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“Whatever floats your boat.”
Rosalie went back to her phone.
“Eliza, hey.” Jonathan Meese walked up with a goofy grin on his face. He looked three or four beers in already. “Got my project?”
“Yep.” I fished around in my pocket and pulled out the flash drive with his name. “A five-page essay, plus the works cited page, all about ESL adaptations for IEPs. And, as requested, a case study review on the implementation in mathematics.” He reached out for the thumb drive but I stopped him. “Payment please.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes and pulled out two twenties.
I sighed. “Dude, you know it’s fifty.”
“That’s all the cash I have on me.”
I wasn’t in the mood. “Bring me four beers and it’s yours.”
He looked like a child stuck in a lanky adult body as he scampered off. All things considered, he’d actually make a decent teacher so long as he didn’t teach above the second grade. He came back, beers in hand and I gave him the thumb drive, pocketing the cash.
I walked back to Rosalie, who was busy talking with a few friends from school. “Here.” I handed her two of the beers. “Payments take funny forms these days.”
Rosalie snorted and cracked hers open. I lifted my own. “I’ll see you in a bit, still gotta do thatnetworking.”
Rosalie raised the can and toasted good fortunes to my “wayward business plans.”
The next two clients? Customers? Suckers? Whatever. The next two were high school kids, so the job had been for less but I knew they’d be back for more. I picked up a new project and gave a new guy my information and strict instructions not to text or email me, only call for the pickup and drop off.
“You know,” a deep voice cut through the buzzing conversation and music around me. “If you are so hellbent on secrecy, maybe keep your voice a little lower.”
A blush crept across my face, or maybe it was just the heat of the bonfire. Then I faced the owner of the voice and blushed. Trask Davis. I did a quick sweep for Karina.
“Can I help you with anything?” I asked.
He shrugged and took a sip of his beer. “Just curious, what exactly do you charge?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I turned to walk toward the ocean. The fire was reaching a new level of heat and suddenly it felt hard to breathe, the air was thick with smoke from the wood and whatever people had between their teeth.
Trask fell in step with me. “You know, you’d have a much easier time walking on sand if you weren’t wearing shoes.”
“Shoes stay on,” I snapped. “Too cold.” I tried to hide the defensive tone in my voice.
“Fair enough,” he said. “You know, I couldn’t help but wonder why you carry so many of those USB drives around. Strange little habit to share those.”
“Oh?” I said, pausing at the wet sand, waiting for a wave to come back. “I just found those. You know how people lose things. Especially at the beach,” I deadpanned.
“Yeah, funny how that happens.”
“Funny.” I couldn’t help but glance at his hands. They weren’t nearly as ink-stained but there were some remains on the sleeves of his sweatshirt. I must have been staring because I heard him chuckle.
“Anything I can help you with?”
“The pens—” I cleared my throat. “The pens—” I closed my mouth. “Never mind.”
“You were so eloquent that first day in class, but now you try to speak a sentence twice and bail out both times. What is it, you like an audience or something?”
I scrunched up my face.
“Shit,” he said, laughing slightly. “That did not come out the way I wanted it to.”
I laughed a little. “I hope this is the only situation you’ve had to utter that phrase.”
