Separate Schools Read online

  He said, “This one’s special for you.”

  Her Wayfarers had slid down her nose enough he could see her eyes over top of them and she asked, “How’s it special?”

  He made an incredulous face, like the answer was obvious, and said, “It’s made with a special ingredient.”

  From the other side of the barbecue, he heard Stevie say, “Gross, dude,” and then Pontoon laughed around a mouthful of food.

  “Is it love?” Taylor said, cocking out a hip playfully.

  He winked and plopped her patty on the bun.

  Riley awwwed from where she sat on the railway tie, then said, “I can’t stand to think of you guys apart.”

  “Me neither,” Harrison said, feeling an honest sadness settle over him.

  Taylor made a funny half-smile that tugged a deep pocket at the corner of her mouth.

  Stevie asked, “Apart why?”

  Riley said, “They’re going to separate schools.”

  “Ohh shit, dude,” Stevie exclaimed, and while it sounded like a taunt, he was pretty sure it was the guy’s honest reaction to what was clearly an awful situation.

  But Pontoon, when it was quiet, let out a loud sad trumpet sound: “Whomp, whomp.”

  “Tell me about it,” Harrison said, still looking deep in Taylor’s eyes. “But you can’t get to me.”

  Care Bear’s deep voice: “Oh, I’m sure you guys will stay together.” It was monotone and could go either way; sarcastic or supportive. No one laughed, and it was quiet for a wholly uncomfortable few heartbeats while he still looked in Taylor’s eyes.

  Stevie gave a funny laugh, said, “Oh yeah, first year girls are always faithful to their boyfriends.”

  Another uncomfortable giggle from somewhere.

  But then Care Bear’s voice boomed again: “Hey, I’ve seen the girls at State. Who says homeboy won’t be drying his dick off on their dorm room curtains every night? First year’s a fuck-fest.”

  It broke the disquiet but he could see that got to Taylor a little and her eyes gleamed wet and before she turned away, he could swear they were trembling.

  22

  When the barbecuing was done, he served himself and Steve Cisco the final burgers and joined Taylor.

  “Thanks for waiting,” he said, and she smiled.

  Together they left the patio and walked down the wooden steps that cut a straight line down the grassy slope that led to the sand beach that ran a crescent around the Brooks’ lakeshore. Steve continued on to sit with Mikey and Jamie. Mostly everyone was already down there. Some had already finished eating and waded in the water. KC and Rick-Joe were heading into the boathouse, and Harrison imagined they were going to bring the boats and jet-skis out.

  Five years ago wasn’t that distant, but it seemed like a different era. KC used the jet skis back then and some select older friends, but it was Mr. Brooks who drove the boat. None of the younger kids could ride the wave-runners, but Mr. Brooks would drive that boat almost all day long, towing kids on waterskis or inner tubes. He’d complain about the price of gas the whole time, and probably finish a six of High-Life, but he was a trooper. Kept the Brooks kids and all their friends entertained from lunch to sunset and let them make fun of his dopey fishing hat with its bright lures hooked through the khaki cotton.

  “Why the long face, Harrison?” Taylor asked him as they settled, just the two of them on the grass above the beach just at the edge of shade. Taylor stretched her legs out so the sun fell on them and she kicked off her Birkenstocks.

  “Thinking about your dad.”

  “Don’t bum me out,” she groaned.

  “Sorry. I just hate that things change.”

  “Things are always changing.”

  “Remember how he used to take everyone skiing all day?”

  It was sometimes touchy bringing up her dad, but he watched her profile now and saw her smile. Sunlight reflected off the lake and while they were in the shade, her face practically shone.

  “Yeah,” she sighed wistfully.

  It was best to drop it while he was ahead so he said nothing further.

  Taylor continued: “I miss those days.”

