As I’m locking up the building, a familiar pickup truck pulls into the parking lot. My shoulders tense when Cooper steps out and approaches me with the determination of a man with something on his mind.
“Hey, Coop.”
He’s identical to his brother, with dark hair and daunting brown eyes. Tall and fit, both arms covered in tattoos. And yet, strangely, I’ve never been attracted to Cooper. Evan caught my eye, and even in the dark I could tell them apart, as if there was some distinct aura about each of them.
“We need to talk,” he tells me with an angry edge to his voice.
“Okay.” His abrupt tone puts me off, raising my defenses. I grew up the middle child with five brothers. Absolutely no one gets to come in hot at me. So I plaster on a placating smile. “What’s the problem?”
“Stay the hell away from Evan.” At least he’s direct.
I knew it was a bad idea showing up at the bonfire the other night. Every instinct said going anywhere near Evan wouldn’t end well, but I’d convinced myself if I kept my distance, didn’t engage, it wouldn’t be so bad. Clearly it was too close.
“Maybe you should be having this conversation with him, Coop.”
“I’m having it with you,” he bites back, and for a second I’m unnerved. I’ve never gotten over the uncanny feeling of arguing with Evan’s face but Cooper’s words. I’ve known them since we were kids, but when you’re as close as Evan and I were, it’s hard to reconcile these feelings of intimacy that belong to a completely different yet similar person. “He was doing fine until you came back. Now you’re not even here a few weeks and he’s beating the tar out of some college prick because you’ve got his head all fucked up again.”
“That’s not fair. We’ve barely even spoken.”
“And look at the damage it’s done.”
“I’m not Evan’s keeper,” I remind him, uncomfortable with the animosity wafting off him. “Whatever your brother’s up to, I’m not responsible for his behavior.”
“No, you’re just the reason for it.” Cooper is all but unrecognizable. He used to be the nice one. The reasonable one. Well, as reasonable as a Hartley twin can be. Cornering me in a parking lot isn’t like him.
“Where’s this coming from? I thought we were cool. We used to be friends.” The three of us had been a trio of trouble once upon a time.
“Fuck off,” he says, scoffing. It startles me. He might as well have spit in my face. “You tore my brother’s heart out and took off without even a goodbye. What kind of cold-ass person does that? You have any idea what that did to him? No, Gen. We’re not friends. You lost that privilege. Nobody hurts Evan.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I stand there, mouth dry and mind blank, watching this person I’ve known practically my whole life look at me like I’m scum. Guilt burns at my throat, because I know he’s partially right. What I did was cold. No warning, no goodbye. I may as well have taken a match to my history with Evan and set it on fire. But it hadn’t occurred to me Cooper would give a shit that I’d left his brother. If anything, I figured he’d be relieved.
Apparently I was wrong.
“I mean it, Gen. Leave him alone.” With a last glare of contempt, he gets in his truck and drives away.
Later, at Joe’s Beachfront Bar, I’m still distracted by the encounter with Cooper. Amid the crappy music and scents of perfume and body spray wrestling in the salt air blowing in from the open patio, I keep rehashing the interaction. It was unsettling, the way he sought me out to basically say stay away or else. If I didn’t know Cooper, I’d have good reason to feel intimidated. As it is, though, I do know him. And his brother. So the more I spin the conversation over in my head, the more pissed off I get that he had the nerve to come and, what, tell me off? As if Evan weren’t a grown man with more than a few malfunctions of his very own that have nothing to do with me. Coop wants to play the protector? Fine, whatever. But despite my lingering guilt over my abrupt departure, learning that Evan’s still going around causing trouble only strengthens my conviction that leaving had been the right thing to do. Evan’s had plenty of time to straighten himself out. If he hasn’t, that’s on him.
“Hey.” Heidi, who’s seated across from me at the high-top table, snaps her fingers in my face, waking me from my bitter stewing. Of all the girls in our group, I’m closest with Heidi, who’s probably the most like me. With her platinum bob and razor-sharp tongue, Heidi’s a total badass, a.k.a. my kind of girl. She also knows me far too well.
“You alive in there?” she adds, eyeing me with suspicion.
I answer with a half-hearted smile, ordering myself to be more present. Although we texted often when I was gone, I haven’t hung out with my friends in ages.
“Sorry,” I say sheepishly. I stab at the ice in my virgin cocktail with a straw. Nights like this, I could use a real drink.
“You sure you don’t want something stronger?” Alana asks, temptingly holding out her glass of tequila with just the lightest mist of lime and simple syrup.
“Leave her alone.” Steph, ever the defender of the weak, throws herself between me and peer pressure. “You know if she has a drink the convent won’t take her back.”
Okay, so she isn’t all that nice.
“Yes, Sister Genevieve,” Heidi says with a sarcastic smirk, speaking slowly like I’m an exchange student or something. An attempt at a crack on how long I’ve been away. “It must be overwhelming with all these lights and loud music. Do you remember music?”
“I moved to Charleston,” I tell her, throwing up my middle finger. “Not Amish country.”
“Right.” Alana takes another sip of her drink, and the salty-sweet smell really does make me thirsty. “The notorious dry city of Charleston.”
“Yeah, no, that’s funny,” I say to their teasing. “You’re hilarious.”
They don’t get it. Not really. And I don’t blame them. These girls have been my best friends since we were kids, so to them there’s never been anything wrong with me. But there was. An uncontrollable destructive streak that drove my every decision when I was drinking. I wasn’t making good decisions. Couldn’t find the middle ground between moderation and obliteration. Other than a regrettable lapse last month on a trip to Florida where I woke up in a stranger’s bed, I’ve kept pretty well to sobriety. Not without effort, though.
“Then here’s to Gen.” Heidi raises her glass. “Who may have forgotten how to have a good time, but we’ll take her back anyway.”
Heidi’s always been good for a backhanded compliment. It’s her love language. If she’s not insulting you at least a little, you might as well be dead to her. I appreciate that about her, because there’s never any confusion about where she stands. It’s an honest way to live.
But she throws me for a loop by softening her tone again. “Welcome home, Gen. I really did miss you.” Then, as if realizing she’d actually—gasp—revealed a sliver of emotion, she scowls at me, adding, “Don’t ever leave us again, bitch.”