Unfaithful: An Unlocked Novella
Read Unfaithful: An Unlocked Novella Online
Authors: Suzuki Sinclair
Unfaithful
Unlocked: Part One
by
Suzuki Sinclair
Text Copyright 2014 Suzuki Sinclair
All Rights Reserved
When I told my girlfriends I was going to be housesitting
while the Moores went away over the summer Sara nearly choked on a piece of her spicy shrimp scampi.
“Whoa!” she blurted, after Lucy was done smacking her on the back.
Her face was still tomato-red and her eyes were watering. “You gotta have a party! A huge, killer party! Their place could hold a couple hundred people, easy. We can get those hot guys that Lucy’s cousin knows to come down from Sacramento!”
Her eyes went as wide as bowling balls.
“I bet they can get us a keg! Two kegs!”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes, “and the moment some drunk jerk barfs on something, goodbye college fund.”
“Oh yeah,” Sara said, and wrinkled her forehead. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“Maybe you should invite
Alex Locke over,” Darci murmured. She reached over the table to my plate and helped herself to one of my sweet potato fries. “For a... private party. Just you, him, and a bottle of fine, fine wine.”
Sara and Lucy giggled, and I tried to hide my suddenly-red face behind the laminated menu.
“I think he’s out of town again,” I mumbled, my face burning. “Do any of you guys want a drink?”
“Ha!” Darci crowed,
and she snatched the Salmon Bar’s laminated menu away from my face. “Check it out, LJ’s face is about to catch on fire.”
She flapped cold air into my face with the menu.
I gave her my best drop-dead look. It bounced right off her shit-eating smart-ass grin.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she said. “Alex Locke is a freakin’
stud
. I’d go there in half a heartbeat.”
I grabbed the menu back
from out of her hands.
“Yeah, well, we’re not all turbo-sluts like you, Darce,” I said. “And I don’t think those kind of things about my boyfriend’s
dad’s business partner.”
I paused, and a
slow, sly smile crept over my face.
“Even if he is a total babe.”
The girls burst out laughing, and Darci snuck another crispy fry from my plate. She threw it up in the air and caught it in her mouth, then crooked her head at me.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “Did you just call me a turbo-slut?”
“The truth hurts,” Lucy said, and waved the waiter over to order another round of Diet Cokes.
We were sitting out on the open re
d brick patio of the Salmon Bar. The heat of the summer sun was beating down on us through the big striped beach umbrella over our table. The soft breeze that rolled off the water was just perfectly warm enough and the sweet smell of the purple lilacs in the garden beds dotted around the patio filled the air.
Everywhere around us people were enjoying the beach.
They walked up and down the promenade in twos and threes and fours, some holding hands, some just taking in the sights of Beacon Bay. The sky was clear and soared high about the bay, a limitless blue bowl without a wisp of cloud. The heat had been soaking into the pristine white sands all day and the shimmering ocean waves sparkled out as far as the eye could see. Out past the bay some yachts chased each other slowly across the sea.
Sara was
half-heartedly picking at a cold chicken Caesar salad, and, as usual, Lucy had ordered her favorite dish in the whole world, the Salmon Bar’s trademark spicy scampi. Also as usual, Darci hadn’t ordered a single thing to eat. But she was more than happy to steal my food without a hint of shame.
“Hey, check it out,” Darci s
uddenly said, nudging me with a sharp elbow. “Speaking of total babes...”
Inside a
bunch of shirtless surfer boys were hanging out by the Salmon Bar’s old-school fake-wood jukebox. They all had smooth skin turned dark bronze by the sun and swaggering, easy walks. One of them cracked a joke I didn’t hear and another knocked his faded baseball cap off his head. The first one, laughing, chased his hat across the floor.
“Out-of-towners,” I said, turning back to our little table. “They’ll be in trouble when the footba
ll team comes in for burgers.”
