Summer Girl Page 2

  I found myself laughing at the thought. As if I’d ever noticed the price of anything before.

  Welcome to your new world, Heather.

  I’d gone to the Sand Bar that night out of boredom, out of loneliness. I’d been on my solo quest for three days now, walking around and showing the picture to everyone I could think of who’d known my family years ago, and I’d run into a brick wall.

  Everyone just looked at the picture of the girl and shook their head. They’d never seen her before.

  I had nobody to call for help or advice, not Barron, not my former friends, not my older brother, certainly not my parents.

  That picture was the reason that they’d announced my premature demise as a member of the family. They’d un-Tremained me.

  I was starting to feel like I’d never find what I was looking for, like I’d thrown my life away for nothing.

  So, even though I didn’t have the money to spare, after a full day of wandering around town aimlessly and accomplishing nothing, I’d left my little motel room that evening and walked a mile and a half to the Sand Bar, a smoky, overcrowded dive where all the older girls from my neighborhood loved to go when they wanted to feel like they were doing something just a teeny bit dangerous.

  I’d never been able to go before, because you had to be 18 to get in, and the last time I’d come to Hidden Cove was three years ago, when I was 16.

  There was a patio out back, and I suddenly felt the need for fresh air. The room was hot and smoky and the pounding music was making my head hurt. As I headed towards the door to the patio, a girl with blue hair and full sleeves of arm tattoos tripped and fell against me, knocking my coke out of my hand and spilling it all over me.

  “Oh, crap! I am so sorry!” she gasped.

  I stumbled back, soaked. This was clearly a sign from above. The universe was telling me it was time for me to go home.

  But the girl grabbed my arm and began pulling me towards the bathroom, and her grip was surprisingly strong.

  “I’m so sorry!” She was laughing, shaking her head at her clumsiness. Me, I would have been crying with embarrassment. “Here, let’s rinse that out real quick so it doesn’t stain.”

  When we got in the bathroom, I pulled the sweater off; fortunately, I was wearing a tank top underneath it. Otherwise my only option would have been to slink back to my motel, wet and sticky.

  She grabbed the sweater from me and stuck it under the sink, blasting cold water on it and scrubbing at it vigorously. “I’m Dottie. What’s your name?”

  “Heather.”

  “Heather! Nice name. I’m the world’s biggest klutz. I can’t believe I did that!” Her big brown eyes went wide with surprise and she giggled at her foolishness as she scrubbed at my sweater.

  She was short, probably 5’2”, with huge boobs, and her feathered blue hair was shot through with black streaks. Blue eyeshadow and black eyeliner were drawn on her eyes in little upward tilting wings. A brief flash of envy flashed through my mind because she could do anything that she wanted to with her hair, and her looks – her right ear was pierced three times and there was a silver bar running from the middle of her ear to the lobe – and then suddenly I remembered that now, I could do anything that I wanted with my looks too. I could die my hair freakin’ pink if I wanted to.

  Dottie quickly wrung out the sweater, then held it up and examined it with a critical eye. The stain was gone. “Okay, that’s better. Now I’m going to buy you another coke.”

  “You really don’t have-“

  “Of course I do!”

  She grabbed my arm, I found myself letting her haul me back to the bar. She had a giggly, bubbly air about her; she was the kind of person who lightened your mood just being around her.

  When we got to the bar, she got Rich, the bartender who liked my chest a whole lot, to give me a plastic bag so I could put my sweater in it and shove it into my purse. She bought sodas for both of us.

  Then she had me by the arm yet again and was dragging me back to the bathroom. Once we were in there, she whipped a bottle of vodka out of her purse and dumped a generous portion into my coke, and then hers.

  “Are you serious!” I gasped.

  “Serious as a heart attack,” she giggled.

  I took a tentative sip, then a bigger sip. “We could get in a lot of trouble.”

  She snorted in contempt, waving her hand in the air as if waving away the very notion. “Live a little, Miss Goody Two Shoes!”

