*

"I know what you're thinking, and I want you to plan for once," John called over the noise of the surf. "It's going to be a long ride back in wet underwear."

Uncanny, how he'd known I was thinking of plunging my whole body into the water, clothes and all. The cold night back home had lifted for the warmest day of the year so far. Florida was even warmer. And even though the ocean was still cool, I longed to experience it in every way I could, for the short time it was mine.

But John was right, as usual, damn him. "You keep your mind off my underwear," I said. Actually, I was delighted to have him think about my underwear.

My face must have given me away, because he took my hand.

We sloshed together through the waves, with our jeans rolled up past our knees. When we'd first gotten here half an hour before, the sun was still up over the dark blue ocean. I had heard the Gulf Coast had the world's whitest beaches, but I hadn't expected them to be this white. They weren't paper-white, but just off—the color of John's hands.

Now the beach was tinted pink, the clouds and ocean glowed neon pink, and a huge orange sun sank in the violet sky. Every time I glanced at John, I expected to look back at the sunset and discover it had been a figment of my imagination. Of course, every time I glanced at the sunset, I expected to look back at John and find he'd disappeared.

He swung my hand as we splashed along. "It's so beautiful that I wouldn't know how to begin to draw it."

"You've drawn the Matterhorn, John. I'm sure you'd manage a Florida sunset."

"This one is special. It would be hard to convey how jarring and in-your-face it is." He turned to me. "And still so beautiful."

I smiled back at him, choosing to tune out the jarring part and listen to the beautiful part. "Besides, where would you put the elephants wearing hats?"

"I think I put those in because I'm not confident in my art. Other people aren't as likely to judge me if I already have elephants wearing hats in the drawing, judging it themselves."

"You know what might help that problem?"

The light had faded to the point that I couldn't make out his hard, dark eyes. I was glad. "A college education in art?" he asked flatly.

"No. Drawing nothing but the bridge over and over. There are no judgmental creatures in your drawing of the railroad bridge."

We walked on in our silence underneath the roar of the ocean. I waited for him to get revenge.

Here it came. "Something's been bothering me since I found out you had leukemia. Your parents stuck with you through it. Doesn't that make you feel like you owe them?"

"They're my parents. What else could they do? Let me die in the street?"

Strangely, we were still holding hands as we threw sharp darts at each other. But he stopped playfully swinging my hand.

"Of course I owe them." I said. "Insurance didn't cover everything. That's why they make me work at the diner for free. My dad says I'm still paying off the methotrexate and daunomycin."

I could feel John shaking his head above me, like I was missing the point. "You needed them, and they helped you. Now they need you. Don't you want to stay and help them? Don't you feel grateful?"

"I feel grateful. Grateful, like, send them a card. Grateful, like, build myself a career and make them proud of me. Grateful, like, have children someday and bring them back to town for Christmas. Not grateful, like, spend the rest of my life with them, running their shitty little diner in the middle of nowhere."

I wished he hadn't brought it up. Or I hadn't. We had to get off this subject and stay off it for the rest of the night, or we'd never get laid.

He must have had the same idea, because he dropped my hand, pinched my ass, and dashed away as best he could through the knee-deep water.

I slogged after him. We played grab-ass in the fading light. Which morphed into a hundred-yard dash up and down the gray beach. He won every time. So I craftily morphed it into a touch football game with a balled-up towel. What we played didn't matter so long as his big hands grazed my waist every few minutes, fueling the fire. I felt like I'd never been terminally ill.

At some point we got hungry and walked toward the road to a stand that sold fried seafood. This place made Eggstra! Eggstra! look like fine dining. But when we took the boxes back down to the moonlit beach and set out our picnic on our towels, I made a startling discovery. The shrimp were fresh. Someone had caught them off the coast that very afternoon. The shrimp we served at Eggstra! Eggstra! had been frozen for God knew how many decades. In fact, I probably had never eaten fresh shrimp before in my life. But I recognized them when I tasted them.

I began to have the sneaking suspicion this night was too good to be true.

I knew it was too good to be true when it got even better. John pulled out his cell phone and called Will. "I'm down for just a few hours, and I want to show the lady a good time while we're here," he shouted over the roar of the tide. "Where's the party?"

He had me pegged. I loved parties.

He laughed into the phone. "No, the lady would not happen to have blue hair. Her hair is indigo. Cyan."

"Violet," I mouthed.

He reached behind my head and ran his fingers down the purple strands in back. He stroked absently while he finished talking on the phone, as if setting my blood on fire were the most natural thing in the world.

Chapter 16

We drove the truck a few miles down the beach highway to an enormous nightclub on stilts. The music from inside pulsed so loudly that the sand strewn across the road vibrated with every beat. We paid cover at the door and walked all the way through the building to get where we were going.

John held my hand like a vise so we didn't get separated among the writhing bodies. I watched the looks on girls' faces as we passed. They checked John out for long seconds. Then they saw we were holding hands. Then they checked me out: hair, face, boobs, belly button, boobs, face, ending with a long and pointed look at my hair. Then another glance at John, like, When you get tired of this, call me. All the mascara, cleave, and midriff in the world didn't make up for the fact that I had blue hair and blue hair was weird. I definitely didn't want to get in a fight with a girl in my six hours at the beach, but I did try to step on their toes in their high-heeled sandals as I passed.

In back of the club, we had the best of both worlds: our white beach and black ocean and white moon, plus a throbbing party. Hundreds of college kids danced inside a square of tiki torches. We kicked off our shoes and crossed the sand.

Alone at the edge of the crowd, in a bank of plastic chairs that the rising tide threatened to sweep away, Will nursed a beer. We recognized the silhouette of his curly hair against the sky. Now that John wasn't in uniform, he and Will gave each other a big boy-hug, swatting each other hard on the back. Will turned to me and moved to hug me. Then he saw John's look and folded his arms around his beer cup.

