Chapter 1
My phone rang as I sat in the lobby of my psychiatrist’s office. I broke eye contact with the girl who stared at me from across the lobby. At first I hadn’t minded, because I was easy on the eyes, but that chick hadn’t even blinked in the last twelve minutes and I was officially creeped out. It was a little over a week until summer officially ended, and it was still going strong with temperatures that crept towards eighty degrees out there, but this girl was dressed from head to toe in black. Her only color came from her blood red lipstick and I was convinced she wore white powder on her face because no one’s skin was naturally that pale. Well unless they were an albino.
I had nothing against albinos, in fact my best friend in elementary school had been pigmentally challenged, and his parents had moved him to some colder and less sunny climate by the end of junior high. I missed Eric even though I hadn’t thought about him in a while, and I wondered if I could find him on Facebook and get in touch. The kids in school had been cruel and nicknamed him Milk, but by seventh grade, Eric had owned the name proudly and started to call himself it. He’d often said “milk is smooth and refreshing like me”. I really should try to get back in touch with that guy.
But now as I looked at the pale girl in the lobby, I wondered what scars she hid beneath her long sleeves, as well as the scars she hid beneath her skin. The ones which have brought her to therapy on a Wednesday afternoon. Personally, I knew all about scars and trying to hide them. Even now I went to tug my long sleeves down safely to my wrists, only to remember I wore short sleeves today. My fingers faintly traced the burn scars on my arms and someday I planned on getting some of them covered with bad ass tattoos. But tattoos are expensive so I have been trying to save some funds. But having a girlfriend complicated that matter, and she thought my scars were pretty damn sexy, so...
Though I had only been in the waiting room about thirteen minutes now, I had also scratched at my chest about three times. That was an itch that seemed to keep coming back, even though it’d been three months since I first received those scars. Now a raised patchwork of white and pink with dabs of purple on the deeper areas of scar tissue. That first month had been hell and I had even put gloves on my hands in the middle of summer to keep myself from shredding my skin or my stitches.I wondered if the itching was only in my head these days, because the way I got the scars certainly still was.Though I had ditched the sleeves, mainly because my girlfriend loved to run her fingers over my arms, and it was hot as hades out there, the scars on my chest still remained hidden to most of the world.My younger brother said it looked like I was clawed by a drunk bear.
I scratched at my chest again for good measure. Maybe if I did it enough, the eye-stalk chick over there would lose interest if she thought I had scabies or body lice or something.
I pulled my ringing phone from the pocket of my shorts and I smiled when I saw the name on the screen.
“Hello beautiful, when did you get back?” I crooned into the phone.
“About five minutes ago. I missed you like crazy!” said my girlfriend Marin.
“I missed you too. Are you still naked?”
Marin laughed. God how I’d missed her laugh, warm and sweet like the maple syrup Mom used to make in our kitchen. It had been ten days, six hours, and twenty-two minutes since I had last heard that laugh or saw her hot as hell self. Not that I was counting or anything.
“No. But Zale’s still waiting for me to do a trunk-in-run by the water.”
Marin and her brother had been creative to avoid seeing each other naked, both when they slipped into their skins and took to the sea, and when they came ashore and shed their skin to take to their legs again. Of course I loved seeing Marin naked, but I doubted I would feel the same way if I were her brother.She’d even let me watch her transformations both times she’d taken to the sea since we’d started dating in June.And I couldn’t wait to see her naked again in any context she would allow me too.
“You want me to come pick you guys up?”
I eyed around the lobby.The receptionist was on the phone, looking at her computer, and pale chick was now giving me a death glare instead of an eye rape. It was still ten minutes before my hour long session with Dr. Richards began. But I was already on my feet and pulling my keys from my pocket.
“If you’re not busy,” said Marin sweetly.
“No. I’m not doing anything. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
I knew that she would be upset if she knew I’d blown off my appointment, but I also knew I would have blown off work, my AA meetings, or my HiSET classes, or literally whatever I was doing at her call. Thank God I wasn’t scheduled to work tonight, but it wouldn’t have stopped me either way. I would have felt guilty about it later because most employers weren’t too keen on hiring someone with a record and fresh out of rehab, but dad knew the owners of The Crab Shack and they’d been willing to give me a shot. They also didn’t serve alcohol at the restaurant which was the reason my dad suggested it in the first place.
Marin didn’t like me to talk on the phone while I drove, so I told her I loved her and I would see her soon. She told me she loved me more and couldn’t wait to see me to prove it. That filled me with a heat that even the air-conditioning in my truck on full blast couldn’t cool.
