Bad Girl Reputation (Avalon Bay #2)(9)

Later, after work, I meet up with my brother Billy for a drink at Ronda’s, a local dive for the retired swingers crowd that spends their days driving up and down Avalon Bay in golf carts and trading keys in a fishbowl over a game of poker. The rising May temperatures in the Bay means the return of wall-to-wall tourists and rich pricks clogging the boardwalk, so the rest of us have to find more creative places to hang out.

As Billy smiles at the leathery-faced bartender for a beer—nobody in this town cards the locals—I order a coffee. It’s unseasonably sweltering outside, even at sunset, and my clothes are sticking to my skin like papier-maché, but I can always drink a cup of hot, unleaded caffeine. It’s how you know you’re from the South.

“Saw you and Jay bringing in some boxes last night,” Billy says. “That the last of it?”

“Yeah, I’m leaving most of my stuff in storage back in Charleston. Doesn’t make much sense to haul my furniture down here just to move it all back up in a few months.”

“You’re still set on going back?”

I nod. “I’ll have to find a different place, though.”

My landlord was a total jerk about breaking my lease a couple months early, so I’ll still be paying him while I’m here living in my childhood bedroom. Leaving my job didn’t go much better. My boss at the real estate agency all but laughed at me when I mentioned taking a leave of absence. I hope Dad’s planning on paying me well. He might be a grieving widower, but I don’t work for free.

“So guess who walked into the hardware store the other day?” Billy says with a look that tells me to brace myself. “Deputy Dog-shit came in hassling me about the sidewalk sign. Something about town ordinances and blocking pedestrian traffic.”

My nails bite into the weathered bar top. Even after a year, the mention of Deputy Rusty Randall still coaxes a special kind of anger.

“That sign’s been there for, what,” Billy says, “twenty years at least.”

As long as I can remember, definitely. It’s a staple of the sidewalk, our wooden A-frame sign with the cartoon handyman announcing, YES, WE’RE OPEN! and waving a pipe wrench. The other side features a chalkboard with the week’s sale or new products. When I was little and loved following Dad to work, he used to yell at me from inside that I better not be drawing on the sign. I’d hastily erase my artwork and begin transferring it to the concrete, doing my best to force traffic around my masterpieces and just about biting the ankles off tourists who stomped their Sperrys through my sidewalk gallery.

“The guy wouldn’t leave until I brought the sign inside,” Billy grumbles. “He stood there for fifteen minutes while I pretended to help some customers and haggled with him about his bullshit ordinance. I was about to call Dad to talk some sense into him, but he went for his cuffs like he was about to arrest me, so I said, screw it. I waited a few minutes after he left and then put it back out.”

“Asshole,” I mutter into my coffee. “You know he gets off on it.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t tail you into town. Half expected him to be sitting outside the house in the middle of the night.”

I wouldn’t have put it past him. About a year ago, Deputy Randall became my cautionary tale. That night was my rock bottom, the moment I realized I couldn’t go on living like I was. Drinking too much, partying every night, letting my demons get the best of me. I had to do something about it—get my life back—before it was too late. So I made a plan, and a couple months later, I packed up everything I needed and set off for Charleston. Billy was the only person I told about that night with Rusty. Even though he’s two years younger than me, he’s always been my closest confidant.

“I still think about her,” I tell my brother. The guilt churning in my gut at the thought of Kayla and her children is still potent after all this time. I’d heard a while back she’d left Rusty and taken the kids. “I feel like I should find her. Apologize.”

Though the idea of facing her, and how she might react, is enough to send me into an anxiety spiral. It’s become a new feeling for me since that night. There was a time when nothing scared me. The stuff that left other people biting their nails rolled right off my shoulders. Now, I look back on my wilder days and cringe. Some of those days were not so long ago.

“Do what you want,” Billy says, taking a deep swig of his beer as if to wash the lingering topic out of his mouth. “But you have nothing to apologize for. The guy’s a jackass and a creep. He’s lucky we didn’t find him down a dark dirt road somewhere.”

I’d sworn Billy to secrecy; otherwise, he definitely would’ve run and told Dad or our brothers what had happened. I’m glad he kept it quiet. No sense in all of them winding up in prison for beating the pulp out of a cop. Then Randall would win.

“I’m going to run into him eventually,” I say, more to myself.

“Well, if you’ve got to skip town in a hurry, I still have about eighty bucks stashed in my old bed frame at Dad’s house.” Billy grins at me, which does go a long way to unwinding the knot in my chest. He’s good like that.

As we’re closing out the tab, I get a text from my best friend Heidi.

Heidi: Bonfire on the beach tonight.

Me: Where?

Heidi: The usual.

Meaning Evan and Cooper’s house. The place is loaded with emotional landmines.