Chapter 6: Genevieve
GENEVIEVE
It’s dark outside by the time I shut off the computer in the office Friday night. I hadn’t intended to work so late—everyone else had long since gone home—but I was in a spreadsheet trance and just kept going until Heidi texted to remind me that I’d agreed to meet up later with the girls. It’s taken me the better part of two weeks, but I’ve finally managed to get a handle on the invoice tracking system. By next week, I should be caught up on all the outstanding accounts just in time to make payroll. I had to give myself a Google crash course on the software, but thankfully Mom had it set up to automate most of the process. Last thing I need is a bunch of angry employees when their paychecks are screwed up. While part of me is worried that doing too good a job might make me indispensable, I’m hoping that efficiency will help motivate Dad to allow someone else to take over soon.
As I’m locking up the building, a familiar pickup truck pulls into the parking lot. My shoulders tense when Cooper steps out and approaches me with the determination of a man with something on his mind.
“Hey, Coop.”
He’s identical to his brother, with dark hair and daunting brown eyes. Tall and fit, both arms covered in
tattoos. And yet, strangely, I’ve never been attracted to Cooper. Evan caught my eye, and even in the dark I could tell them apart, as if there was some distinct aura about each of them.
“We need to talk,” he tells me with an angry edge to his voice.
“Okay.” His abrupt tone puts me off, raising my defenses. I grew up the middle child with five brothers. Absolutely no one gets to come in hot at me. So I plaster on a placating smile. “What’s the problem?”
“Stay the hell away from Evan.” At least he’s direct.
I knew it was a bad idea showing up at the bonfire the other night. Every instinct said going anywhere near Evan wouldn’t end well, but I’d convinced myself if I kept my distance, didn’t engage, it wouldn’t be so bad. Clearly it was too close.
“Maybe you should be having this conversation with him, Coop.”
“I’m having it with you,” he bites back, and for a second I’m unnerved. I’ve never gotten over the uncanny feeling of arguing with Evan’s face but Cooper’s words. I’ve known them since we were kids, but when you’re as close as Evan and I were, it’s hard to reconcile these feelings of intimacy that belong to a completely different yet similar person. “He was doing fine until you came back. Now you’re not even here a few weeks and he’s beating the tar out of some college prick because you’ve got his head all fucked up again.”
“That’s not fair. We’ve barely even spoken.”
“And look at the damage it’s done.”
“I’m not Evan’s keeper,” I remind him, uncomfortable with the animosity wafting off him. “Whatever your brother’s up to, I’m not responsible for his behavior.”
“No, you’re just the reason for it.” Cooper is all but unrecognizable. He used to be the nice one. The reasonable one. Well, as reasonable as a Hartley twin can be. Cornering me in a parking
lot isn’t like him.
“Where’s this coming from? I thought we were cool. We used to be friends.” The three of us had been a trio of trouble once upon a time.
“Fuck off,” he says, scoffing. It startles me. He might as well have spit in my face. “You tore my brother’s heart out and took off without even a goodbye. What kind of cold-ass person does that? You have any idea what that did to him? No, Gen. We’re not friends. You lost that privilege. Nobody hurts Evan.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I stand there, mouth dry and mind blank, watching this person I’ve known practically my whole life look at me like I’m scum. Guilt burns at my throat, because I know he’s partially right. What I did
was
cold. No warning, no goodbye. I may as well have taken a match to my history with Evan and set it on fire. But it hadn’t occurred to me Cooper would give a shit that I’d left his brother. If anything, I figured he’d be relieved.
Apparently I was wrong.
“I mean it, Gen. Leave him alone.” With a last glare of contempt, he gets in his truck and drives away.
Later, at Joe’s Beachfront Bar, I’m still distracted by the encounter with Cooper. Amid the crappy music and scents of perfume and body spray wrestling in the salt air blowing in from the open patio, I keep rehashing the interaction. It was unsettling, the way he sought me out to basically say stay away or else. If I didn’t know Cooper, I’d have good reason to feel intimidated. As it is, though, I do know him. And his brother. So the more I spin the conversation over in my head, the more pissed off I get that he had the nerve to come and, what, tell me off? As if Evan weren’t a grown man with more than a few malfunctions of his very own that have nothing to do with me. Coop wants to play the
protector? Fine, whatever. But despite my lingering guilt over my abrupt departure, learning that Evan’s still going around causing trouble only strengthens my conviction that leaving had been the right thing to do. Evan’s had plenty of time to straighten himself out. If he hasn’t, that’s on him.
