Song of the Fireflies (14 page)

“Well, I would’ve been there for the kid,” he said. “I would’ve helped her raise it, but you would always be in my life. With me. Just like you are now.”

His hand covered mine over my chest and he slid his fingers in between mine, locking them together.

I didn’t say anything in response. He knew it was what I had needed to hear.

I breathed in softly, and Jana’s face finally vanished from my mind. I saw only what was really in front of me then: the dark sky peppered by hundreds of tiny white dots and the waning moon hanging high above the horizon. Although I loved the night sky in any season and in any place, it never felt quite the same as when I saw it at home, above Mr. Parson’s pasture.

“If you could go back in time, any time, and stay there, would you?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said with reluctance, as if he needed more time to think about it. “I mean, if I could go back and
change
anything in my life, I guess I would. But as far as staying somewhere, I’m not sure.”

“What would you change?”

“The night on the ridge, of course,” he said and laid his left arm over my belly underneath the water.

“But let’s just say you
had
to choose a time in your life to go back to and live, stay there forever, what time would you choose?”

He was quiet for a long moment and then he said, “I’d choose our childhood. The day we first met up until—”

“—until we lost our innocence?” I interrupted.

I felt his chin move against the side of my face as he nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “I’d choose our childhood.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“But I like being with you now, too,” he added. “Despite the circumstances, I think that if I had to choose between our childhood and our adult lives together, I’d probably choose the way we are now.”

I swallowed uneasily and then brought his hand from underneath the water and pressed my lips to his wet knuckles.

“What would
you
choose?” he asked, though I wished he hadn’t.

“I…”

He squeezed his arms around my body and said, “I know what you would choose. Don’t feel bad about it. But baby, when this is all over, when we’re free to live our lives and enjoy our time together, you won’t feel the same way.”

“Maybe not,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure.

One night of partying went by at Tate’s secret spot on the beach, but we didn’t sleep there that night. Elias got so shitfaced after drinking way too much whiskey that I thought he had alcohol poisoning. Since I was the most sober one among our group of seven, Tate tossed me the keys to his Jeep, and I drove us to a hotel in St. Petersburg. But not until after I got us lost and drove farther out of our way than I had to. It wasn’t easy navigating a giant Jeep Sahara through a state I had never driven through before, with a load of drunks and one very sick fiancé puking his guts up on Tate’s floorboard. Tate was too drunk to care. I held my breath the whole way, hoping like hell we didn’t get pulled over by the cops.

I felt so awful for Elias. I pulled over twice to let him get some air. And by the time I got him into the bathtub and ran down the hallway with a dripping ice bucket in one hand, he had finally calmed down on the vomiting. I cleaned him up and helped him into the bed.

I had taken it upon myself to get a room separate from everyone else. Tate said he didn’t care when I asked him as we stood at the hotel’s front desk. I put the rooms on his credit card. The front desk clerk almost didn’t rent us the rooms because we looked like a bunch of beach hoodlums and we stank like whiskey. But I think she took pity on Elias.

It seemed like all of us slept for twelve hours straight. Except when check-out time came around—Tate woke up long enough to find me in the room next door, get his credit card back, and go downstairs to pay for another day.

By early evening, we were all awake and out on the beach, soaking up what was left of the sun. Elias was feeling much better. He said he doubted it was the alcohol that made him sick; it was probably the burritos we’d eaten an hour before he started drinking.

“I’m telling you,” Elias said, “That felt like food poisoning. It wasn’t the alcohol. I’ve drank way more than I drank last night, and I never puked like that before.”

I grinned at him. “Are you just saying that to make yourself feel better about drinking tonight?”

“No,” he said. “But if I do drink tonight, I think I’ll lay off the hard stuff.”

“Good idea,” I said, and laid my head on his arm as we walked alongside each other down the beach.

Jen had a suitcase full of clothes with her in the Jeep, and she lent me a bikini. Elias didn’t care to swim, but Tate offered him his extra pair of trunks if he changed his mind. This was beginning to bother Elias. A lot. Tate paying for everything, paying for us, for me. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t something he could control. He couldn’t access his bank account. What money we did have was probably snorted up Anthony’s and Cristina’s noses by now. One last time Elias was going to call his father and give his dad access to his account somehow, so his dad could wire us some money, but I stopped him. It was too much of a risk.

But either Tate was loaded or he just didn’t care about maxing out his credit cards. I couldn’t know. But he didn’t have any qualms about paying for everyone most of the time. Caleb paid for beer and food, but usually it was Tate footing the bill, except when we stayed at friend’s houses and such. That was pretty much a freebie all around.

Before the night started to fall, Tate talked everyone into heading back to that secret spot on the beach, which was well over an hour from the hotel.

