Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77309 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 387(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 258(@300wpm)
I want to know him.
The real him, not the playboy asshole he presents to the world.
He speaks softly as he tells me the story. “She was my best friend at the time. Her name was Eva Quest.” He pauses and I’m not sure if he’ll continue. Although lucky for me, he keeps rubbing my feet. “We met in at this summer boarding school. Not really camp, since it was all academics. My dad sent me and my brothers there starting when we each turned ten, and we went every summer until we graduated high school. He said it was to keep us out of trouble, but it wasn’t very effective.” He smiles to himself. More memories, more pieces of him I want to gather.
“Are you still in touch with her?” I ask, prompting him to continue.
He ignores my question. “Eva was trouble, and I think that’s what drew me to her. She was the kind of girl everyone had a crush on, you know? Beautiful, funny, intelligent, outgoing. She could fight with the boys and hang with the girls. But nobody was in her league.”
“Not even you?”
“No, definitely not me, not back then.” He laughs at something. “I met her my first year and looked forward to that stupid place because it meant a few months of hanging around her. We’d text all the time during the regular year, and when we were at Belling’s, we were inseparable. Until our second to last year.” He pauses again. A longer pause this time, like he’s struggling with something. “She met this guy. I don’t know how. It happened when she was back at home, and I guess they started dating or whatever, but I never liked the asshole. He was twenty-eight and she was barely seventeen.”
I let out a soft groan. “Oh, god.” I can already guess where this story is going.
“Yeah. Well. He came to visit her that summer. Drove up from Atlanta all the way to Maine. He was an asshole, had this shitty little convertible, dressed like an upscale realtor with loafers and polos. Eva adored him, and I never understood why. He seemed like such an egotistical loser to me, even back then. The guy was fake, everything was for show, but I couldn’t ever convince Eva of that. Things were fine though, at least until the night of the party. There was this lake near the school grounds, and the older kids would sneak down there to smoke cigarettes and light bonfires. That night, Andy showed up with three big handles of cheap vodka, and that was the beginning of it.”
Another silence. I pull my feet away and sit up straight. My heart’s beating into my ears. A best friend, an older boyfriend. I start to make the connections, and I can already see why he’d feel so awful about being with a girl as young as Allison. He witnessed the power imbalance once already from the other side.
He clears his throat. “Eva got drunk. We all got drunk. At some point, Andy convinced her to go out in this beat-up old rowboat onto the lake. I tried telling them the thing wasn’t stable and it was way too dark, but Andy laughed at me, called me a fucking pussy, basically made a lot of noise. Eva didn’t want to go but Andy pressured her, and she couldn’t turn him down. I never understood what it was about that loser, maybe just that he was so much older, but she was willing to do whatever he asked even if she didn’t want to. I watched her get in that boat and the pair of them rowed out, and to this day I hate myself for not stopping it. I was back at the fire when the screaming started.”
I cover my mouth and try not to gasp. “Tell me she’s okay.”
“Andy came back. He was soaked. The boat capsized. I guess there was a leak, and they tried to plug it, but he tipped it over in the process. He was trying to explain himself, but Eva was missing. I hit the guy in the face, broke a knuckle on his jaw, then I stripped down and swam out with a couple other guys to search for her. But all we found were the oars floating in the water. I dove down and down a dozen times, looking for her in the silt and muck, and it was so dark under there, so dark I could barely tell which way was up, but I kept trying until someone pulled me out of the water. I didn’t want to give up, but by that time I was exhausted and I would’ve drowned myself if I hadn’t gotten out. The cops were called, rescue people showed up, but it didn’t help. The divers found her body a couple days later. Andy got in some trouble, ended up on probation, but it wasn’t enough.” He looks up at me, his expression dark. “There are things about my life you don’t fully understand. An aspect to my world that I’ve kept from you.”