“I can’t believe Antoinette is out there,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
Jacob shook his head. “Man.”
“Does Val ever talk about me, Jacob?” she asked.
“About you? What do you mean?”
“Does she ever say she thinks I’m a good friend or that she likes me, or that I’m someone she can trust?”
“She brings up your name sometimes,” Jacob said. “I mean, I know you two are friends. I knew you were friends when I started seeing her. But I can’t remember anything she’s said, like, specifically.”
Kayla popped the cigarette lighter and lit the roach, smoked it until it was nothing but a tiny piece of charred paper. She flicked it out her window.
“I think Val hates me,” she said. “She might not even realize it, but she does.”
Now it was Jacob giggling. “I don’t understand women.”
“No,” Kayla said. “Me, neither.” Because only one day earlier Kayla had ridden up this beach with her two dear friends, friends of twenty years- friends who it turned out were her enemies. She pointed at Theo’s Jeep in the distance. “There it is. Up there. Good, nothing happened to it.”
As Jacob approached Theo’s Jeep, the sand got softer, deeper. He downshifted and eased the Bronco alongside the Jeep.
“Door-to-door service,” he said.
“Thanks,” Kayla said. “I appreciate the ride, and the smoke. I needed it.”
“My pleasure, madam,” he said. He smiled at her, an incredibly gorgeous smile, and Kayla hesitated. The idea of her and Jacob together was powerful, tempting, and because of all that had happened, maybe even reasonable. Kayla had never intentionally hurt anyone in her life; the feelings she had now were so foreign she didn’t know what to make of them. The best thing, she thought, was to go home and sleep.
“Good night,” she said. She got out of the Bronco and fished Theo’s keys from her purse. She climbed into the Jeep. There was a hatchet on the passenger seat. What had Theo been doing with a hatchet?
In her rearview mirror, Kayla watched Jacob swing the Bronco in a circle. She started the Jeep and lurched forward. When she checked her mirror a moment later, Jacob had stopped. She hit her brakes; he flashed his lights. Are you okay? she thought. Then she saw his tires spin, they bit into the sand. Jacob got out of the Bronco and ran toward her.
Kayla pulled the parking brake, put down her window. “Don’t tell me.”
He grinned. “I’m stuck.”
Kayla slogged through the sand toward the Bronco. Jacob knelt by his front left tire to let out air. She started on the back tire with the key to the Jeep. The air coming out made a sharp, satisfying hiss and smelled of rubber.
Kayla closed her eyes and listened to the waves and the hiss of the air. A cool breeze swept off the water, and Kayla felt rooted to her place in the sand, like she was a heavy, old piece of driftwood. She couldn’t even think about Night Swimmers without feeling hurt and foolish-she believed in the rituals, in the magic of it. But she had believed alone, like the last kid to find out about Santa Claus or the tooth fairy, the last one to realize that the adult world didn’t contain magic of any kind.
Jacob walked over to check on her progress. Kayla tugged on the leg of his jeans.
“Hey,” she said.
“How’s it coming?”
“Sit here with me a minute,” she said. A slow fear spread through her as she spoke the words. She pictured the detective pulling the bottle of Ativan from his shirt pocket. And then Paul Henry: You need to do a better job picking your friends.
Jacob plunked onto the sand next to her, and they watched the waves roll onto the beach.
“Sorry I got stuck,” he said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Actually, it’s kind of nice out here tonight.” She took a deep breath. “So… Val’s moving in with you, then?”
Jacob rested his arms on his knees, the tire gauge dangled from his fingers. “Looks like it.”
“That’s good. You two are serious.”
“Val’s serious,” he said. “I can’t believe she left her husband.”
“John’s an asshole,” Kayla said. “He deserves to be left.”
“I guess,” Jacob said. “I mean, I was content to let things be, but Val, you know, she wanted to make the whole thing legitimate. Because she’s a lawyer and she doesn’t want to damage her reputation.” Jacob turned to her. He hadn’t shaved, and dark stubble was growing in on his chin. “I’m just a dope-smoking carpenter,” he said. “And I’m still pretty young. Do you think she expects me to marry her?”
“She might,” Kayla said.
He clenched the tire gauge in his fist. He was scared; Kayla could see it. She thought of Val giving the police her pills, letting them stack the clues against her: Ativan, champagne glasses, phone calls. And then pretending like it was no big deal, like it happened every day. Kayla thought of Raoul getting up each morning to work at the Ting house with the knowledge that Theo was sleeping with Antoinette. Her own husband knew and didn’t tell her. Kayla thought of Antoinette holding her arms in a wide circle before she pirouetted into the water. It was clear now what the circle meant-she had been telling Kayla that she was pregnant. Which of these betrayals was the worst? Kayla couldn’t decide. What was clear was that all three people knew how to deceive her.
Kayla looked at Jacob sitting inches from her. She raised her hand to touch the back of his head, but she was too afraid, and she dropped her hand into the sand. Raoul. Oh, God, Raoul. Kayla started to cry.
Jacob turned to her, his green eyes growing wide with surprise. He put his arm around her shoulders. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Kayla, don’t cry.”
But she had been waiting to cry all day, waiting to surrender to her sadness. She sobbed into Jacob’s shoulder, and somehow Jacob’s shoulder became Jacob’s mouth, hot and searching against her own. His lips, his tongue. They kissed like a couple of hungry teenagers, Kayla’s heat rising to the surface of her skin, an aching between her thighs. Jacob reached into the front of Kayla’s sundress, and she moaned. A man other than her husband touching her breasts, fingering her, tonguing her nipples. It felt amazing. Was this why people broke the rules, turned the world upside down-because it felt this good, this electric, because it made them feel this alive?
Kayla fumbled with the buttons of Jacob’s jeans. She tore her mouth away from his so that she could see what she was doing. His erection strained through his jeans, long and hard and perfect, and although Kayla wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything that was bad for her-more than a cold beer at the end of the day, more than a cigarette when she was drunk with her girlfriends in a smoky bar, more than hot, liquid butter on her popcorn- although she wanted this thing to happen, she stopped. Rolled away from him.
Raoul. No, thinking about Raoul wasn’t good enough. Her children: Theo, Jennifer, Cassidy B., Luke. She thought about her children.
“I can’t,” she said.
She noticed that he’d torn one of the spaghetti straps of her sundress, and she fruitlessly tried to secure it back into place. Jacob stared at her, confused. Then, slowly, he removed his T-shirt.
“I have wanted you for so long,” he said. “You know that, right?”
Kayla nodded, mute with terror over what she’d set in motion. She thought of him touching her lip the day before at the Tings’.
“Just let me kiss you again,” Jacob said. “I will die if I don’t kiss you one more time.”
It flashed through Kayla’s mind that Jacob knew just how to trick her, too. Because who could turn in the face of those words? Who could resist Jacob, bare-chested, leaning over her for just one more kiss? His curly head blocked the moon as he came toward her. The moon was her only witness. They started kissing again with even more heat, and Kayla surrendered. She undid Jacob’s jeans and guided him inside her.