Deeper

“What about my bike?”

“Leave it here.” He nodded toward her ten-speed, chained safely to the rack. “You don’t have to work too early tomorrow. You can walk.”

“How do you know what time I work?” Bess asked suspiciously, but she was already slinging her backpack over her shoulders and facing toward the boardwalk rather than the street.

“I just know.” Nick wiggled his hand and made a “woowoo” noise. “Like a psychic.”

“Uh-huh.” She hooked her fingers into the straps of her backpack just below her armpits. The sidewalk wasn’t deserted even this late, but it was far less crowded and she and Nick could walk side by side.

She paused when they got to the ramp leading to the boardwalk next to the Blue Surf Motel, toeing off her sneakers and pulling off her socks. She tucked the socks inside the shoes and put them in her backpack. She wiggled her toes on the wood, still warm from the summer sun though it had set a couple hours before. She sighed.

Nick laughed. “Long day?”

“A lot of standing. You have to stand at work, too, don’t you?”

They walked together to the stairs leading down to the sand. Streetlamps lit the beach here, turning it to stark whiteness but leaving the sea itself in shadows. The sand was still kicked up, not yet smoothed by the grooming trucks. She spied more than one half-destroyed castle.

“Yeah.” Nick bent to untie his boot laces and pulled his boots off. He staggered, off balance.

Bess laughed when he fell, and he grinned up at her, his eyes flashing. He got up, brushing the sand from his rear and dangling his boots from his other hand.

“You’re lucky I don’t get easily insulted,” he told her.

“Sorry,” she said without remorse.

Nick snorted. “Uh-huh. Right. I know how girls are.”

“That’s what I heard.” Bess scraped one foot along the chilling sand as she walked and left a line behind them. In the morning it would be gone.

Nick turned around to face her, walking backward. “Heard what?”

Bess looked sideways at him. “That you know all about girls. A lot of girls.”

He turned again, still walking. “Who told you that?”

“Who do you think?”

He shot her a glance. “Same bitch who told you I was queer? She’s a real reliable source.”

Bess feigned nonchalance. “I’m just saying what she said.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

They’d reached an outcrop of rock, big slabs of it poking from the sand like the back of an alligator, or a dinosaur. The jetty. The waves crashed louder here. Bess hopped up on the rock and Nick followed.

“Well, after I told her I knew you weren’t gay—”

“Jesus.” Nick snorted. “Ryan really reamed her for that, by the way.”

“Did he?” Bess hopped onto the sand on the rock’s other side. The lamps had ended with the boardwalk. Light still shone behind them but in front the only glow came from the windows of houses lining the beach.

“Yeah. He was pissed.”

This was interesting. “Because she said you were gay?”

“No.” Nick snorted again, laughing. “Because she tried to get me to fuck her.”

“Oh.” Bess wished she hadn’t asked. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known, but she didn’t want to hear it.

“I didn’t.” Nick stopped walking, and so did she. “If you care.”

Bess shrugged. “Why should I care?”

He stared at her. The wind came up and tugged at the tied ends of his bandanna. He reached up to slide it off his head, and the wind played then with his hair. After what felt like a very long time, he smiled. “You tell me.”

“According to Missy you fuck a lot of girls.”

“I didn’t fuck her.”

Bess started walking again, her stride determined. Light behind, darkness ahead. She didn’t need the light to know where she was going.

“It’s not my business, Nick.”

“So Missy told you I’m what, some sort of big slut?”

It wasn’t a word Bess had often heard used for a boy, and she laughed. Nick didn’t. “Are you?”

“I thought it wasn’t any of your business.”

“It’s not!”

“I’m not queer,” Nick said, “and I’ve screwed pretty many girls. Just not Missy.”

He’d stopped walking again, and Bess did, too. She turned to face him. He’d linked his boot laces together over one wrist and shoved his hands into his pockets again. She crossed her arms, wishing she’d taken her sweatshirt out of her backpack before hitting the beach.