time.”
Eric twists in his seat as Jordan pulls out of the lot. Waves an awkward hello to the girls. Haley just nods at Eric and goes back to playing with her phone, but Paige takes off her sunglasses. Meets Eric's eyes.
“Hey, Eric,” she says. “Fancy meeting you here.”
(Here are some facts about Paige Hammond and Haley Keefer, for context:
Paige is tall and blond and beautifulâthe female Jordan Grant, almost. Her parents are big-shot real-estate developers who got rich flipping mansions to foreign investors. Except her dad's in some legal trouble at the moment, some embezzlement scandal. It's all over the news, and Paige's stock at Cap High has taken a hit.
(She's, like, an A-minus right now. Or maybe a B-plus.)
You
might recognize Paige from the photo spread she did in Italian
Vogue
, if you're into that kind of thing. But Paige is smart, too, Ivy League; she's going to Yale in the fall.
(So don't get too attached.)
Haley Keefer had her own little fall from grace a while back. She disappeared from school last fall, and rumor has it she was committed to some psychiatric hospital.
Eating disorder
, people said.
She almost died.
Whatever happened, Haley's still alive. But the gossip was a big blow to her rep anyway. She's not exactly Jordan Grant material either.
Haley is kind of the opposite of Paige. She's shorter than Paige, in height and in hair. Where Paige is glamorama, Haley is punk rock. Pixie cut. Tattoos. Corsets and ripped fishnets.
Her dad was in a rock band back in the eighties. They
never really made it big in North America, but the residuals from his European sales are still paying for the waterfront mansion and the vintage Ferrari. You might have heard his stuff in, like, a Girl Talk mashup or some post-ironic DJ set.
Haley also has an older sister, Tinsley. Tinsley is tall and slim and pretty. Tinsley is an actress. Tinsley is her mother's favorite.
Talking about Tinsley is the easiest way to make Haley hate you. We won't talk about Tinsley.
Yet.)
(Here is one more fact about Paige:
Paige and Eric used to hook up, back in the day. Back before Eric started to realize he was more into boys.
Eric never really told Paige about his change in, you know, sexual preference. They just kind of drifted apart.
(Well, Eric drifted. Right into a sea of textbooks and college applications.)
Needless to say, there's some unfinished business between our hero and the model in the backseat. There may even be some hurt feelings.
Awkward.
)
But Paige and Eric don't dredge up those hurt feelings yet. The weather's too nice to rehash ancient history. The sun's shining, the sky's blue, and there's a breeze off the water. This isn't the time to be
stressed
.
So what do four rich Capilano kids do on a hot summer day?
Easy.
They take advantage.
They make the most.
They enjoy themselves.
(And in this context, that means a boat day.)
Jordan's dad owns the boat. He's never around, though, so it's pretty much Jordan's toy. It's a Sea Ray Sundancer, fast and low-slung and sexy, with a sundeck at the bow and a cockpit at the stern, and a little kitchenette and master bedroom down below. Jordan revs the throttle high and points them out into the bay, dodging sailboats and cargo ships all the way to the south shore, the university, out west toward Wreck Beach.
Paige and Haley are downstairs in the kitchenette mixing vodka sodas. Paige is telling Haley about how
2
tried to pick her up at the Cactus Club the other night. Haley's telling Paige how she's pretty surehas a fiancée back home in L.A.
Eric isn't really paying attention to Haley and Paige, though. Eric doesn't care about. Eric isn't even really enjoying the weather. He's in the cockpit with Jordan, nursing a gin and tonic, telling Jordan how he can't actually be here right now because he should be at the law office.
“What were you doing at HH&B anyway?” Jordan asks him. “What could be so important that you would waste a day like this?”
“I kind of work there,” Eric tells him. Eric tells him about the internship. He tells Jordan how it'll look great on his law school application. How his dad had to call in favors with his old partners to get Eric in. “It's mostly just data entry, though,” Eric says. “I'm not actually
doing
anything.”
