Giving In: The Sandy Cove Series (Book 1) (3 page)

“Harlow.”

“Harlow…” He taps his finger to his chin, squints his eyes, and takes a sip from his cup. “Harlow, oh, Willow’s friend. You are in big trouble, Missy. She’s been having a heart attack waiting for you.” Mohawk man smiles. I roll my eyes. I knew it. Willow is so high strung, and I’m surprised she didn’t have a search party out looking for me. I pop my trunk and grab my suitcase. When I close the trunk and look back up towards mohawk man, he’s gone. Second man tonight who has the manners of a Neanderthal. Twenty three year old guys are assholes. I spin around after retrieving my suitcase, and standing there, hand extended out to me, is mohawk man.

“Max Vincent. Nice to meet you.” I return the gesture.

“Nice to meet you. Harlow Hannum.”

“You are in the dog house with that crazy friend of yours. She’s nuts, you know that right?”

I chuckle because his statement is right on the nose.

“Yes, this is true. I’ve known her since the 6th grade.” I give him a half-smile.

I know she’s nuts. Now a stranger knows it too. Way to make a good first impression, Willow.

“Well, I’ve known her for less than a day, and I too know this is true. Let me grab that suitcase for you. Anything else I can bring up?”

Max seems like a nice guy. Cute, polite, and I dig the close-cropped mohawk, his ‘Keep Calm and Party On’ t-shirt, and the black Chuck Taylor’s. “I’m good. Just have to get a box of stuff from the back seat.”

“Ok, great. I’ll carry this up for you.”

Max grabs my suitcase and begins to walk up a flight of wooden steps that are located beside the house I’m staying in. It’s dark so I’m not really sure what the house is like. There are a lot of windows, that I can tell. We reach the top, and I follow Max through a sliding glass door which leads to a kitchen. I see Willow sitting there with our other friend, Thea. She turns and just the way she looks at me, makes me think, yep, I’m in big trouble. Max turns to my ear and whispers, “Certifiably crazy. I feel bad for ya.” He winks at me and flashes a smile.

“Harlow Hannum, where in the hell have you been? I was ready to call the cops.” She hops up and stalks towards me, grabbing my shoulders, and I can faintly smell the scent of hops and barley on her breath.

“No need, I was just with them. I got pulled over.”

“Why would you get stopped by the cops? What did you do?” Willow asks in a tone a mother would use to scold a teenager. She flips her long, blonde hair over one shoulder and takes an autocratic stance before me.

“Nothing. He thought I was drinking and driving, but I bent down to get my phone that dropped on the floor of my car. I may have swerved off the road a bit.”

“Great, Har. You are in town for five minutes and already have a run in with the fuzz. Am I going to have to put a leash on you this summer?”

“First time in Sandy Cove I take it.”

“No, Mr. Mohawk. It’s not her first time. We were here last summer, stayed at the Beach Comber Inn,” Willow spews at Max, obviously annoyed with his questioning.

“Were you invited into this conversation what’s-your-name… Max is it?” Willow says with attitude.

“Geez, bring it down a notch, Miss Crazy Pants. I helped her with her suitcase.”

“Willow, relax. The cop, who pulled me over, led me here. I was lost, and he knew where the house was. Max was on the deck and asked who I was when I pulled up.”

I turn to him and out of Willow’s grasp, surprised.

“Max, when I pulled up, you called out to the cop and referred to him by name. How do you know him?”

“Cruz? Cruz lives…” Before he can finish, we are suddenly interrupted by Porter, Willow’s cousin, as he pulls open the sliding door and strolls in.

“Harlow, you made it! Wills was going nutso. We were about to send out a search party to look for you.” Porter comes up to me, pulls me to his chest, and gives me a bear hug. I love Porter. He’s a great guy and has been protecting Willow and me ever since we grew boobs. Porter has the face of a noble dignitary, someone with money, aristocratic even. Tall, well over 6’2” and shoulders that are proportionally fitting for his stature. Chiseled chin, dark hair, thick and wavy, perfect nose, cleft in the chin, and a smile of epic proportions. Porter was “it”, every girl’s wet dream, except for mine. I look at him as a brother. Always have. I think I have serious problems.