“Hey.” Heidi, who’s seated across from me at the high-top table, snaps her fingers in my face, waking me from my bitter stewing. Of all the girls in our group, I’m closest with Heidi, who’s probably the most like me. With her platinum bob and razor-sharp tongue, Heidi’s a total badass, a.k.a. my kind of girl. She also knows me far too well.
“You alive in there?” she adds, eyeing me with suspicion.
I answer with a half-hearted smile, ordering myself to be more present. Although we texted often when I was gone, I haven’t hung out with my friends in ages.
“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. I stab at the ice in my virgin cocktail with a straw. Nights like this, I could use a real drink.
“You sure you don’t want something stronger?” Alana asks, temptingly holding out her glass of tequila with just the lightest mist of lime and simple syrup.
“Leave her alone.” Steph, ever the defender of the weak, throws herself between me and peer pressure. “You know if she has a drink the convent won’t take her back.”
Okay, so she isn’t all that nice.
“Yes, Sister Genevieve,” Heidi says with a sarcastic smirk, speaking slowly like I’m an exchange student or something. An attempt at a crack on how long I’ve been away. “It must be overwhelming with all these lights and loud music. Do you remember music?”
“I moved to Charleston,” I tell her, throwing up my middle finger. “Not Amish country.”
“Right.” Alana takes another sip of her
drink, and the salty-sweet smell really does make me thirsty. “The notorious dry city of Charleston.”
“Yeah, no, that’s funny,” I say to their teasing. “You’re hilarious.”
They don’t get it. Not really. And I don’t blame them. These girls have been my best friends since we were kids, so to them there’s never been anything wrong with me. But there was. An uncontrollable destructive streak that drove my every decision when I was drinking. I wasn’t making good decisions. Couldn’t find the middle ground between moderation and obliteration. Other than a regrettable lapse last month on a trip to Florida where I woke up in a stranger’s bed, I’ve kept pretty well to sobriety. Not without effort, though.
“Then here’s to Gen.” Heidi raises her glass. “Who may have forgotten how to have a good time, but we’ll take her back anyway.”
Heidi’s always been good for a backhanded compliment. It’s her love language. If she’s not insulting you at least a little, you might as well be dead to her. I appreciate that about her, because there’s never any confusion about where she stands. It’s an honest way to live.
But she throws me for a loop by softening her tone again. “Welcome home, Gen. I really did miss you.” Then, as if realizing she’d actually—gasp—revealed a sliver of emotion, she scowls at me, adding, “Don’t ever leave us again, bitch.”
I hide a smile. “I’ll try not to.”
“Welcome home,” Steph and Alana echo, raising their glasses.
“So fill me in,” I say, because I’d love to talk about literally anything else. Between the funeral and moving back home, all anyone does is ask me how I’m doing. I’m sick of myself. “What else is going on?”
“Alana’s banging Tate,” Steph spits out with too much enthusiasm, as if the declaration has been nervously pacing in the wings all night, waiting for its entrance. While Heidi
and Alana are notoriously tight-lipped, Steph’s a huge gossip and has been since we were kids. She gets off on the drama, so long as it doesn’t involve her.
“Jesus, Steph.” Alana throws a cardboard coaster at her. “Say it a little louder.”
“What? It’s true.” Steph sips her drink with an unrepentant sparkle in her eyes.
“How’d that happen?” I ask curiously. Our friend Tate gets around, to put it mildly. Even among the more promiscuous in our wider circle of friends, he’s notorious. He’s not usually the type Alana goes for. She’s … well, particular, is a way of putting it.
Alana shrugs in response. “Darndest thing. I was stumbling around in the dark one night and, whaddya know, I tripped and fell on his dick.”
Interesting. Tis the season for summer hookups. Good for her, I guess.
Heidi rolls her eyes, unamused with Alana’s evasiveness. “More like hooking up since last fall.”
I raise an eyebrow. Since last fall? I’d never known either of them to be interested in long term. “So is this a thing, or … ?”
She gives another noncommittal head tilt that fails to convince. “An irregular occurrence of one-night stands. Of the extremely sporadic sort.”
