Chapter 11: Genevieve
GENEVIEVE
“I think I screwed up,” I whisper to Harrison as the waiter in a white dress shirt and black vest lays the linen napkin in my lap. There are already three sets of glasses on the table and we haven’t even ordered anything yet. When the waiter offered us still or sparkling water, I asked for the free kind. “I had no idea this place was so fancy.”
Or expensive. It only opened recently, and I noticed it as I passed by the other day. When I was concocting this diversion for Evan earlier, it just popped into my head. Now, I’m wearing my best summer dress, even put on makeup and did my hair, and yet I still feel underdressed.
For his part, Harrison does a decent job of passing as one of the yacht club guys that wash into Avalon Bay for the season. Button-down shirt and those damn khakis with a belt that matches his shoes. It works for him, though.
“I don’t mind.” Harrison pushes some glasses out of the way to make room for his menu. “I don’t eat out much. It’s nice to have an excuse.”
“Okay, but I’ll obviously split the check.”
With a Disney Channel smile, Harrison shakes his head. “
I can’t let you do that.”
“No, seriously. I wouldn’t have suggested this place if I’d known. Please.”
He sets the menu aside and meets my eyes with stern conviction. It ages him ten years. “If you keep trying to shove money in my pocket, I’m bound to get offended.” Then he winks at me, those boyish freckles blossoming on his cheeks, and I realize he’s putting me on.
“That’s your cop face, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been working on it in the mirror,” he confirms, leaning in with his voice hushed. “How am I doing?”
“I’d say you’ve got it down pat.”
Harrison sips his water as though he’s just remembered that first dates are supposed to make us nervous. “There was a little old lady the other day I pulled over for running a stop sign. I made the mistake of asking if she’d not seen the sign, which I guess she took to mean I thought her vision was the trouble, and so this woman gets on the phone to the sheriff telling him some high school kid’s stolen a cruiser and a uniform and is out terrorizing the community.”
I burst out laughing.
“Anyway. I’ve been told I better figure my way to looking more the part,” he finishes.
The waiter returns to take our drink order, and would we care for a bottle of wine? I wave off the wine list when Harrison offers it to me. My experience is generally limited to the five major food groups: whiskey, vodka, tequila, rum, and gin.
“Hang on, I got this,” Harrison says, getting excited as he scans the list. “I watched a wine documentary on Netflix once.”
A smile springs free. “Nerd.”
He shrugs, but with a satisfied smirk that says he’s quite proud of himself. “We’ll have two glasses of the 2016 pinot grigio,
please. Thank you.”
The waiter nods his approval. I consider speaking up to refuse, but what’s the harm in one glass of wine? It’s not like I’m pounding shots or downing cocktails. I won’t even get a buzz on a stingy pour. Besides, I don’t want to dive headlong into the details of my reputation recovery before we’ve even ordered food. Not a great conversation starter. I think of it like an accessory to complete my ensemble of mature adult Gen.
“I think that went well,” I tell him.
“I was nervous there for a minute, but I think I pulled it out in the end,” he agrees with a laugh.
Honestly, as far as fake first dates go, this one’s off to a better start than I had any right to expect. We ended up meeting at the restaurant instead of him picking me up, and part of me worried he might walk up holding flowers or something. As he’d kissed my cheek in greeting, he admitted he’d considered bringing a bouquet but realized I wasn’t the type, and it’d probably embarrass both of us. He was right, and the fact that he figured that out put him in an entirely new perspective. Now, the vibe is chill and we’re getting along. None of those uncomfortable silences and darting glances to avoid eye contact, while we both struggle to devise an exit strategy. Dare I say, I’m having a good time. Strange as that is.
The old me wouldn’t have been caught dead in this place. Which I suppose is the point. I’m stepping out of the long shadow my past has cast over my life. Harrison is certainly living up to his part of this plot. A bit shy and reserved in comparison, but sweet and funny in a nineties family sitcom sort of way. And although I can’t muster up any sexual attraction to him, perhaps that’s a good thing. Evan and I were all but defined by our rabid sexual chemistry. It ruled us.
But if I’m going to be serious about this good girl turn, maybe I
need a good boy to match.
“Anyway,” he says once we’ve ordered our meals, after going off on a tangent about why he can’t eat mussels anymore. “I feel like I’m being rude, doing all the talking. I tend to ramble sometimes.”
“No, you’re fine,” I assure him. I’d much rather not have the conversation focus on me. “Tell me, what’s the weirdest call you’ve gone out on?”
Harrison ponders, staring into his glass of wine while spinning it in little circles on the table by the base. “Well, there was this one. Second week on the job. I’ve still got a babysitter, this guy Mitchum, who, if you picture a disgruntled math teacher with a gun, is pretty much spot-on. From the second we meet, his personality is he wants me dead.”
