“I’m not from Mars if that is what you’re asking.”

“No, you look much more like our friends from Venus.”

“Why, thank you, kind sir. It’s not often I get complimented on my beauty.” She curtsied and then grinned at me as she straightened back up. “Now, what else would you like? My manager is going to fire me if I stand here talking for another minute.”

I looked at her with a wide smile, feeling more alive and happy than I had in a long time. I felt a pang of disappointment at her words. I could stand here talking to her all night. I didn’t want her to leave the table. I wanted her to sit down and banter back and forth with me all night. Then I wanted us to leave the diner and go back to my place, so I could devour her body one inch at a time.

“Zane?” Her voice questioned me lightly and I looked up at her searching eyes. We stared at each other in silence for a moment, and I felt a surge of electricity pass through me. It was so sudden and strong that it made me freeze for a moment. I felt as if I had been electrocuted. That’s how powerful the connection was.

“I have to go.” I jumped up, suddenly feeling disoriented. “Sorry, here.” I pulled out a $50 bill and handed it to Lucky. Our fingers touched, and she jumped back slightly as we shocked each other.

“I didn’t mean to be rude.” Lucky bit her lip and looked away from me. I could tell that she felt slightly uncomfortable and I wanted to pull her towards me and touch her. I needed to feel her skin beneath mine, so that I could breathe in her smell, and then taste her sweetness. I wanted to make her laugh so that her eyes crinkled and her lips curved up, I yearned to hear her panting and begging me to take her. I desperately ached to make her eyes roll out of passion and not exasperation. I wanted to just talk to her; so that I could ask her where she grew up, what her favorite color was, if she liked dogs or cats, if she’d ever been horseback riding.

“I don’t have time for this.” I shook my head viciously, as if I could shake the unwanted thoughts out of my brain.

“I don’t know what…” Her eyes looked at mine in worry, and I cut her off.

“Have a good night, Lucky. I’m sorry, I have to go.” I touched her shoulder and walked out of the diner quickly. I started running as soon as I walked out of the door and cut down the side street to take a detour at the beach. I didn’t want to go home, I didn’t need to be reminded of Noah right now. I needed to rid my mind of Lucky and all the unfamiliar emotions that were coursing through me. I’d never had this sort of visceral reaction to anyone, and while I hated thinking and feeling this way, a part of me was in wonder. How could this girl have ingrained herself in my thoughts so heavily, without us even having a full conversation? I’d never even spent an hour alone with her. I didn’t know her. But a part of my soul lit up like it never had before. Seeing Lucky and talking to her, took me to a place that I never knew existed. It was as if she held the key to a place in me that had never been opened before. A place so dark and secret that I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be found. I knew what women were capable of, and I knew that love was an emotion I didn’t want to experience. There was nothing good that could come of love. It was a fleeting and fickle emotion and it made no rational sense.

I reached the boardwalk and almost pushed past a little boy to get to the sand. I stopped and waited patiently as he picked up shells and moved forward. He looked up at me and grinned, holding up a small, translucent shell in his fingers.

“Shell.” He mumbled, and I smiled down at him.

“Very nice.” I was about to move past him, when he pushed his other hand up to me.

“Shell.” He showed me the shell in his other hand, it was slightly bigger, but had a darker exterior that was still covered in sand.

“Another beauty.” I nodded at the boy, and he grinned.

“Here.” He made to give me the shell and I shook my head.

“Oh, no, those are yours.” I ran my hands through my hair as I stared into his big, open brown eyes. “You should take them home and keep them as a souvenir of your trip at your beach.”

“Here.” He pouted at me and pushed the smaller, prettier shell into my fingers. “Shell.”

“Take it, please.” A woman to the left of me smiled at me. “Connor loves to give people gifts. And honestly, we have too many shells in the hotel room as it is. We leave tomorrow morning, and he’s meant to be in bed right now, but I let him come down to get some more shells because I knew he would be begging me all night if I didn’t. Thank God for bright lights.” She laughed as she pointed at the row of streetlights that ran along the edge of the sand.

“Sure. I understand.” I nodded at her and took the shell from his grubby little fingers. “Thank you, Connor.”

