Author's note:
Minor BDSM elements in this part.
All characters over eighteen.
Part 4 of 6.
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CHAPTER 18
Kevin turns his head away from the road and says, "You've been hanging around your sister too much."
"What?" I lean to the side to check for mile markers, but all I see is Jane's dark capital hairdo around the headrest.
"Your hair, man." He pulls the Audi steering wheel straight, and now we're heading south on the coast highway.
I glance at my sister next to me as discreetly as I can. Jessica stares at the phone in her lap, but I can't get a read on her expression with so little light.
"Needed a change," I say.
"I'm surrounded by emo goth kids, I swear."
"Well, Babe," says Jane. "We can't all be as naturally pretty as you." Her finger taps Kevin's lips with each of her words, and he bats her hand away like it's an annoying bug.
"Why black though?" Kevin won't let it go.
"I wasn't going with pink or green." I watch the counter on Jessica's last blue dot text tick away. Her message vanishes when the timer reaches five minutes, and the chat window with my sister lies barren. Then I change the subject. "So what's the plan tonight?"
"I'm building a kickass fire."
Jessica laughs, and looks up. "Garret will build the fire. Kevin will get drunk and move some wood around."
"I make art. Not everybody gets it."
I click off my phone, and darkness envelopes the car, save for the glow my sister holds, and the occasional oncoming set of headlights. I want to pull Jessica onto my lap and do all manner of groping, both high and low, while I kiss her neck. Instead, the middle seat belt plays referee for the sake of our friends in the front. My sister sits right there across a stretch of leather, but I can't touch her.
The road winds south, and eventually Jessica locks her phone, leaving the four of us with silhouette views of each other. I lean half way to my sister, around Jane's headrest, and watch the lines of the road ahead, until the passenger's trance take me.
I snap out of the spell when the car turns.
"We're here, bitches." Kevin screeches the S5 to a stop in the driveway of a house with grey wooden shingled siding. Another vehicle sits in front of us, doors open, and lights still on. Robyn leans over collecting items from the passenger side, while Garrett shuffles down the front steps of the house, washed out by the combined headlights of both cars. He pulls a joint out of his inside jacked pocket and puts it to his lips, holding a lighter to the end. Garrett holds out the joint, and Robyn takes it from him, having appeared around the far side of the car. She encourages the red ember, as she carries her handbag and what looks to be a cooler. By the time I'm standing on the porch with my bag, Garrett is lighting a second joint.
"We need to christen this place properly," says Garrett. He takes a drag, then holds it out for me.
"It's a religious obligation, then?" I help myself to the communion, and it's not as hot as I expect. Tastes like pine.
"Very much so," says Jessica, holding out her hand, palm up. She closes and opens her fingers twice. I hand her the joint, and she takes one hard pull, then offers it back to nobody in particular. Garrett looks to me, but my head is already starting to feel like a bowling ball, so I decline. Garrett takes the cinder and reinvigorates it.
"What have we got?" asks Kevin. He sets down a large two-tone blue and white plastic drink cooler next to the front door.
"Three beds," says Robyn. "So Jessica gets to fight with her brother over the third. One and a half baths, so we all get to fight over the shower." Her joint is half gone already.
Bags pile up in the entryway, and before I've even looked around, Kevin's oversized hand forces a shot of something clear into my chest. I drink it without question. It burns surprisingly little, and reminds me of Jessica's orange body wash.
"What is this?" I ask.
"Mandarin vodka." Garrett pushes past me into one of the bedrooms.
"Babe." Jane waves at Kevin. "We're in here."
Kevin follows Garrett past me, carrying two suitcases.
Jessica stands by the side of a chest-high white tile counter, which divides the kitchen from a dining area furnished with a dark stained wooden table. She holds her bag in one hand and stares at an empty shot glass in the other, licking her lips. I slowly move to her, glancing past the wooden table at the living room down the hall. The full couch at the other end of the house might be my future.
"What do we do?" I ask, keeping my voice low.
"I don't know," whispers my sister. "We'll figure it out later. Just put your stuff in the bedroom with mine, so it doesn't get lost."
I do as I'm told, and then Kevin prepares another round of shots while we're all standing in a circle in the kitchen. Everyone always stands in a circle at parties. Garrett stacks liquor bottles in a 'V,' like bowling pins, while Kevin pours something brown into the row of shot glasses.
"Is that the same stuff?" I ask.
"Nah," says Kevin. "That only works once in a while."
An arm shoots over my shoulder between Jessica and me, and holds steady, until Kevin gives the arm's fingers a drink. I turn to see Jane swallowing what he handed her, then she clangs the glass on the counter. Kevin begins filling a stainless steel flask with rum, while Garrett finishes his tidy arrangement of bottles, and I turn to discover all three girls have vanished out the front door.
"Where did that horrible stuff come from, anyway? Somebody named Roger?" I point to the brown bottle Garrett has standing guard over the other liquor.
"Yeah. Jess didn't tell you about him?" asks Kevin.
"No." I'm suddenly glad my sister is out of the room.
"He was a..." Kevin tilts his head and glances at the front door, then crouches so the top of his flask rests at eye level, "thing of your sister's last year. It didn't end well. You could ask her about it, but I think she's still pretty sore."
"Is there a short version?"
"Eh." Kevin hesitates. He's carefully topping off the flask. "They were together for a few months. He wanted to... date other girls... at the same time. Without telling her." Kevin screws the flask shut, and gives me a shrugging look, before bolting after the girls.
Garrett stands by the front door, zipping up a blue windbreaker, another unlit joint having appeared in his mouth. I'm not sure where the first one went. Or the second one. I grab my coat and I'm the last one out of the house.
I follow Garrett and Kevin down an asphalt path leading around the side of the house, over a ridge to the beach. A slick layer of sand coats the dark pavement, which is more of a challenge to traverse than it ordinarily might be, due to shots and weed. The light from the house begins to recede, and a hill topped with grass taller than me appears on either side of the path. Wind whips my coat and hair, and a salty rotting stench invades my nose as I crest the ridge. The roar of the waves comes from all around, and gives no marker for the distance to the water. I stand at the top of the ridge, and my eyes slowly adjust. Faint whitecaps of the surf dance in the distance, at the far end of a gentle slope. Several shadows move below, and Kevin bellows something indistinct. I follow his voice.
The shallow slope of the beach spans more than a football field from the ridge to the waves. I step onto the sand, and have to put in more effort, but before long I find my companions half way to the water. The girls huddle together, with Jane rubbing Robyn's arms on each side. Kevin stacks wood into a pyramid in a dugout pit in the sand.
