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13
REMI
The drive into Grimstone is becoming familiar and soothing—narrow, mostly empty roads hedged on both sides by towering forest.
All the shops are closed on Main Street, other than the Fog Cutter bar and the Monarch hotel. I park outside the bar as Emma suggested, then I descend the long staircase of wooden steps built into the cliffs to the black sand beach below.
I teased Dane about the name Grimstone, but he was right—I’ve never seen a darker, more forbidding beach. The inky cliffs form a sheer drop to flat sand that glitters like black diamonds. Waves rush into the dark voids of the sea caves, pulled back again with a hissing sound.
The bonfire blazes a quarter mile down the beach, surrounded by figures whose long shadows trail across the sand like capes. The noise and laughter intimidate me, and for a moment, I consider turning around and driving back home.
Then I spot Emma’s bright orange head, and she turns and sees me, too.
“Is that Remi? Come here, I want to introduce you to everyone!”
“Everyone” turns out to be a motley mixture of twenty and thirty-somethings who live and work around Grimstone. Half seem to be related to each other in complex and confusing ways. Aldous and Amy are black-haired twins, both employed at the new resort—Aldous as a concierge and Amy as a maid. This is apparently offensive to Corbin, a dark and surly cousin to Emma and Tom, who mans the gas station just outside of town.
“Nobody should work for those parasites.”
“I’ve got to work somewhere,” Amy says crossly, “and the Monarch wasn’t hiring.”
“I’d hire you,” says Selina, a mellow brunette with a raspy voice who owns the tattoo parlor next to the hotel. “But only for the summer. Can’t swing it in the winter.”
“I’m fired after Halloween,” her sister Helena says glumly. Helena is a curvy blonde who does readings at the tarot shop and seems to have some connection to Corbin, though I can’t tell if they’re related or used to sleep together—Helena won’t stop glaring at him, while Corbin pretends she doesn’t exist.
Music plays from a tinny speaker. Farther down the beach, people are dancing and playing volleyball.
Tom is so hammered I don’t think he even remembers texting me.
“Remi!” he shouts, raising his cup so enthusiastically that half his beer sloshes down his arm. “Where’d you come from?”
“Pretend he doesn’t exist until tomorrow.” Emma grabs Tom by the shoulders, turns him around, and shoves him back in the direction of the kegs. “This is not the impression he wanted to make.”
“REMI!” Tom bellows back over his shoulder, though Emma’s only managed to push him two feet away. “You want to play beer pong?”
“The table’s broken,” Emma reminds him.
“Who broke the table?”
“You did.”
“WHAT?”
“He’s not usually…” Emma sighs, huffing a kinky orange curl out of her face. It’s Tom’s curl—he’s lolling his head on her shoulder, forcing her to support most of his weight. “Actually, he’s like this most of the time.”
Tom grabs Emma’s chin between his thumb and index finger and wiggles it like he’s making her talk. “I’m Emma and I’m mad…”
She shoves him off into a pile of sandy blankets. The rest of Tom’s beer flies through the air and lands in Corbin’s lap. Corbin leaps up, fists raised. Helena grabs Corbin from behind, and Emma throws herself over her drunken cousin. Corbin rips free and chaos descends.
Twenty minutes later, after Tom’s been safely sequestered and Corbin has disappeared into the darkness with Helena, Emma returns, scratched and dirty and in a horrible mood. I pass her a cider from Tom’s battered blue cooler.
“That ass,” she says, chugging it down and grabbing another. “It’s the least he can do.”
“I already drank three.”
Emma laughs. “I hope you did.”
