Heart Bones(21)

He stares at me a moment but says nothing. I’d like to drill a hole in his head so his thoughts can pour out. But then again, I might not like them.

“What’s the purpose of a gap year, anyway?” I ask.

“You’re supposed to spend the year finding yourself.” He says that last part with a hint of sarcasm.

“Did you? Find yourself?”

“I was never lost,” he says pointedly. “I didn’t spend my gap year backpacking through Europe. I’ve spent it manning rent houses for my father. Not very sophisticated.”

It sounds like he’s a little resentful about that, but I’d give anything to get paid to live on a beach in a nice house. “How many houses does your family have here?”

“Five.”

“You live in five beach houses?”

“Not all at once.”

I think he might have just smiled a bit. I can’t tell. Could have been a shadow from the fire.

Our lives are so incredibly different, yet here we are, sitting on the same beach in front of the same fire. Attempting to have a conversation that doesn’t prove how many worlds apart we are. But we’re so many worlds apart, we’re not even in the same universe.

I wish I could be inside his head for a day. Any rich person’s head. How do they view the world? How does Samson view me? What do rich people worry about if they don’t have to worry about money?

“What’s it like being rich?” I ask him.

“Probably not much different than being poor. You just have more money.”

That is so laughable, I don’t even laugh. “Only a rich person would say that.”

He drops the stick back in the sand and leans back in his chair. He turns his head and makes eye contact with me. “What’s it like being poor, then?”

I can feel my stomach drop when he throws my own question back at me with a spin. I sigh, wondering if I should be honest with him.

I should. I’ve told too many lies in the past twenty-four hours, karma is sure to catch up with me. I give my attention back to the fire in front of us when I answer him.

“We didn’t receive food stamps because my mother was never sober enough to make her appointments. We also didn’t have a car. There are children who grow up never having to worry about food, there are children whose families live off government assistance for various reasons, and then there are children like me. The ones who slip through all the cracks. The ones who learn to do whatever it takes to survive. The kind who grow up not giving a second thought to eating a slice of bread they pulled out of a discarded loaf on the deck of a ferry, because that’s normal. That’s dinner.”

Samson’s jaw is hard as he stares back at me. Several beats of silence pass between us. He almost looks guilty, but then he glances away from me, giving his attention to the flames. “I’m sorry I said it wasn’t much different. That was a shallow thing to say.”

“You aren’t shallow,” I say quietly. “Shallow people don’t stare at the ocean as deeply as you do.”

Samson’s focus returns to mine as soon as I say that. His eyes have changed a little—narrowed. Darkened. He runs a hand down his face and mutters, “Fuck.”

I don’t know why he says that, but it sends goose bumps down my arms. It feels like it might have been a realization about me somehow.

I can’t ask him about it because I spot the girl and guy walking out of the water toward us. Cadence and Beau.

When they get closer, I realize she’s the girl Samson was kissing in his kitchen earlier. She’s eyeing me as she makes her way over. The closer she gets, the prettier she gets. She doesn’t sit in a chair; she sits right down on Samson’s lap. She stares at me like she’s expecting me to have a reaction to the fact that she’s now using Samson as her personal chair, but I’m good at hiding what I’m feeling.

Why am I even feeling anything at all?

“Who are you?” Cadence asks me.

“Beyah. I’m Sara’s stepsister.”

I can tell by the way her eyes scroll over me that she’s definitely a locker room girl. She wraps an arm around Samson like she’s staking a claim. Samson just looks bored, or lost in thought. Beau, who was just in the water with Cadence, sits down next to me after grabbing a beer.

His gaze starts at my feet and slowly slides up my body until he’s finally looking me in the eye. “I’m Beau,” he says with an ambitious grin, reaching out a hand.

I shake it, but when I do, Sara reappears with Marcos from their swim. She groans when she sees Beau giving me attention. “Beyah is engaged to be married,” Sara says. “Don’t waste your time.”

Beau looks down at my hand. “I don’t see a ring.”

“That’s because the diamond is so big, it’s too heavy for her to wear all day,” she retorts.

Beau leans in toward me, staring at me with a smirk. “She’s lying because she hates me.”

“I can see that.”

“Where are you from?”

“Kentucky.”

“How long are you here for?”

“The summer, probably.”

He grins. “Nice. Me too. If you ever get bored, I live over—” He lifts a hand to point toward wherever his house is, but he stops speaking because Sara is now standing in front of us.