“That sounds awful, Cade. I’m so sorry you
went through that.” Kyra had thought from previous conversations
with Cade that Hale had been the one to be bullied, but now she
understood. Hale’s behavior made a little more sense.
“I’m sorrier for Hale.”
“Well,” Kyra said, “can I get you anything
to drink? I have warm bottles of water.” Her laugh was weak, but
she tried.
“No.” Cade’s eyes flitted around the room
again. “But thank you. I just wanted to drop by and tell you work
would resume tomorrow. And…and I wanted to apologize for Hale. I
hope he did not scare you.”
“Oh, gosh no!” Kyra said quickly. “You don’t
have to apologize for him, Cade. And he certainly didn’t scare me.
If I’d known what was happening, I probably would’ve punched that
guy too.”
Cade’s smile was faint. “I appreciate
that.”
Suddenly, Kyra felt like she might’ve
insulted him by saying she would’ve stood up for him too, as if
Cade couldn’t have done it himself. To cover her blunder, she said,
“What if we all hung out tonight? I can cook dinner and we can
relax over at Stevie’s? I’m sure she wouldn’t mind, and maybe y’all
don’t want to be alone tonight?”
Cade seemed to think it over. His shoulders
sagged in relief. “That would be great. I have been worried about
how to distract Hale. He will be in an awful mood if we just go
straight home.”
“Okay!” Kyra clapped her hands together.
“I’ll get everything arranged. Y’all just come on over to Stevie’s
when you’re ready.”
Finally, Cade’s smile was genuine. “I really
appreciate this, and I am sure Hale will too, even if he does not
say anything.”
Cade was always covering for Hale,
apologizing for him or smoothing things over for his brother. It
had to be exhausting, Kyra knew. She wished he didn’t feel the need
to do that with her. Maybe if they could all become better friends
everything would be more comfortable.
“Of course he will,” Kyra said. “This will
be fun.”
She used her best chipper voice, and was
rewarded with a laugh from Cade. “If you say so. I better get
going. I will take him home so he can shower and change, and then
we will be over.”
“Sounds great!”
Cade opened the door and started off her
porch. He waved over his shoulder as he picked his way through her
scraggly garden, which still needed work. She’d have to put that
task off another day. When Cade had pulled out of the driveway, she
closed the door and hurried upstairs to call Stevie. Hopefully her
friend wouldn’t be mad that Kyra had just invited people over to
her house without asking.
Kyra crossed her fingers and pressed
send.
“Humph.” Stevie answered the phone on the
last ring. From the clatter, it sounded like she either dropped the
phone or rolled out of bed. “Yeah?” Stevie croaked.
“What just happened?”
“Er…” The phone shuffled around making awful
scratching noises in Kyra’s ear. “Do you really wanna know?”
“Not really,” Kyra said quickly. “So, guess
what?”
“What?” Stevie did not sound interested.
“Hale and Cade Cooper are coming over to
your house tonight. We’re going to hang out.”
Stevie groaned. She didn’t even pretend to
be polite. “Dude.”
“I thought you’d be okay with it!” Kyra
cried.
“I’m not even out of bed yet,” Stevie said
as if that was an answer.
“It’s after noon…”
“Exactly! Who wakes up before noon?”
Kyra sighed. She adjusted her grip on the
phone and walked to her closet, flicking through her shirts until
she found one she wanted to wear tonight. “Come on, Stevie. Please?
My house is a mess.”
“Is this just a ploy to hang out with Hale?”
Stevie asked, her voice suspicious.
“No! Cade and I just think it would be good
for him to get out of the house tonight. You know, since he’s just
getting out of jail.”
“Oh, right. You and Cade thought…well, in
that case.” Stevie snorted with laughter.
“Cade is a good guy. Maybe you two would hit
it off,” Kyra offered.
“That guy is a total pussy,” Stevie said,
sounding offended.
“Stevie!”
Kyra heard Stevie’s music crank up all the
way from her house, which meant Stevie was going to get in trouble
with the old ladies of the street. Her shower screeched to life,
and the phone got shuffled around some more. “Fine. I’m going to
get ready. You’re in charge of the food. I’ll bring the booze.”
“Oh, great,” Kyra mumbled. “You need to turn
that down. Mrs. Harrison is going to call the cops on you.”
“Let her try.”
