My hands tap nervously on my knee. “He wanted you to go back with him. Why did he say he was your boyfriend? Were you trying to get back together with him?” This last question comes out before I can stop myself, and I shrink in my seat, hating how my voice has taken on a whining tinge. It’s not a question I wanted to ask, but it’s been there, haunting me since I had seen Jonah in his room. He shouldn’t have been there. I scowl again.
Otter glances over at me. “Of course I wasn’t,” he scoffs at me. “Why the hell would you even think that?”
I don’t know. “We were… whatever,” I say as I wave my hand. “You didn’t know if I was coming back.”
“Well, yeah,” he admits. “That doesn’t mean I’d run right back to him. I told you, Bear, whatever was between me and him was done the moment I left to come back home.”
“Yeah, he seemed to understand that real well,” I mumble, picking at the hole in my hoodie sleeve. I don’t know how it got there. It’s still kind of wet, as are my jeans, and I can feel sand in my ass crack. It starts to itch as soon as I think of Mrs. Paquinn and her sand crabs. Lying on the beach all night in the surf was a bad idea in a long string of bad ideas. This better turn out okay, because I obviously need Otter to think for me. I have too many stupid ideas all on my own. Like not changing clothes before leaving the apartment.
“Jonah’s like that,” Otter says, bringing me out of my thoughts. “When he wants something, he makes sure he gets it.”
“Wow, what a classy guy,” I say, feeling mean. “He seems like the type that beats his boyfriends. Did he hit you? Did he let you leave the house on your own?”
“Hey,” he says sternly. “If I recall, the only one hitting anyone was you.”
“Yeah, well, don’t be smug in my direction. Especially when you’re fucking with what’s mine,” I growl.
“Yours, huh?” He glances at me again, his expression blank.
I suddenly feel embarrassed. I blush and look back out the window. I don’t want to come off sounding so possessive, so needy. A lot of shit has been said between us, mostly by me, and here I am, mouthing off without a goddamn filter. And yet, I feel even worse things rising in my throat like bile, and I choke them back down. Fuck the filter: I need a muzzle.
“Where are we going?” I ask, changing the subject gracefully.
“You’ll see.”
“Oh.”
Silence, just for a few moments. Then, “Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“He went back to San Diego. He came here to try to get me to go back with him.”
“Oh.”
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“I said no.”
A FEW minutes later, we pull into a neighborhood I don’t recognize. The houses are older, lower middle class. Some have toys strewn across the lawn. One has pink lawn flamingos in the front yard. Another has their Christmas lights still up. Or up already. I don’t know which. ’Tis the season and blah blah blah.
He pulls up in front of a house toward the end of the street. It’s small and painted a weird shade of green. There’s a waist-high chain-link fence that circles what I guess would be considered a front yard, if it was big enough to be called a yard. The driveway is cracked. The garage door looks like if it opened, it would fall off. Realtors would advertise it as cozy and a great starter home. Realtors are such liars.
Otter turns the car off and puts his hands on the steering wheel, tapping them nervously. He looks at the house and takes a deep breath.
“Did you want to go back with him?” I blurt out, not meaning to. Now that I think about it, even a muzzle probably won’t work.
He exhales explosively and laughs. “No.”
“Then why would he come here?”
He shrugs. “I told you. That’s Jonah. He doesn’t like taking no for an answer. Remember when I said that if I didn’t pick up the phone when he called, he threatened to come here?”
I nod.
“I didn’t pick up the phone. He came here. It’s that simple. Although I expected it to happen a lot sooner than it did.”