Chapter 21: Evan
EVAN
“Mistakes were made.”
Riley laughs.
“That much is clear. It may have started when I steered us into another boat coming off the starting line. It may have been when we failed to make the first turn around the buoy. Who’s to say, really?”
A hysterical noise escapes his throat, a cross between a snort and a howl. Riley hasn’t stopped laughing since we rammed the dock. No, not rammed. We
nudged
the dock. Rammed would suggest a great rate of speed, which I don’t think we achieved during the entire race.
Sopping wet, I wring out my T-shirt over the railing of the boardwalk while the trophy presentation kicks off at the other end of the marina.
“Dude,” he chokes out between giggles. “We failed miserably.”
“Not true,” I protest. “There was a high point there when we managed to right the ship and not entirely capsize.”
He’s still laughing as we make our way to the crowd gathered around the platform, cheering for the winners and politely congratulating all those who placed. I’m just glad we’re not getting stuck with a bill for salvaging the boat off the
bottom of the bay.
As it turns out, I can’t sail for shit. It’s hard, actually. So many ropes and pulleys and winches, who the fuck knew. I thought you just put the sail up and steered, but apparently there’s such a thing as oversteering, and steering left to go right for some stupid reason. Almost the second the starting gun went off, we were discombobulated. Came in dead last after tipping the boat and nearly going in the drink.
But Riley’s still laughing, absolutely stoked on the whole ordeal. Mostly at my suffering, I think, but that’s okay. The kid had a great time, which was the whole damn point to begin with.
“There’s my guy.” His aunt Liz, a petite woman with pretty brown eyes and long hair tied in a low ponytail, finds us among the spectators and gives him a hug. “You have fun?”
“It was a blast,” Riley says. “For a minute there, I thought we were goners.”
“Oh,” she says, covering her alarm with a laugh. “Well, I’m glad you both survived.”
“Don’t worry. I’m a much better swimmer than I am a sailor. I wouldn’t let your kid drown.” I say this, of course, shirtless, with a full back of tattoos. Lady probably thinks I look more like Riley’s drug dealer than his role model.
“Can I have some money for the hot dog stand?” Riley pleads. “I’m starving.”
With an indulgent smile, Riley’s aunt hands him a few bucks and sends him off.
“Trust me,” I assure her, now concerned that putting a kid’s life in mortal peril might reflect poorly on my participation in the program. “He wasn’t in any danger. Just a minor mishap.”
Liz waves off my concern. “I’m not worried. He hasn’t had this much fun in a long time.”
I think about the Riley I met that first afternoon—the shy, quiet teen who spent the first couple hours
staring at his feet and mumbling to himself. Cut to today, where he’s shouting commands at me and taking snarky jabs at my lack of nautical prowess. I don’t know if it’s what the program had in mind, but I’d call that improvement. For our relationship, at least.
“He’s a cool kid. Who knows, maybe he can teach me how to sail and we can try again next year.” I surprise myself when it occurs to me what I’ve just said. I hadn’t given much thought to how long this arrangement would last. But now that I give it some consideration, I couldn’t imagine Riley and I not being pals a year from now.
“You know, I think you mean that.” Liz studies me, and I can’t help wondering what she sees. “I do appreciate everything you’ve done for him. I know it’s only been a couple weeks, but you’re starting to mean a lot to Riley. You’re good for him.”
“Yeah, well …” I slide my sunglasses on and make another attempt at wringing out my wet shirt. “He’s not a total asshole, so …”
She laughs at that, letting me off the hook. I’ve never been great at taking compliments. Being the consummate screwup doesn’t often give a lot of reason for praise, so I guess you can say I haven’t had much practice. And yet somehow, this kid turns out to be one of the few things I’ve gotten right. I’ve seen him several times a week for more than two weeks, and despite all odds, I haven’t screwed him up yet.
“I need to get him home so I can head to work,” Riley’s aunt says. “But I’d like it if you came by for dinner one night. The three of us. Maybe next week?”
The fleeting notion of what would be in some alternate universe if Liz took a shine to me skips through my brain. Until I glance over her shoulder to spot black hair and long, tan legs, and the universe—
this
universe—reminds me there’s only one woman for me
on this plane.
Gen is strutting down the boardwalk in some girly white dress that gets my blood hot. Because she’s trying. She’s trying to impress this dweeb, to look the part by dulling herself to his milquetoast sensibilities. She’s grinding down the sharp edges that make her everything that’s fierce and dangerous and extraordinary, and I won’t stand for it.
