Erin lay on her stomach, and Jacqueline knelt over her. Her hands shook when performing the attack. Instead of trading places, they kept their positions and did the move twice more. Unable to take my eyes off them, I barely observed the pair I was supposed to be monitoring. When they switched places, I felt her panic from across the room and feared she might hyperventilate and pass out.

C’mon, Jacqueline, my mind urged. You can do this.

A surge of pride flowed through me when she went through the motions, pushing herself to perform them accurately despite her distress. As they rose to their knees afterwards, Erin praised and embraced her, and I breathed a sigh of relief, even if Jacqueline didn’t look in my direction in the last minutes of class or when she went out the door.

I didn’t want her fear, or my presence, to keep her from returning. I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.

That night, before I could talk myself out of it, I texted her, asking if she still wanted to see the charcoal. She answered yes, so I told her to pull her hair back and wear something warm, and then I hopped on my Harley and went to get her.

Outside her dorm, I leaned on the bike and watched the door. People were coming and going all around me, but I couldn’t pay attention to any of them. When she emerged, I was struck again at our differences. I made enough money now to buy non-thrift-shop threads, but my style hadn’t changed much. This girl was a blend of classic and trendy but expensive clothes – they were a second skin she wore comfortably. She slowed, looking for me while buttoning a little black coat that could have come right out of a definitive 1960s film, the type my mother had loved.

It didn’t take her long to spot me.

Her step faltered and I wondered why. I wanted to sweep her up and kiss her as if there’d been no break since the last time I held her. I wanted to erase her friends’ designation for me – her bad-boy phase – an inconsequential segment of time between two sensible, valid stages: Kennedy Moore and whoever came next.

‘I guess this is the reason for the hair guidelines,’ she said, inspecting the helmet I handed her as if it was a complex, alien thing. She’d never been on a motorcycle before, a fact that sort of turned me on. Like I needed help with that.

She gazed up at me as I settled the helmet on her head, adjusting and fastening the straps. I lingered over the process, mentally devouring the sweet lips I could still taste and staring into her eyes, deep and blue as the open ocean.

The care I took on the drive over escaped her, I figured, since she buried her face in the middle of my back and held on to me round corners as if she’d be flung to Oklahoma otherwise – not that I’d ever complain.

By the time we arrived, her hands were freezing, so I took one and then the other between mine, gradually rubbing warmth back into them. I wondered how she played an instrument the size of an upright bass with such small hands, but I bit my lip just before voicing this aloud.

She’d only told Landon about the instrument she played.

Prolonging my guilt trip, she asked if my parents lived in the house on the other side of the yard. ‘No. I rent the apartment,’ I told her as we climbed the steps and I unlocked the door.

Francis didn’t appear impressed or concerned that I’d brought someone home with me. He merely stalked from the sofa to the door and out, as if giving me a few moments of privacy. Jacqueline laughed at what I’d named him, musing that he looked more like a Max or a King. I explained that my cat had enough of a superiority complex without me giving him a macho name.

‘Names are important,’ she said, unbuttoning her coat slowly.

A chill ran down my spine at her words and the possible dual meaning behind them, but it disappeared with the hypnotic draw of her small fingers, slipping buttons through buttonholes at a pace that mercifully drove everything else from my mind and affected my heart rate directly. When she finally released the lowest button, my patience was going up in flames. I slid my thumbs inside and along her shoulders, tugging the jacket gently down her arms.

‘Soft,’ I whispered.

‘It’s cashmere,’ she whispered back, as though I’d asked.

I wanted to pull her close, run my hands over that sweater and kiss her breathless. I wanted to stroke my tongue along the tapered arch of her ear, frame her pretty face with my hands and taste her plum-ripe mouth. Her eyes dilated slightly in the dimly lit room, and she stared up at me, waiting. Every muscle in my body strained towards her, wanting her. But I had something more important to tell her, and I blurted it out before I lost my nerve and reached for her instead, noble intentions be damned.

‘I had an ulterior motive for bringing you here.’

16

Landon

Those of us who dislike crowds were spoiled after the last few months of mild winter weather and fewer tourists. But during spring break, there’s no such thing as a deserted beach here.

After barely graduating last year, Thompson senior started getting into more extreme shit – selling and using – while Rick slowly took over the weed, gelcaps and little purple pills arm of his big brother’s enterprise. His livelihood depended on buyers, so crowds were good.

‘Dumbass smokes through half his profits, though, man,’ Boyce said. From one of the rocks overlooking the beach, we watched Rick circle through the crush of bodies. He was selling a good time in a baggie, and business was thriving.

‘Or gives them away.’ As if to illustrate my point, Brittney Loper circled her arms round him from behind, pressing her chest into his back and speaking into his ear. Without stopping his conversation with a couple of potential clients, he brought her round front with one arm and transferred a small baggie from his hoodie pocket to the front pocket of her jeans with the other.