Song of the Fireflies

Chapter Eighteen

Bray

One night of partying went by at Tate’s secret spot on the beach, but we didn’t sleep there that night. Elias got so shitfaced after drinking way too much whiskey that I thought he had alcohol poisoning. Since I was the most sober one among our group of seven, Tate tossed me the keys to his Jeep, and I drove us to a hotel in St. Petersburg. But not until after I got us lost and drove farther out of our way than I had to. It wasn’t easy navigating a giant Jeep Sahara through a state I had never driven through before, with a load of drunks and one very sick fiancé puking his guts up on Tate’s floorboard. Tate was too drunk to care. I held my breath the whole way, hoping like hell we didn’t get pulled over by the cops.

I felt so awful for Elias. I pulled over twice to let him get some air. And by the time I got him into the bathtub and ran down the hallway with a dripping ice bucket in one hand, he had finally calmed down on the vomiting. I cleaned him up and helped him into the bed.

I had taken it upon myself to get a room separate from everyone else. Tate said he didn’t care when I asked him as we stood at the hotel’s front desk. I put the rooms on his credit card. The front desk clerk almost didn’t rent us the rooms because we looked like a bunch of beach hoodlums and we stank like whiskey. But I think she took pity on Elias.

It seemed like all of us slept for twelve hours straight. Except when check-out time came around—Tate woke up long enough to find me in the room next door, get his credit card back, and go downstairs to pay for another day.

By early evening, we were all awake and out on the beach, soaking up what was left of the sun. Elias was feeling much better. He said he doubted it was the alcohol that made him sick; it was probably the burritos we’d eaten an hour before he started drinking.

“I’m telling you,” Elias said, “That felt like food poisoning. It wasn’t the alcohol. I’ve drank way more than I drank last night, and I never puked like that before.”

I grinned at him. “Are you just saying that to make yourself feel better about drinking tonight?”

“No,” he said. “But if I do drink tonight, I think I’ll lay off the hard stuff.”

“Good idea,” I said, and laid my head on his arm as we walked alongside each other down the beach.

Jen had a suitcase full of clothes with her in the Jeep, and she lent me a bikini. Elias didn’t care to swim, but Tate offered him his extra pair of trunks if he changed his mind. This was beginning to bother Elias. A lot. Tate paying for everything, paying for us, for me. I tried to tell him that it wasn’t something he could control. He couldn’t access his bank account. What money we did have was probably snorted up Anthony’s and Cristina’s noses by now. One last time Elias was going to call his father and give his dad access to his account somehow, so his dad could wire us some money, but I stopped him. It was too much of a risk.

But either Tate was loaded or he just didn’t care about maxing out his credit cards. I couldn’t know. But he didn’t have any qualms about paying for everyone most of the time. Caleb paid for beer and food, but usually it was Tate footing the bill, except when we stayed at friend’s houses and such. That was pretty much a freebie all around.

Before the night started to fall, Tate talked everyone into heading back to that secret spot on the beach, which was well over an hour from the hotel.

We had already checked out of our room, and I had to pee, so before we got on the road I found a public restroom in a nearby restaurant. The stalls were full when I made it inside. I waited next to a sink, trying to avoid having to hold myself or do the pee-pee dance, until finally one toilet flushed and out of the stall stepped a girl with a blonde braid draped over her shoulder.

I smiled, and she smiled in return. Really, I just wanted her to walk away from the stall faster so I could jump in there and pee before it was too late.

Afterward, we hung around the beach for a while longer. I saw that same girl from the restroom sitting several feet away from us next to a tall, brown-haired shirtless guy with a huge tattoo down his side. When the girl stood up once, I saw that she had one, too. I was instantly intrigued. I had always liked tattoos, the way they looked on other people, but I never got around to getting one of my own. The tats these two had looked like masterpieces even from this far away.

“Damn,” I heard Johanna say. “Do you see that guy over there?” I was more curious about Johanna saying anything at all, much less openly gawking at some random guy on the beach while Caleb was standing just feet away from us talking to Tate.

