Chapter 5: Evan
EVAN
All the freaks come out at night. Under a full moon, we’re the hidden images of ourselves, revealed in silver light. It’s the Bay turned wild with inhibition and mischief, everybody hot and bothered and aching for a good time. Any excuse for a party.
On the beach, dozens of our friends, and more than a few random tagalongs, surround a bonfire. Our house is set back just beyond the dunes and grassy tree-dotted lawn, its outline evident only in the orange porch lights. It’s a good time, kicking back with a few beers, smoking a bowl. A couple people with guitars haggle over song requests while a nearby group plays strip glow frisbee. Whatever it takes to get laid these days, I guess.
“So this clone is wasted, right,” Jordy, an old high school friend of ours, says to those of us gathered around the fire, sitting on a driftwood log while he rolls a joint. Dude could do this shit with his eyes closed and it’d still be the tightest, neatest roll you’ve ever seen. “And the guy stumbles into our table. Like knocks right into us. He keeps calling me Parker.”
We laugh, because it’s such a clone name. Those collar-wearing pansy-ass Richie Riches who go to Garnet College are nothing if not predictable. Can’t hold their liquor and making it everyone
else’s problem.
“For like twenty minutes he’s talking to us, holding on to the table to keep from splattering on the floor. No idea what the hell he’s babbling about. Then suddenly he’s like,
hey, come on, bros, after-party at my house
.”
“No,” Mackenzie says, eyes flashing wide and dread in her voice. “You did not.” She’s keeping Cooper in a better mood tonight, sitting in his lap with her tits shoved up in his face. Got him well occupied, which is a relief. I was getting sick of his tantrums.
Jordy shrugs. “I mean, he insisted. So the four us, right, are pretty much having to carry this guy out of the bar. Then he hands me his keys and says,
you drive, it’s the blue one
. I press the button on the fob, and this Maserati SUV flashes its lights at me. Like no way, right? That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar car. I’m pretty sure I stepped in piss at some point in that dirty bar bathroom, but sure, guy.”
“Just tell me he still has his kidneys,” I say with a grin.
“Yeah, yeah. We didn’t chop him or the car for parts.” Jordy waves his hand, then lights the joint. “Anyway. So the guy goes,
Car, take me home
. And the thing is like,
okay, Christopher, here’s your route home
. At that point I’m thinking, well, shit. So I rev that baby up and start driving. About a half hour later we get to his stupid-huge mansion down the coast. I’m talking iron gate and topiaries and shit. So we make it there alive and the dude’s like,
hey, want to see something cool?
”
Always the famous last words. Like the time our buddy Wyatt tried the knife trick from
Aliens
and had to get thirty-seven stiches and have a tendon reattached. Come to think of it, that was one of the last times Genevieve and I hung out. Which, until all the blood, was a pretty good time. Can’t say for sure how we ended up on the sixty-five-foot Hatteras sportfishing boat out in the middle of the bay, only that we had
a nightmare of a time getting it to the dock and somehow still managed to come ashore about ten miles from where we were aiming. Navigating gets a hell of a lot harder in the dark after a few Fireballs.
I can’t believe I’d almost forgotten about that night. But I guess I’ve done a lot of forgetting over the last year. Or tried to, at least. For a while, I expected Gen would show up as if nothing had happened. Like she overslept for six months. Then seven, eight months—a year gone, and I’d finally trained myself to stop thinking about her every time this thing or that reminded me of another time when. So of course, just when I’ve almost got her out of my system, she’s back. A fresh, unfiltered shot straight into my bloodstream when I was damn near clean. Now all I taste are her lips. I feel her nails down my back every night while I’m lying in bed. I wake up hearing her voice. It’s infuriating.
“This crazy bastard thinks he’s Hawkeye or some shit,” Jordy says, passing the joint around the circle. “Running around with a bow, shooting flaming arrows all over his backyard. I’m like,
nah, white boy, I’ve seen this movie
. The guys and I are gonna bail but, oh, right, we drove this dude’s car and we’re stuck out here behind an iron gate.”
I can’t help glancing toward the house. I keep expecting Gen to come walking out of the shadows. I feel Mackenzie giving me the eye and realize she’s caught me looking. Or rather, caught me
hoping
. Because I know Heidi or one of the girls will have invited Gen, and if she doesn’t come, it’s because she’d rather hide out at her dad’s place than chance seeing me again. The notion seriously grates.
“We have to make a run for it because this dude is out of his mind, and we’re climbing through these damn hedges and getting all cut up. I’ve got Danny on my shoulder to heave him up over the fence. Juan is trying to get an Uber but the reception sucks, so the app isn’t loading. We’re hauling ass, hearing all kinds of commotion behind us, while I’m thinking,
one of these rich folks are going to think that house is burning down and call the cops on us. Sure enough, about ten minutes later, we’re heading back toward the main road and a car comes up real slow behind us.”
