Page 238 of Hell Hath No Fury

LOVE’S A BEACH

SUMMER SOULS SERIES

DANIELLE PEARL

CHAPTER ONE

Liza

Eighteen

“Jonah, it’s time to go. You’ve had enough.” I try to mask my annoyance.

Jonah swings back his head to down the remainder of his beer—the eighth of the night.

That I’ve noted.

He gives me that glare. The one I know better than to try and decipher, because it can lead to anything from a wild confession of affection, to a humiliating display of… I’m not quite sure, actually. Distaste? Loathing? Definitely resentment…and aggression.

At the very least, Jonah has always known how to keep me on my toes, that's for sure.

We both graduated from Ocean High School West barely weeks ago, and it was he who’d pursuedmefor, quite literally, years at this point.

Though you definitely wouldn’t know it on nights like this one.

Jonah stretches his neck, cracking it like he tends to do when he’s stressed. Not that I can fathom what he could possibly have to complain about at the moment. He doesn’t care much about anything other than surfing, drinking, and me, or so he claims, and with nothing on the agenda for the next couple of monthsbefore he leaves for culinary school—and, me, for Boston—he should be more content than ever.

But, for some inexplicable reason, he never is.

He refills his cup at the keg, which is positioned in its usual place behind the grassy dunes, lazily hidden from the disinterested eyes of parents or the rare beach-cop on a four-wheeler, before gesturing it in my direction. “I don’t even have to listen to this shit from my own mom.” He laughs, but I can't detect any actual humor. “She’d just fill one for herself and shut the fuck up about it. Wouldn’t kill you to take a lesson from her, Liz, eh?” He raises his brows at me to emphasize his point.

I swallow down the small gasp of indignation at the sudden mention of his mother, breaking his gaze.

I know very well that Jonah wouldn't want me to be anything like her, and so does he. He’s always resented her. So why he would he want me to drink myself stupid—after all, I’m not exactly sober as it is—when he’s talked plenty of shit about her for doing exactly that, is beyond me.

In his most vulnerable of moments, as few and far between as they are, he’s even confided to me that it was exactly that kind of behavior she chose over protecting him from his ex-stepdad. Before the asshole got picked up by the Atlantic Beach cops, that is, and thrown into county jail, where he belongs. Too bad they couldn’t keep him there indefinitely. But the two years he got for regularly beating the crap out of both Jonah and his mom, Marybeth, helped get him out of their lives at least. So why would he resent me fornotmimicking those choices? Didn’t he tell me my maturity and “good-girl judgment” was why he loved me so much? Not that anyone could mistake me for an actualgood girl.

I take an extra long drag of my cigarette, letting the menthol flavor fill my lungs and delay my response. I hope he will be chill tonight, regardless of how much he’s consumed. Something tellsme it wasn’t just beer, either. But I don’t call him out on it. I don’t want to set him off.

“I’m just tired and I want to get home. You clearly can’t drive me,” despite having promised otherwise. “I’ll just walk.”

Jonah and I are what you’d calltownies. Not that Atlantic West is primarily a vacation town, since there are tons of people who live here year-round, in perfectly nice, middle class homes just about forty-five minutes from New York City depending on traffic. But then there are the Atlantic Beach Estates.

Very few of the Estates are used as primary residences. In fact, most of the owners spend most of the year in the most expensive parts of Manhattan, considering Atlantic Beach—and its semi-exclusive private beach clubs—their summer home. Some locals, like Jonah, aren't particular fans of the “summer people”, a term most people around here use without any particular connotation, but which Jonah spits with express disdain.

He thinks they’re all snobs who ruin our otherwise perfect beach town with their mere presence. And some of them do kind of suck, shoving their entitled attitudes in the faces of everyone in their vicinity. But mostly, oursummer peopleare the ones looking toavoidthe pretentiousness and status-obsession that’s often perceived—perhaps rightfully so, I wouldn’t know—of the famed Hamptons communities located about an hour or two east of our own. The ones who think it ridiculous to pay a thousand bucks to charter a helicopter from the city to their summer home when they can just as soon drive in the time it takes to listen to one good podcast episode. The ones who don’t believe themselves far too utterly important to,God forbid, take the Long Island Railroad, which just so happens to be one of the cleaner, safer forms of public transportation out there.

I grew up going to the Gold Coast Beach Club day camp with just as many summer people as local kids, and barelymuch noticed the difference until Jonah and his friends started making sure to almost constantly point them out.

Jonah’s mouth is a solid, unbroken line, and I can see in the way he clenches his prominent jaw that he is less than thrilled with my response.

“I’ll see you home when I’m ready to leave. I’ll let you know when that is.” He squares his shoulders, and walks the ten feet over to Stern and Jared, his best friends since I can remember, to light up yet another blunt. The smell of weed instantly coats the saltwater breeze, and I wonder if the two joints we all smoked earlier weren’t more than enough, considering his eyes are blood-red and barely open as it is.

It’s times like this that I struggle to remember why, after literal years, I finally cracked and gave into dating the guy. He has his good moments, for sure. For the life of me, I can’t seem to reconcile this Jonah and the one who charmed me into sneaking into Aqualina Beach Club at sixteen to hit their fancy seafood buffet, to take my very first bong hit. The one who snuck roses into my locker on Valentine’s Day, even after I turned down his date…at first. The one who laid more than one surprise candle-lit picnics on the beach, who took my virginity last July 4thunder a fireworks-sparkling sky.

But this version? This is the Jonah who can’t stand not to be in control of everything and anyone. Who needs collective attention more than he does me, the girl he swore he loved. Even if I’ve never been able to bring myself to say it back.Maybe one day,I’d thought, but it’s nights like tonight that make me see more clearly than ever why those words have never felt natural when it comes to Jonah and me, and, consequently, why they’ve never entered my heart or mind, let alone come from my lips.

I know what will happen if I bother confronting Jonah. If I start the usual standoff, where I let him know his place, and, in my inevitable defiance, tell him exactly what I’m going to do,which is, of course, the precise opposite of what he ordered. He will stage some kind of possessive display, try to put me inmyplace, only to find it leads to a blow-out argument. And I’m just so over the whole dynamic.