“Then there’s Wyatt,” Steph adds like she’s sitting on a secret, all dumb smiles and arched eyebrows.
“Wyatt?” I echo in surprise. This revelation is even more baffling than the Tate one. “What about Ren?”
“You know how they’ve been doing the on-again/off-again dance for like three years? Dumping each other every other week? Well, it finally backfired,” Heidi reveals with a smirk. “She dumped him over something
stupid, and he moved on.”
Wow. I definitely didn’t see that coming. Lauren and Wyatt were similar to me and Evan in that way, constantly breaking up and making up, but I never expected them to end it for good.
“And you moved in on him?” I demand, turning to Alana. “Ren’s our friend—isn’t that against girl code?”
“I didn’t move in on him.” Alana huffs at the suggestion. “We’re not hooking up, no matter what this one thinks—” She glares at Steph. “For some ludicrous reason, he’s decided he has a thing for me.” She flips her copper-colored hair over one shoulder, looking annoyed. “I’m trying to shut it down, okay?”
Taking pity on her, I swiftly change the subject. “Catch me up on Cooper and the new girl,” I tell Heidi. It wasn’t so long ago Heidi was doing the “will they, won’t they” dance with Coop. In their case, however, the friends with benefits arrangement blew up in her face. “What’s her deal?”
“Mackenzie,” she replies, without the hint of irritation that had at one point tinged her occasional texts to complain about Cooper and his new rich girlfriend. “Garnet dropout. Basically walked out on her parents and let them cut her off.”
“It was a whole thing,” Steph agrees. “Oh, and she bought the old boardwalk hotel. The Beacon. She’s been restoring it to reopen soon.”
Damn. She
is
loaded. Must be nice. Me, I’d settle for having any kind of direction about what I’m doing with my life. Filling out spreadsheets and chasing down my brothers for invoices isn’t exactly my lifelong dream. And as much as I appreciate everything my dad’s built to support us, the family business feels more like a trap than an opportunity. It isn’t me. Though hell if I know what is.
“She’s actually kind of cool,” Heidi says, albeit grudgingly. “I wasn’t a fan at first. But they’re good together, and Coop’s usually in a better mood since she’s been around, so that’
s something.”
Could’ve fooled me. Whatever this girl’s effect on him, it isn’t foolproof.
“What’s that look?” Alana asks.
“He sort of accosted me when I was leaving work.”
“He what?” Heidi’s evident alarm snaps her upright.
It sounds stupid to say out loud. Cooper’s got a reputation for being a bit of a hellion, but he’s easily the tamer of the Hartley twins. Scolding me in a parking lot still feels wildly out of character for him. Then again, where his brother’s concerned, he’s always had a short fuse. Evan has that effect on people.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I tell them. “He all but threatened me to stay away from Evan. Said he doesn’t consider me a friend anymore after the way I hurt his brother.”
“Harsh,” Steph says with sympathy.
“I guess he has a point about that part.” I pretend to be unbothered, shrugging. “But he also blamed me for Evan being out of control, which isn’t exactly fair. Evan’s a grown man. He’s responsible for his own actions.”
Alana looks away like she’s got something to say.
I narrow my eyes. “What is it?”
“No, nothing.” She shakes her head, but there’s clearly more she’s reluctant to elaborate on. When the three of us press her with silence, she finally relents. “It’s just, I mean Evan went and got the shit kicked out of him to make you jealous. Seems like the kind of thing Cooper would notice and disapprove of.”
“So you’re taking his side, then? It’s all my fault?”
“No. All I’m saying is, the way Cooper thinks, he’s going to look at that and you showing up as a bad omen of things to come. Let’s be honest, he’s always been terrible at keeping Evan in line. He probably thinks if he can scare you off, it’ll make everything easier.”
“That’s a crappy
thing to do,” Steph says.
“Hey, I’m just guessing.” Alana finishes her drink and drops her glass on the table. “Another round?”
Everyone nods, and she and Steph leave for a pit stop at the restroom before putting in an order for round two.
After draining the last of her drink, Heidi eyes me warily and makes an uneasy entreaty. “So, listen. This is awkward, but, um, you know Jay and I are sort of dating.”
My eyes widen. “Jay as in my brother Jay?”
“Yeah.”
“Um. No. I did not.”