I hear a voice and look over my shoulder. It’s Gen, standing a few yards away with Heidi and some of the girls. She’s wearing a long-sleeve shirt falling off one shoulder and barely revealing a tiny pair of shorts hugging her ass like they’re painted on. Long black hair cascades down her back. Kill me.
Gen’s got this way about her. Confident and cool but with this edge of absolute batshit terror, like at any moment she could blow a kiss and drag a knife through your parachute, then push you out of a plane. There’s nothing sexier than the way her blue eyes smile when she’s got mayhem on her mind.
“Then the car stops. Man, my chest is pounding. A guy sticks his head out the window and shouts at us:
Get in, assholes. Drunk Lannister is on the loose and it’s the Battle of the Blackwater out there.
”
The group erupts in laughter. The fire flashes as someone coughs up a mouthful of beer. I note Gen is pointedly not looking in this direction.
Jordy gets the joint back and takes a hit. “Turns out Luke went home with some clone chick down the street and was outside when they saw this dude shooting off these arrows, which caught at least two boats on fire at their docks. Neighbors were running out of their houses firing back flares. Like, sheer madness.”
Cooper catches me watching Gen. Without a word, I hear him scolding me. Then he shakes his head, which may as well be a dare. He might be settled down, but I still intend to have a good time. And I know Gen. Maybe she was on some cold turkey kick before, but now that she’s back, there’s no point in either of us pretending we know how to stay away from each other. It’s chemistry.
Wandering away from the bonfire, I
approach her. I’m half hard already, thinking about the last time I saw her. Legs wrapped around me. Teeth digging into my shoulder. My skin still bears the marks she left behind. Just the sight of her has me wanting to take her to bed and make up for time lost.
She feels me coming before I open my mouth, casting her gaze over her shoulder. There’s the briefest flicker of recognition—the shared spark of lust and longing—before her expression turns impassive.
“What are you drinking?” I say as what I figure is an easy way in.
“I’m not.”
It’s awkward right from the off. All the familiarity of our conversation back at her house—gone. To the point that even Heidi and Steph wince with embarrassment.
“What do you want?” I ask, ignoring her attitude. If that’d ever worked on me, we wouldn’t have kept getting back together. “I’ll run up to the house and make you something.”
“I’m good, thanks.” Gen stares off at the waves climbing up the sand.
I stifle a sigh. “Can we talk? Take a walk with me.”
She pulls her hair over her shoulder in a move I recognize right away. It’s her fuck-off flip. The I’ve-already-stopped-hearing-you hair toss. Like we’re strangers.
“Yeah, no,” she says, voice flat and all but unrecognizable. “I’m not even sticking around. Just stopped by to say hey.”
But not to me.
“So it’s like that?” I try to curb the bite in my tone and fail. “You come back here and pretend you don’t know me?”
“Okay,” Heidi interjects with a bored roll of her eyes. “Thanks for stopping by, but this is a penis-free zone tonight. Run along, Evan.”
“Fuck off, Heidi.” She’s always been a
shit-stirrer.
“Yep, happy to.” At that, she and Steph drag Gen closer to the bonfire and leave me standing there like an idiot.
Cool. Whatever. I don’t need this aggravation. Genevieve wants to play games, fine. I grab a beer from the cooler and notice a group of girls stroll up to the party looking like they stumbled out of Daddy’s Bentley. They’re all dressed in the same sort of little ruffle tops and short skirts—straight off the clone assembly line. Definitely Garnet students, and my money’s on sorority sisters. Gen’s complete opposites in every way. They stand around looking lost and confused for a minute, until one of them homes in on me.
She tries her best to look chill while slipping in the sand to stride over. With too much lip gloss, she smiles at me. “Can I get a drink?”
I happily pop the cap off a beer for her and grab a few more for her friends. The best part about rich girls coming to slum it out here with the townies is they’re easily amused. Tell them a few embellished stories about near-death exploits and running from the cops, and they eat that shit up. It scratches their sticking-it-to-the-parents itch, allowing them to live dangerously from a safe, vicarious distance, and gives them something to tell their friends about. Normally, feeling like I’m an attraction at a zoo would piss me off, but tonight I’m not the one with the sour face.
As the chicks let their hands linger on my arms while they laugh at my jokes and peel up my shirt after I tell them I have tattoos, Gen is staring daggers from her spot near the fire. Hitting me with a glare that says,
really, them?
And I don’t give her the satisfaction of a response, because if she wants to pretend I’m dead to her, then I’m cold all over.
“I’ve got one too,” the bravest of the girls informs me. She’s cute, in a cookie-cutter clone sort of way. Nice rack, at least. “Got it on spring break last year
in Mexico. Want to see?”
Before I can answer, she pulls her skirt up to flash the inside of her thigh at me. Her tat is a jellyfish, looking like it’s gliding up into her lacy panties. I don’t know how that’s supposed to be sexy. But Gen watches me look, and that’s kind of hot.