We had already checked out of our room, and I had to pee, so before we got on the road I found a public restroom in a nearby restaurant. The stalls were full when I made it inside. I waited next to a sink, trying to avoid having to hold myself or do the pee-pee dance, until finally one toilet flushed and out of the stall stepped a girl with a blonde braid draped over her shoulder.

I smiled, and she smiled in return. Really, I just wanted her to walk away from the stall faster so I could jump in there and pee before it was too late.

Afterward, we hung around the beach for a while longer. I saw that same girl from the restroom sitting several feet away from us next to a tall, brown-haired shirtless guy with a huge tattoo down his side. When the girl stood up once, I saw that she had one, too. I was instantly intrigued. I had always liked tattoos, the way they looked on other people, but I never got around to getting one of my own. The tats these two had looked like masterpieces even from this far away.

“Damn,” I heard Johanna say. “Do you see that guy over there?” I was more curious about Johanna saying anything at all, much less openly gawking at some random guy on the beach while Caleb was standing just feet away from us talking to Tate.

I shrugged it off, accepting that Caleb, Johanna, and Grace’s relationship was weird enough to me as it was. I didn’t care to delve deeper into it. If Johanna wasn’t worried about what Caleb might think, then I wasn’t worried
for
her.

“Which guy?” I asked, pretending not to have noticed.

I didn’t want Elias to think I had zoned in on him like Johanna had. I mean sure, the guy was smokin’ hot, but he had nothing on my man. No one did.

Tate and Caleb walked back up then.

“Hey,” Tate said from behind, “we’re going to head out soon.”

“Why don’t we invite some more people this time?” Johanna suggested. She stood up and dusted sand from her bikini.

Tate looked at Caleb, who shrugged. “Yeah, sure, that’s a good idea, actually,” Tate agreed.

Elias and I stood up. All of us started scanning the beach and since it still technically wasn’t summer, there weren’t many people to choose from. A middle-aged couple sat to our right, the woman wearing a purple one-piece with large flowers printed all over it and a huge floppy hat on her head. An old man jogged past, very tanned and in better physical shape than most forty-year-olds I had seen, and glistening with sweat and suntan lotion. A young married couple with two children sat close to the water in beach chairs. It was safe to say that the cute blonde in the red bikini and her tattooed boyfriend were the only candidates.

“I saw that girl in the restroom down at the restaurant earlier,” I said, nodding in her direction. “Why don’t we invite them?”

I noticed Tate eyeing her a little too obviously. Jen slapped him on the arm, and he pretended to be wounded. Thankfully, Jen forgave him quickly, because I really wasn’t in the mood to hear them arguing, and I doubted anyone who came along with us to party would be, either.

We went over to the couple.

“From around here?” Tate asked.

I sat down on the sand next to the girl and brought Elias down with me. I hoped they wouldn’t take offense to us invading their space like that.

They didn’t seem to mind. “No, we’re from Galveston,” the guy answered.

“And Raleigh,” the girl added.

“We’re from Indiana,” I said, smiling at her.

Tate wrapped Jen in his arms from behind, probably his way of making her feel better about his straying eyes from before. “I’m Tate, this is Jen,” he said, then introduced everyone else. “Johanna. Grace. And that’s my brother, Caleb.”

“I’m Bray,” I said. “This is my fiancé, Elias.”

We had long ago given up using false names.

The girl sat up and brushed the sand away from her hands. “Cool to meet you,” she said. “I’m Camryn and this is
my
fiancé, Andrew.” She had a pretty smile and an air of kindness to her. Andrew had bright green eyes and two distinct dimples that set evenly in his cheeks when he smiled.

Elias reached out to shake their hands.

Tate said, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here.” I knew that was a serious bit of misinformation, but if he told them it was a longer drive than that they probably wouldn’t have come. “It’s a great secluded party spot. You’re both welcome to come along.”

Camryn turned to Andrew. They seemed to be having some kind of inner conversation.

Andrew then said to Tate, “Sure. We can follow you out.”

“Kick ass,” Tate said.

The two of them grabbed their belongings and followed us off the beach and to the parking lot.

“They seem pretty cool,” Elias said. I was sitting on his lap in the backseat, my head hitting the roof every time the Jeep would drive over even the slightest bump. “Did you see those tats they had?”

“Yeah, that was some sick ink,” Tate said from the driver’s seat. He glanced over at Jen in the passenger’s seat. “Makes me want to get another one.”

Jen rolled her eyes and went back to painting her toenails, her feet propped on the dashboard. I wondered how she could paint in the moving Jeep without getting turquoise nail polish all over her feet.

It was dark by the time we got there.