I snort out a too-loud laugh that disturbs the tables nearby and has me hiding behind my napkin.
“I’m serious,” Harrison insists. “I don’t know what it was, but I walked into the boss’s office before my first shift, and Mitchum was standing there looking at me like I’d knocked up his daughter.”
I can’t imagine anyone being put off by Harrison’s first impression. Then again, I’ve never been too fond of the cops in this town, so maybe that’s all the explanation there needs to be.
“We get called out to this house in Belfield,” he continues. “Dispatch says a couple of neighbors are having some kind of dispute. So we arrive on scene to find two older fellas jawing at each other in the front yard. Mitchum and I separate them to get their stories and figure out real quick they both started hitting the bottle early that day. They were arguing over a mower or a mailbox, depending on which one of them tells it. Nothing especially interesting, but they’ve both got rifles they’re waving around, and somebody let a few shots off.”
I’m trying to anticipate where this story is headed when Harrison shakes his head at me, as if to say,
don’t even try.
“Mitchum asks the one guy,
why don’t you put the gun away?
He tells us he only got his gun because his neighbor got his own. And the other neighbor says he only got his gun after the other guy put the gator on his roof.”
“What?” I bark out another disturbing noise that disrupts the entire restaurant, though now I’m too preoccupied to feel contrite. “Like a real alligator?”
“This fella’s been trying to shoot the thing down, if you can believe that. Pumping rounds into his own roof, the walls, wherever. We can’t be sure they’re even all accounted for—thank goodness we never got any reports of stray bullets.”
“How’d he get it up there in the first place?” I demand.
“Turns out the guy works for the phone company. He’s out driving to a job when he finds this gator in the middle of the road. On his lunch break he decides to drive the cherry picker home and drop that poor animal up there, though I can’t for the life of me imagine the mechanics of that situation. Turns out they’d had a run-in that morning which precipitated the retaliation.”
“I almost have to admire the guy,” I admit. “I’ve never had a grudge that warranted a biblical plague. I guess I need to find a better class of nemesis.”
“But get this. Mitchum, sweet guy that he is, tells me I have to climb up there and get the gator down.”
“No way.”
“Now remember, it’s my first shift on the street, and if this guy goes back to the station and says I can’t hack it, I could be banished behind a desk for good. So I don’t have much of a choice. Still, I ask,
shouldn’t we get animal control out there instead?
And he tells me,
sorry, kid, the dog catchers only work on the ground
.”
“Wow.” I’m honestly stunned. Not that I didn’t know cops were bastards, but that’s some cold shit right there. Talk about
friendly fire. “What’d you do?”
“The short version,” he says with the haunted stare of a man who’s seen things, “involves a ladder, a ribeye, some rope, and about four hours to get that thing down.”
“Damn, Harrison, you’re my hero. Here’s to protecting and serving,” I say, clinking my wineglass with his.
We make it halfway through our entrées before he tires of dominating the conversation and once again tries to turn it on me. This time, the topic being my mother.
“I’m sorry again,” he says. “This must still be a difficult time. With moving back and all.”
His consolatory tone reminds me that I’m still putting on an act, playing a part I’ve written of the person I should be: the grieving daughter, still mourning her dear mother. Wallpapering a better story over our absent relationship, because it sounds good.
Which is something I’ve never had to do with Evan.
Fuck. Despite my best efforts, thoughts of him creep in through the seams. He’s the only person who understands my darkest thoughts, who doesn’t judge or try to dissect me. He understands that the empty place where everyone else holds their mothers in their hearts doesn’t make me a bad person. For all our failings, Evan never needed me to be anyone but myself.
“Ooh, that looks good.”
Speak of the fucking devil.
Completely blindsiding us, Evan suddenly drops a chair at our table and sits down between Harrison and me.
He grabs a scallop off my plate and pops it in his mouth. His daring gaze flicks to me with a self-satisfied grin. “Hey.”
Unbelievable.
My jaw doesn’t know whether to drop or tighten, so it alternates between the two disparate movements, I’m sure making me appear unhinged. “You’re out of your mind,” I growl.
“Brought you something.” He places a green
Blow Pop on the table, then appraises me with almost lewd interest. “You look nice.”
“Nope. Not doing this. Go home, Evan.”
“What?” he says with mock innocence. He licks lemon-butter sauce from his fingers. “You’ve made your point. I came to spring you from this stuck-up nightmare.”
He stands out among the other diners, wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, hair wind-tossed, and all of him smelling like motorcycle exhaust.
“Come on.” Harrison, to his credit, takes the interruption in stride. A bit confused as he questions me with his eyes, but maintaining a polite smile. “We’re having a nice time. Let the lady finish her dinner in peace. I’m sure whatever you two have to talk about can wait until later.”
