Page 12 of As a Last Resort
AUSTIN
I walked into my house to Britney Spears’s “Womanizer” blaring from the Echo. It’s amazing how such a small thing could be such a nuisance. And I’m not talking about the Echo.
My feet took me straight to the fridge. I grabbed a cold beer, popped the top, turned and leaned my back against the humming steel. I downed the entire thing in under thirty seconds.
“Whoa. Rough day on the water, Captain?”
I hadn’t seen Lexi sitting on the couch with her nose in a book.
Beyond Sam, the last trip of the day was still on my mind.
It was a little more than overcrowded, and one woman’s purse fell overboard.
Everything from her wallet to tampons decorated the Gulf of Mexico.
It was yet another reminder we were bursting at the seams and I needed to do something about it.
“Something like that.” I threw the bottle into the trash and reached for another. “How can you read with that blasting?”
“Alexa, volume two,” she said as she strolled into the kitchen, hopped onto the counter, and cocked her head at me like a bird, waiting for the explanation from intuition only little sisters had.
“What?” I asked.
Lexi’s apartment lease had expired a week ago, and with her getting married in a month, it didn’t make sense for her to extend it.
She was crashing in between Mom and Dad’s house and mine.
The house felt less empty with her in it, although her obsession with talking to Alexa and blasting Britney drove me up the wall.
“All good, just a long day.” Her eyes burrowed through my forehead. “What were you reading?”
She continued to stare and lean toward me, about to tip off the counter. Then she huffed. “That was a lame attempt to change the subject. Out with it.”
Always so persistent.
“I had a familiar face on the charter over to the island today.” I gulped down half of my second beer.
Her eyes grew wide. “She didn’t.”
“Nope. Not her.” She was probably thinking of the V word.
“Thank God. I didn’t feel like burying a body today.”
“You remember Sam, right? From high school?”
She stilled. Then blinked. The name took her by surprise. “Ummm, ex-best-friend Sam? I’m-moving-to-New-York-and-will-never-speak-to-you-again Sam?” She squinted her eyes at me. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”
“Yeah, so that one. She’s back. And apparently it’s Samantha now.”
She took a shallow breath. “No way.”
“Yes, way.”
“She’s back.” She paused. A myriad of emotions flashed over her face at once. She hopped off the counter after a few moments of staring at me, bumped me out of the way of the fridge, and pulled out two more beers. “Like, forever? Or for the weekend?”
I’m not sure Lexi even knew what she wanted the answer to be.
“A couple weeks. Something for work.”
“Huh.” Lexi chewed on her bottom lip. “Tell me more.”
“I don’t have more. Between loading other people onto the boat and fishing feminine products out of the deep blue sea, I didn’t get much other than she’ll be here for a little while.”
“Did she grow another head? Is she losing her hair?” It was my turn to just stare at her. “What? Cities are gross. The smog, the city pollution. It all affects your body. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Does she know you’re getting married?” I asked. I saw her flinch, but it was so subtle I would’ve missed it if I weren’t deliberately looking for it.
“I haven’t spoken to her since she up and left seven years ago. So, I’d go with a no on that one.” Lexi was good at covering up her feelings. Most of the time. “Are you going to, like, see her while she’s here?”
“No. Why would I see her?” She lifted her brow at my nonchalant attitude that clearly wasn’t playing nonchalantly.
“She was still hot, wasn’t she?” she teased. “You know, she used to draw hearts with your name in them.”
“That’s… unexpected.”
“We did it with the Hanson brothers and NSYNC too. Girls do that. It’s not weird.”
“Debatable. But no, I’m not going to see her. Why would I? She’s your friend.”
“Was, until she fell off the face of the earth…” Her voice trailed off. Not many things dimmed the ball of sunshine that was my little sister, but I could tell she didn’t know what to do with this bit of news.
I lowered my voice. “You can’t blame her for leaving.” Sam was Lexi’s best friend in high school. I knew she was hurt when Sam moved.
“I don’t blame her, not completely, but it doesn’t change the fact that she did.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve held a grudge against her this entire time for what happened after graduation.”
“God no, not at all. I just think there could have been a way to keep our friendship, that’s all. I just didn’t think I was completely disposable like everyone else.”
“You are not disposable.” I lowered my head toward her so I was on her eye level, but I could see the hurt flicker across her eyes. I knew exactly what she was feeling. I recognized that look.
“Yeah, no, I know. It’s fine.” She shrugged it off and eyed me. “Is she hot though?”
“That’s completely irrelevant.”
“She was hot.”
“Well, she’s not ugly.” A fact that, for some reason, pissed me off.
Lexi smiled. “Didn’t you have a picture of her up in your room?” She watched my reaction out of the side of her eye as she pulled another sip.
Her memory was ridiculous. So, here’s the thing.
Lexi had a lot of really annoying friends.
But Sam had always been the cute, funny one.
But I did not have a thing for her. She just happened to be the friend of my sister’s I preferred over all of the other annoying high-pitched teenage lovestruck friends, that’s all.
More importantly, I was happily in love at that point with my evil conniving cheating girlfriend prior to her turning into an evil conniving cheating fiancée.
And Sam was four years younger than me so I barely saw her or had anything in common with her anyway. They were focused on making student council poster board signs with puff paint and glitter, and I was focused on graduating and becoming an actual adult.
“I had a group picture, which she happened to be in, hung up in my room fifteen years ago.” That’s not a thing .
“Seven years. But, same,” she said. “Well, make sure you admire her from afar. I don’t want you getting caught up in whatever drama she has going on.”
“Lexi, she’s not my friend. I’m not going to see her.” She crossed her arms and leaned against the counter. “But if you think you should see her…”
“Definitely not. I just don’t want you getting your heart broken, that’s all. Again.”
“Lexi, stop.”
*Turning the volume up to level seven.*
“No, not you, Alexa!” I shouted.
*Turning the volume up to level ten.*
Britney’s voice rang out “I’m a Slave 4 U” from the tiny device.
I yelled over the music. “You really don’t want to change that thing’s name?”
“Never in a million years.” She doubled over in laughter. “Alexa, stop.”
The screeching abruptly stopped.
“How come she only listens to you?”
“Must be my Southern charm.” She gulped the last of her bottle, wiped her mouth with the inside of her elbow, then belched.
“You’re gross. And I’ve got an early morning.” I threw my bottle into the trash can and squeezed her shoulder as I started toward the back of the house.
“So you’re really not going to try and see her?
” I was almost out of Dodge and into the hallway when I heard her.
The thing was, Sam was the same type of local that Vanessa was—the type that leave and never come back—except that Vanessa didn’t leave.
Because of me. And it came back around to bite me in the ass anyway.
Sam belonged in the city, and there was no point in playing with fire if you knew the end result would be a trip to the ER.
I turned around to face her. “Are you really not going to try and see her?” She didn’t respond. “I work this whole week anyway. I highly doubt I’ll see her around.”
“Yeah. Totally. Plus it’s, like, a super big island.” She bit her lip again. She was scared. I’m not sure if she was scared of running into Sam, or scared of her being here and not seeing her at all.
“Good night, Lexi,” I called out as I strolled down the hall.
*Good night, Austin, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.*
The electronic voice rang out as I walked down the hall, but it wasn’t louder than Lexi’s giggling.