“You probably shouldn’t have told them it was only a thirty-minute drive,” Grace said beside me. She was sitting halfway on Caleb’s lap and her hip kept bumping into mine, making the ride that much more uncomfortable.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Tate said.

We turned onto a partially paved road and the last couple of minutes of the drive were the worst as the Jeep shook and jolted over the broken road littered with potholes and debris. My head felt like a battering ram. The headlights bounced through the darkness until finally the road opened up into a wide space of sand and rocks.

Camryn and Andrew pulled up next to us in their black vintage car and shut off the engine.

“Hopefully they won’t be too pissed,” Tate added and hopped out of the Jeep.

Without hesitation, the rest of us got out quickly. I stretched my legs and rubbed my calves and the lower part of my back with my fingertips. Elias came around behind me and massaged the back of my neck. I let out a soft moan. “I don’t know how much more piling up in that Jeep I can handle.” In response, he kissed my bare shoulder.

Tate lifted the ice chest from the back of the Jeep and dropped it in the sand.

“We’ve got plenty of beer,” he said, raising the lid and reaching inside. He tossed a bottle of Corona to Andrew.

Elias and I stepped up beside Camryn. Tate popped the cap on another bottle of Corona and offered it to her.

“Thanks,” she said and took it.

“If you’ve got any blankets, might want to bring one,” Tate said. Jen joined him then, prancing over in her skimpy white bikini. I think she may have felt a little threatened by Camryn, but not so much that she treated her badly. “And I’ve got a kick-ass system in this baby,” Tate added, patting the back of the Jeep. “So I’ve also got the music covered.”

Andrew popped the trunk on his car and grabbed a blanket.

“Where are my shorts?” Camryn asked, rummaging around in their backseat.

“Right here,” Andrew said. He tossed them over the car toward her, and she caught them.

“I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I heard her say as she slipped the shorts on over her red bikini bottoms.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one!” I said. I was always afraid of swimming in the ocean at night.

She smiled at me over the roof of their car and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before?”

Tate and everyone else were walking toward the beach carrying all of our stuff. As usual, Tate left the doors open on the Jeep. The speakers blasted rock music; Tate and Caleb’s mutual playlist, which consisted mostly of some singer named Dax and several different bands he had been in. Last night it was Pantera. The night before, old-school Snoop Dogg. All of our musical tastes had no boundaries, really.

“We were out here last night,” I answered, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel.”

Elias shook his head at me, disappointed. I think I embarrassed him.

Camryn and Andrew followed us down to the beach, where Tate was already setting up camp. Tate tossed a match onto a pile of tree branches and ignited the lighter fluid he had squirted all over the pile. Fire curled up and over the top of the branches and illuminated the darkness. Elias and I sat down with two beach towels next to Camryn and Andrew. Tate and the others were on a giant blanket.

I noticed Johanna was seriously checking Andrew out. I was put off by it, but I never said anything. It was rude the way she kept eyeing Andrew with his fiancée sitting right there. I had never really had much reason to dislike her until I witnessed this. She sat next to Caleb, the guy she had been screwing for no telling how long, making sure her pose was natural but at the same time sensual, as if she hoped Andrew would notice her barely tanned skin underneath her hot pink bikini, which barely held her boobs in place. At one point, I saw her twist her long, blonde hair and drape it over her shoulder on one side, as if to mimic the way that Camryn wore hers. I thought
I
had issues. No, Johanna had me beat in the issues department. And I may have been promiscuous, but I had standards. Johanna didn’t know the concept.

“Those are some wicked fuckin’ tattoos,” Tate pointed out.

Camryn pulled away from Andrew’s chest to give us all a better look. She raised her arm above her head and exposed her side, as well.

“Yeah, no doubt,” I said, totally fascinated by the ink and wanting some of my own more and more. I crawled across the sand toward them to get a better look. “I’ve been curious about yours.”

“Turn around here, babe, and show them how it fits,” Andrew said and lifted Camryn around on his lap. He lay down on the sand and brought her body down on top of his.

They lined up their tattoos to form a seamless picture, and my eyes grew wide with fascination and envy. I didn’t even know the story behind it yet, but my heart ached just seeing the two of them lying together like that, like two pieces forming one whole person right in front of my eyes. Momentarily, I thought of me and Elias. I pictured the two of us in their place. Andrew’s half of the tattoo was of a woman wearing a long, graceful see-through white gown that was pressed against the sensual curves of her body by the wind. Tendrils of flowing fabric blew behind her as she reached out her arms to the male figure inked on Camryn’s ribs. I gaped down at the detail, mesmerized by the beautiful complexity of every perfect line. The tattoos were enormous, stretching from the tops of their ribs down almost to their hips.