“My please.” He grinned, and I tried not to smile as he messed up the phrase.

“No, it’s my please.”

Connor grinned up at me, and then looked back down at the sand, looking for more shells. I smiled at his mom and walked past them, holding the shell in my hand tightly. I walked quickly to the shore and sat down in the sand and stared out at the horizon. The ocean looked calm, and so did the sky. It didn’t match the unrest that lingered in me. I squinted down at the shell in my hands and traced the lines carefully. The shell was so small, but it was very delicate and beautiful. I studied it for a long time, trying to memorize the patterns as they sparkled up at me in the moonlight. I closed my eyes and tried to picture the shell in my mind. I could see the shape clearly, but instead of the lines that made up the character of the shell, all I could see was Lucky’s face. I sighed and laid back in the sand, opened my eyes, and stared up at the blackness of the sky. The stars twinkled in the sky, and it was as if they were mocking me, because I could see Lucky’s smile in the shape of the lights. I closed my eyes again and counted to ten and tried to think about anything but her. It was like she had bewitched me or something. Maybe she had done something to my food so I couldn’t stop thinking about her. That had to be the answer. Why else would she be consuming my every thought? It wasn’t natural. I took a deep breath and tried to picture the shell in my mind again. This time, I could picture it as clearly as if I were staring at it in the sunlight. I lay there for a few minutes and just thought about nothing. There was something calming about not having a million thoughts crowding my brain. I could almost believe that everything in my life was normal again, that I was just a guy who was trying to be a screenwriter, who dated around, and hung out with his little brother.

“Zane.” My eyes popped open at the sound of the voice. I jumped up and looked around, but there was no one there. I placed the shell in my pocket and walked back to Collins Avenue, back to the bright lights of all the hotels and restaurants. Back to the land of happy people. I walked back to the diner and stopped and looked in the windows. I saw Lucky in the corner smiling at some guy who was grinning at her like a fool, and I felt the sudden urge to run in and drag her away with me. I was going crazy. I didn’t have any reason to feel jealous.

I walked away from the window quickly and to my car. I pulled out my cellphone and saw a nasty text message from Brigetta waiting for me. I tried not to roll my eyes as I climbed into my Lexus is300. It was a pity that Brigetta was mad at me because I didn’t want her to spread the word that I was rude, but I really didn’t care what she thought. My only concern was to rid Lucky from my mind so I could concentrate on getting Braydon incarcerated. I wasn’t going to let anything come between me and my goal.

Chapter 4

“She’s nice, Zane. Don’t be a douchebag.” Noah’s green eyes crinkled as he hit me in the shoulder. “You do not want to mess this up.”

“Whatever.” I shook my head and sighed. “There is nothing to mess up.”

“Give her a chance. Nice girls aren’t bad.”

“Nice girls aren’t always good.” I rolled my eyes. “And with a name like Lucky, how nice can she really be?”

“You’re a dick, you know that, right?” Noah laughed. “Be an ass then. Just don’t become a grumpy ass when you see her with other guys.”

“I’m not going to see her with anyone. I’m not even going back to that stupid restaurant.”

“Really? You’re never going back to that restaurant?”

“I have no reason to go back now.” My heart pounded as I realized that the words were real. “You’re here.” I paused and squinted at Noah. “Wait, how are you here?”

“How am I here?” He laughed. “I’m your brother, I’m always here.”

“But you… you died.” The words tripped out of my mouth.

“Get to know her, Zane. Don’t just cut her off.”

“I don’t want to.” I shook my head. “No.”

“You think about her all the time.”

“I think about you all the time.” My voice rose. “I don’t have time for anything else.”

“I love you, bro.” Noah smiled at me, and his eyes looked at me wistfully, like they did whenever he tried to bring up our mother. I blinked furiously as his body started to disappear and I was staring at thin air.

“Noah?” I broke out into a sweat and looked around the room. “Noah, where are you?”

“He’s not here.” A sweet voice whispered in my ear. “He had to go.”

