A Kind of Contradiction

Audrey and Lindsay showed up at our front door twenty minutes before Nash was due to arrive. They were surprisingly nice to me, but I still got a weird vibe from Audrey when she handed over a plain black bikini. I returned to my room and put it on, relieved that it wasn’t that small on me. Audrey may have been short, but she had curves in all the right places. Although she and Lindsay didn’t bother with actual shirts, I slipped a cropped henley tank over my head and a pair of frayed denim shorts onto my hips. The moth on my upper thigh and the roses on the inside of my ankle were on full display, but Mom had left an hour ago for brunch, so I didn’t have worry about her seeing them.

With my phone, house key, and some cash tucked into the pocket of my shorts, I grabbed a pair of sunglasses and beat up leather sandals and headed back down to where the others were waiting. Three sets of eyes zeroed in on my tattoos, and I watched as they passed their silent judgement. “That’s cool,” Danny commented, indicating the moth. My fingertips brushed against the black lines and I grinned, now awaiting the girls’ comments.

“Your mom let you get tattoos?” Audrey asked, one judgemental eyebrow raised.

“My mom doesn’t know,” I told her.

“Huh,” she said with a nod. “That’s hardcore.”

I snorted, but she didn’t seem to notice. Lindsay asked me if getting the tattoos had hurt, and I told her that the one of my ribs was the worst. They asked to see it, but Nash was pulling up out front and sounding the horn of his Jeep. The geometric pattern would be on full display if I decided to go for a swim at the lake, so they would have to wait.

Danny leapt into the front seat before Audrey could, so the three of us girls had to squeeze into the back. I was right behind Nash, and caught his gaze in the rearview mirror. If he’d noticed my tattoos, he wasn’t saying anything.

According to Danny, the drive to the lake was approximately two hours. With the way Nash drove, it took us an hour and fifteen minutes. Audrey and Lindsay kept a steady stream of chatter going the whole way there, mostly about how this was the first trip to the lake of the summer.

There were at least fifty teenagers occupying the secluded beach. Nash parked next to a Ford truck in the makeshift lot twenty feet away from the sand, amidst a series of cars in various states of disrepair. There were a few nice ones too, like Nash’s Jeep, but it was almost a comfort to see regular cars for once. I shut my door at the same time Nash climbed out of the driver’s seat, and he lazily dragged his eyes up and down my body before they shot back to my thigh. “So Danny wasn’t lying,” he said, looking impressed. He took a second to look at the one on my ankle, then his chocolate brown eyes returned to my face. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“I’m also fucking awesome when I’m drunk,” I informed him with a grin, which he returned easily. “And I was told there was beer.”

Nash chuckled, jerking his head toward a crowd of teens. There were six kegs and probably over a hundred red cups stacked next to them. We waited our turn, then wandered toward the water with our respective beers. Danny was already in the lake, trying to get Lindsay go join him. But Audrey had dragged her over to where the other girls were sunbathing.

“So this is how Maine kids party?” I asked, scanning the shoreline. It wasn’t even two and half of the people were already drunk.

“This is the lazy version,” Nash informed me. He took a step closer, kicking at the sand. “You’re already getting a lot of curious looks.”

“They should take a picture,” I muttered, noticing two boys leering at me a few feet away. I smiled cheerfully at them and waved, and they shifted their attention elsewhere.

“Not gonna go for it?”

“Those two? Please,” I scoffed, looking around again. I spotted a tall, tan, blonde male something checking me out, and directed Nash’s attention to him. “If I wanted to score, then I’d go for him.”

“Steve? He’s a tool.”

“With a name like Steve, I wouldn’t expect any less.”

“Why him?”

“Because he won’t call me the next day,” I said, shooting Nash a devilish smirk.

This time, though, he frowned. “There’s no middle ground with you, is there? You’re either naïve and uptight or reckless and promiscuous.”

“Promiscuous?” I repeated, amused at the term. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“I was trying to be polite.”

“Ah,” I said, and sipped my beer.

“Are you going to go talk to him, then?”

I glanced over at Steve, who’s attention probably wouldn’t remain on me for much longer, and decided that Nash was far more interesting. “Nah, I’m good.”

There was a rocky outcropping about a hundred feet away, looming at least thirty feet above the lake. I pointed at it, squinting behind my sunglasses. “Do people jump off of that?”

“No,” Nash said. “There’s rocks in the water right below it.”

“Can you still get up there?”

“Sure. It’s a bit of a climb, but the view is nice.”

I grinned and started toward the ridge. It took Nash a second to realize that I’d left him, and he jogged to catch up. We didn’t make conversation as we passed by the suntanning girls (and I noticed Aubrey’s glare in my direction when she saw I was with Nash) and made it to the base of the rock. Nash took the lead, using his free hand to balance himself as he scaled the side of the ridge. I tried to follow his path, and was wholly impressed that I didn’t fall and break my neck while climbing with a beer in one hand.