The phone went dead in Kyra’s ear, but the
conversation had gone better than she’d expected. Kyra hurried up
and dressed, picking a shirt that was slightly sheer with some
high-waisted shorts. She grabbed her purse and rushed out the
door.
Her first stop was the grocery store. She
picked up all the ingredients for stir-fry. Squeezing vegetables
and sniffing fruit, Kyra made her way through the produce section,
placing an assortment of goods in her basket. She looked up and
gasped.
“Florence,” she said.
Her grandmother stood before her, looking
stern and cruel. Kyra had a flashback to the photo albums in her
front bedroom, to the laughing woman who stood beside her mom with
their arms wrapped around each other and smiling. They’d once had
the same eyes, both summer sky blue, but now Florence’s were
shrouded in ice and venom.
“Don’t you dare,” Florence raised a
trembling hand and pointed at Kyra. Her eyes darted around to make
sure no one was around. “Don’t you dare speak to me like you know
me.”
Kyra’s eyebrows rose, her mouth gaping open.
“I don’t know you. You’ve made certain that I would never know
you.”
“I don’t know why you bought that house or
why you’re here,” Florence said, ignoring Kyra’s comment and
jabbing her finger in Kyra’s face. “I guess to torture me by
spreading your filth around town. Maybe you want some money? Would
you leave if I paid you?”
Shock flooded Kyra’s system, and the words
to form a coherent argument were lost. She wished more than ever
that she could be the type of person who could come up with
something witty and sharp in the moment. “I don’t want your money,”
she managed to sputter out.
“Well, I don’t want you here! Nobody wants
you here. Why won’t you just leave? I
hate
being reminded of
her.”
Kyra knew it was silly, but all she heard
was that she wasn’t wanted. She’d never felt wanted all her life.
Tears sprung up in her eyes. “I hate you,” she hissed. “I hope you
die.”
Florence gasped, her hand fluttering to her
heart. “You are filthy, white trash, just like your mother!”
“I’d rather be like her than you!”
Kyra couldn’t risk another second of
standing in front of that awful woman without crying, and she
refused to let Florence see her cry. She hurried away without a
backward glance, shaking slightly as she rushed to the closest
checkout counter, her fingers tugging at her bracelets like they
were choke collars stifling her breathing. Her darting glances
confirmed that some people were watching her.
“Don’t feel bad, honey,” the clerk said,
noticing the tears trickling down Kyra’s face. “Everyone hates her.
Always have.”
Kyra nodded as she handed over her debit
card, feeling as though she might be sick. When she’d paid and
grabbed her bags, she hurried out of the store and to her car. She
was back at Stevie’s in five minutes.
“What happened?” Stevie asked as soon as she
opened the door and saw Kyra’s face.
“I just ran into my grandmother. Again.”
“Ah, the infamous Florence Aberdeen. It’s
truly amazing how terrible she is,” Stevie mused, following Kyra
into the kitchen. She sat the groceries on the counter and huffed
out a breath. “What did she say to you?”
“Oh, not much. Just that she didn’t want me
on the island or in that house. She asked how much it take for me
to leave.”
“She was going to pay you to move away?”
Stevie asked, shocked. She opened a bottle of wine and poured
herself a glass.
“Apparently she hates me that much.”
“The good news is that she’s pretty old, so
at least she won’t be around much longer,” Stevie said with a
shrug.
Kyra turned around with a bag of rice in her
hands and her eyes wide. “Stevie!” But she laughed, and soon,
Stevie had her cracking up and forgetting all about her
grandmother. When the guys knocked on the door an hour later,
neither Kyra nor Stevie noticed, because they were too busy singing
and dancing around the kitchen.
Cade cleared his throat and Kyra spun around
from where she stood at the stove, frying the rice. Stevie turned
down the stereo.
“I think I should’ve stayed in jail,” Hale
said, deadpan.
“Hale,” Cade hissed, but Stevie laughed.
Kyra smiled at Hale, but he didn’t look at her.
“Thanks for having us over, Stevie,” Cade
said, being careful with his words. He’d put some gel in his hair
and wore a collared polo. “Your house is lovely.”