“Where?” I turned to the side and saw Lucky’s concerned eyes staring into mine. A wave of an unfamiliar emotion ran through me and she smiled at me softly. “Lucky.” I said her name quietly, as if testing it out and she smiled at me again, this time a happy grin, and she made my insides light up. “Lucky.” I repeated as I stared into her eyes.

A coughing fit woke me up, and I sat up blinking furiously as I tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness. I jumped out of the bed as I realized I was sweating and that I had been dreaming about Noah and Lucky. A chill ran through my body as I realized that Noah was still gone, and I realized that I was even more upset when I had thought that Lucky was a figment of my imagination. I walked to the shower quickly and jumped in, wanting to clear my mind from all of my crazy thoughts. I was angry at myself. How could I have been, if only for a minute, more worried about not seeing Lucky again than about the fact that Noah was dead? It was shameful. I needed to get her out of my head. It wasn’t natural for someone to fill your thoughts like this; especially someone you didn’t know. I had barely spoken to her, but all I had to do was close my eyes to see the small dimples in her cheek when she smiled and the way her eyes lit up when she thought something was funny, but she didn’t want to laugh. I already knew that she twirled her hair in her fingers when she was nervous or angry, and she looked down when she was embarrassed. I scrubbed my body hard with the soap as I realized that I knew more about this girl than I knew about girls I had slept with for months. “You’re f**king crazy, Zane.” I mumbled to myself. I didn’t need this shit. I was losing my focus. I didn’t need this girl making me soft or occupying my thoughts. How ironic was it that now that Noah was gone, there would be a girl I couldn’t forget. He would have been laughing right now. I laughed at the irony. Noah would love this; he would absolutely be getting off on this shit. He had been telling me for years that he couldn’t wait for me to meet a girl that would change the equation in my life, and I had always rolled my eyes and scowled at him. That was never going to happen, I had always told him. And even now, I was determined that it wasn’t going to happen. Lucky meant nothing to me. My body was probably reacting this way because I wanted to sleep with her. I hadn’t gotten laid in a while. I was probably fantasizing about her because she seemed off-limits; maybe I was finally over the model girls that gave it up easily. Maybe my body wanted a challenge. This was the worst possible time for me to develop the thrill of the hunt. But it was what it was. I would sleep with her to get her out of my system, and then I would be fine. That would be it. I would then be able to put 100% of my thoughts and energies into bringing Braydon Eagle down.

I decided to go through Noah’s stuff in his room instead of going back to bed after my shower. I knew there might be some clues in there, and I also wanted to avoid having any more dreams. It was better for me to do something productive right now. I needed to think that I was doing something that was actually helping. I walked into Noah’s room hesitantly. I hadn’t really been in it since he passed away. It was as messy as he had left it when he had moved out and gone to stay with Braydon after we had argued. I took a deep breath and looked around at the unmade bed and at all the papers strewn on the table by the window. I was embarrassed to admit to myself that I had no idea why he had so many papers on his desk. I wasn’t really sure what he had been working on in his last days. I picked up a random piece of paper and saw a bunch of notes that didn’t make much sense to me: 1954, Alabama, The Great Migration, de jure vs. de facto, Thurgood Marshall, jobs, housing, education, freedom rides. At the bottom page there was a phone number, or what I assumed to be a phone number, but I wasn’t sure whose number it was. I kept that page in my hand and continued looking through the pieces of paper: there were a lot of quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and some people whose names I didn’t recognize like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton. There were a lot of quotes that pertained to black power, and I wondered what Noah had been working on. I knew he cared about equality, but I hadn’t realized he was so actively involved in this stuff. I grabbed some more papers and sat on the bed to go through them. This time all of the information seemed to pertain to a couple named Sidney and Betty Johnson. And there was a lot of information. From what I could tell, Noah had been in contact with them during the last few months of his life. Maybe they had some insight into what had been going on. I bit my lip as I realized that there was no email address or phone number on any of the pages, and I had no idea where they lived. I sighed and was about to drop all of the papers back on the table and go back to bed when I realized that I did have a phone number on the first piece of paper. I wasn’t sure if it was the Johnsons’ number, but it was worth a shot to call it. I realized that the area code was a California number, so it was way too early to call. I would call later when I knew that there was no possibility that I would be waking the Johnsons up.