Page 23 of Chasing Riddick
“ D ude. You’re such a buzzkill lately,” Turtle complained, flopping down in the lawn chair next to me.
I glanced away from the campfire I’d started in the firepit on Shelly’s lot. Every lot on Stars Cove’s campsite had one, and I’d spent the last hour tossing rolled-up bits of The Stars Cove Gazette into it.
The big black and white photo of Mayor Tully’s face was now missing a forehead due to my nervous picking and fidgeting.
“Am not,” I grumbled. My friend frowned at me, looking uncharacteristically worried.
“You are too, man. You’ve been down in the dumps since you made me come get you. What happened anyway?”
It’d been three days since I left my shack. I hadn’t gone back once and hadn’t heard from Riddick… which made sense since I was pretty sure he didn’t even own a cell phone .
That didn’t stop me from constantly checking my phone to see if he’d somehow messaged me anyway.
“Nothing happened,” I replied. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told Turtle about Riddick. I didn’t owe him anything, and since he wasn’t my coach anymore, the rules no longer applied.
I could drink, smoke, and fuck anyone I wanted, though the thought of doing any of those things just made me more miserable.
It didn’t help that I’d walked in on Blake and Turtle fucking enough times that they were starting to feel bad for me. They kept pushing me to hook up with Quinn, who had become increasingly clingy at work over the last few days. So, I suspected they were telling her to hook up with me, too.
It was annoying, and I had no way of explaining to them that I was going through what felt an awful lot like a break-up… even though we hadn’t actually been anything.
I hadn’t even had any dreams of Riddick, which I guess was a good thing.
Jizzing all over Turtle’s tiny couch was the last thing I wanted to do…
Especially since he’d hung a Magnum PI poster up since our last conversation, and I always felt like Tom Selleck was staring at me…
It was creepy… but somehow, it also reminded me of another man with a hairy chest and kind eyes…
I missed him.
I missed Riddick so fucking much, it was insane.
I missed making dinner with him and the way his eyes would sparkle when I made some stupid joke or got overly excited about things.
I missed how he would wax my board for me every morning because he knew I didn’t like how the wax got stuck between my fingers.
There had been this strange sense of home that had been growing in that shack… a feeling I hadn’t had since my mom was alive, and now that it was gone, I couldn’t remember how I had ever been happy living in this van with Turtle.
It felt lonely, even though Turtle and I were basically living on top of each other .
“Something definitely happened, dude. You’re acting the way you do when…” he trailed off, running his hand through his long hair.
“The way I do when what?” I snapped, already knowing the answer.
He gave me a very un- Turtle look and sighed.
“You’re acting the way you do around the anniversary of her death, dude.”
I swallowed.
“No way. It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s pretty bad, brother. You may not be fully horizontal under the covers, but there’s no light in your eyes. Someone hurt you. Bad.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I sighed, and he looked at me like I was crazy.
“See! This is what I mean. You always wanna talk about stuff. We shoulda named you Motormouth Mike!”
My lip twitched, and I tossed one of my tiny paper balls at him.
“That’s a terrible name.”
Turtle laughed and shrugged.
“Terrible but accurate, bro.”
“Whatever.” I sighed.
“Why don’t you come to the beach party tonight?” he asked, and I was already shaking my head before he even finished speaking.
“Come on, man. You don’t have to drink or anything. Just come hang out. Quinn will be there. I don’t know who put you in this funk, and you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but maybe you just need someone to fuck her out of your system.”
The ‘ her’ threw me for a loop for a second until I remembered Turtle still thought I was exclusively into girls.
To cover up my weird reaction to what he’d said, I just sighed again.
“Fine.”
“Dope!” He clapped me on the shoulder jovially. “We’re gonna have a fucking blast, bro! This party is going to be a rager!”