“Getting chased out of a national park by a furious ranger at four a.m.”
She laughs, nudging my arm. “I miss our adventures.”
I take a swig of her flask. “Sorta loses the appeal when you have your own keys and drinking is legal.”
“I promise you, there’s still all sorts of trouble we can make.”
That flirtatious spark in her eyes makes me sad. Because we used to have fun together, and now it feels strained. Awkward.
“Coop!” Down in the yard, my brother shouts at me. “It’s a party, dude. Get down here.”
Twin telepathy still works. I leave Heidi on the deck, head downstairs, and grab a beer on my way to the beach, where I meet Evan around the bonfire with some of our friends. I drink while they spend the next hour swapping the same stories we’ve been telling for ten years. Then our buddy Wyatt organizes a game of moonlight football and most of the crowd drifts toward it, leaving only a handful of us by the fire. Evan’s in the Adirondack chair next to mine, laughing at something our friend Alana just said, but I can’t seem to enjoy myself tonight. There’s a bug under my skin. Burrowing. Chewing out holes in my flesh and laying eggs of anger and resentment.
“Dude.” Evan kicks my foot. “Snap out of it, man.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah,” he says sarcastically, “I can tell.” He grabs the empty bottle of beer I’ve been absently holding and tosses me a new one from the cooler. “You’ve been a moody little bitch for two days. I get you’re pissed off, but it ain’t cute anymore. Get drunk, smoke some weed. Heidi’s here somewhere. Maybe she’ll hook up with you again if you ask nicely.”
I stifle a groan. There are no secrets in this group. When Heidi and I first slept together, we’d barely dug the crust out of our eyes the next morning before everyone else knew about it. Which is just more proof that it was a bad idea to go there. Hooking up with friends is only inviting trouble.
“Eat me, asshole.” Heidi throws a handful of sand at him from across the fire pit. She flashes him the bird.
“Oops,” he says, knowing full well she was sitting there. “My bad.”
“You know, it’s remarkable,” Heidi says in that flat tone that is a glaring warning she’s about to snip your balls off. “You two are identical twins, and yet I wouldn’t touch your dick, Evan, even with Cooper’s face.”
“Burn,” Alana shouts, laughing beside Heidi and Steph. The three of them have been the absolute torment of every boy in the Bay since we were in third grade. An unholy trinity of hotness and terror.
Evan makes a lewd gesture in response because comebacks are not really in his wheelhouse. Then he turns back to me. “I still say we wait till that clone leaves his house and we jump his ass. Word gets around, Coop. People start hearing you let that shit stand, and suddenly they’re thinking anyone can mess with us.”
“Cooper’s lucky that prick didn’t press charges,” Steph points out. “But if you turn this into a war, he could change his mind.”
She’s right. There’s no good reason why I haven’t spent the last two days in a jail cell, other than that Preston guy was satisfied in humiliating me. While I’d never admit defeat, I’m still hot about getting fired. Evan’s right—Hartleys can’t let that shit stand. We have a reputation in this town. People smell weakness, they start getting ideas. Even when you have nothing, someone’s always trying to take it.
“Who was he, anyway?” Heidi asks.
“Preston Kincaid,” Steph supplies. “His family owns that massive estate down the coast where they ripped out those two-hundred-year-old oaks last month to put in a third tennis court.”
“Ugh, I know that guy,” Alana says, her bright red hair glowing in the firelight. “Maddy was running her dad’s parasailing boat a few weeks ago, and she took him out on it with some chick. He was trying to talk some game to Maddy right in front of his date. Dude actually asked her out. When she made some excuse, right, because she’s still trying to get a tip, he tries to persuade her into a threesome right there on the boat. Maddy said she damn near tossed him overboard.”
Steph makes a face. “He’s such a creep.”
“There you go.” Evan pops the cap on a fresh beer and takes a swig. “He’s got it coming. We’d be doing a community service to bust him down a peg.”
I eye my brother, curious.