I shrugged it off, accepting that Caleb, Johanna, and Grace’s relationship was weird enough to me as it was. I didn’t care to delve deeper into it. If Johanna wasn’t worried about what Caleb might think, then I wasn’t worried for her.

“Which guy?” I asked, pretending not to have noticed.

I didn’t want Elias to think I had zoned in on him like Johanna had. I mean sure, the guy was smokin’ hot, but he had nothing on my man. No one did.

Tate and Caleb walked back up then.

“Hey,” Tate said from behind, “we’re going to head out soon.”

“Why don’t we invite some more people this time?” Johanna suggested. She stood up and dusted sand from her bikini.

Tate looked at Caleb, who shrugged. “Yeah, sure, that’s a good idea, actually,” Tate agreed.

Elias and I stood up. All of us started scanning the beach and since it still technically wasn’t summer, there weren’t many people to choose from. A middle-aged couple sat to our right, the woman wearing a purple one-piece with large flowers printed all over it and a huge floppy hat on her head. An old man jogged past, very tanned and in better physical shape than most forty-year-olds I had seen, and glistening with sweat and suntan lotion. A young married couple with two children sat close to the water in beach chairs. It was safe to say that the cute blonde in the red bikini and her tattooed boyfriend were the only candidates.

“I saw that girl in the restroom down at the restaurant earlier,” I said, nodding in her direction. “Why don’t we invite them?”

I noticed Tate eyeing her a little too obviously. Jen slapped him on the arm, and he pretended to be wounded. Thankfully, Jen forgave him quickly, because I really wasn’t in the mood to hear them arguing, and I doubted anyone who came along with us to party would be, either.

We went over to the couple.

“From around here?” Tate asked.

I sat down on the sand next to the girl and brought Elias down with me. I hoped they wouldn’t take offense to us invading their space like that.

They didn’t seem to mind. “No, we’re from Galveston,” the guy answered.

“And Raleigh,” the girl added.

“We’re from Indiana,” I said, smiling at her.

Tate wrapped Jen in his arms from behind, probably his way of making her feel better about his straying eyes from before. “I’m Tate, this is Jen,” he said, then introduced everyone else. “Johanna. Grace. And that’s my brother, Caleb.”

“I’m Bray,” I said. “This is my fiancé, Elias.”

We had long ago given up using false names.

The girl sat up and brushed the sand away from her hands. “Cool to meet you,” she said. “I’m Camryn and this is my fiancé, Andrew.” She had a pretty smile and an air of kindness to her. Andrew had bright green eyes and two distinct dimples that set evenly in his cheeks when he smiled.

Elias reached out to shake their hands.

Tate said, “We’re heading to a private spot on a beach about thirty minutes from here.” I knew that was a serious bit of misinformation, but if he told them it was a longer drive than that they probably wouldn’t have come. “It’s a great secluded party spot. You’re both welcome to come along.”

Camryn turned to Andrew. They seemed to be having some kind of inner conversation.

Andrew then said to Tate, “Sure. We can follow you out.”

“Kick ass,” Tate said.

The two of them grabbed their belongings and followed us off the beach and to the parking lot.

“They seem pretty cool,” Elias said. I was sitting on his lap in the backseat, my head hitting the roof every time the Jeep would drive over even the slightest bump. “Did you see those tats they had?”

“Yeah, that was some sick ink,” Tate said from the driver’s seat. He glanced over at Jen in the passenger’s seat. “Makes me want to get another one.”

Jen rolled her eyes and went back to painting her toenails, her feet propped on the dashboard. I wondered how she could paint in the moving Jeep without getting turquoise nail polish all over her feet.

It was dark by the time we got there.

“You probably shouldn’t have told them it was only a thirty-minute drive,” Grace said beside me. She was sitting halfway on Caleb’s lap and her hip kept bumping into mine, making the ride that much more uncomfortable.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Tate said.