“Sure,” I tell Liz, while my attention remains elsewhere. “Let’s do that. Tell Riley bye for me? Just saw a friend I need to say hi to.”
I jog through the crowd, dodging sweaty tourists and sunburnt children to catch up to Gen. Then, I slow down and manage to get in front of her and the guy, because now she’ll have to notice me and say something, alleviating all guilt of crashing her date for a second time.
“Evan?”
I feign surprise as I turn around. “Oh, hey.”
I can sense her rolling her eyes behind those reflective sunglasses. She smirks and shakes her head. “Oh, hey? You get you’re terrible at this, right?”
Sometimes I forget I’ve never been able to put one over on her a day in my life. “Yeah, you know, I’d love to hang around, but I’m kinda busy, so …”
“Uh-huh.”
With my shirt slung over my shoulder, I nod at Deputy Dolittle in his standard-issue Tommy Bahama. “Nice shirt.”
“Stop,” Gen warns, though she’s still smiling. Because she knows, dude walks around dressed like that, he’s asking for it. “What do you want?”
“Hey, there’s no hard feelings, right?” I offer my hand to the deputy. “Truce?”
“Sure.” He grips my hand with what must be all the force he can muster. I almost feel bad for the
guy. Almost. “Bygones.”
“Evan …” She cocks her head at me, impatient.
“You look nice.”
“Don’t do that.”
I fight a grin. “I can’t give you a compliment?”
“You know what I mean.” She likes it. The amusement in her voice betrays her words.
“You do look nice.” I’ll always prefer the real Gen, the girl in a pair of cutoff shorts and a loose tank top over a bikini. Or nothing at all. But that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate this little white slinky number that, in the right light, I can all but see through against her tan skin. “Big plans today?”
“We saw your race,” the guy says. He could tell me his name a thousand times, and it still wouldn’t stick. I could cover my eyes right now and have no idea what the guy looks like. He should have gone into the CIA or something; a dude this incapable of leaving an impression would do well, I imagine.
“It was, um, eventful.” Gen tries and fails to pretend she isn’t checking me out.
“These things are always so boring,” I tell her. “Thought we’d add a little drama.”
“Is that what that was? Drama?”
“Rather be last than boring.”
Even behind those sunglasses, I feel her dragging her eyes down my bare chest. The way her teeth tug at the inside of her lip conjures all sorts of images in my head. I want to shove my fingers in her hair, put her up against the wall, and make this guy watch her melt against my lips. Whatever ideas she’s got about playing the field or making me jealous, we both know he can’t kiss her like I can. He’ll never know her mouth, her body, the way I do.
“Why don’t you join us for lunch?” the chaperone interjects.
Even Gen looks like she’d forgotten he was there. She startles, glancing over at him. “No, you don’t
have to do that.”
“Lunch sounds great,” I say cheerfully.
“Seriously?” This time her exasperation is directed at him. “Harrison. We had plans.”
Surprisingly, he doesn’t budge. “I insist.”
Oh, buddy. I don’t know what he thinks he’s playing at, but there’s no scenario where he puts Gen and me in a room together and it goes in his favor.
“Fine. I’m going to the restroom first.” She points a finger at my chest. “Behave. And put a shirt on.”
Gen leaves us standing outside a tacky gift shop. I’m content to keep my thoughts to myself, but it’s Officer Chuckles who speaks up.
“She’s a special woman,” he starts.
That he talks about her like he knows her at all grates my nerves. “Yep.”
“This sounds silly, but even back in high school I had a crush on her.”
Back in high school we were making out in the yearbook darkroom while skipping third period.
“I know what this is,” he announces, squaring up to me like he just found his balls. “You think you can intimidate me or scare me. Well, I promise it won’t work.”
“Dude, I don’t know you.” I remind myself he’s a cop, and that I promised both Gen and Cooper I was done picking fights. Still, he’s got to know I’m not the guy you test. “But if I were trying to scare you off, I wouldn’t be shy or cute about it. I’d just do it.”
“What I’m saying is, I like Genevieve. I intend to keep dating her. And nothing you do is going to change that. Keep crashing our dates, if you want. It won’t make a difference.”
I have to hand it to the guy. Even when putting himself between me and what’s mine, he does it with a Boy Scout smile.
Almost polite. Civil.
But it doesn’t erase the fact that I’d step over his bleeding carcass to get to her. However long it takes for Gen to come back to me, I’ve already won this fight. He just hasn’t figured it out yet.
“Then by all means,” I say with a half smile. “Let the best man win.”