“Oh, shit.” Laughing, Evan cocks his head at me. “This guy’s serious? Where’d you find him? I mean, damn, Gen, you’re basically dating our seventh-grade science teacher.”
That wipes the friendly smile from Harrison’s face.
“Evan, stop it.” I grab his arm. “You’re not funny.”
“Alright, I’ve asked you nicely,” Harrison says. He stands up and I’m reminded of all the times cops chased me and Evan out of convenience store parking lots and abandoned buildings. “Now I’m telling you. Leave.”
“It’s fine,” I warn Harrison. “I’ve got it.”
Still holding Evan’s arm, I tighten my grip. There’s no way I’m letting him start a brawl in the middle of this restaurant and get his ass thrown in jail for breaking a cop’s nose.
“Please, Evan,” I say flatly. “Just go.”
He ignores the request. “Remember when this place was a clothing store?” Evan leans in closer, brushing his fingers over my hand on his arm, which I snatch away from his touch. “Did you tell him about the time we did it in the
dressing room while the church ladies were just outside the door trying on their Sunday hats?”
“Screw you.” My voice shakes with anger, cold and brittle, the words barely passing through my lips as my throat constricts. I’d slap him if I didn’t know for certain it would only encourage his sabotage. The more emotion Evan can pull from me, the more proof he has to continue his pursuit.
Pushing back from the table to stand, I catch a brief glimpse of Harrison’s sympathetic gaze before I turn away and leave.
I hit the railing that separates the boardwalk from the beach below like a car slamming into an embankment. I might have kept on walking into the ocean, blind with rage, if it hadn’t stopped me. I want to throw something. Launch a brick through a storefront window to hear it shatter. Take a baseball bat to a china shop. Anything to get this restless static out of my arms, the thick, stone-hard ball of fury throbbing in my chest.
When I hear footsteps behind me, my fist tightens. A hand touches my arm and I’m mid-swing when I turn to see Harrison with his hands up, braced for impact.
“Oh gosh, I’m sorry.” I drop my hands. “I thought you were Evan.”
Harrison laughs nervously and flashes a relieved smile. “No worries. This is what all those de-escalation courses are for at the academy.”
It’s sweet, his commitment to deflecting everything with a joke and a heaping, sugary spoonful of optimism. I don’t have that stuff in me.
“Really, though. I’m sorry for everything back there. That was so embarrassing. I’d make some excuse for him, but Evan’s kind of a jerk on his best days.” I lean over the railing,
resting my arms on the splintered wood. “And here all you did was say hi in a bar to be nice. Bet you didn’t expect all this drama, huh? Got more than you bargained for.”
“Nah, I knew there was a chance I’d have a pissed-off Hartley on my ass if I went out with you.”
I lift a brow. “Oh really?”
“We went to the same high school,” he reminds me, his voice wry but gentle. “Everyone had a front-row seat to the Genevieve and Evan show.”
Embarrassment heats my cheeks, and I avert my eyes. Somehow, knowing Harrison witnessed our high school antics is even more humiliating than having Evan crash this date.
“Hey. Don’t look away like that. Everyone has baggage.” He comes to lean against the railing beside me. “We’ve all got a past. Things we’d rather people not judge us for. How can anyone grow if we only let them be who they were yesterday, right?”
I glance over in surprise. “That’s an unusual outlook for a cop.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
We stand there for a while, just listening to the waves and watching the way the lights of the boardwalk float on the water. I’m about to pack it in, pick up my dignity off the ground and head home, when Harrison makes another suggestion.
“You want to take a walk?” As though he’s spent this whole time mustering the courage, he offers his hand. “I don’t think I’m ready to go home. Besides, we didn’t make it to dessert. I bet the ice-cream place might still be open.”
My first instinct is to say no. Just go home and nurse my anger. Then I remember what Alana said. If I’m going to walk a different path, I have to start making different choices. And I suppose that starts with giving Harrison a chance to change my mind.
“That sounds nice,” I say.
We stroll down the boardwalk toward
Two Scoops, where he buys us a couple of ice-cream cones. We keep walking, passing families and other couples. Teenagers running around, making out in the shadows. It’s a balmy night with a warm breeze of salt air that offers the slightest relief from the heat. Harrison holds my hand, and while I let him, it feels wrong. Unnatural. Nothing like the feeling of anticipation and longing that comes with touching that person you can’t wait to kiss, the one who sets your nerves racing, gets your fingertips excited.
Eventually, we end up in front of the old hotel. Last time I saw this place, it was gaping open, walls collapsed, with furniture and debris pouring out. The Beacon had been all but eviscerated in the hurricane. Now, it’s like it never happened. Practically brand new, with its sparkling white façade and green trim, shiny new windows, and a roof without any holes in it.
Now that Cooper’s girlfriend owns this place, I’ll probably never be allowed to step foot inside.
