He takes another sip of water. I narrow my eyes. “You’re full of shit,” I tell him. I know his type, which isn’t all too different from Sean, actually, just maybe a little more adventurous. The privileged rich boy who happens to be so ruggedly handsome, people are constantly falling over themselves just to get in their good graces. And these boys know this, relish this, and just like to mess around with people because they know they can get away with it.
“Sweetheart, you’re the one who asked what happened.”
“I asked because I thought you’d tell me the truth. And you really need to stop calling me sweetheart. My name is Jill.”
“Okay, okay. Jill. I’m not exactly sure what I need to do to convince you that I’m telling you the truth, but that’s what happened.”
“If that’s what happened, we should call the police. If you were the victim of a kidnapping, you need to report that. It’s a crime.” I cringe inwardly, thinking I sound exactly like Uncle Nate.
“The police aren’t going to be able to do anything. This wasn’t about me at all.”
“You were kidnapped but it wasn’t about you?”
“No. It’s something to do with my father. They wanted him to pay a ransom. Which shows how little they know my father. Going to the cops is only going to piss my father off and I’ll probably end up having to see him, which I try to do as infrequently as possible.”
I feel a twinge as he says this, the same quick, sharp feeling I always get whenever I hear someone saying these sorts of things about their parents. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder why people who had parents they hated, or whose parents didn’t give two shits about them, why they still got to be alive and my dad, who was a friend as much as a parental figure, was dead. I know it’s an immature way to feel, but the reaction was involuntary; all I could do was acknowledge it and then try to let it go.
“So you were kidnapped, you swim who knows how many miles and wash up on a beach, and you’re just going to do nothing.”
“I never said that.”
“Well . . . what am I supposed to do with you? This is a camp for teens. Random guys washing up on the beach in the middle of the night isn’t going to go over too well with the owners. The campers’ parents expect them to be safe.”
“I’m safe. I like kids. Kids like me. I was a big brother in another lifetime.” He stretches, his broad expanse of torso expanding and contracting. “Christ. Can I get out of these clothes? Do you mind? I’m sorry; I’m getting your sleeping bag soaked.”
“What? I . . .” I don’t have anything with me for him to put on, but he’s already pulling his shirt off, and he’s got this incredibly smooth skin wrapped over long, toned muscles. I look away.
“What I’d really like, though, is to be able to get a little rest. And then we can figure things out in the morning?” He yawns, and I suddenly imagine him as a little boy, getting tucked into bed for the night.
He is someone’s son, I tell myself. He used to be a little boy.
“Fine,” I say, suddenly too tired to do anything but agree. I nod to my sleeping bag. “It’s all yours. I’ll put your clothes out here to dry off. Put them back on when you wake up in the morning.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” he mumbles, already half asleep.
Chapter 7: Griffin
I’m not sure how long I slept for, but when I open my eyes, the tent is filled with a muted light and from somewhere in the distance, I hear what sounds like a shitload of kids talking, laughing.
I lie there in the tangle of the sleeping bag, head pounding, muscles feeling like they’re about to either explode or liquefy, or maybe both. I sit up slowly, my equilibrium shifting, swaying like I’m still out on the boat even though I’m not. I am here, on dry land. I am on a beach and I am alive and I’ve got the nastiest f**king headache to prove it.
I reach for the water bottle and take a sip, then another. My lips feel like little more than parchment paper, like they could flake off at any second. What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower. Jesus Christ.
I’m trying to summon the energy to get myself up when the flaps on the tent are suddenly yanked back.
“Jill, you overslept!” a voice says, and then stops abruptly. A girl is peering in at me. She’s young, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and clearly not expecting to find me in here. “Oh,” she says. She’s got big greenish-blue eyes and long brown hair she’s piled up on the top of her head in one of those messy bun things that are so much fun to pull out. She smiles. “Hi. You are certainly not who I was expecting to find in here. Where . . . where is Jill?”
“I don’t know.” I start to crawl forward, and then I realize I’m naked. “Hey, could you toss me those clothes that are out there?” The girl backs up, letting the flap of the tent fall. I can’t tell if she’s horrified or in shock, but a second later, she sticks her arm back into the tent and hands me my clothes, which are still damp and encrusted with sand, but I put them on anyway. I crawl out of the tent, the flap brushing my back as I make my way out. The sun is reflecting off the water in such a way that it’s painful to look at it. I squint and wish I had my Ray-Bans.
“I’m Allison,” the girl says. “Are you and Jill . . .?” She lets the sentence trail off.
“I know Jill,” I say, though I refrain from adding whether it’s biblically or not. I have a feeling Jill wouldn’t appreciate that one too much.
“My parents own this place.”
I glance down at her. “Your parents own the beach?”
“Well . . . sort of. They own the ranch. I’m a counselor here. But you aren’t one of our campers.”
I feel as though I look like the shit someone just scraped off the bottom of their shoe, but from the way Allison is smiling at me, my outward appearance must not reflect that. Or, she’s really hard up, but she’s a cutie, so I doubt that’s the case.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” she says, tilting her head and giving me a coy look.
“Griffin.”
“Are you going to be around for a while?”
“Uh—”
“Because I wouldn’t mind seeing more of you. You should stay. You can be my guest. My parents won’t mind at all.”
It makes my face feel like it’s about to crack, but I give her my most winning smile. “Sweetheart, that’s the first good news I’ve heard in a while.”