“I’m fine. I was lost and my phone died, and I got pulled over by…”

Max now interrupts. “Cruz pulled her over. He brought her here.”

“Oh, so you met Cruz?” Max squints his eyes, looking at me intently.

“Wait, you said you came here last summer? To Sandy Cove? Your name is Harlow?” He looks confused, then nervous, then runs his hand over his mohawk and mumbles something along the lines of he had too much to drink tonight.

“Porter, dude, I um, I think we better let the girls get some sleep. It’s getting late.”

“Wait, Max. You didn’t answer my question. How do you know Dickcop?”

“Dickcop?” Everyone asks in unison.

“Yes. Dickcop. He pulled me over because he thought I was drinking and driving, then proceeded to give me the most farcical sobriety test in all of God’s creation, when I was clearly sober, and acted like a total ass the whole time.” Max looks to Porter. Porter looks to Max, then at me.

Thea looks up at Willow, in her drunken stupor, “She’s using the big words again, isn’t she?”

Max asks, “What did he make you do?”

My anger returns as the memories of what he made me do resurface.

“The Macarena.”

“The Macarena?” Porter asks, and I nod. I take Willow’s cup out of her hand and drink some of the contents.

Laughter erupts between Max and Porter, and my irritation grows. Porter turns to me.

“Har, are you serious? Cruz isn’t like that, he’s pretty cool. You’ll meet…”

Max tugs at his arm suddenly with force and shoves him towards the door.

“Um… We better go now. Glad you made it here safe, Harlow. We’ll see you girls tomorrow. Beach, badminton, and beers.”

“You can count on it after this night. Oh, and Max, this conversation is not over, but if you see Officer Cruz in the very near future, tell him his ass is mine.”

Max looks to me with a smirk. “Oh, I’m pretty sure you already have had it.”

He and Porter exit, and I’m left with that absurd statement.

“Is it wrong that a haircut can turn me on?” Willow says dreamily.

“A haircut?” Thea looks at Willow in disbelief.

“Do I stutter?”

I look at Thea and we watch as Willow’s head resumes its position in the clouds.

“So you are here for one day, and already in love? Seriously, Wills?”

“Well… Then what about you, Thea? Got your eye on anyone in particular?”

Willow takes a long sip from her cup and points directly at her.

“Doesn’t matter,” Thea responds quietly.

“And I didn’t say I was in love. He’s just got that, ‘I’m a bad-boy, rock and roll, mohawk wearing, sweet as pie, hot as sin, smart as a whip attitude’. I dig that, and that act of him annoying me, just exactly the way I want it to go,” Willow adds.

“You dig everyone.”

“That’s irrelevant.” I give her a look of disgust.

“You’re drunk.” Thea tells her, jokingly. “Not denying it.” Slurs a drunken Willow.

I shake my head and rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. My exhaustion is swiftly taking over my body.

“Oh, God, I need to get to bed. It’s been a hell of a long day, and I have to get some sleep, so I have the energy to have a cop fired tomorrow.”

“He really made you do the Macarena in the street? And you went along with it?”

“I didn’t have a choice, Thea. I needed to do what he said so I could get here before Willow put my face on a milk carton.”

Willow gulps down the remaining liquid from her cup and gives me an agreeable eye roll, something she is famous for.

I grab my suitcase and leave the box in the living room that houses my shampoo, makeup and other girly items.

“Point me in the direction of a bed, please.”

The girls stand up from the table, shut off the lights and lead me to my room. I notice the decor of the home. Beach scene portraits line the walls of the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Pale blue paint is the backdrop and light colored plush carpets under my feet. Willow shows me to one of the four bedrooms with the same decor as the hallway. A seashell embossed comforter on the bed, a million decorative throw pillows, and a nice, cozy queen size bed sits there begging for me to lay on top The girls decide to flop on it. Pillows fly off the bed from the force of the ‘kerplunk’ of their bodies. I unzip my suitcase and begin to place my clothes in the drawers of the nearby chest. My friends lay there, watching and giggling from intoxication, and I’m jealous of their cloudy brains.