  She was right. It was time to stop living by the rules. I took a huge swig, and she cheered me on with a war whoop, then stuffed her bottle back into its purse.

  Dottie was officially a bad influence. I giggled. I’d run into the right person tonight.

  The alcohol burned its way down my throat and warmed me like the sun. Out on the dance floor, I suddenly found I could dance without feeling self-conscious, bouncing to the beat of a Rihanna song.

  The small dance floor was hot and crowded, and I finished my drink by the end of the song. A Justin Timberlake song blared on the radio, and two hot guys came over, guys who looked vaguely familiar; I was pretty sure I recognized them from Brown University, which meant they were just in town for the summer.

  “Aren’t they hot? Which one do you want?” Dottie yelled in my ear over the music.

  “Uh…you pick!” Neither of them, really.

  She started dancing with the lanky guy with wavy brown hair, leaving me with a blond who looked like and Abercrombie & Fitch model. Unfortunately, he was the type who clearly knew it and was totally full of himself.

  Within sixty seconds Dottie and her dance partner were sucking face like a couple of groupers. Wow, that was fast. I’m pretty sure they hadn’t even introduced themselves.

  The blond guy who was dancing with me kept moving closer and closer, trying to grind up against me, and I found myself stumbling backwards, moving away from him. Apparently he sucked at reading body language, because he just kept pushing forward, trying really hard to push his crotch up against me.

  Then the song ended and I looked around and Dottie was gone. And the guy was still trying to rub up against me, and as I backed up I felt myself run into a solid wall of muscle.

  I spun around, and there he was. Mr. Dark and Dangerous.

  He was looking over my head, at the guy behind me.

  “Back the hell off,” he snapped at the guy. I glanced back at Blondie, and he looked as if he were about to argue, but then he took another look at my rescuer his face changed, and he turned on his heel and walked off without a word.

  Good call.

  Because the guy standing behind me had that look about him, the look of a coiled up cobra waiting to lash out and strike.

  I stumbled again, and the guy put his arm around my waist and started moving me through the crowd. The room was tilting on its axis, and I felt heat spreading out through my whole body, and I was 16 years old all over again, gawking at the hot guy on the boardwalk.

  Except now the hot guy had his arm around me and we were standing outside in the cool air on the patio behind the bar, with the night breeze caressing my face.

  “Thank you for rescuing me back there,” I said, praying that I wasn’t slurring my words.

  “My pleasure.” At the word “pleasure”, I suddenly felt myself shiver and an image of him and me, naked, tangled up in an embrace on the sand, flashed through my mind.

  He mistook the reason for my shivering – thank God! – and quickly took off his leather jacket, draping it around my shoulders. It was warm and heavy and it smelled like him; it felt as if he’d wrapped himself around me. I hugged it to me, wanting to keep it forever.

  “What happened to your sweater?” he asked.

  He’d noticed me! He’d noticed me enough to pay attention to what I was wearing earlier. That warm flush of desire washed over me again. God, I was a drooling dork around this guy.

  “Dottie spilled coke on it, so we washed it off and I stuffed it in my purse,” I said. />
  “And then she ran off and left you,” he observed.

  “I know. My only friend,” I said with mock sadness. And actually, some real sadness. It had felt nice to have a friend again, if even for a few minutes.

  He shrugged, with a grin. “That’s Dottie for you. When a new guy comes along, you’re history. If she’s your only friend, you need to find some more friends.”

  “I know, right?”

  I felt like I were awake-dreaming. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. Mr. Panty-melter was standing right next to me, and the giant white orb of the moon dangled overhead in a sky studded with a million little rhinestone stars.

  “You should have lots of friends in town. Your family’s been coming here forever, haven’t they? Heather Tremaine, right? Although I haven’t seen you around in a couple of years.”

  Oh. My. God.

  He knew who I was. And he’d noticed when we stopped coming here.

  Suddenly I could feel my heart pounding against my ribcage so hard that every beat vibrated through my body, and my jaw dropped as I tipped my head back to stare at him.

