Heat Stroke (Beach Kingdom, #2)(14)

Yes.

Of course it was. He’d been trying to get Marcus to stop playing his shadow since summer started. The big guy was simply giving him what he wanted.

So why was he so cold?

Marcus cut a blank look over at him and Jamie held his breath, waiting for Marcus to say something idiotic so they could get back on track and everything could go back to normal. But it never happened. Marcus returned his attention to the ground, quickly finishing a quick application of sunscreen before he turned and lumbered out of the Hut.

Rory shoulder-bumped Jamie on the way to the door. “You ready, man?”

“Yeah.” Jamie cleared the cobwebs from his throat. “Right behind you.”

“Everything okay?”

Jamie scoffed. “Okay? Did you hear how quiet it was in here? I’m starting the day without a headache for once,” he lied, adding unnecessarily, “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

Narrator: But Jamie wasn’t fine.

Friday rolled around and still, Marcus hadn’t spoken a word to him. Every morning, they went through the same routine. Marcus strolled into the Hut at the last second, only making the barest touch of eye contact with Jamie, never saying a word. Never requesting the chair beside Jamie’s. Nothing. Making the whole situation worse and less possible to shrug off, the other lifeguards were growing increasingly subdued, too. Had Marcus’s brash asshole routine really been the heartbeat of the lifeguard station?

The notion was ridiculous.

Or was it?

Jamie’s own heartbeat didn’t feel the same, either. Nothing did. He’d been so fucking moody, his brothers had been avoiding him like the plague. None of his books would hold his attention, not even his favorite comfort read, a book of essays by Emerson. It was time to start working on his lesson plans for the new school year and he couldn’t focus long enough to write the date at the top of a notebook page, let alone incorporate the country’s current administration’s economic policies into his baseline teaching notes. And why was everything so itchy? The soles of his feet, his fingers, the back of his neck. There was a colony of red ants marching around under his skin and sitting still proved impossible.

Especially tonight. It was Friday at midnight and Marcus had been working the door of the Castle Gate since happy hour. He hadn’t said shit to Jamie and Jamie was starting to get really annoyed. At Marcus. Then himself, for being annoyed when this was exactly what he’d wanted. Marcus to leave him alone.

What Jamie needed to do was call Kurt, the older gentleman whose number was programmed into his phone. Never mind that he couldn’t even remember what the dude looked like.

Jamie poured a row of tequila shots for a group of girls. One of them had a silk, birthday girl sash draped across her chest and a phone attached to her hand. She snapped a picture of the neatly lined row of liquor oblivion and squealed. “Take a shot with us!”

Bartenders were asked to do this all the damn time. Drunk people never stopped worrying about being judged and thus, hated having sober people around to potentially catch them doing something regrettable. Ten times out of ten, Jamie declined. But his hand was suddenly being operated by someone else, sluicing golden liquor into a sparkling clean shot glass and tossing it back while the girls cheered.

Oh shit, the burn tasted good.

Too good.

Andrew was distracted by a boisterous group at one end of the bar or he probably would have given Jamie hell for imbibing on the job. Rory merely raised an eyebrow.

“Another?” Jamie asked the girls, already lining up glasses.

A few minutes later, he did it again.

After that, the night wasn’t so bad at all. When Jamie glanced up and found Marcus watching him with a stony expression by the door, Jamie winked and Marcus looked away, his throat muscles shifting. He wasn’t drunk enough to see Marcus upset—what the hell did he have to be upset about, anyway?—so he took another shot. Whiskey this time. Huge mistake, but he’d worry about it tomorrow.

This simply wasn’t how things were supposed to work. No matter how many times Jamie told Marcus to fuck off, he wasn’t supposed to actually do it.

Jamie was in the middle of pouring a Guinness pint when Marcus went into the back office. A quick glance at his cell phone clock told Jamie the bouncing shift was over. Usually he hung out until the bar closed, nursing a beer or two. But this time, Marcus emerged with his sweatshirt, throwing an absent wave at the bar before disappearing out the door.

Gone. Just like that.

Jamie swallowed several times, but there was a fistful of nickels in his throat and he couldn’t get them down. He took a fifth shot, but that did nothing to dislodge the heaviness. Was the train ride that bad? Or was it that good?

There. That explained why Marcus’s silence was bothering him so much. Because he didn’t have answers. Jamie thrived on having conclusions to all questions, so obviously being in the dark about what had driven Marcus away was unacceptable.

Thank God. It all made sense now.

Four o’clock in the morning rolled around before Jamie knew it. He wasn’t drunk drunk, but he definitely wasn’t sober, either. But unlike most nights when he had too much…he wasn’t yearning for his bed. No, he wasn’t tired at all. Wired was more like it. Anxious.

Rory had opened the bar that night, so Andrew sent him home to Olive early, leaving Andrew and Jamie to close. They’d just cleared the Castle Gate of all drunken revelers when Andrew came out of the back office, fingers perched on the bridge of his nose. “My keys are gone. Did you pocket them by mistake?”