Untitled Part One
This is part one to a longer story I have yet to continue. I’m not sure if I want to really, but it’ll be here if I decide to. And if you could help me figure out a title, that would be nice.
The damp sand curled in between my toes, molding around them like plaster of Paris. This was the first time I’d been back to this beach, to this country even, since she’d left. She left with a smile on her face and dreams in her head, not once thinking about what she was doing to me.
“Oh, Landon,” Maury said as she slung her bag over her shoulder, “it’s only a year.”
Only a year. I scoffed and put the opening of the beer bottle to my lips. Well, not anymore. Plans are always changing, as they say. She called last month to tell me she was staying in America permanently, that she couldn’t believe how well things were going. Maury had met someone. I knew it. I knew it wouldn’t be only me on her mind. But she was the only one on mine.
The wind blew lightly, ruffling my hair and tugging at my unbuttoned shirt. I felt a little too comfortable in that moment with the wind blowing my hair, the sand between my toes, and the soft scent of saltwater wafting up my nasal passageways. I wanted to fall down on the Australian sand and just lay there for eternity, letting the water lap against me as it came in and went out with the tides. That seemed slightly dramatic, so I just turned around and walked up the beach to the house I was renting for the summer.
The place was ridiculously expensive and all sharp corners. It was supposed to be ultra modern, which gave it a tight, suffocating feeling that contrasted severely with the peaceful landscape. I’m not even sure why I chose this place. It wasn’t in the least bit something I’d go for and I couldn’t even figure out how to turn the damned television on, let alone figure out why the kitchen light kept turning on when I flicked the switch in the hallway. And, really, why were there ten showerheads in the bathroom and what did you really need green lights around the mirror for? The house in itself was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. It didn’t help my mood.
I set my empty beer bottle on the marble countertop and made my way to the fridge for another. If Maury’d been here she would have told me to slow down, that maybe I ought to start thinking about all those calories in that bottle. But what did it matter now how many calories I ingested? Maury wasn’t coming back now.
I pull the cap off using the edge of the counter and smile, satisfied, as a cool mist rises from the opening. The liquid inside is bitter and tastes a bit like a litter box, but I down half of it in one gulp. Taste doesn’t really matter, either, as long as the end product is always the same. This morning I woke up laying face down in the sand. I was half naked. The neighbors were staring. I figured that by the end of summer I would be laying face down on the water and the neighbors would be screaming.
A sadistic smile twitched my lips as I padded across the kitchen floor to the sitting room. The television was huge, flat, and begging to be watched for mindless, endless hours. If only I could figure out why the remote was turning on the fireplace, the sink in the kitchen, the garbage disposal, and the ice machine and not the TV.
I was just settling onto the overly plush, stark white sofa when the doorbell rang. I moodily stared down the entrance hall. It was probably just the neighbor lady offering more cookies and lasagna. She said I wasn’t keeping up with myself. All the booze I was drinking was killing me and I needed food to soak up the toxins. I always smiled politely and took her food, setting it in the fridge to rot.
I lumbered to the door, leaving my beer behind. Mrs. Next Door didn’t need to know that I drank all day—by myself. It would probably break her poor, Christian heart to see me wasting away as I was. But she didn’t know the story behind it all. She didn’t know Maury or what she’d done to me over the past year.
Mrs. Next Door was not standing on the other side of the door, though. It was a small girl, maybe fourteen, with red hair tied back in a braid, tan skin, blue eyes, and oversized, dark clothing. She had to be sweltering in this heat. It was at least eighty today and with the sun glinting off the water it felt much hotter.
“Landon Crucid?” she said, shutting one eye shut as she looked up at me.
God I had to be a mess. I hadn’t showered in a week and couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved. My shirt was open, revealing the beginnings of a beer belly, and the board shorts I was wearing were all sandy and had lasagna stains on them. I could only imagine what this girl was thinking.
“And you are?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe.
“Danielle Riggs.”
Riggs. My brain shot bolts of lightening through my system. She had to be related to Maury. Maury had to have sent her.
“Related to Maury?”
She nodded. “I’m Maury’s daughter,” she said, averting her eyes from my face.
I squinted, taking in the few freckles on her nose, the square shape of her jawline, and the small bump in her nose about halfway up. Maury had the same bump, same jawline, same few freckles. This girl could have been her sister or her daughter.
“Daughter.”
“Daughter,” she repeated. “Look,” she scratched the back of her neck and wiped the sweat from her forehead, “my mom was always talking about you. She was always saying something or other about a Landon Crucid and it’s been hell tracking you down, ok?”
“Why were you tracking me down?”
“Why? Because I had to meet you and then it became kind of important last night. My mom sort of, like, she committed suicide, right? Jumped off a bridge, broke her neck. It was a grisly scene. Anyway,” she shrugged like it wasn’t bothering her, like what she’d just said hadn’t about knocked me to my knees, “I don’t want to live with my dad. He’s a prick. So I figured since Mom was saying all this nice stuff about you that you’d be a real stand up guy and take a kid in. What do you say, Landon Crucid? You want a daughter?”
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