Page 11 of Your Fault

Still, now wasn’t the time to think about all that. Now was the moment for celebration. I’d agreed to take Noah to the stupid bonfire on the beach her classmates had organized. I wasn’t particularly into the idea, but at least it meant we’d be together. The next day, Noah would be busy with graduation, and her mother wanted to take her out to dinner afterward, so either we went out today, or I would have to go back to sharing her with everyone. I knew it was selfish, but those past few months, between her school obligations, my travels to San Francisco, and the roadblocks our parents were throwing up, I hadn’t seen her even half as much as I’d wanted to. So I was going to make sure tonight counted.

The ride to the beach was pleasant. Noah was so happy about graduating, she couldn’t stop talking the whole twenty minutes it took us to arrive. I liked the way she moved her hands around when she was excited about something. Just then, they seemed to have a life of their own.

I parked as close as I could to the masses of people gathered there. It wasn’t just Noah’s classmates on the beach. It looked like every graduating class in Southern California had shown up.

“I thought there were just going to be a few of us,” Noah said, no less perplexed than I was.

“Yeah, just a few million, maybe…”

Noah smiled, tried to ignore my response, and turned to look at Jenna, who appeared just then in a bikini top and skintight shorts and shouted, “Let’s start drinking!”

A group of guys who had been trailing her cheered, raising their glasses in the air.

After getting out, Noah hugged her and cracked up laughing.Then I walked up. Towering over Jenna, I leaned down, snatched her drink away, and poured it out in the sand.

“Hey!” she protested, indignant.

“Where’s Lion? He should be here,” I said, not concealing my amusement at her irritated expression.

“Idiot!” she growled, turning around and ignoring me.

Noah shook her head, wrapped her arms around my neck, and stood on her tiptoes to address me.

“Are you sure you don’t mind being here?” she asked, tickling my neck with her long fingers.

“Go have fun, Freckles. Don’t worry about me,” I answered, bending down to press my lips into hers. They were so full, so soft that I thought I’d lose my mind. “I’m going to go find Lion. When you miss me, you can come looking for me.”

“I miss you already,” she responded. Just then, Jenna pulled her away from me and dragged her off to do God knows what kind of stupid shit.

I scowled at her and let her leave with Noah to where their friends were getting ready to burn their uniforms. It was a tradition… I could still remember the day I had burned my own.

I walked over to a smaller fire with just a few people standing around it and looked at the flames, my hands tucked into my pockets, thinking, fantasizing about all the things I wanted to do with Noah that summer, all the possibilities that would open up for us in the months to come.

Then I saw Lion standing beside another fire as far as possible from the crowd. He had a beer in his hands and was staring into the flames just like me, but he didn’t look like he was dreaming or making plans. He looked worried, even depressed. I walked over to talk to him.

“What’s up, man?” I asked, clapping him on the back and bending over to retrieve a bottle from the six-pack at his feet.

“Just trying to make this dumbass party pass as quickly as possible,” he replied, then took a long drink of his beer.

“By getting drunk? Jenna’s already tanked, and one of you will need to drive, so if I were you, I’d slow down,” I warned him, but he ignored me and brought the bottle straight back to his lips.

“I didn’t even want to come here, but Jenna wouldn’t shut up about it,” he told me, looking straight ahead.

“She just graduated, dude. You can’t blame her for not knowing what the fuck’s going on with you. I don’t even know myself.”

He exhaled for a long time and tossed the bottle into the fire, where it shattered into tiny pieces.

“Things at the garage aren’t going well, and the last thing I want is for my brother to get out of prison and see me unable to keep the family business afloat…”

“If you need cash…”

“No, Nicholas, I don’t want your money. We’ve already had this talk a million times. I can work it out. It’s just, things aren’t going the way I’d like, that’s all.”

By his expression, I could see he wasn’t telling me the whole story.

“Lion, before you get into some kind of trouble…”

He turned to me, and I shut my mouth.

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