Kyra snorted with laughter, causing Stevie
to shoot her a dirty look. Her house was anything but lovely; it
was messy and disorganized. Art supplies littered the kitchen
counters, and a huge drying glob of clay sat directly in the middle
of Stevie’s kitchen table from where she tried her hand at
sculpting. From the looks of the drying lump, Stevie would be
sticking to photography.
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.” Stevie poured
glasses of wine and handed them to the guys.
Kyra watched Hale from the corner of her
eye. He hovered at the edge of the room by the windows, staring
outside with a far-away gaze as if he was thinking of something
very sad. His shoulders never seemed to relax. His neck was tense,
his jaw clenching and unclenching rapidly. Kyra sensed his sharp
edges, his short fuse. She’d thought they were making progress that
night at the bar, but he barely acknowledged her now.
When dinner was ready, the group gathered on
Stevie’s back deck. A teal-painted picnic table was lined with
plates and citronella candles. The ocean waves did their dance
against the sand, and across the water came the distant rumble of
thunder. The air was almost chilly, and Kyra regretted her sheer
shirt as she set the bowl of rice onto the table.
“Here.”
Kyra looked up at the sound of Hale’s voice
next to her. He stood so close that she felt the proximity of his
body in the form of pinpricks across her skin. Her stomach dipped
with nerves.
“What?” she asked, fumbling like a
schoolgirl with a crush. She looked down at his hand; he was
offering her his jacket. “Oh, thanks. I’m fine.”
“I saw you shiver,” Hale said, pushing the
jacket into Kyra’s arms.
His tone wasn’t outwardly mean, but it
wasn’t anything like the warmth he’d shown her at the bar. Kyra
jerked the jacket from his grip and said, “What happened? Why are
you being like this?”
Hale stared down at her, his expression
dark. Kyra smelled the storm in the air and felt the change in air
pressure. “This is who I am,” he said as more thunder rolled across
the ocean, and Kyra knew he meant it.
“We better eat before we get rained on,”
Stevie said as she carried out more wine. She had two bottles
tucked under her arms.
Kyra glanced back at Hale, but he was
already taking a seat beside Cade. Stevie plopped down the wine and
promptly started opening one. Cade tried to make friendly
conversation with her as she finagled with the cork.
It was a nice evening as they ate their
meal. Even Stevie had to admit that vegetable stir fry was good,
and no one commented when Kyra didn’t drink any wine. Stevie’s dry
humor made everyone laugh at times and cringe at others. The wine
was gone, and Stevie was the one responsible for drinking most of
it. As the evening wore on and she drank more and more, she seemed
to open up, to come alive. She blossomed when she was drunk,
becoming funnier and more vivacious as the night wore on.
When it was time for the guys to leave, Cade
thanked Stevie and Kyra as Hale walked to their truck without a
word. Raindrops splashed against the porch’s roof slowly and
deliberately. Kyra’s eyes didn’t leave Hale until he was inside the
truck.
“Thanks for doing this. We enjoyed it,” Cade
said.
“Are you sure?” Kyra asked, her eyes
flickering back to the road. “He didn’t seem to have a good
time.”
“He did. He just does not show it very
well.”
“Or at all,” Kyra muttered as Cade left.
Stevie elbowed her in the ribs.
“You’re so obvious.”
“What?”
“You like Hale Cooper.” Stevie’s wine
sloshed against the glass’s rim as she swayed.
“Yeah,” Kyra said, rolling her eyes. “And
all of his personalities.”
ten
K
yra sat in front
of her tripod and mirror. Her reflection showed a thick brown layer
of gunk covering her face. A tight topknot sat high on top of her
head, and she was talking to herself.
“This moor mud mask is great to open up your
pores and clean out all the gross particles that get lodged in
there, like makeup and dirt. It also helps brighten your skin and
reduces redness.” She tilted her face this way and that to show all
the angles. “Let it sit for ten minutes. I know it looks gross, but
trust me, you won’t care what is in it once you see these
results!”
Kyra checked the clock on her laptop. She
had a few more minutes until she could wash off the mask before it
dried completely. She’d been waiting for a quiet moment to record
this video, because it was extremely time sensitive and moor mud
was ridiculously expensive. She sighed and blew a loose tendril of
hair out of her face before it got stuck to the mask.
Suddenly, she heard the front door slam from
downstairs. It was so loud it rattled the window in Kyra’s room.
Looking out her door, she saw the top of Hale’s head pass by
downstairs from between the banisters.