John leaned in. "I'm going to get her a drink. Don't steal her while I'm gone."

"Are you crazy?" Will asked. "I wouldn't dare steal from the police academy."

John turned to me. "Frozen daiquiri?" "Pina colada, please."

"Virgin?" He wasn't asking my permission. He was just making sure I knew he wasn't going to try to swipe me any alcohol.

"That's optimistic," I said.

He frowned at me and glared at Will before heading across the beach toward one of the bars in thatched huts. Apparently I was not allowed to make sex jokes in front of Will. Surely John wasn't still jealous.

"Speaking of virgins," I said to Will.

He eyed me warily. "Pardon?" He sipped his beer.

"Spring break's almost over. You're here alone. Time's a-wastin'."

"Wha—" he spluttered into his cup. "Am I giving out virgin vibes?" "Kind of."

He gaped at me, then closed his mouth and shook his head in disgust. "I wanted to come here. At least, I thought I did. I really like to look. But when it comes right down to it…I want it to mean something, you know?"

I nodded. "Actually, no, but I can imagine."

A cell phone rang. "And don't you dare tell John I said that," Will went on. "Some things guys just don't say to each other." He pulled his phone from his back pocket and looked at the screen. "Speak of the Devil." He clicked the phone on. "Yes, Governor?" Then he whirled around, glancing in every direction around the beach. "You're watching us? Where are you?"

"He's sneaky," I said.

Will clicked the phone off and pocketed it. "John told me to move six inches to the left." He picked up his plastic chair and edged away from me in the wet sand. "He really likes you."

"He does stuff that makes me think so," T admitted. "Bringing me to the beach." "That's serious," Will agreed.

"And then he does stuff that makes me think he doesn't like me at all. For instance, Tuesday night, he made sure I saw a dead body in a car wreck. That's not my idea of date night."

Will cringed, and shook his shoulders like he had the shivers. "He takes that cop stuff very seriously. But I know he likes you, Meg. The night I saw y'all at McDonald's, he called me from Martini's and told me to back off. You didn't think I was coming on to you, did you?"

"No."

"Neither did I." Will was a little drunk, I saw.

"Wait a minute," I said. It was my turn to gape at Will. "He called you from Martini's? He was supposed to be breaking up a bar fight! I feared for his safety! Bastard."

"Yeah, I think the fight was over. He just talked to the manager for a second. Then he probably stood in the corner and glowered at people like he does, and called me, pretending it was Official Police Business." He imitated John in a low, serious voice. "Tin in charge of her while I'm at work, and I can't have my best friend hitting on her.'"

"Will, that sounds like he doesn't like me."

"He likes you, trust me. He doesn't want to like you."

"Why not?"

"Because you're leaving. And he's staying. That's exactly the problem he got into with Angie." He traced a heart in the condensation on his cup. "Personally, I didn't see why they couldn't stay together. Birmingham is only a twenty-minute drive from town. It would have been hard for them to see each other because of John's weird working and sleeping schedule, but they could have done it. It hardly even qualifies as a long-distance relationship. I think John just wasn't that into her." He rolled his eyes. "There's not a whole lot there, anyway."

"She broke up with him, though."

"Right," Will said, pointing at me. "But now she's interested in him again."

"It makes perfect sense to me that she'd be conflicted, if she has any sense. He's this awesomely handsome, really cool guy who's chained himself to a bridge. He's hot, he's cold." I moved toward Will, and I didn't care whether John was watching or not. This was important. "When you were a kid, did you ever watch The X-Files? Mulder is this smart, cute, funny guy who's obsessed with catching the aliens who stole his sister. He's totally oblivious to the red-haired Scully standing right in front of him—"

"I don't think John is totally oblivious to you. I don't think that's possible. You talk really loudly."

"—and if he happens to throw her a kiss, she'll take it. If he happens to think to screw her, she'll realty take it. And she says things to him like, 'Logically, Mulder, this doesn't make sense, please let go,' and she pats him on the shoulder and hopes he'll screw her again."

Will was staring at me with big eyes. I'd forgotten he was a virgin. Talking to him about sex was like talking to Tiffany.

"Well, I'm not Scully,'' I went on. "I can't pat John and comfort him. I want to put my hands around his neck and shake him and scream, 'What are you doing?'" I demonstrated in the empty air and I hoped John saw me choking his ghost. "He frustrates me. He makes me angry. And I don't think that's a good relationship, one built on frustration and anger. Do you?"

Will shook his head somberly.

"He's good for a lay, though," I mused.

"Oh, please don't say that."

I waited for Will to explain what he meant. He just stared at me.

Then he whacked himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "I can't believe"—he gestured all around us —"that I'm sitting here at a spring break party on the Redneck Riviera, warning a girl not to have casual sex with my best friend. I think we've entered a parallel universe. I keep expecting people to come out of the porta-toilets with their heads on backward."

"Exactly," I said. "Stop trying. K doesn't make sense for John and me to date. It makes sense for us to do it."

"But I'm telling you. that's not how John works. He's going to want more than that from you."

"I don't have anything else to give him," I said. "Not while he's chained to the bridge."

Will took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. "I wish there were some way to unchain him from the bridge, so he could go do his art. I've been trying to figure that out for years."

"I gave it a shot."

Will eyed me, then drained his beer. "What'd you do?"

"To get out of trouble, I had to write a proposal to the DA for a project to keep other teenagers out of trouble. I suggested that they put a camera at the bridge, with a feed to the police dispatcher. That way, they'll always know when someone tries to go on the bridge. John will have no reason to check for trespassers every five minutes. And the DA said the city is actually going to do it."