beach house

The first time I saw her, she was standing in the kitchen with a cigarette in one hand, and a beer in the other. She was wearing a black tank top and frayed jean shorts, looking out the window at the beach.
“We’ll go swimming later.” She said and walked out of the kitchen beer and cigarette still in hand. I watched after her as she sat down on the couch in another room and turned on the TV. she didn’t smile, she had almost an angry look on her face. She was edgy. Exactly the type of person I had feared for the past 17 years of my life. She looked away from the TV. and up at me. I felt awkward for staring
“I’m Andrea” I said. I went to stick my hand out for her to shake and she said
“Al.” she looked me in the eyes. It was one of the most awkward meetings I had ever had in my life.
“What are you like 15?” she asked me and took a sip of her beer.
“I’m 17.” I told her, feeling just a little bit inferior. She was obviously much older than I was.
“Grab a beer and sit down.” She told me. I had never had a drink before, but there was no way I was going to tell her that. I went to the fridge and took out a bottle of water instead.
“When is your stuff coming?” she asked me without looking at me.
“It should be here by this afternoon. Is anyone else here yet?”
“Not yet, just us.” She still didn’t look my way. I wasn’t sure whether she was talking to me just to be polite.
“Which room should I stay in?” I asked her
“Take your pick…one of the perks to being here early. The one at the end of that hall is mine though.” I put my water down and wandered through the big beach house. The ceilings were high and there were sky lights every few feet. Everything was very bright, and very white. I passed a couple of bedrooms and checked them out, but I finally settled on the one next to Al’s. I couldn’t help but look into her room to see what she’d done with it. She had a black comforter and some black pillows, but other than that, her room looked like all of the others.
“Which one did you decide on?” Al said behind me. I jumped. She was lighting a new cigarette and had finished her beer.
“I-I-I think this one.” I pointed to the room next to hers.
“Good choice…lots of light.” She walked away. I couldn’t figure her out. Then again I couldn’t figure anything out right now. I never knew my parents. My mother was 15 when I was born and died during labor so my grandmother took care of me until I was twelve. She died from a cancer that nobody knew she had. From there I was shipped off to my aunt’s house. She was only 22 at the time, but had volunteered to take me. She met a guy last year before school started and left the apartment with me for a while. She figured she’d only be gone for a few months, but she never came back. It turned out that he was very involved with drugs and the such, got her hooked, and she was killed during a deal. I kept the apartment for the next few months until I graduated from high school a year early, and now I’m here. I had to get out of the city, so I figured the Hamptons would be the best place to go. It wasn’t a very secure childhood, but I was always taken care of, and always loved. I made my bed and flopped down on it. It had arrived before I got there this morning. I stared at the seemingly mile-high ceiling up into the skylight. I heard clunking and a man’s voice say my name. I jumped off the bed and ran to the door to find a moving guy with my boxes. Al was stretching in the living room. I told the moving man where my room was and watched Al. she was a pretty girl. She had long dark brown hair, a paler complexion than my own, and a tiny figure. She had a dancer’s body. I had always wanted to be a dancer; I just never got the chance. She turned around and saw me looking at her again. I was so embarrassed.
“Want to go to the beach before everyone else gets here?” she asked me.
“Now that your stuff is here, you can find your bathing suit.” It was the first friendly gesture she had made since I’d been there.
“sure.” I hoped I hadn’t sounded too childish when I said it, but I was so excited. I never made friends very easily, and I was nervous about moving in with 4 people I never met before. The fact that one of them had invited me to the beach this early on was a step in the right direction in my mind. If you went out our front door and walked across the street, you would be on the beach. We got ready and Al smoked another cigarette on the way across the street.
“Are you the one who took out the ad?” I asked her. There hadn’t been a name on the ad, and nobody gave me one when I called either.
“Yeah, the rent is getting too high for my budget.” She took one last drag of her cigarette and put it out before setting up a blanket for the two of us.