  “You know me?” it came out in a squeak.

  Sexy, Heather. Very sexy.

  He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.

  “Slade Monroe,” he said, still holding on to my hand for a long, long second before he finally let go. His hand was big and warm and strong, and I shivered at the feeling of his flesh wrapped around mine. When he let go I could still feel the imprint of his hand tingling on my skin.

  “Yeah, when you first walked in the bar, you looked kind of familiar, and then it came to me.” His voice drawled out, slow, with a faint Southern accent.

  “How did you know my name?”

  “All the guys from town used to talk about you.” His lips slowly curved into a grin, and there was a glint of amusement in his eyes. I wanted to fall into him, to melt into his body. It didn’t help that my head was spinning from the alcohol, and I was standing inches from the man who’d been starring in my teenaged fantasies since the first day I’d laid eyes on him.

  I struggled to sound casual. And sober. “What did they say?”

  “Things I can’t repeat. Let’s just say, they admired you greatly.” His grin was contagious; I threw back my head and laughed, and the earth shifted under me, and I stumbled backwards. He slung his arm around my waist and caught me, and I leaned against him, breathing in the scent of sweat and cologne. He was as steady as a statue even as the sand sloshed alarmingly under my feet. My hero.

  “You’re cut off, by the way.”

  “Cut off! I…I didn’t drink anything.” Instant panic flashed through me. I’m the type who can’t even make up a good lie about why my homework was late. I suddenly felt like a huge neon sign was shining above me, with an arrow pointing down at my head.

  “Liar, liar, liar,” the sign blinked.

  “Right.” The amused grin spread across his face. “Let’s go for a little walk. Let the cold air sober you up a little bit.”

  “Really! I haven’t been drinking!” But I let him lead me down the wooden patio steps and on to the beach, stumbling as I walked.

  We stood there in the sand, and the oat grass on the dunes swayed in the wind.

  “Am I in trouble?” I asked in a small voice.

  “In trouble? Are you serious?” He laughed at me again, and then he looked at me, and his eyes widened.

  “Are you blushing?”

  I could feel the heat spreading across my cheeks. “Maybe,” I muttered. He knew that I’d been drinking. He knew that I’d snuck alcohol in his bar. I was utterly mortified. And the beach was starting to spin in slow, lazy circles around me.

  “No, you’re not in trouble, Heather Tremaine.” I liked the way he said my name; it felt like his tongue was sensually caressing it. “And I don’t remember the last time that I’d made a girl blush.”

  “Maybe it’s the company you keep.” I could have bitten my tongue as soon as I said it; it came out bitchy and jealous. And who was I to be jealous of this man?

  But he wasn’t mad.

  “No argument there,” he shrugged. “I run with a pretty sketchy crowd. Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Of course,” I muttered, and then my stomach bunched up and I realized with horror that I was about to puke.

  In front of the hottest guy on the planet. A hot guy who’d been kind of flirting with me. I think.

  I staggered over to a trash barrel, leaned over it, and heaved, and I felt Slade’s hand on my back, and then everything went black.

  Chapter Three

  The room was spinning and my head pounded in a steady, painful pulse.

  And I had no idea where I was.

  My eyes flew open and I scrubbed at my face with my hands, and then frantically groped at the bed around me, trying to get an idea of where I was. I wasn’t on a bed, I was on a sofa. I was lying on a sofa wearing all my clothes. Even my shoes.

  My motel room didn’t have a sofa.

  There was a ceiling fan slowly circling above me, and my stomach lurched and I had to look away.

  “Morning, sleeping beauty.” A disembodied voice drifted my way, from somewhere off to my right.

  It was him. Slade Monroe, my savior, from the night before. Oh, the humiliation just never ended, did it?

  Suddenly he was looming over me, as I struggled to sit upright. I realized that there was a blanket on me, and as I sat up it fell off me onto the floor.

  “Here.” He helped pull me up into a sitting position, and handed me two aspirin and a glass of water.