We turned onto a partially paved road and the last couple of minutes of the drive were the worst as the Jeep shook and jolted over the broken road littered with potholes and debris. My head felt like a battering ram. The headlights bounced through the darkness until finally the road opened up into a wide space of sand and rocks.

Camryn and Andrew pulled up next to us in their black vintage car and shut off the engine.

“Hopefully they won’t be too pissed,” Tate added and hopped out of the Jeep.

Without hesitation, the rest of us got out quickly. I stretched my legs and rubbed my calves and the lower part of my back with my fingertips. Elias came around behind me and massaged the back of my neck. I let out a soft moan. “I don’t know how much more piling up in that Jeep I can handle.” In response, he kissed my bare shoulder.

Tate lifted the ice chest from the back of the Jeep and dropped it in the sand.

“We’ve got plenty of beer,” he said, raising the lid and reaching inside. He tossed a bottle of Corona to Andrew.

Elias and I stepped up beside Camryn. Tate popped the cap on another bottle of Corona and offered it to her.

“Thanks,” she said and took it.

“If you’ve got any blankets, might want to bring one,” Tate said. Jen joined him then, prancing over in her skimpy white bikini. I think she may have felt a little threatened by Camryn, but not so much that she treated her badly. “And I’ve got a kick-ass system in this baby,” Tate added, patting the back of the Jeep. “So I’ve also got the music covered.”

Andrew popped the trunk on his car and grabbed a blanket.

“Where are my shorts?” Camryn asked, rummaging around in their backseat.

“Right here,” Andrew said. He tossed them over the car toward her, and she caught them.

“I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I heard her say as she slipped the shorts on over her red bikini bottoms.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one!” I said. I was always afraid of swimming in the ocean at night.

She smiled at me over the roof of their car and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before?”

Tate and everyone else were walking toward the beach carrying all of our stuff. As usual, Tate left the doors open on the Jeep. The speakers blasted rock music; Tate and Caleb’s mutual playlist, which consisted mostly of some singer named Dax and several different bands he had been in. Last night it was Pantera. The night before, old-school Snoop Dogg. All of our musical tastes had no boundaries, really.

“We were out here last night,” I answered, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel.”

Elias shook his head at me, disappointed. I think I embarrassed him.

Camryn and Andrew followed us down to the beach, where Tate was already setting up camp. Tate tossed a match onto a pile of tree branches and ignited the lighter fluid he had squirted all over the pile. Fire curled up and over the top of the branches and illuminated the darkness. Elias and I sat down with two beach towels next to Camryn and Andrew. Tate and the others were on a giant blanket.

I noticed Johanna was seriously checking Andrew out. I was put off by it, but I never said anything. It was rude the way she kept eyeing Andrew with his fiancée sitting right there. I had never really had much reason to dislike her until I witnessed this. She sat next to Caleb, the guy she had been screwing for no telling how long, making sure her pose was natural but at the same time sensual, as if she hoped Andrew would notice her barely tanned skin underneath her hot pink bikini, which barely held her boobs in place. At one point, I saw her twist her long, blonde hair and drape it over her shoulder on one side, as if to mimic the way that Camryn wore hers. I thought I had issues. No, Johanna had me beat in the issues department. And I may have been promiscuous, but I had standards. Johanna didn’t know the concept.

“Those are some wicked fuckin’ tattoos,” Tate pointed out.

Camryn pulled away from Andrew’s chest to give us all a better look. She raised her arm above her head and exposed her side, as well.

“Yeah, no doubt,” I said, totally fascinated by the ink and wanting some of my own more and more. I crawled across the sand toward them to get a better look. “I’ve been curious about yours.”

“Turn around here, babe, and show them how it fits,” Andrew said and lifted Camryn around on his lap. He lay down on the sand and brought her body down on top of his.