“The summer is almost over. Don’t you have to go back to school soon if you’re 17?”
“I graduated a year early.”
“Oh, so you’re a smart one then.” She looked out at the ocean. I still hadn’t seen her smile. Her bathing suit fit her small figure well. It was a black string bikini, and it looked good on her with her dark sunglasses and hair. Guys walked by our blanket whistling. To this she stuck up her middle finger matter-of-factly, and they left her alone.
“They were cute.” I said to her. I wasn’t sure whether she had a boyfriend or whether she just wanted to be left alone, but she was kind of rude to them.
“Men are slime.” She said.
“If they want to talk to me, they should come over and do that. Never talk to a guy who whistles at you like you’re his dog.” She lowered her sunglasses and looked me in the eye when she said this, making sure I understood I suppose. She opened up the cooler she’d brought with her and handed me a beer. She watched as I took a sip and when I did turned back to the ocean looking satisfied. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would taste.
“You don’t drink do you?” she said
“Not normally.” I told her.
“That’ll change soon…living with me it’ll rub off on you.” She took a beer out of the cooler for herself and drank it. I was still nursing mine when she finished hers and got up.
“Want to come in the water? You can take that with you.” She pointed to the beer and held out her hand to help me up. I took her hand and walked to the waters edge with her. She walked in about up to her waist and walked back out.
“I’m ready to go.” She sure did have an odd way about her. I dipped my foot into the water and deciding it was too cold anyway, followed Al back up the beach. We packed up our stuff and headed back to the house in time to find three other people sitting in front of the TV. I went over to them and introduced myself. The two girls were Scarlet and Anna and the guy sitting in between them was Nick. He got up when I introduced myself to give me his seat. I told him it was ok, to sit down, and went into Al’s room where I figured she would be.
“I didn’t know there was going to be a guy living with us.” I said to her
“What are you afraid of guys or something?” she asked me without stopping what she was doing.
“No I was just surprised is all. When’s dinner?” I asked. She laughed. It was the first time I’d seen her smile since I’d been there. She had a pretty smile. She had light green eyes and bright white straight teeth. I wondered why she was laughing at my question though.
“What?” I asked. She looked at me and said
“You’re a big girl now; you can eat dinner when you want to.” She told me and sat down on her bed.
“Would it be ok if I made something for everyone since it’s our first night here?” I asked.
“Do what you want. It’s your house now too.” She said and lit another cigarette. I liked the sound of that. I went out to the living room and asked what everyone wanted to eat.
“You cook?” nick asked me.
“Yea I cook.”
“You don’t look old enough to know how.” He smiled the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. He made it seem like he wasn’t insulting me; even though he was.
“I’m seventeen.”
“Cool, I’m nineteen…make what you want, I eat everything.”
“How about you guys?” I asked Anna and Scarlet. Neither of them cared either.
“Great” I said to myself “I’m going to come back with something that nobody’s happy with.” I went out to my car, and was going to start it when nick came out of the house yelling for me to wait. He got up to the car and I rolled down my window.
“I’ll go with you.” He said and got in the passenger side of the car. He smelled nice. He was wearing just enough cologne that I could smell it, but it wasn’t overpowering either.
“Do you know where there’s a store out here?” he asked me. I didn’t know. I had only been to long island a few times, and before this, never to the Hamptons.
“No. I figured we would drive around until we found one.” I looked at him and he was smiling again.
“Your car is much nicer than mine…your parents buy it for you?” there was no way I was going to tell a stranger my entire life story so I just replied with a simple
“no.” I think he took the hint because he didn’t ask anymore questions about my parents.
“Where do you go to school?” he asked me.
“I went to a high school in the city.” I wasn’t being very friendly, I don’t know why either. He was a very nice guy…nice looking too. He was about 6 foot with dark hair and brown eyes that seemed to search your soul whenever you spoke with him. His smile could brighten the cloudiest day, and he had two earrings in one of his ears. One in the lobe and one in the cartilage. He was muscular, not too much so, but enough to notice, he was very tan too. He looked gentle.