The Salmon Bar was where just about everyone
in town hung out on summer afternoons—it was built like a gigantic Hawaiian bungalow, all dark, polished wood and high beams holding up the roof. It was decorated with garlands of sweet-smelling flowers, bright green and red paper lanterns and fierce-faced, glaring Tiki statues and old posters of Manny, the owner, from when he used to be a hotshot surfer in the Pacific Islands. There was one right next to our table, Manny from years ago with one arm around his board, stuck in the sand, holding up some trophy with the other, and beaming this massive grin so big it was almost as if the top of his head was going to fall off.
Manny himself hustled over with our Diet Cokes balanced on a thick circular wooden tray. He’s put on a lot of weight
since his surfing champ days. His big brown belly sits around his middle like a spare tire but he still moves gracefully in and out of the kitchen doors and around the restaurant. The frosty glasses didn’t move an inch while he circled around our table, picking up the drinks off the tray and putting them down in front of us.
“Four such beautiful girls all huddled together?” he asked. “Whispering and plotting and scheming? That can only mean trouble for men everywhere.”
He shook his head, sadly. “I pity the boys that run foul of
you
.”
“Hey Manny,” I said, and smiled. “You should know by now. We’re sweet as sugar.”
“I’d believe it from you,” he said, and
he gave me a broad wink. “But these other ones...”
“Hey!” Sara said after a second, when she caught on.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Manny said. He gave the table a quick polish with his red and white checkered towel. “I know you’re good kids.”
“But,” he said, with a meaningful nod in the direction of the surfer guys, who were still jostling each other, “maybe you could do me a favor, Lisa Jeanne, and make sure you
r boyfriend and his angry buddies don’t start any fights out on the beach this summer, huh? I don’t need the agitation.”
I squirmed uncomfortably.
“Hey, I was just trying to give that guy directions,” I said, avoiding Manny’s eyes. “I didn’t know Mark was going to get all over-protective.”
“I think,” Manny said heavily, “that maybe the boy from out of town wasn’t really lost.”
“I know that
now
,” I said, and I took a big sip of my Diet Coke.
*
That night had been awful. The out-of-town surfer boy had come in for the summer, like they always do. They swarm all over Beacon Bay in packs and crowd the beaches by day, acting like douches and frightening off the mom-and-dad tourists. At night they try to get the girls to come back to their beat-up vans and always start fights with the local guys.
I honestly thought the guy was just asking for directions. At first. He was tall and ta
nned and had this blue and yellow bandanna tied around his head and a long leather necklace hanging low down on his bare chest. He came wandering up and smiled real friendly and asked me where he could find somewhere to buy some board wax.
Mark had spotted me talking to him and come over and put his arm over my shoulder. The surfer boy made a
stupid crack about taking me home, and then Mark had shoved him, and he’d shoved Mark back. Some other surfers walking by jumped in, and then Mark’s buddies jumped in... and before you know it, the cops were there.
I don’t know what happened, but Mark’s dad came down to the beach
, and went off and spoke to the cops in private. All the local boys were allowed to go home. The surfers were given fines and told to get out of town before nightfall.
*
Darci nudged me, breaking me out of the memory.
“Jesus, Darce,” I said, rubbing my ribs. “
You gotta file those elbows of yours down, or something.”
“So is Sexy
Mr. Alex gonna be around?” she asked. “Doesn’t he usually come out for the summer?”
“Oh,” I said, blinking. “No idea. If he is, he probably isn’t going to stick around. What would they need me
to housesit for if he was? He could just watch the place for them; he lives there like, two months every year anyway.”
Lucy sighed dramatically and put the back of her hand against her forehead like a damsel in distress.
“Your life is so
hard
, Lisa Jeanne,” she said. She ticked her list off on her fingers. “Hot boyfriend who’s ready to punch any guy who looks at you. Sweet mansion to spend summer in. And the promise of the sexiest piece of man-candy Beacon Bay has ever seen dropping in unannounced. Promise you’ll text me as soon as Alex shows up.”