I crammed the phone among the old receipts and straw wrapper in my cup holder and jacked up the radio. My favorite band Pantera yelled about shedding skin and man I thought this song was wrote for me. But it was also dark, and in rehab one of the lessons was to avoid triggers for your drinking. I had drunk too this song too many nights to count, and today I was three months sober. So I changed the station onto preset number one which Marin had set.It was a classic rock station and I smiled because the memory attached to “Pour some sugar on me,” was so much sweeter. Late night, just Mare and I on a deserted beach, she turned on her playlist and turned me on by swaying her body in the sand. Afterwards we were both covered in sand, had it in unmentionable places, as we crossed off make out on the beach from her to do list.
My phone sang about and being a “teenage dirtbag” from the band Wheatus and my brother’s face flashed across the screen.Usually, I wasn’t one for attaching pictures to phone numbers, but Kieran had hacked into my phone one night in August while I slept and added a photoshopped picture of himself with his face on washboard abs he would never achieve. Of course he had made his ring tone, I’m sexy and I know it, and unknown to me, I happened to be in my first HiSET class,(which was the state of Maine’s equivalent to the GED), and forgot to silence my phone when I’m sexy and I know it blared from my phone leaving me pretty mortified, my classmates laughing, and the teacher pissed.I could laugh about it now, but at the time I punched the little punk as soon as I got home that afternoon.
Now I hit decline on my brother because it wasn’t safe to talk and drive after all. That didn’t stop him as several seconds later, he texted also. I was responsible enough to avoid the temptation to look at the screen until I was the fourth vehicle behind the red light.
Don’t decline me u dick. I made it 2 2nd base last nite
I glanced up to make sure the light was still firmly red before I typed my reply.
Doesn’t count with ur self
That kid was quick on the drawl and I got a middle finger emoji within seconds. I laughed and told him “2 get his ass 2 practice,” before I put my phone away and hit the gas pedal. I ignored the buzz again until I came to a stop sign across town. This time my brother’s message was serious. The same one he’d texted me every day since I’d gotten out of rehab two months ago.
R U ok 2day?
He even used punctuation, crap just got real. He was a pain the ass almost sixteen- year- old punk, but I loved him and I missed the little shit. Of course I didn’t tell him that. But I had told him I loved him for the first time in God knew how long that night in the hospital before I left for rehab. He blamed it on the pain medication. I was jealous the words came so easily between Marin and Zale, or even between them and anyone they loved for that matter. I was working on it though. I was working on a lot of things.
Someone honked at me while I texted my reply and I thought about bringing my brother’s emoji to life, but I let it go. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and I was about to see my girl.
Yes. On my way 2 pick up Mare
And I meant that yes. Today had been an okay day, though I couldn’t claim the same about every day. And Mare being back was just the cherry on top of my proverbial sundae. I couldn’t wait to get to that beach, but I kept the gas pedal at no more than five miles above the speed limit as I coasted through Boothbay Harbor. Because if Marin were in the seat beside me, she would’ve said “Slow down or the only place you’ll get there early to is the afterlife pal!”Yeah, I was so whipped that girl told me what do even when she wasn’t even physically here.
I wasted a few precious seconds to check my phone when I parked on the street near Marin’s old cottage on the beach.
B sure 2 suit up cause 1 of u is enough 4 the world, said my brother.
Wise guy, my kid brother, or more accurately jealous as hell.
Get ur ass in the only suit u’ll b wearin 4 awhile and get 2 practice. Talk 2 u later.
He was on his school in Miami’s surf team. Not too bad at it either, the best on the team, not that I would tell him that.Had to keep him humble and his head was already far too big for his scrawny shoulders.
U know I make any suit look damn good. Tell Mare I said hi and when she wants a real man she has my #
I laughed. My brother’s pursuit of my girlfriend was a source of amusement for me because I knew that it was never going to happen.Mare was out of his league, damn she was even out of mine.She had also turned eighteen while I was in rehab, which I was still trying to make it up to her. Missing your girlfriend’s birthday sucked in itself, but missing the most important one in her life was a new level of stupid even for me. Not that she held it against me like I held it against myself. I had also missed Zale’s birthday which fell a couple weeks before his sister’s, but I didn’t offer him full body oil massages among other things like I had her.
Dream on little buddy, I texted my brother.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and got out of my truck. I took a deep breath of salted air the way Mare and Zale always did when they first got to the beach, and then I went to find my girl and her brother, the best friends I had in this world.here…