When we got to the top, Nash sat down on the edge of the cliff and patted the rock next to him. There was lichen growing here and there, but it was otherwise bare. I held my cup between my knees as I twisted my hair up into a bun to get some air on my neck, and then tried to get more comfortable on the rock.

“Can they see us?” I asked, peering down at the beach littered with teenagers.

“Not really. Maybe the tops of our heads. If we were standing then they would be able to see us.”

I cast him a sultry look. “People totally come up here to make out.”

He chuckled, staring into his cup. “It has been known to happen.”

I downed the remainder of my beer, and didn’t really want to climb all the way back down for another one. “This was a bad idea,” I said. Nash blinked at me, a confused expression crossing his face. I swung my empty cup in front of him. “I’m out of beer, and the kegs are all the way down there.”

“Oh,” he breathed, licking his lips. Then he reached into the pocket of his swim trunks and procured a flask. “I always come prepared.”

I took a tentative sip, instantly grimacing. “You drink whiskey?”

“I steal my dad’s whiskey,” Nash corrected. He’d also finished his beer and stole the flask from my hand. He took a sip, then handed it back to me.

We’d consumed most of the flask, and my brain was buzzing. I giggled at something Nash said, and lowered myself down against the rock. But my bun was in the way, so I tugged at the elastic and let the lilac waves flow free. Nash had turned his body toward me, his shin pressed against my side. He gestured with the flask when he spoke, his eyes lidded. “You laugh a lot,” he observed.

“If I have anything else to drink, I’ll be a stupid drunk instead of a happy one,” I said. “Once I tried to longboard down this really steep hill, but somebody stopped me before I could do it.”

My eyes had drifted shut while I spoke, but when they opened, Nash was fixated on my lips. He realized that I was watching him and blinked quickly, raking a hand through his hair. The movement caused it to stand on end, away from his forehead. I laughed, sitting up so that I could smooth it down. Nash returned to staring at my mouth while my fingers tamed his hair, but he looked away again as soon as my hand fell into my lap.

“You can kiss me if you want,” I said softly.

“Just because I want to, doesn’t mean I can,” Nash replied. He tucked the flask back into his pocket and stood up, offering a hand down to me. We shared a brief smile while his hand was still enveloping mine, his rough fingertips pressed against the inside of my wrist. But the moment ended quickly when Nash turned around and started back down the cliff.

I never ended up swimming, and found myself caught in conversation with a group of people I didn’t know. Over their shoulders I saw Nash take off his shirt and race into the water after Danny, and my heartbeat kicked up a notch at the sight of the faintly defined muscles on his abdomen and the sharp v-lines that disappeared beneath the waistband of his swim trunks.

“You’re blushing,” the girl next to me whispered. “It’s Nash Buchanan, right? He’s so hot.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. “That’s one word for it.”

“Too bad he’s hooking up with Audrey,” the girl sighed, gazing off in the direction of the water volleyball game that the boys had started.

“Are they together?” I asked, curiosity biting at my brain.

“Nobody really knows for sure. They’ve been hooking up for, like, a month now, but I’m pretty sure they aren’t official,” she explained, tugging on one of her golden corkscrew curls. “As far as I know, they haven’t even gone on any dates. But who would want Audrey as a girlfriend, right? She’s fucking psycho.”

I managed a halfhearted laugh, but the girl didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t made the same connection she had. I was, after all, wearing Audrey’s bikini under my tank top.

“I’m Julia, by the way,” the girl said, tucking some of her short curly hair behind her ear.

“Cosima,” I replied.

“Oh, you’re Danny’s sister!” she exclaimed. “The one who went away for a year, right?”

“That’s me.”

“I heard you were super snobby, but you seem perfectly cool to me,” Julia said.

“I was a bit of a snob before I left,” I admitted.

“Well, since I didn’t know you before, I’m not going to let that cloud my judgement.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.”

“Not a problem,” Julia flashed me a bright smile.

By the time the sun started to disappear behind the treetops, I’d been hit on six times, had four more beers, and managed to get a sunburn. This last one was a bit of an oversight on my part, since I never saw anybody else putting on sunscreen so I assumed that getting burnt wasn’t a thing that happened. I’d always maintained that my skin was my nicest feature, and I used the best lotions and creams to keep it smooth and unblemished. So getting a sunburn was pretty close to the top of Bad Things Happening list in my mind.

What I hadn’t anticipated was that the party didn’t end at dusk. For the last hour some of the boys had been gathering huge pieces of driftwood, branches, twigs, and basically anything that would burn. Somebody had an old newspaper in their car that was used to start the fire, and when the sun finally set there was a bonfire blazing on the beach.