They lined up their tattoos to form a seamless picture, and my eyes grew wide with fascination and envy. I didn’t even know the story behind it yet, but my heart ached just seeing the two of them lying together like that, like two pieces forming one whole person right in front of my eyes. Momentarily, I thought of me and Elias. I pictured the two of us in their place. Andrew’s half of the tattoo was of a woman wearing a long, graceful see-through white gown that was pressed against the sensual curves of her body by the wind. Tendrils of flowing fabric blew behind her as she reached out her arms to the male figure inked on Camryn’s ribs. I gaped down at the detail, mesmerized by the beautiful complexity of every perfect line. The tattoos were enormous, stretching from the tops of their ribs down almost to their hips.

I glanced back at Elias with an idea rampant on my face. He looked nervous. And he should’ve been, because he knew what I was thinking: that I was ready to drag him to the closest tattoo shop.

“That. Is. Awesome,” I said, looking back at Camryn and Andrew. “Who are they?”

“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Andrew answered. “From the Greek legend.”

“A tragic tale of true love,” Camryn added.

Andrew squeezed his arms around her.

“Well, nothing seems tragic about the two of you,” Tate said and lit up a cigarette.

I finally managed to pry myself away. “I think it’s beautiful,” I said as I made my way back to sit between Elias’s legs. “And I guess it better be, because I know that had to hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, it definitely hurt,” Camryn said. “But it was worth every hour of pain.”

We all sat around the blazing bonfire and talked mostly about benign things for a long time, but it didn’t take long for Camryn and me to hit it off. Even before she started getting buzzed and overly talkative, we talked more than anyone. Normally it would be me and Grace, but she was too wrapped up in Caleb this time to be my sidekick. At one point, I was so into my conversation with Camryn, and I felt so comfortable with her, that I almost slipped up and mentioned we lived in Georgia. Elias noticed how close I was getting to saying things I shouldn’t, and that was when he entered the conversation and started talking about concerts we had all been to.

“Maroon 5 are great live,” I said.

“I know!” Camryn said with excitement in her eyes. “I saw them in concert with my best friend, Nat, and they were amazing! Not too many bands who sound almost just like they do on their album.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth,” I said and took the last drink of my beer. “Did you say you’re from North Carolina?”

Camryn sat Indian style on the sand.

“Yeah, but Andrew and I don’t really live there now.”

“Where do you live?” Tate asked. He took a long pull from his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. “Texas?”

“No, we sort of… travel,” Camryn said. She had pretty bright blue eyes; I’d noticed them when the light from the fire hit her face at just the right angle. And a cute, oval-shaped face.

“Travel?” I asked. “What, like driving around in an RV?”

“Not exactly,” Camryn said. “We just have the car.”

“Why do you travel?” Johanna asked.

I saw the way Andrew looked at her upon hearing her voice, and he wasn’t pleased, to say the least. It was pretty obvious he had noticed the way she had been eyeballing him all night. He ignored her and looked back over at us. “We play music together.”

“What, you’re like in a band?” Johanna asked with a valley-girl accent.

I rolled my eyes. Her desperation was getting ridiculous.

Andrew looked right at her this time, which kind of surprised me. “Sort of,” he said, but that’s all the answer he gave her. I realized it was intentional.

“What kind of music do you play?” Caleb asked. He sat, as usual, between Grace and Johanna, not caring in the slightest what anyone thought of him being with two girls.

Andrew took a drink of his beer and answered, “Classic rock, blues and folk rock, stuff like that.”

“You’ll have to play for us!” I said excitedly. I was buzzed myself by this time.

Camryn turned around to look at Andrew, and she was animated by the idea. “You could. You’ve got the acoustic in the backseat.”

“Nah, I’m not up to it right now,” Andrew said.

“Oh come on, baby, why not?”

“Yeah, man, if you’ve got a guitar with you and know how to play, that’d be awesome,” Tate jumped in.

Caving to the peer pressure, and probably more so to not wanting to say no to his fiancée, Andrew got up and walked to his car. He came back carrying a guitar.

“You’re going to sing with me,” he said to Camryn as he sat back down beside her.

“Nooo! I’m too buzzed!” She kissed him on the mouth and sat next to me and Elias, probably to get out of it.