  She wiggled her painted toes in the sun, her plate balanced high on her thighs. It had been a shock at first to see her so naked, but he’d grown accustomed now, and sitting here with her it looked like a regular bikini, and although the cups of her top were small, sitting down like this you couldn’t see the back of her panties were a thong. Her mouth pursed as she thought of something, and her expression clouded. She said, “It’s going to be so weird next week.”

  He nodded, watching her still. He said, “I hate it.”

  She said, “At least you’ll still be in Saginaw. I’m going to be so far away. By myself.”

  “Are you scared?” he asked her.

  “Not scared, no.”

  “Excited?”

  “I think so.”

  “You stressed?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Maybe I can come visit,” he said.

  She didn’t reply for a long time, her eyes cast out over the water. KC and some of his friends guffawed about something from inside the boathouse. She said, “I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed. There wasn’t much hope of affording a flight out to California, anyway, not with all the other things that needed paid. Three months without her was going to be brutal. They’d talked a bit about the oncoming separation, but mostly it seemed like they both wanted to avoid the subject.

  They ate for a while in silence, watching their friends hanging out and talking. Cookie and Jamie were in the water, not wearing swimwear yet, but walking into deeper water with their shorts legs tugged high. Brady Aaron wasn’t sitting with Kelsey Kay, she was with Shelby, the two of them sitting in the sand and talking close with their arms hugging their knees. KC and Rick-Joe came out of the boat house, Brady following them, fitting in well with the older jock types.

  Taylor had finished her tiny potato salad, and had picked her way with small bites through the burger he’d cooked her, and he asked her if she wanted more potato salad.

  “Okay,” she said. “And can you take my cup,” she passed her plate and her cooler cup, “in the kitchen fridge there’s a pitcher of fruit punch. You know the gray pitcher, the one with the lid and it’s got the rooster on the side?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Refill it, please?”

  “Okay. Is there booze in it?”

  “Aren’t you nosy,” she said, and scrunched up one side of her face. When he didn’t smile, she said, “Check it if you want, dad.”

  “Fine,” he sighed. “Take my plate?”

  She removed his plate from his lap, and he said, “Don’t eat my burger. Take yours and put it on my plate.”

  She did, and he rose with her sitting there in her flossy bikini, looking hot as hell, holding his plate with both their burgers.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He went up the steps and into the house, going through the basement doors and taking the stairs up to the kitchen. He found her pitcher in the fridge and while he wanted to check it, he didn’t. Couldn’t help taking a whiff while he refilled her cup. It just smelled like fruit punch. There was a chance he was blowing it out of proportion, and he didn’t want to be a nag on their last weekend together before she went off to school in California.

  Out the basement doors again, he stopped at the long table by the barbecues that held the prepared salads, condiments, buns, and things, topped up Taylor’s plate with another small ball of potato salad, and headed down the steps to the lake.

  Taylor didn’t sit where he’d left her. She sat dozens of feet farther down on the sandy beach. From behind she looked naked; her back narrow and ridged with tanned muscle, her waist thin, her paler rump curving out, just a thin turquoise string up her butt and around her waist. Sitting next to her in what should be his spot, engaging her in what appeared to be humorous conversation, was Colt Brigg
s. With his hat turned back and his golden curls spilling around his face, he said something that made her laugh even harder, and she covered her mouth with her hand and tossed her long shining hair over her shoulder. Harrison could see the bud of her nipple pressing out against the turquoise triangle of her skimpy bra.

  23

  When he presented Taylor’s plate to her (wordlessly because he was mad), she thanked him.

  Colt said, “Where’s mine, dude?”

  He said to Taylor, “You don’t want to sit in the shade anymore?” He ignored Colt, knowing the guy’d already eaten.

  “I came down into the sun,” she said. Next to her was the plate with their two hamburgers. Sand had spilled over one low edge, the plate laying uneven on the beach.

  Colt was sitting very close, his feet almost touching hers. He had his knees up and his muscular arms gathered around his legs, one veiny hand clutching the opposite wrist.