“It’s remarkable what they’ve managed to do with the place,” Harrison says, admiring the renovation. “I heard it’s supposed to open in the fall.”
“I loved this place when I was a kid. For my sixteenth birthday, my dad brought me and my friends in for a spa day. Got our nails done, facials and stuff.” I grin at the memory. “They gave us robes and slippers, water with cucumbers in it. All that fancy stuff. It probably sounds stupid, but I remember thinking this was the most beautiful place. All the dark wood and brass, the paintings on the walls, the antique furniture. It was how I imagined palaces must look on the inside. But, you know, kids are stupid, so …” I shrug.
“No, it’s not stupid,” Harrison assures me. “We had my grandparents’ anniversary dinner here years back. They served all this really pretty-looking food—real rich-people stuff, because my family wanted to give them a special party—
and my grandad got so mad, kept yelling at the waiter to just bring him some meatloaf. I swear,” Harrison laughs, “he left that party like it was the worst night of his life. Meanwhile, the family spent a small fortune to cater the thing.”
We trade a few more stories, and eventually he escorts me back to my car parked outside the restaurant. While much of my irritation with the ordeal from earlier has dissipated, nothing makes this part of the night any less awkward.
“Thank you,” I say. “For dinner, but really for being so nice. You didn’t have to be.”
“Believe it or not, I had a great time.” His earnest expression tells me he actually means that.
“How are you even like this?” I demand, befuddled by him. “So positive and upbeat all the time. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Harrison shrugs. “Seems like a lot of work being any other way.” Like the true gentleman he is, he opens my door for me. Then, with a tentative gesture, he offers me a hug. It’s a relief, honestly, not to do the whole dance around a kiss. “I’d like to call you, if that’s okay.”
I don’t get a chance to contemplate the possibility of a second date.
“Step away from the car,” a voice shouts.
Frowning, I turn around in time to spot Deputy Randall crossing the street. He’s got a mean way about him. A look that intends to do harm.
“Put the keys on the ground,” he commands.
For fuck’s sake. I shield my eyes as he approaches with a flashlight shining in my face. “It’s my car. I’m not stealing it.”
“I can’t allow you to drive impaired,” Randall says, resting a hand on his utility belt.
“Impaired?” I look at Harrison, seeking
confirmation I’m not hallucinating this. Because Randall cannot be serious. “What are you talking about?”
“Rusty,” Harrison says timidly, “I think you’ve made a mistake here.”
“I clearly observed the young lady standing in an unsteady manner and leaning on the door for support.”
“Bullshit,” I spit at him. “I barely touched a glass of wine over an hour ago. This is harassment.”
“I gotta say, Rusty, I’ve been with her all night.” Harrison is soft-spoken and polite, presenting a nonthreatening contradiction to Randall’s nonsense assertions. “She’s telling the truth.”
“Told you before, kid,” Randall says with an almost gleefully cruel sneer. “This ain’t one you want to waste your time on. If she’s awake, she’s either drugged out or drunk, making a sloppy embarrassment of herself all over town.” He huffs out a sarcastic laugh. “If drunk and disorderlies were frequent flyer miles, she could book a trip around the world. Ain’t that right, Genevieve?”
“Fuck you. Asshole.” I know I’ll regret the words even as they’re coming out of my mouth, but I don’t bother clamping my lips shut. It feels good to let it out, ineffectual as it is. A brief fantasy of snagging his pepper spray flickers through my mind.
The faintest twitch of a smirk tugs at the corner of Randall’s mouth. Then, forehead creased, he orders me to come stand behind the car and take a field sobriety test.
My jaw snaps open in shock.
“You can’t be serious,” protests Harrison, who’s clearly starting to understand what an utter dickweed Randall is.
“No.” I cross my arms and consider just driving away. Daring Randall to stop me. Those old instincts of mayhem and defiance roar back with a vengeance. “This is ludicrous. We both know I’m not drunk.”
“If you fail to comply with a lawful order, you
will be under arrest,” he informs me. Randall is practically drooling at the prospect of putting me in handcuffs.
I turn to Harrison, who, though plainly alarmed, admits with a shrug there’s nothing he can do about it. Seriously? What the hell’s the point of dating a cop if he can’t get you out of a trumped-up traffic stop with a disgruntled egomaniac?
What truly pisses me off, however, what really tears the nails from the bed, is knowing Randall gets off on this. He loves applying his authority to humiliate me. Busting a nut with his power trip.
Not wanting to make a scene, I stalk toward the rear bumper and appraise Randall with a cool look. “What would you like me to do?
Officer.
”
A smile stretches across his face. “You can start by reciting the alphabet. Backwards.”
If he thinks this weakens me, he’s sorely mistaken.
That which doesn’t kill me makes my anger stronger.