“You guys had a party tonight?”

Thea twirls her hair, yawns, and looks towards me. “Not us, Porter and Max. They know a lot of people.”

“Porter’s been coming down here every summer for as long as our families have owned these homes, so he’s made a lot of friends.”

Willow’s mom and her sister, Porter’s mom, bought the twin homes when their father left them a hearty inheritance when he passed away. The sisters decided to buy the homes so their families could enjoy them summer after summer. Willow and Porter are two years apart, and might as well be brother and sister, rather than cousins.

“How do Porter and Max know each other?”

“According to Porter, Max’s band played at the same bar Porter worked at when he was in college. They became friends, but Max travels now with his band and goes to school for engineering.”

See, I knew he had a big brain. Looks and brains are a big turn on, and totally Willow’s type. I have a type as well. Assholes. Write that down. Harlow Hannum has a thing for assholes. I guarantee one of the girls is about to bring up the biggest asshole of them all.

Wait for it, wait for it… It’s coming. Which one will say it first? I’m taking bets.

“Well, at least you don’t have to see Cha…”

Ding, ding. Leave it to Willow.

Thea doesn’t even let her get his full name out before covering her mouth with her hand.

“Willow, he is a name we do not speak. He’s like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter. You know better.”

She shoves Thea’s hand away from her face.

“Fine. We do not speak his name. So maybe you’ll find that guy you got banged by in the bathroom last year.”

I reach over and smack her.

“Ow. What was that for?”

“Because, it’s something I’d like to forget, and if it wasn’t for the constant badgering and questions like did I have diarrhea or something because I was in the bathroom for so long, you would never have known. It’s embarrassing enough, and I hold myself 100% accountable for my actions.”

Willow takes her hands away from her head and lays her head back on the pillow.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say you were all to blame for it. I’d say Jose Cuervo was also responsible. But all in all, it was super hot!”

The thoughts of that night make me nauseous. I swallow hard thinking of how later that night I expelled the contents of the Jose Cuervo from my belly into the porcelain God. I never get that drunk, and I mean never. But I had just seen the one whose name we do not speak, making out with a girl in the corner of that bar. All the while he was flashing his infamous, sexy glare at me, while his tongue probed the inside of the trollop’s mouth. I sat back down at the bar, not returning to where my friends were playing pool with some guys they met and that’s when I saw him. He was sitting four stools away from me, ordering a beer, as I was ready to consume my sixth tequila shot of the evening. A totally detrimental decision on the part of a smart girl like myself.

I bounce off the bed and pull each girl up by the hands.

“Time for bed. Summer starts tomorrow and I plan on making it a day of fun and sun, after I get a cop fired. Now, get out.” They trail off to their rooms one by one with half-hearted waves. I slip into my tank top and pajama bottoms. I retrieve my toothbrush from my knapsack, find a bathroom, brush my teeth, and I know sleep will claim me in no time.

I wake up to the sun beginning to shine in my eyes. I had forgotten to close the blinds before I fell asleep. I look at my watch on the bedside table. 6:45 a.m. This is only fifteen minutes later than I get up for student teaching. I roll to my back and punch the mattress. Coffee is calling my name, I suppose. I rise and head to the bathroom, run a brush through my hair, splash some water on my face, and brush my teeth. The house is quiet. I seriously doubt anyone is awake. They are normal, unlike myself. I tiptoe into the kitchen. The living room is bright from the sun’s rays, and as I go to fill up the coffee pot with water at the sink, I look out the kitchen window to see the calm waters of the bay. There is a large dock that extends outward towards the back. It appears to be in the middle of the two homes. I see a small boat on Porter’s side. It’s so peaceful.

I need peaceful.

I need relaxing.

I need stress-free.

I need not to be reminded of him. The one whose name we do not speak.