“All right, what do you want me to sing?” Andrew asked.

“Hey, whatever you feel like, man,” Tate said.

Andrew sat there in thought for a moment as though shuffling through a hundred different songs in his mind and decided on “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. My mom used to listen to that song all the time, so I was no stranger to it. And damn, Andrew could sing. As if he wasn’t already tattooed and gorgeous and could play the guitar like a pro, his voice was something to be reckoned with. I sat up between Elias’s legs, my body swaying side to side with the music, letting it run through me.

All of us were getting into it, even Elias, who wasn’t at all threatened by Andrew, because he knew he had no reason to be. I’d made sure of that early on.

Andrew belted out the last chorus and the song ended.

“That was great!” I said excitedly.

“Man, you weren’t fuckin’ playing’ around,” Tate said and lit up a joint.

“Play another one,” I said, laying back against Elias. He wrapped me in his arms, and I felt his chin press softly against the top of my head.

Tate passed the joint to Camryn first but she just looked at it for a moment. She shook her head at Tate and said, “No thanks—I think I’ll just stick to liquor tonight.”

Andrew played a few more songs by the bonfire and Camryn finally did sing one with him. They were both very talented. I thought they should be playing shows somewhere.

Tate came back from the Jeep carrying a stack of Solo cups, a bottle of Seagram’s 7, and a bottle of Sprite. Jen went to work mixing drinks and passing them around.

“Have at it, man,” Tate urged Andrew. “Don’t worry about driving anywhere tonight. Cops don’t even know about this place.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll have a cup,” Andrew said.

When it came Camryn’s turn, the two of them went back and forth about whether or not it was a good idea, but ultimately she decided that it was. She had already turned down the joint.

Maybe it was the weed and the alcohol, but before too long I was talking to Camryn about, of all things, tampon brands and eventually the best kind of shampoo. She asked me about my bracelets, to which I made sure not to let her get as close as Grace had the other night at the beach house, worried it would be a similar scene all over again. I could open up to Elias about what I did, but no one else out here had any business knowing. The music continuously funneled from the Jeep.

“Andrew, I need to pee,” Camryn said.

He took her cup from her hand and set it on the sand. “I need to take a piss too,” he said.

Tate pointed behind them with another cigarette between his fingers and said, “Go around that way. There’s no glass and shit to step on over there.”

Andrew set his cup next to Camryn’s and helped her up. Once they slipped into the darkness, Elias thought it was a good idea, too, and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few,” he said. He looked down at me. “You need to use the bathroom?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I said.

He smiled and walked in the opposite direction of Andrew and Camryn, past the vehicles, to relieve himself.

Grace left Caleb’s lap and came over to me, laying her head on my shoulder.

“Have you been watching Johanna?” she whispered.

I looked over at Johanna trailing her fingers down Caleb’s bicep muscle, a vacant look on her face. She always appeared high or just not all there in general. I wondered what went on inside her head, other than thoughts of Caleb, and now this new guy, Andrew. Eventually, I had to believe that nothing else went on inside there.

“You mean her drooling over Andrew? Yeah, kind of hard not to notice. Doesn’t Caleb care?”

Grace chuckled and raised her head from my shoulder. “Not really,” she said. “He pulled me behind the Jeep earlier and told me he wanted her gone.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

She shook her head, glanced over at Johanna and Caleb again, and then added, “There’s something seriously wrong with that girl.”

“That’s an understatement. How long have you known her?”

“Just a few months. She moved into my apartment building.”

Caleb got up and started digging around in his pockets. It may have been just to get away from Johanna for a moment.

“Why doesn’t he just tell her that he’s not into her anymore?”

“Because she lives in Virginia,” Grace said quietly. “He may be an ass sometimes, but he won’t leave her stranded so far away from home. I told him when we were at the Jeep he should just get her a bus ticket back to Norfolk.”

“What did he say to that?”

Grace brushed her long, dark hair away from her shoulders. She drew her knees up, leaned back, and propped herself up on her elbows.