  He had a little shadow of stubble dusting his handsome face, and it made him look unbearably sexy and scruffy. I imagined him rubbing that scruff against me, rasping my skin with it. He wore a dark t-shirt and jeans, and he looked a little rumpled, but still so handsome that my heart broke just looking at him.

  I wanted him to say something romantic. I wanted him to tell me I was beautiful. Tell me we’d just spent the night having the best, most passionate sex of his life and he couldn’t live without me.

  “Do you need to puke again?” he asked.

  “What?” my voice quavered.

  “Do you need to throw up? I can help you walk to the bathroom. Or get you a bucket.”

  “No!” I was pretty sure there was nothing left in my stomach, which felt like a hollow, growling cavern. “How many times did I throw up last night?”

  “Just the one time at the beach.”

  “Oh my God, I am so sorry,” I moaned.

  I gulped the two aspirin and washed them down with water, which also helped wash away some of the horrible dead-creature taste in my mouth.

  “Don’t be sorry. I have that effect on all the ladies.” The grin curled the left side of his mouth, and his caramel brown eyes gleamed.

  Somehow I doubted that was true.

  “I think I will go use the bathroom,” I mumbled. He pointed to the bathroom door, and I made my way there, unsteady on my feet.

  The bathroom was small, the shower adorned with a simple black vinyl curtain hanging from silver rings, and a folded up stack of grey washcloths in a silver bowl on a shelf next to the sink. I grabbed a washcloth and scrubbed at my face with hot water, then my neck, then washed my hands, and straightened up and looked at the cracked oval mirror that looked as if it had been glued to the wall above the sink.

  My eyes were bleary, and my face looked a little puffy, but I didn’t look too terrifying. I ran my fingers through my wavy hair, trying to tame the frizz, and tossed the dirty washcloth in a round wicker hamper on the floor.

  Then I stumbled back out to the living room and collapsed on the couch again, noticing that my purse was on the floor by my feet.

  Slade had gone to the kitchen and I could smell bacon frying, and my stomach rumbled. Amazingly enough after last night, I was hungry.

  I looked around the room, turning my head very, very slowly because when I moved to fast, the pounding in my head got wo
rse.

  As far as I could tell, we were in a small one-bedroom house, with décor that screamed “bachelor” all over it.

  There were a few framed pictures of classic Mustangs on the wall, along with a neon bar sign, and a moose head with – I cringed – a pink thong dangling from the left antler.

  I tried very hard not to think about how that got there.

  The décor was sparse. There was a TV on a stand, a bookshelf made of metal rails and black metal shelves with a bunch of video game books and science fiction novels and military history tomes.

  He walked in carrying a tray which had two plates on it, each with piles of eggs and greasy slabs of bacon, and he sat down on the couch next to me and set the tray on the scarred wooden coffee table.

  “Eat,” he said. “Nothing like greasy food for a hangover. Trust me, I’m the expert.” Sitting on the tray was a pint of scotch, and he grabbed it and drank directly from the bottle, then held it out to me.

  The pounding in my head increased in tempo, and I closed my eyes and thought of staggering on the sand last night, of the way the world spun around me like a tilt a whirl ride gone horribly wrong.

  I shuddered. “No thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Hair of the dog that bit you,” he said, and then he dove into his pile of eggs.

  I attacked my own plate of food. The greasy, salty food was like manna from heaven; I felt my stomach quieting as I chewed and swallowed. I leaned back on the couch after I’d finished. The throbbing in my head had receded somewhat, but it was still there, like boots marching endlessly across my skull.

  “You don’t drink much, do you?” He flashed that amused grin at me.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Very.” There was a twinkle in his eye. He was going to have no mercy on me.

  “If I tell you something, promise you won’t laugh at me?”

  “Of course. Unless you say something funny.”

  I kicked at him, and he caught my leg, swatted it away, and laughed at me. “Your reflexes are a little slow this morning.”

  “Screw you,” I grumbled, but with a half-smile on my face. His grin was contagious.