“You know what I heard once?” Darci said.
“That someone once bid thirty-five grand on Alex Locke at a charity bachelor auction. There were like, ten women fighting for a date with him.”
“Shit, I heard that too,” Lucy replied.
“You know, his picture’s still up in the trophy case,” Sara said. “Beacon Bay Senior High’s best QB ever.”
Lucy sighed.
“You only mentioned that every single time you walked past that case,” she said. “I think we know about his picture by now. And anyway, we’re out of that stupid school, forever.”
“Whatever,” Sara said, and went back to her shrimp.
Lucy looked around, then back to me.
“
I
heard,” she said, “that the cops busted him once having sex down by the pier.”
She winked.
“With
three
girls who’d come out here for the summer. The cops didn’t know whether they should arrest him or shake his hand.”
Darci leaned back in her chair.
“Well,” she said. “There are four of us here. We should see if Alex wants to break his own record.”
“You guys!” I said. “Can you quit being such dicks! A joke’s a joke, but shut up about Alex Locke!”
Lucy and Darci exchanged glances.
“No need to get so upset,” Sara mumbled around a
towering forkful of scampi. “They’re just kidding.”
“Yeah, I know,” I sighed. “Let’s change the subject anyway.”
“What about Manny, huh?” Lucy said, leaning in over the table and dropping her voice. She had a conspiratorial tone. “Isn’t he such a creep? With all that ‘beautiful girl’ stuff? I wish he’d knock that off.”
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “He’s just being friendly. It’s old-fashioned. He’s like
... Dean Martin, or something.”
“Who?” Lucy asked, looking puzzled.
“Hey!” Darci said, and Sara jumped, almost tipping over her Diet Coke. It rocked dangerously on the table, and Darci stuck out a hand and grabbed it.
“You should see if you can track down some of Alex’s sex tapes!” Darci whispered, or as close to a whisper as she gets. My nerves were starting to jangle. I took a hurried glance around the rest of the patio, but no one seemed to have heard.
“Sex tapes?” Sara almost squealed.
“Finally, something distracts you from your shrimp,” Lucy said drily. “I thought you were never going to join the conversation.”
Sara wadded up her purple paper napkin and threw it at Lucy. Lucy ducked and it flew over her shoulder to bounce off into a corner.
“Don’t you remember?” Darci asked. “Like, two months back? LJ was staying over with Mark and they had to get something from Alex’s little guest house around the back. They walked in and there was totally a video camera set up in the bedroom.”
Sara’s mouth dropped open and she stared at me.
“You mean there might be a sex tape out the
re somewhere starring Alex Locke?” she asked me. “Holy fuck, Lis, Sherlock that shit!”
“Jesus, guys!” I said, shaking my head
at Darci. “I never should have told you any of that. If Alex hears about it he’s gonna kick Mark’s ass. And anyway. It probably wasn’t for sex tapes.”
Darci raised one perfectly-plucked eyebrow.
“There’s probably lots of reasons someone might have a video camera in their bedroom,” I said. Even in my own ears, it sounded lame. Darci’s other eyebrow joined the first somewhere halfway up her forehead.
“Anyway,” I said. I grabbed for my bag, and my hands were suddenly clumsy. I felt
anxious and awkward and I didn’t want to stay any longer. “I gotta get out of here. Good luck with the surfer boys.”
Darci caught me up as I was halfway to the car. I’d slipped my
cheap plastic shades on because the sun was so bright.
“Hey, LJ,” she said, catching my elbow. “Sorry. We were just giving you shit.”
“Hey, it’s cool,” I said, and I gave Darce a goodbye kiss on the cheek. “I just don’t want any stupid rumors to get started, you know? If Mark heard we were making jokes about how hot his dad’s business partner is... You know he gets. The company would probably be busted up by the weekend.”
“Yeah, I know,” Darci said, with feeling. “He already thinks I’m a, what was it
you said? A turbo-slut?”