“Yeah, well, it’s new-ish. Honestly, he’d been chasing me for a date since the fall, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. He finally broke me down a couple months ago. I wanted to make sure you’re cool with it. I don’t want things to be weird with us.”
What’s weird is seeing Heidi squirm. Hardly anything penetrates her don’t-mess-with-me exterior or puts her on the defensive. She’d spook a bull shark. So it’s cute, I guess, that she wants to ask my permission to date my older brother.
“You want my blessing, is that it?” I tease, sucking air from the bottom of my glass of mostly ice melt while I make her wait. “Yeah, it’s fine. This town is so small it was only a matter of time before one of you ended up with a West brother. I’m just surprised it’s Jay.”
Jay’s the sweetest of my brothers. Well, after Craig, anyway, but Craig doesn’t count because he literally just graduated high school. Jay is twenty-four and doesn’t have a mean bone in his softie body. He’s almost the complete opposite of Heidi, who’s all sharp edges.
“Trust me, I’m equally surprised,” she says dryly, running a hand through her blonde bob. “I swear, I’ve never gone out with anyone so damn nice. Like, what’
s his problem?”
I burst out laughing. “Right?”
“The other night we were on our way to the drive-in and he pulled over to help a little old lady cross the street. Who the fuck does that?”
“Please don’t tell me you screwed my brother at the drive-in.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you.”
“Oh God. I walked right into that one, huh?”
“Uh, hi there, Genevieve,” a male voice interrupts.
Heidi and I turn as a cheerfully nervous guy arrives at our table, dressed in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and khaki pants. He’s cute, in a Boy Scout sort of way, with brown hair and freckles. If it weren’t for a vague feeling I recognize him, I’d say he was a tourist who got lost and stumbled away from the boardwalk.
“I’m Harrison Gates,” he says. “We went to high school together.”
“Oh, sure, right.” The name barely nudges my memory, but now that he’s placed his face for me, he does seem familiar. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” He directs a smile at Heidi as well, but his gaze remains focused on me. “I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to offer my condolences about your mom.”
“Thank you,” I tell him sincerely. Whatever my mixed feelings about her death, the nice part about coming home to a small town is that people do generally give a damn. Even people who would have sooner run me over with their car a few years ago have come up to say a few kind words. It’s what you do. “I appreciate that.”
“Yeah.” His smile grows larger and somewhat less anxious as his posture relaxes. “And, you know, I wanted to say welcome back.”
Heidi gives me a look that appears to be a warning to bail, but I don’t understand her alarm. Harrison seems nice enough.
“So what are you up to these days?” I ask, because it seems rude not to talk to the guy
for a minute, at least.
“Well, I just joined the Avalon Bay Sheriff’s Department, if you can believe it. Still sounds weird to say it out loud.”
“Really? Huh. You seem too nice to be a cop.”
He laughs. “I hear that a lot, actually.”
Even before the incident last year, I’d had plenty of unfortunate run-ins with the local police. When we were kids, it seemed they had nothing better to do than to follow us around town harassing us. It was a sport for them. The school bullies but with guns and badges. That asshole Rusty Randall being the biggest bully of them all.
“Watch out with this one, Rookie. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
As if he heard me cursing him in my head, a uniformed Deputy Randall saunters up and slaps a hand on Harrison’s shoulder.
My entire body instantly goes ice-cold.
Heidi snaps a comeback at him that I don’t really hear above the deafening fury screaming through my skull. My teeth dig into the inside of my cheek to keep me from spouting off at the mouth.
“If you don’t mind,” Randall says to Harrison, “I need a moment of her time.”
He’s gained weight since I last saw him. Lost a lot more hair. Where he used to hide his true self behind a friendly smile and a wave, now his face is contorted in a permanent scowl of resentment and malice.
“You know what, we’re a little busy here,” Heidi says, cocking her head at him in a way that begs a fight. “But if you’d like to make an appointment, maybe we’ll get back to you.”
“Was that your car I saw parked across the street?” he asks me in a mocking tone. “Maybe I ought to run the tag for unpaid tickets.” Even Harrison seems uncomfortable at Randall’s threat, eyeing me with confusion. “What do you
say, Genevieve?”
“It’s fine,” I interject before this gets out of hand. Heidi’s looking like she’s about to flip a table. And poor Harrison. He really has no idea what he’s stepped in. “Let’s talk, Deputy Randall.”
What more can he really do to me, after all?