“He said that’s probably what he’ll do.”

“Hey,” I said, “why are you with him, anyway? I mean, he doesn’t exactly seem like boyfriend material.”

Grace smiled and let her bare knees sway side to side. “I’m not lookin’ for a boyfriend,” she said. “I just want to have fun. Got out of a bad relationship not long ago, and I ain’t in any hurry to jump into another one.”

I could understand where she was coming from. Not that I felt the same way, though.

“So, what did Elias say about your wrists?” Grace asked, lowering her voice.

I crossed my legs and hid my hands in between them, my fingers moving over the bracelets absently. I didn’t want to talk about this, but I really liked Grace and I wanted her to know that.

“He was upset, naturally,” I said. “But we’re OK. Elias understands me.”

Grace smiled slimly, glanced at my wrists, and then let her body slouch farther in between her shoulders.

“I never told anyone this before,” she said, looking out ahead of her, “but I had an older brother. Jacob. He was in the military. Two years in Iraq.” She glanced at me once and said, “He put a bullet in his head six weeks after he got home,” and then she looked away. Her gaze was fixated on the darkness, but I knew she was seeing her brother’s face.

My heart fell. I twisted around on the sand to face her. “That’s… so fucked up, Grace. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s the best way to describe it. Fucked up. He was in a bad place for a really long time. No one knew.” She gestured one hand in a backtracking fashion. “Well, we knew something was wrong. He was different when he came home. Isolated. And he had real bad anger issues. But we didn’t know he was capable of suicide.” Then her face fell, shadowed by the memory and her own guilt, which I knew she’d probably carry around forever. “We didn’t know until it was too late. The second chancers are lucky.” She pointed at me then, and her smile grew. “You’re lucky. Don’t ever forget it.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I wanted to agree with her, but knowing that her brother wasn’t so lucky, I felt awful and thought it best to say nothing at all.

Grace changed the mood quickly as she raised up and dusted the sand from the palms of her hands. Then she reached around and pulled her bikini bottoms from her butt crack.

“Damn, I have too much ass to be wearing Jen’s bathing suits,” she grumbled as the bikini elastic snapped around her butt cheek.

“I think I do, too,” I said and laughed with her.

Tate and Jen were making out over on the blanket, Jen’s small body looking like a permanent fixture on top of his. Johanna looked bored sitting over there by herself, twirling her hair around her index finger. Caleb walked from cup to cup, dropping something into each one as he passed by.

“What’s that?” I asked when he made it over to us.

One side of Caleb’s mouth lifted into a grin. He dropped whatever it was into my cup. And then one in Elias’s.

“Just a little something to shake this party up,” he said. “Completely harmless, I swear.”

I wasn’t used to seeing Caleb so mischievous. He hardly ever smiled.

Grace raised her cup that had been sitting beside her in the sand. “Don’t forget about me,” she said.

“Hell no, baby,” he said and dropped something into hers last.

I wasn’t sold at first, and Caleb noticed.

“I swear!” he repeated with a breathy laugh.

Grace leaned in toward me then and said, “If anything, this stuff will make you and Elias want to do sexual shit you’ve never tried before.” She grinned, reaching out her hand to Caleb, and he helped her to her feet.

I was so sidetracked by her comment and my already intense high that without really thinking about it, I took a heavy drink from my cup.

Elias emerged from the darkness after his bathroom break just before Camryn and Andrew did.

I never said anything about what Caleb had done. It wasn’t that I was intentionally hiding it. I just didn’t think about it anymore. At the time, I was already on my way to being drunk. I had shared three joints over the course of the night and was pretty fried. My judgment was severely impaired. I didn’t think of what Caleb did as being wrong, because the high side of me believed him when he said it was perfectly harmless. After all, he and Grace were doing it. He had even put some in his own brother’s cup. I know what I did was wrong and stupid and thoughtless and reckless and a thousand other things. I know. But everybody makes mistakes. This just happened to be one of my most regrettable.