“Oh, I went to school in California.” That would explain the tan. We drove for a while without saying anything to each other until we passed a grocery store.
“You just passed one.” He told me. I pulled into a parking lot and made a turn back onto the road to go to the store. We got out and went inside. It was a big store. Bigger than I’d ever seen. I’m sure living in California he’d seen bigger though. We wandered around the store picking up odds and ends, some vegetables, and some cookie dough ice cream. We decided that spaghetti with meat sauce was an acceptable first night dinner and picked up the ingredients for that. I was surprised at how inexpensive the produce was. I guess since this is where it was grown they didn’t have to charge as much for it as they did in the city. Come to think of it, everything was less expensive than the city except the housing. We took our purchases out to the car and this time the drive home was more relaxed. We turned up the radio and sang to old songs, and laughed the whole way home. He really was a nice guy. When we got back to the house, he helped me carry the packages in. when we went inside; we found Anna and Scarlet sitting in the kitchen with Al smoking cigarettes. There was loud music playing from one of the bedrooms. We put the packages on the island in the center of the kitchen and began to unpack everything. It seemed like the three of them had gotten to know each other a little better while nick and I were at the store. They were a little bit buzzed. Scarlet and Anna were at least, Al must have had a pretty high tolerance because she didn’t even seem affected by the amount of alcohol she had consumed.
“You find a store ok?” Al asked us.
“It took a while, but we had fun in the process.” Nick told her. He elbowed me and smiled as he walked past me to put the ice cream in the freezer. That guy was always smiling. Al looked at me as if she were trying to read my mind. But then she turned back to her beer. Nick helped me make dinner, and afterwards we all sat around drinking and getting to know each other. Al had been right; I was getting used to the taste of the beer, and actually starting to enjoy it. I could see myself doing this more often. I still didn’t tell them my whole story, but I did become more comfortable with them. Nick picked the room next to mine to take, and after everyone else had gone to bed, and I was getting ready to settle in, I heard a knock at my door. It was nick with the container of cookie dough ice cream we had bought earlier, which throughout the night he had found out was my weakness. I let him in and we lay in my bed eating ice cream and talking more intimately than we had with the others. He was fun to be with. Just from one night of getting to know him, I felt differently than I ever had for a guy. I felt that I could trust him, and I really liked him. I wouldn’t say I was in love or anything crazy like that, we were just comfortable together. By the time he went back to his room, it was already light out. When I woke up the next morning I walked into the living room to find Al dancing to no music. I knew she was a dancer. I watched her for a few minutes. She had such grace and poise when she danced. She was a completely different looking person when she was dancing. She didn’t look rough or angry at all. She caught me watching her mid-spin and stopped abruptly.
“Do you always stare at people like that?” she asked me.
“No, you’re a good dancer.”
“thanks.” She took a sip from the water that was sitting on the coffee table and plopped down on the couch.
“I like to dance when I wake up. I figure if I wake up doing something I love, the day won’t turn out that bad.” This was a good outlook to have on life.
“What’s the deal with you and nick? You guys seemed pretty comfy last night, and I heard you early this morning. Did he stay in your room?” she didn’t seem mad, but I didn’t like how she was asking so many questions.
“No, we just stayed up really late talking last night. He left my room at like 6”
“Yeah, that’s about the time I was waking up and I heard him.” I went into the kitchen and picked up an apple. I washed it and went back into the living room. I sat with Al as she turned on the TV. It was nice not to wake up and spend the morning alone the way I had in the apartment. Nick came out of his bedroom without a shirt waved at the two of us and went across the hall to the bathroom.
“He’s cute.” She said when he closed the door.
“Be careful.”
“Be careful with what? We’re just friends.”
“That’s what you think.” I thought about what she said. I’d never really dated before. I was too busy trying to get out of school as fast as I possibly could. He came out of the bathroom, and smiled at us as he went into the kitchen to find something to eat. That smile! Maybe I did have a little crush on him, but I wasn’t about to get into a relationship with somebody I just met. I got up and went into the kitchen; Al watched me and laughed quietly.
