Reckless Girls(42)

Brittany doesn’t have that much in common with Chloe, either, if she’s honest, but Chloe is easier, more fun to be around.

Chloe is not a constant reminder of what happened.

And now, she wants Brittany to join her in Australia.

She reaches out, pushing Brittany’s knee. “Don’t you want to see it?”

Brittany does. She’s loved Europe, but Australia would be a real adventure. Somewhere she’d never even dreamed of going.

“You’ve still got plenty of money, right?”

They haven’t talked about Brittany’s money before. Not how much of it she has, not how much of it she’s spent. Eventually, Brittany knows, she’ll have to tell Chloe about it. Her parents, the accident. The settlement from both insurance and Sterling Northcutt’s family.

But for now, she just nods. “Yeah.”

“Well, there you go!” says Chloe, grinning. “And if money becomes an issue, we can stay with my friends, or find other cheap hostels. I promise you, it can totally be done.”

And then she reaches for her bag, pulling out a wad of paper bills. “And of course, there’s always the bro circuit.”

Brittany reaches over and takes Chloe’s hand, the hand holding all those bills. They crunch slightly under her fingers, and she feels her heart lift at the idea that this can continue, that the idea of “home” could keep receding further and further into the distance.

“Let’s go.”





NOW





SEVENTEEN





Robbie has been here four days.

I keep expecting to wake up one morning and discover his boat is gone, that he’s moved on to whatever is next for him. But no, every day, there it sits, the ridiculously named Last Dance with Mary Jane.

Every day, there he is.

The second day, the day Jake took me shooting, Robbie sat on a patch of sand and spent hours hacking away at a piece of driftwood with a bent and dull-looking pocketknife. That afternoon, he disappeared into the jungle, a beat-up black canvas bag slung over one shoulder.

The third day, he announced he was going fishing, and stood out in the shallows with a line tied to a Vienna sausage.

“Stupid bugger,” Jake says from his spot on the beach, and Nico leans past him to see what Robbie is doing.

“Mate!” Jake calls out. “Don’t eat anything you catch!”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Nico asks, and Jake looks over at him.

“Bunch of ’em here are toxic as fuck. Kill you dead in a couple of hours if you eat ’em.” His teeth flash in a quick smile. “Another one of Meroe’s little treats. Surprised you didn’t know.”

Something flashes across Nico’s face, gone before I can identify it.

But it doesn’t matter because Robbie doesn’t catch anything.

On the fourth day, the beach is empty when we all swim over, and I breathe an audible sigh of relief as we set up camp in our original lean-to.

“You must be completely shit at cards,” Jake teases, as I situate myself on a blanket. He’s wearing a pair of blue-and-white-striped trunks today, shorter and more fitted than the board shorts Nico usually wears, the hair on his legs golden and curling in the sunlight.

I blush. “What do you mean?”

“Everything you’re thinking is clear on your face. For example, I can tell that you’re intensely grateful our new friend hasn’t made an appearance yet today.”

“Yet is the key word there,” Brittany says as she lies down next to me, adjusting her sunglasses. “My bet is he’s not leaving before we do.”

“Well, yeah. First night we rolled out an entire feast for him, what do you expect?”

That’s Amma, sitting on Brittany’s other side. She’s pulled out the paperback that Jake had been reading when we first arrived, and I realize it’s a spy thriller, silhouetted figures running across a dark blue background.

“We rolled out a feast for you, too,” Eliza says with a slight edge in her voice. I can’t blame her—Amma’s never been anything but borderline rude to Eliza, no matter how nice Eliza is in return.

“Yeah, but we obviously weren’t freeloading creeps,” Amma replies.

“Bit harsh, that,” Jake says mildly, looking back out to sea.

We all sit in slightly awkward silence before Eliza says, “Lux, darling, would you be an absolute legend and go back to the Azure Sky? Since our friend is not out and about today, I think I’ll break open the good wine. You know where it is, right?”

I nod, getting up and dusting the sand off the backs of my legs. The Azure Sky’s dinghy is up on the beach, and I easily maneuver it back into the water, pointing it toward the catamaran. I wave at Nico as we pass.

As always, I’m struck by how clean everything is aboard the Azure Sky, how sleek and neat the deck is. The longer we’re moored here, the more ragged the Susannah seems to become, her deck littered with damp towels, pairs of shoes, spare lines.

I slide open the door to the main cabin.

And freeze.

Robbie is standing there, his back to me, the lizard tattoo on his shoulder leering at me. He’s got his hands on his hips as he looks at something by the sink, and the cabin is flooded by his scent. Sweat, salt, mildewed laundry …