“So that's how you're spending your summer. Data entry. Problem sets.” Jordan pilots the Sundancer around a slower, smaller speedboat. “Isn't law school in, like, four years?”
“It doesn't hurt to start early,” Eric says. “My dad just wants me to work for what I get. He says everyone in this town is so rich they feel, like,
entitled
.”
“So what would
Senator
Connelly say if he knew you were out on a yacht instead of working for a living?” Jordan grins. “I guess that's pretty obvious. Anyway, it doesn't matter.”
He slaps Eric on the back.
“You're here now,” he says. “Your dad doesn't know. And we're
not
turning around, so you're just going to have to enjoy it.”
Jordan motors the Sundancer around Point Grey and throttles down the engine, and they drift in toward Wreck Beach. This is hippie country, a bunch of leathery old nudists letting it all hang out in the breeze. Haley drops the anchor a couple hundred yards offshore; Jordan cranks up the radio until every hippie in the sand is glaring out at the Sundancer. Then he pours Eric another drink and flops down beside him.
“Don't you ever get bored in that cubicle?” He gestures in a wide arc: The boat. The beach. The girls. The drinks. The sun on the water and no clouds in the sky, the mountains looming high in the distance. “Look around, dude. Is this really worth passing up for
data entry
?”
“Not everyone's dad is Harrison Grant,” Eric says. “Of course I want to be out here. But I have to think of the future.”
“Fuck that noise. You really think your dad didn't have any fun? Shit, I bet he tore it up when he was our age.”
“I doubt it,” Eric says. “I don't think he ever had any fun. He was too focused on, like,
integrity.
And LIVING UP TO HIS POTENTIAL.”
“Then he fucking missed out.” Jordan flashes that movie-star smile. “I'm just saying, life's too short. Why be stressed? Live in the moment for once.”
Jordan reaches down, produces a joint from somewhere. He stands and stretches, slips his shirt off and chucks it into the
little cabin. Then he climbs up onto the sundeck. “Come on. We're ignoring the girls.”
He's impossibly golden, standing out there in the sun. He's tanned and he's built and he's devil-may-care, and Eric could give two shits about being a Connelly Man, all of a sudden.
(Funny how that works.)
Eric climbs up onto the sundeck and spreads out a towel and lies down in the sun between Jordan and Paige and lets the stress melt away, until he's not worried about his internship anymore, or what Ann will tell his father.
Until he's
Living in the Moment
, the way Jordan said.
And
the Moment
is good.
It's really good.
They tan.
(Well, all except Haley. She doesn't really do sun. She doesn't really do
social
, either; after a while she retreats to the cockpit, pulls out a battered copy of
L'Ãtranger
and a package of Belmonts, and just sits in the shade and reads and smokes by herself, and Eric can't tell if she's happy, but she sure doesn't look
stressed
, anyway.)
They swim.
The water is cold but refreshing, and it's so clear you can see the anchor digging into the sandy bottom. And the boat bobs on the waves, and Eric floats on his back beside it, staring up at the blue sky and bobbing in the waves too, and the internship and his dad and all of Capilano may as well be a million miles away.
“So Jordan says you saved his academic career,” Paige saysâ
(They're back on the boat now, on the sundeck, on towels, letting the sun dry the water from their skin.)
“I'd love to hear
that
story.”
Eric glances at Jordan, who's back in the stern with Haley. They're cuddled up close back there.
Real
close.
(Eric's kind of distracted.)
“I didn't really do much,” he says. “Just helped him cram a little bit for the calc exam.”
“Don't be so
modest
.” Jordan climbs back up to the sundeck with a fresh round of drinks. “I would have failed that midterm without you. They would have held me back a year. Now I'm home free, and the summer is ours.”
Paige takes her drink. Toasts. “The summer is ours.”
She reaches over to touch glasses with Eric, but Eric's hardly paying attention. He's watching Jordan retreat back to the stern of the Sundancer. Watching Haley sit up when he gets there.
He's watching Jordan and Haley make out.
And he's thinking . . .
Son of a
bitch.
