The moment we shared hovers at the back of my mind. I don’t really want to think too deeply about things, but evidently my disguise is working. Spending more time with Benny is like an early birthday gift I want to hold on to with both hands, even if he’s trying to pry it free. “Sounds fun to me.”
“Cleaning the beach?” he verifies, stopping where we left our shoes and bending to pick them up. He hands me my sandals. “Brianne Belacourt wants to clean the beach?”
Iwantto spend time with him. “Yes.”
“Okay. It’s actually not that surprising, I guess. I remember how obsessed you were with saving those dolphins.”
“Sea turtles,” I correct. “But all sea life matters.”
His smile is warm. “I’ll pick you up at eight.”
Which is what leads me to grin for the rest of the day.
6
BENNY
Beach Beautification Dayis going smoothly. We got a decent turnout this morning. Almost two dozen people spent the last few hours scouring the beaches with metal reacher tools and trash bags while sporting orange high-visibility vests.
Bree’s wrapped in a thick baby blue sweatshirt she picked up at the tourist shop on the side of the road. It’s emblazoned with white BODEGA BAY in all caps and a large, embroidered anchor. Her blonde wavy hair—wig—is stuffed beneath a matching baseball hat and pulled through the back into a long, bushy ponytail. Despite the chilly morning temps, she’s in shorts that hit her legs mid-thigh.
I’m in shorts too, but I probably don’t feel as cold as she looks.
“It’s supposed to be summer,” she says, frowning as she points her trash grabber at me. “Summer is warm.”
“The sun hasn’t been out long. Give it an hour, and you’ll be fine.”
“This is not warm,” she says again, ignoring me.
“It beats your humidity, though. At least it cools off here at night.”
She doesn’t seem to agree. “I’d rather sweat through my sleep than suffer this ice water ocean. You can’t seriously mean you surf in this.”
“The wetsuit helps.”
Her expression implies she doesn’t believe me. She shivers as a wave of wind passes over her, then shoots another glare my way. As if the chilly weather is purely my fault.
I climb between two sand dunes, scanning the ground for trash. If she keeps following me, we’ll be blocked from the bulk of the wind soon. “Hey, youwantedto be here.”
“Who knows why,” she mutters under her breath. Clearly that’s a rhetorical question, but it still makes me wonder why Bree Belacourt chose to join my BBB in picking up trash on the beach when she’s clearly running from something.
For me, I hope, and not for Peter. His invitation got her here, but I’d like to think the moment we shared in the waves was the clincher.
It’s possible the feelings that whole running-from-the-waves situation evoked were one-sided, but I don’t really think they were. Maybe I shouldn’t have carried her from the water like that, but her pants were getting wet with the way she was splashing through the surf. I’d acted on impulse. I didn’t realize it would throw us back a decade and make me feel seventeen again.
There are so many reasons I should keep my distance from Bree—our history, everything that made me decide to leave the first time, whatever made her run from the world and hide out here—just to name a few. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to toss all those excuses in a cupboard and twist the key.
Ignorance is supposed to be bliss, right?
Our current isolation isn’t helping things, either. Whenever we’re alone, we get comfortable, talking about the past with such abandon I’m worried I’ll slip and reveal something I shouldn’t. We’re the only two people walking through the sanddunes in South Salmon Creek, and I focus on the garbage poking from the sand. I’ve found way too many plastic Pepsi bottles and fruit snack wrappers today.
“So you have the place for four weeks. How long are you planning to stay in town?” I ask, not looking at Bree. That way, she doesn’t see how much I need to know this information. Colby told me she had rented his house for a month, but knowing her—and how flighty she used to be with everyone but me—that might mean anything.
“As long as I need to.” She removes her glasses and wipes them on the edge of her sweatshirt, showing off the makeup she donned for today. Extra thick eyeliner frames her lashes, and those freckles are back. It’s jarring how different she looks. “We’ll see what happens.”
It’s not quite the time commitment I was hoping for. It leaves me uneasy, knowing she could take off at any moment. We haven’t gotten to catch up yet, not properly. While I never expected to see Bree again when we parted ways all those years ago, now that she’s here, it feels like a waste for her to disappear too soon.
I’m trying to contain a cloud—she looks solid from a distance, but she’s not tangible up close.