“Did it hurt?” I ask her, meeting Gen’s eyes over the girl’s shoulder.
“A little. But I like the pain.”
“Yeah, I get that.” It’s almost too easy. This chick is practically begging me to take her back to the house. “It’s pain that teaches us what pleasure is. Or how would we even know the difference?”
Eventually, her friends give up trying to share me and wander off to find their own one-night stands, and it doesn’t take long before she kisses me and I’m copping a handful of her ass. It’s a familiar routine, one I’ve indulged in plenty of times this past year. Forgetting myself in a hungry tongue and eager body meant forgetting about Gen for a while, not having to remember the cold truth that she’d left me without a word.
But right now, she’s the only thing on my mind. When I come up for air, I spot Gen biting her lip at me like she’d slit my throat if there weren’t so many witnesses. Ha. Too damn bad. She started it.
“Motherfucker!”
I blink, and suddenly there’s some polo-wearing douchebag crowding my sightline. His face is red with anger, making him look like a pissed-off lobster. He calls the girl Ashlyn, who scrambles away from me with a guilty look about a second before the dude sucker punches me. It isn’t a great shot and barely naps my head sideways.
“Well, that was rude,” I remark, readjusting my jaw. I’ve taken so many hits in my life, I barely feel it anymore.
“You stay the hell away from her!” He’s all hopped up on his macho bullshit, and he’s got his buddies
behind him.
I look over at Ashlyn, but she’s not at my side anymore. She’s huddled with her friends five yards away, refusing to meet my eyes. The smug gleam on her face as she watches Mr. Polo tells me I was more than frivolous entertainment for her tonight. I was payback.
“Easy, there,” I tell the guy. A few heads turn, then several more as the party becomes aware of the confrontation. “Your sister and I were just getting acquainted.”
“That’s my girlfriend, asshole.”
“You’re sleeping with your sister? That’s fucked up, dude.”
His second punch is stronger. The taste of blood fills my mouth as I lick at the gash in my lip. I spit a wad of red mucous in the sand.
“Come on, pretty boy,” I taunt, smiling with red, wet teeth. My arms tingle with expectant energy. “You can do better than that. She even showed me her tattoo.”
He comes at me again, but this time I dodge the shot and send him to the ground with blood pouring out of his nose. We wrestle, sand sticking to the blood streaking down our shirts. We exchange blows, rolling around until some of his buddies and mine finally jump in to tear us apart. My friends tell the clones to get lost. They’re outnumbered, after all. Still, as pretty boy and his group are retreating, I can’t help feeling interrupted, my muscles not nearly tired and the adrenaline still running hot.
“Come again any time,” I shout after them.
Then I turn around to a wave of salt water splashing me in the face.
When I wipe my eyes, Gen’s standing there with an empty red cup. I smirk at her. “Thanks, I was thirsty.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“He hit me first.” My lip stings and my hand is sore, but I’m otherwise unscathed. I reach for
her, but she steps away.
“You haven’t changed a bit.” At that, she tosses the cup at my feet and leaves with Heidi and Steph, her look of dismissive disgust landing harder than any blow I endured from the party crasher.
I haven’t changed a bit? Why
should
I change? I’m the same person she’s always known. Only difference is she disappeared for a year and came back with a superiority complex. Pretending to be someone she’s not. Because I felt it, the other day at her house. The real Genevieve. This new chick is an act, and not a very good one. I don’t know who she thinks she’s impressing, but I’m not about to feel bad about being honest. At least one of us is.
“What was that?” Cooper follows me up to the house as I reach the back deck.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I say, pulling open the sliding glass door to the kitchen.
“Hey.” He grabs my shoulder. “Everyone was having a good time until you had to start some shit.”
“I didn’t start anything.” This is so typical. Some random dude messes with me, and Cooper makes it my fault. “He decided to throw down with me.”
“Yeah. It’s always the other guy. But somehow they always pick you. Why is that?”
“Just lucky, I guess.” I try to walk away again but Cooper gets in my path and shoves my chest.
“You need to get your shit together. We’re not kids anymore. Picking fights because you’ve got some chip on your shoulder has gotten real old, Evan.”
“Just once, it’d be nice if you took my side.”
“Then stop being on the wrong side.”
Fuck this. I push him aside and go upstairs to take a shower. Cooper has always refused to see my side of anything. He’s too busy being a judgmental prick. Must be all warm and cozy in his Good Twin delusion, but
I’m sick of it.
Waiting for the water to heat up, I stare at my reflection in the mirror and experience a jolt of shock. My lip’s a bit swollen, but not too bad. No, it’s the ravaged look in my eyes that startles me. It matches the broken, battered feeling I’ve been struggling to ignore since my best friend skipped town on me, but I hope like hell I wasn’t wearing that expression back there with Gen. She knows she stuck a knife in me when she bailed, but I’ll be damned if she sees the damage it wrought.