  “You pass my burger?” Harrison said to Taylor as he set himself down in front of her, his back to the water, getting as close to her as Colt was.

  “Yup,” she said cheerily and twisted at the waist to retrieve the other plate. She tilted it, let the sand sift off.

  The way she moved showed off her tight tummy, showed the muscle and ribs as they moved under her tight bronzed skin. She was so flat in her middle the wound string of her bikini bottom left a gap where it crossed the knob of her hipbone and a careful eye could get a peek down at her lady parts. Colt didn’t miss it at all and Harrison darted his eyes to catch this college guy taking a peek inside the front of her bikini bottoms.

  Taylor shifted, got onto her knees to present his plate to him, said, “Sorry, about the sand,” and made a funny wriggly mouth at him. He told her it was fine, and they got the right burgers on the right plates, and she sat back on her heels, her feet folded under her mostly bare bottom.

  Colt had already eaten, and he watched them a moment, said to Harrison: “Your mom make these hamburgers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom makes great fucking hamburgers. Shitty you gotta leave home now, you’re gonna hate dorm food, dude.”

  “I’m staying here. I mean back in town. Saginaw.”

  “You going to State?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re staying in your mom’s house?”

  “My parents’, yes.”

  “You’re going to commute every day?”

  “Four days a week.”

  Colt made a dubious expression, then shrugged it off.

  Harrison added, “That’s why I bought a car.”

  Colt took off the ball cap and set it next to him in the sand. With two hands he ran fingers through his thick, sun-bleached hair, his curls untangling as they combed through. He was square-jawed and deeply tanned and Harrison hated him. The guy said to Taylor now: “And you? California, huh? I guess you’re not commuting. You’re gonna commit to that college experience.”

  “I am,” she said confidently but Harrison knew her a long time and saw her face contort nervously.

  “What’s Santa Cruz got that you wanted?”

  She shrugged her shoulders and took a small bite of her hamburger. With the back of her hand over her mouth she answered him: “They accepted me.”

  “No, really,” Colt laughed.

  Harrison said, “Business Admin.”

  Colt’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “I think someone wants to go surfing.”

  Colt had got it right it would seem because Taylor’s pouting smile quirked to one side. “Maybe,” she admitted. She’d talked to Harrison about it before, surmised that maybe she’d like to try out surfing while she was there.

  “Yeah, I thought so,” Colt laughed. “You should go to The Hook.”

  “You know Santa Cruz?” she said, looking at him now, running her hair behind an ear.

  “I know all the Pleasure Points,” he said slyly.

  “Ha, le ha,” she pronounced drolly, and squinted her eyes at him.

  Harrison felt his back go up, could feel an anger that this guy would talk like that to his girlfriend. He said, “What’s that? Pleasure Points?”

  Taylor took another bite of her hamburger and said, “Part of Santa Cruz.”

  Colt said, “I went there once. I don’t know—year-and-a-half ago. Not just there, but all down the coast. I got some friends in the area.”

  Taylor said, “I thought The Hook was dangerous for new people, like outsiders.”

  He said, “Trust me, they’ll love you.” His eyes went over her again.

  Taylor sang, “Shut up,” and she tossed her hair, and Harrison hated seeing her absolutely dig what Colt said.

  “No, seriously,” he said, laughing it off, “give me a call when you’re there, I can hook you up with some dudes who’ll be good to you.”

  Taylor considered it, then without replying she set her burger on her plate, the plate in the sand, and she turned away from them, stretching a crawl toward her bag which was thrown aside from where they were sitting. She gave him and Colt a direct view of her ass. It was round and taut, and the thong of the bikini back was completely wedged up her crack. It was like she was naked. From her purse she withdrew her phone. Harrison looked to Colt who burned holes in Taylor’s ass with his laser focus, a smirk tugging his lips to one side.

  Harrison said, “So, hey, you graduated or what?”

  Colt slightly turned his face toward him, but kept his eyes on target and said, “Not yet.”