“Yeah you’re just friends.” She said under her breath, not expecting me to hear it, but I did. When I went into the kitchen, I put my apple core in the garbage and watched as Nick took the milk out of the fridge and drank from the container.
“That’s kind of gross.” I said to him. He turned back to me and laughed.
“Want some?”
“Not anymore.” He laughed again, and smiled.
“What are you doing today Andy?” he asked me. Very few people have ever called me Andy, I didn’t mind except that it sounded like a guy’s name.
“I’m going to find a job. My inheritance only covered the security deposit and the first and last month’s rent. If I want to stay here, I have to go to work.” Now that I think about it, everybody was still there, so I guess none of them had jobs.
“I’ll come with you. We can take my car this time.”
“You might want to put a shirt on first.” I didn’t protest to him coming with me, or not wearing a shirt, but I didn’t want to show up at the agency with him half naked.
“If you say so, I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Take your time, I have to shower anyway.” I went into the bathroom and got into the shower. I was alarmed to hear the door open after I was already in there. I guess it came from living alone so long. It was Anna.
“Good morning. Let me know when you’re done, I have to get in there soon.” I had just gotten in, but I wanted to be courteous so I took the quickest shower of my life and got out. I walked over to Anna’s room and found her and Scarlet sitting on the bed smoking something that wasn’t a cigarette if you get my drift.
“Shower’s free.” I said to Anna. I just stared at the joint. I had never seen one before, even growing up in the city.
“Cool, want a drag?” she asked me.
“No she doesn’t.” al walked in and grabbed my hand. She pulled me towards her room and yelled behind her
“Put that damn thing out!” She pulled me into her room and shut the door behind her.
“Don’t get involved with that stuff. I’m guessing since before you moved here you’d never had a drink, you’ve never done drugs either. Don’t get involved with that stuff.” If only somebody had told my aunt that before it was too late.
“Don’t worry about it, I wasn’t going to.”
“I do worry about it. Besides it clearly says something about that stuff in the lease.” She seemed angry.
“Are you going to kick them out?”
“No, everyone deserves a second chance. Just do me a favor and don’t get too attached to them, I’m not so sure about them anyway.” I wondered why Al was so against what they were doing. She opened her door for me to leave, and walked out behind me. I went into my room to get dressed, but she went straight to Anna’s room and shut the door. She wasted no time in getting on their cases about it. I was getting undressed when nick walked into my room without knocking. I quickly covered myself as he apologized up and down.
“It’s ok; don’t worry about it…just knock next time k?”
“No problem, I’m really sorry Andrea.”
“It’s really ok Nick. I’ll be done in a minute.” He walked out shaking his head. I laughed. It was the first time he hadn’t walked out of my room smiling. I guess we all had a little adjusting to do. When I came out of my room, he was sitting at the kitchen table shaking his leg nervously. He didn’t even hear me come in. I put my hand on his shoulder and he jumped.
“Ready to go?” I asked him smiling sweetly so he would know that we were still ok.
“Yeah, let’s go.” He went outside to his car and I followed. I slipped into its cracked leather seats. It smelled of gasoline and the heat of the summer’s end.
“So where do we have to go?” he asked me without looking at me. He was acting as if he’d never seen a naked person before. I reached over and kissed his cheek.
“It’s ok Nick…we’re cool.” He turned to me then and smiled again, I knew we were ok when he relaxed a little and put the radio on.
“We’re going to the employment agency about a block or two away.” I rubbed his arm and he relaxed even more. Pretty soon we were as comfortable as we had been last night. He turned the radio down and looked at me while we were stopped at a light.
“Do you want to go out with me tonight?” I was surprised when he asked me this. Even though by this time I knew there was something between us.
“sure.” I said. He smiled that smile again and drove as the light turned green.