Seth’s eyebrows draw together. “I don’t love yah that much,” he says and laughs his way back into the house.
Then he pops his head around the corner. “I almost forgot,” he says. “Kendra will be over early in the morning—thought I’d warn you.”
I raise my index and middle fingers from the chair arm in response. “I’ll be sure to lock my bedroom door tonight.”
The screen door cracks lightly against the wood frame as it bounces closed behind him.
Kendra. Love her to death, but the most obnoxious alarm clock I’ve ever had the displeasure of being awoken by.
Gazing back out at the ocean, I let the scene with Sienna from earlier today play though my mind again. I see that long, flowing skirt clinging to her petite form and her soft hair draping her shoulders. Her cute feet covered by those not-so-sand-friendly heels. Her dimpled smile and the mascara smudged all over her face that I didn’t have the heart to point out to her—it didn’t make any difference to me anyway. She’s a beautiful girl, and sweet enough and with just the right amount of confidence, from what little I know about her, that she could have spinach in her teeth and I’d still find her beautiful.
But maybe Seth’s right. Maybe Seth’s lifestyle with women isn’t so bad after all. I try to tell myself that from time to time, in times just like this when I’m trying everything in my power to convince myself that I need to back off. I always think about why Seth is the way he is and I can’t help but agree with his philosophy. He shut himself off completely from relationships when his fiancée dumped him. He loved that girl, and she loved him, but all of us—me, Seth, Braedon, Kendra, and Landon—knew it would happen. Because it always does with guys like us: Most girls who don’t share our lifestyle of extreme sports can’t handle it and usually take off in the other direction, the safe, “normal” direction, the second they find out what we do.
I tilt my head back and shut my eyes, inhaling a deep breath. What if Sienna goes looking for me tomorrow on the beach? Damn, I wish I hadn’t talked to her because now I’ll feel like shit if she does look for me and I’m not there. I don’t want to come off as a dick by standing her up.
Defeated by my even stronger conscience, I accept the facts: It’ll never work with a girl like her, and I’d be more of a dick to pursue it.
There’s a far-off pounding muffled in my head, like the sound of a hammer drilling a stubborn nail into a wooden beam. I groan and roll over, covering my head with a pillow. My mouth is dry and I can taste my breath, hot and sour and fetid. BAM! BAM! BAM! The pounding is getting louder. And then a familiar voice follows: urgent, a little rough, though tinged with femininity.
“Luke, I need my green backpack!” I hear from the other side of my bedroom door. “Have you seen it?”
I wake up fully, grabbing the pillow and pressing it firmly against my face as a low, guttural groan of protest rumbles through my chest. With my eyes closed, I see a visual of where I last saw that green backpack and then want to kick myself for not taking it out of my bedroom yesterday when I thought about it.
“Luke?” Kendra calls out again. “Come on, I know I left it over here. We can’t find it anywhere in the house.”
A swath of cool air brushes my face as I pull the pillow to the side. My eyes crack open a slit at first, instinctively wary of the possibility of blinding sunlight beaming through the curtain on the window above the bed. But it’s still early, the sun just barely making its appearance in the sky, bathing my room in a soft gray hue. My eyes open the rest of the way, but my body is having a hard time catching up.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“All right! Hold on a sec!”
I toss the sheet off and crawl out of the bed, scanning the floor in search of my boxers. When I find them, I stumble trying to put them on in a rush.