  “Then you’ll be out in the workforce?” he said, trying to lead this guy into acknowledging he was an adult. But fuck, Taylor was an adult now, too, wasn’t she? Neither of them were kids anymore even if they’d been kids recently.

  Colt grunted an affirmation but disregarded him. Taylor had returned to sitting on her heels in front of them and now she passed her phone to Colt so he could give her his number. Colt took it, huddled up and tapped his number into her phone. Harrison watched Taylor. She was on her knees, smiling slightly, and he was sure she was getting off on having this older guy—a good-looking one—interacting with her.

  An anger came up in him and it flooded acid up his esophagus. It was a borderless spate and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. He wasn’t mad at her. Or was he? He was mad at Colt, sure, but it was broader than that. This feeling encompassed him, and he stared at the bright sparkling sand in wonder as it washed over him. Was it jealousy? Sure, that made sense, but it was far more powerful than just jealousy. It had begun to feel enormous. He said to her, “You really that into surfing?”

  She didn’t even look at him, her eyes instead watching Colt’s large, manly hands work over her phone. “I don’t know. I think so.”

  Colt handed the phone back and said, “Well, whatever you want to do, just give me a call. These guys are good guys.”

  Harrison said, “How old are they?” and couldn’t suppress as much contempt as he wanted.

  “Fuck, I don’t know,” Colt said without looking at him, eyes still on Taylor as she flicked through her phone to see the number he’d left there. “I don’t go around asking people how old they are.”

  “Are they at UC?”

  Colt didn’t even respond, just laughed now and said something amusing that occurred to him: “Watch that Highway 17, when you go out there to the water. There’s a ghost.”

  “Oh right, don’t worry, I’ll watch out for the ghost,” she said sarcastically.

  “No, for real,” Colt said. “Me and my buddies saw him. He’s an old native guy. We went through at midnight and we saw this old dude with, like, braids walking at the side of the road and for whatever reason all three of us thought it was super-creepy.”

  “You’re not going to scare me,” she said, taking another tiny bite of her hamburger.

  “It’s legit. Look it up. So we go to the motel and we said this to our waitress at the restaurant in the morning, and she’s like, that’s the old Indian ghost and how when you see him you’ll never leave SC alive or so
mething.”

  “You’re here now,” Harrison said. “Not much of a ghost story.”

  Taylor smiled at that but kept her eyes on Colt. She said, “He’s just trying to freak me out.”

  Colt smiled back at her and said, “You going to California all by your lonesome?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “What’s-his-name here gonna be so far away and you have no friends going along to Cali?”

  She shook her head no, still smiling.

  Harrison reminded him, “Harrison,” but figured he knew his name and was just being a dick.

  “Your ghost is bullshit,” she said, comically defiant.

  Colt laughed loud and said, “Wanna bet?”

  “Bet that you saw a ghost? How do we prove that?”

  “That the ghost is real. That’s the bet.”

  “Oh, please,” she said skeptically.

  Colt said, “Loser has to streak across the beach.”

  “In front of our friends? I don’t think so.”

  “Nothing they haven’t seen,” he said with a smirk, eyeing her up and down again for the tenth fucking time.

  “Gross. Not my friends. Well, maybe when I was, like, eight.”

  “Aw, somebody shy? You don’t have much covered up, anyway, what’s a little more?”

  “Oh, you’re not shy?” she said, raising up on her knees a little and taking a bite from the hamburger.

  “Can’t let fear stop you from doing things.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Why’s that?”

  With her eyes turned down, looking at her hamburger again, she said, “Aren’t you supposed to have, like, a really big penis.”

  Harrison doubled over like he’d been punched and he inexplicably thrust his hands in the pockets of his shorts.

  Colt threw his head back and laughed, his big muscular shoulders up around his ears.

  She giggled, laughed, and when Harrison looked at her, she crinkled her nose. “What?” she asked petulantly.

  Harrison said, “Why would you say that?” His voice was tight and constricted.