I could hear the ocean’s roar on the other side of the dunes before we even saw it, and it made me shudder. Ugh. The sheer vastness of it, the terrible creepy crawlies that lived in it, the unsavory feeling of salt clinging to my skin on the rare occasions I’d ever dared to step into it. And it seemed like every time I had, something awful happened. One time, as I ran out of the waves my first summer here (having been dragged in by Bree, of course) I stepped on a jellyfish. Not the stinging kind, but I still slipped and fell, and it was disgusting! Worse was the time a shark nipped at my heels. I avoided the water for two years after that. It didn’t draw blood, and its dorsal fin didn’t break the surface, but I just knew it was a shark that had gone for the gold and missed. I just knew.
The second I stepped onto the beach to join the party, I could tell I was in over my head. I couldn’t begin to fathom how Bree carried herself with such confidence, striding onto the sand, her curvy hips bobbing back and forth. I sighed, swallowing my doubts. I wanted to do this. I wanted to be here.
Didn’t I?
“Bridget Fifan!” One of the college boys, a tall, slender black guy, stood up from the bonfire he was stoking. He definitely had the aura and swagger of someone older. He approached Bree, giving her a high five. I stood back, apprehensive.
“What is up, my sista?”
“Keepin’ it real, Jamal!” said Bree. “Allow me to introduce my friend, Andi. Andi? Jamal.” She pointed to some of the other college kids. The guys were all shirtless, and the girls were all in string bikinis. Bree had talked me into finally wearing my bikini as well, the wide-banded grape-colored one, but it was downright modest compared to what the college girls were wearing and it was currently hidden under my big baggy t-shirt.
“And that’s Tyler, Skylar, Saoirse, Kigawe, Miracle, Melanie, Steve, Ta-Nehisi and Ryan.”
I waved awkwardly. A couple waved back, but most of them stayed focused on the bonfire they were dousing in lighter fluid.
“It’s been forever, girl!” said Jamal to Bree. “Come sit, make yourself at home! Mi casa es su casa. And hey.” He reached into a large blue cooler by the fire and pulled out a metallic bag that looked like a Capri Sun. “Can I interest you ladies in a… wine cooler?”
“F’sho!” said Bree, snatching it hungrily. Jamal tossed one to me before I had the opportunity to respond. Oh crap. Now I really felt in over my head. Except for having snuck a sip of my parents’ Bud Light Lime once or twice, I’d never even tried alcohol! And to have a whole wine cooler to myself? I didn’t want to look uncool in front of Bree’s college friends, but I felt so out of my league!
And something in me told me Riley wouldn’t want me to drink it.
I scoffed. Riley, of all people? Why did I care what Riley thought about whether I had a couple of wine coolers? He was just some weird guy I barely knew. Really, we’d barely even spoken.
Then why does he consume your thoughts?
I ripped the tiny straw off of the baggie, peeled off its plastic casing and jammed it into the beverage, droplets of inebriating sweetness popping out. “Thank you, Jamal,” I said. I wasn’t about to let what Riley thought—no, what I thought Riley would think about this party—dictate what I would and wouldn’t do. “For real.”
One wine cooler became two. Bree was having a high old time, regaling the college kids with stories about her trip to Brazil with a women’s literacy group, but I kept to myself, sipping on my straw, trying not to think of Riley.
“Hey, you alright?” asked Bree, taking a break from showing her friends the pictures of some of the kids she’d taught on her phone.
I took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Fine!” I said.
“You’re not thinking about Riley again, are you?” she asked. “You seem so unhappy when you think about him.
There it was again, the Bridget Fifan third degree. Did she just have to know every single excruciating detail of my inner workings? “No… well… maybe.”
“Get him out of your head!” she said, sitting down next to me and giving me a pat on the back. “I brought you out here to have fun, and you specifically said not to invite him.”
“Yeah, but it was you who invited him to the pool party in the first place.”
Bree sighed and smiled, typical smile of can’t-get-me-down Bree. “Oh, I was just trying to be nice! I’d never seen him talk to anybody… or be friendly to anyone, for that matter.” She shrugged. “C’mon, don’t worry about it! Let’s have fun!”
Her idea of fun seemed to be more wine coolers. I took another, and as the afternoon wore into evening, the bonfire grew higher and the raucousness of the college kids grew more debauched, I found myself starting to relax. Was it the effects of alcohol, or was my mind genuinely finally starting to drift from thoughts of Riley?
“Is there anything to eat?” I asked, standing up and brushing the sand off my behind. I shivered; the sun was setting, and it was starting to get a little chilly, but I couldn’t find where I’d left my t-shirt after tossing it off half an hour ago in a surge of wine-cooler induced boldness. But now, I felt strange. Standing up made me realize just how woozy I was.
“I think everyone ate all the chips and stuff,” said Bree.
“Word,” said Jamal. “But you can jive on up to the taco hut on the boardwalk if you hungry, dig?”
“Okay,” I said, trying to take a step and finding my legs seemed to be made of rubber.
“Whoa, are you okay? How many did you have?”
“Three,” I said.
“Three beers?”
“No… wine coolers… pretty good!” I said. Jamal and Bree seemed confused.
“Wow, girl, you a real lightweight!” said Jamal.
“I’m a what?” I asked.
“I can come with you,” said Bree. “I’m a little hungry myself. I could go for a burrito.”
“No, it’s okay,” I said. “I’m good, just a quick taco and I’ll be back.” Eyeing another wine cooler, I snatched it as I headed off in the direction of the boardwalk, ignoring the part of me that felt guilty, the part of me that felt that Riley wouldn’t like it. Maybe I was underage, but I knew how to take care of myself. And besides, I still couldn’t get a beat on what his fascination was with me. A part of me felt he hated me, and yet another part felt that he wanted to protect me.
The biggest part of me felt that he saw me as an ant and wanted to crush me. But if that were the case, why did he keep showing up wherever I happened to be?
Whatever he wanted to do with me, why couldn’t he just get it over with?
I clamored up the wooden stairs and onto the boardwalk—no ‘taco hut’ in sight. I took another swig from my drink and started stumbling down the boardwalk, hungry for tacos. As the sun sank lower, everything seemed to be either closed or in the process. I continued to amble on, sipping my wine cooler and trying to keep my increasingly drunken thoughts off of Riley.
I came upon an alley, a light at the end of it. Was that the elusive taco hut? It was almost entirely dark now, and I was starting to lose hope that I would ever find a taco, let alone my way back to the beach! I was so stumbly and—
“What up, girl, you lost?”
I turned around. There stood three men, blocking my way back to the boardwalk. One of them looked like Jamal, but darker. Another looked Hispanic, and the third had blonde hair and was smoking something that was definitely not a cigarette. All three wore polo shirts. Had they been down at the bonfire?
No… those guys were all shirtless.
Speaking of which, I looked down. Oh god. I’d forgotten I’d taken off my baggy t-shirt. Here I was in an alley by the boardwalk wearing nothing but my bikini. I moved to hide my shame.
“No, girl,” said the Hispanic guy. “You look good. Real good. Good enough to eat.”
“Um, I was just looking for the taco stand.”
“It’s closed, girl,” said the blonde guy. He took a drag from his marijuana, and then tossed the half-smoked joint onto the ground.
“Yeah,” said the black guy. “Everyone’s headed home except for the guys partying on the beach… and you’re a long way from them.”
A sense of dread began to well up in the pit of my stomach. I gulped. “Well then…”
“Don’t worry about a thing, girl,” said the blonde guy. Even in my drunken state I couldn’t mistake the intent in his eyes. In all of their eyes. Want. Hunger. Dominance.
Lust.
They came closer to me, slowing as they moved, like a pack of lions about to pounce upon their prey, their predatory looks unmistakable. “We’ll take good care of you.”
I ran, not waiting for them to come another inch. The second I split, I stumbled, but I tried to shake off the effects of the wine coolers. I could hear them come after me and I cried out. My flip flops were slowing me down, and I had no idea where I was, dashing from alley to alley, the tenement buildings climbing higher and higher.
Not another human in sight.
I could hear them behind me, laughing cruelly. I tried not to think of what they’d do if they caught me, but I was in panic mode. I had no idea where I was going. Such was my indiscretion that I didn’t realize the dead end until it was upon me.
A tall fence, unscalable. I felt like it was laughing at me, laughing like the evil, leonine, lustful boys on my heels.
“Don’t worry, girl,” said one of them right behind me. “We’re just here for a good time.”
“Just leave me alone!” I shrieked, backing up against the fence. Why, god, why did I let Bree talk me into wearing this bikini?
Now they were upon me, surrounding me. I could feel their breath against my face, smell the beer on it. I winced, tried to turn from them, but they were everywhere.
“Shhh,” said one, resting his finger on my lip. I jerked away. “Like we said, we’re just having a little fun.”
“Yeah,” echoed the blonde one. I felt his eyes crawling up my body, touching me with his lecherous gaze. “A little bit of fun.”
For a split second, time seemed to slow to a stop. It seemed as though all sound had been sucked out of the world, and we were in a vacuum.
And then, like a light coming on, all three of their faces contorted, melting from expressions of lust and amusement into abject terror.
One grabbed his hair and ripped it out in large, painful chunks. Another dragged his fingernails down his face. The third fell to the ground, ramming his forehead into the pavement.
“No!” he screamed. “Nooooooo!!”
I was at first too stunned to react, or to even think. Soon all three of them were on the ground, abusing themselves, shrieking incoherently. The effects of the alcohol were still on me, as well as the terror from my sprint from the horny wolf pack. My mind was in a haze until I looked up, and there he was.
Riley.
It might have been the alcohol, but I could swear his piercing green eyes were glowing, and I knew. He was doing this. He was doing this to these guys, just like he had done it to Travis at the pool party.
And he had saved me.
Overwhelmed, I began to collapse, and suddenly he was there next to me, catching me. Just like at Henrietta’s, it was as though he moved space and time, stepped right through it, or stopped it so that he could effortlessly cross that distance in a split second to catch my fall. Insignificant, stupid, drunk me, collapsing because of a situation that I alone had gotten myself into. I had no one to blame for them coming after me but myself. I knew that. Riley had to have known it.
But he caught me anyway.
“Riley,” I whispered.
“Tiny thing,” he said. I could barely hear him over the screams of the three guys losing their minds. “Tiny, insolent, inebriated creature.”
“I know,” I said. He began to carry me away from them, back toward the boardwalk. “I’m sorry, it was stupid for me to get myself into that situation…”
“It was,” he said. I could see him now up close, and unless I was losing my mind too, I knew it wasn’t the alcohol—his green eyes were definitely glowing.
“It is clear to me now that I cannot leave you alone,” he said. “You will only hurt yourself!”
“Riley, I—” I felt wretched. Twice now I had needed him to rescue me from situations that I had brought upon myself through my own miserable stupidity. “I’m sorry!”
“I cannot allow you to hurt yourself,” his voice broke as he said the words, as though the mere idea pained him. I looked into his glowing, verdant eyes, hoping in them I would see answers.
Instead, I only saw pain.
“I cannot allow it…”
And then everything faded to black