Chapter 4

The Otter Slide was the closest thing Hastings Rock had to a gay bar. It drew a younger, friendlier crowd than some of the other bars in town, and it was mostly a place for locals—it wasn’t on the tourist strip, and on the outside, it wasn’t quaint or cute or trendy. It was a single-story building with a built-up roof and shiplap siding. The large front windows were blacked out, and beer ads papered the walls.

What the outside lacked, though, the inside made up for with a kind of welcoming coziness. Pendant lights with green-and-gold glass were easy on the eyes, and a pool table and a Star Wars pinball machine gave you something to do (besides drinking) if you wanted to hang out with friends. The air smelled like hops and onion rings. (That’s what heaven smells like, by the way.) Seely, the owner, still spent most nights behind the stick, and she made some of the best cocktails I’d ever had. She had a thing for little stuffed animals, and they were all over the bar: a little gay goat on the jukebox, a little gay bear in a bowl of bar mix, a nonbinary unicorn on a booth divider. A gorilla who was trying way too hard to give off daddy vibes perched on the pinball machine.

Over the last couple of months, this had become one of my favorite places to go with Indira, Fox, Millie, and Keme—although Keme had to be out by ten because he was a minor. I’d also spent a fair number of nights here with Deputy Bobby and his boyfriend, West. West, in particular, seemed to have decided that it was their responsibility as “local gays” (his words) to make sure I had plenty of opportunities to drink way too much and have cute boys pointed out to me.

Deputy Bobby and West were here tonight; I spotted them as soon as I stepped inside. West was beautiful—that was the only word for him. Pink cheeks, pouty lips, flaxen hair in a disheveled side part. And Deputy Bobby was literally what every guy was looking for. Objectively, I mean. Like, objectively, he had a face. And arms. And a butt. They were dancing on the little parquet dance floor at the back of the bar with a handful of other couples. Deputy Bobby had a beer in one hand (it would be a Rock Top, whatever their seasonal lager was), and his other hand held West close against him. Like, close. Like, cover the kids’ eyes at the movies.

“Hey.” A boozy breath on the side of my face made me turn. “You came.”

Cole wore the same hoodie and joggers and coconut-bead necklace he’d had on earlier. His hair was still a mess. And his eyes were red and glassy.

“Hey,” I said. And then I frowned. “You told me you weren’t going to be messed up.”

He gave me a rueful smile. It was a strangely vulnerable expression, with an unexpected amount of self-disgust.

“I think I’m going to go,” I said.

“No, please.” He caught my wrist, and his hand was warm and soft. “Please don’t go. I’m sorry.” He ran his thumb over the inside of my wrist. “It’s been such an awful day, and looking forward to this has been the only thing that’s kept me from going crazy.”

I don’t know what made me look past Cole, but my eyes went to Deputy Bobby again. He was still dancing with West, but he was staring at me, and I couldn’t make sense of the expression on his face. It almost looked like he was angry, and Deputy Bobby never got angry. It did something to my stomach, this weird, flipping thing, and before I realized I was going to say it, I heard the words coming out of my mouth: “We can start with one drink.”

Cole’s smile broadened, and he ran his thumb along the inside of my wrist again.

After asking me what I wanted, he sat me in an empty booth and went to the bar. He came back again almost immediately. Seely was looking over, a question in her eyes; I nodded, and she went back to mixing drinks.

“Are those peaches?” Cole asked as he set my drink in front of me. “And cherries?”

“It’s a house specialty, the summer Old Fashioned. Local produce.” I took a drink to brace myself and asked, “Want to try?”

He did. He had a nice mouth, part of that unobjectionably handsome thing he had going on, and I thought about the cold glass against his lips.

“It’s good,” he said when he passed it back.

“Rock Top?” I asked, glancing at the brown bottle in his hand.

“It’s all I drink when I’m here. They’re so good; I don’t know why they don’t have better distribution.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I said.

“It’s one of my two favorite things about Hastings Rock,” he said as he looked me in the eye.

“I bet you say that to all the guys whose house you rent for a wedding.”

“Definitely not.” He let that land with some more eye contact.

Something was starting to build in his silence, a kind of charge to the conversation, so I blurted, “So, you and your family come here a lot?”

For a moment, I thought he was going to try to steer the conversation back to Intense Flirting (Hardcore Edition), but instead he relaxed into a smile. “Every year. Grandma loves this place, which means it’s a mandatory vacation.” He looked around. “I loved it when I was a kid, you know? Now it’s one more family thing I have to do.” I wanted to ask what that meant, but before I could, he said, “I’m sorry for, uh, showing up like this. I wanted to say that again. This afternoon—I mean, it was rough.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah?” His grin showed that strange self-dislike again. “I don’t. God, they were all going at each other. Mom and Dad and Grandma going after Mason about—about that stupid thing with the money. Sharian and my parents. Sharian and Penny, even.” I’d forgotten about the maid of honor, and it took me a moment to remember who he was talking about. “I’ve never seen Mason and Sharian fight like that. They called off the wedding; I don’t know if they already told you. Big deal, right? I mean, they’ve only canceled it ten other times. But this time it felt real.” Awareness penetrated some of the fog in his eyes, and he tried to smile again. He reached across the table to wrap his hand around mine. “I’m happy I’m here with you.”

I fought the urge to pull my hand away and said, “Thanks.”

Another of those silences came. It was strange, against the background of voices and bottles clinking and music. The song was Sia, “Cheap Thrills.”

“So,” Cole said, “how does a guy like you end up here?”

“Maybe I’m a local.”

He burst out laughing.

“Hey,” I said. “That’s kind of rude.”

For some reason, that only made him laugh harder. He still had his hand wrapped around mine. I was aware of people passing our booth, of the fact that they couldn’t miss the physical contact. Hastings Rock was a small town, and it was even smaller when you removed the tourists from the equation. Gossip traveled fast. I thought of Deputy Bobby’s face, the hard blankness of his expression earlier.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You’re on the run.”

I made a buzzer noise.

“You’re a movie star researching a role.”

This time, I rolled my eyes.

“You’ve got to help me out,” he said. “You’re too cute and too smart; there’s got to be a reason you’re here.”

“You didn’t hear about Vivienne?”

“She’s the writer, the one who used to live at that house. I thought she went to prison.”

“Uh, yeah.” I rolled my eyes again. “The short version is I came here for a job. It didn’t work out, but I decided to stay.”

“Oh yeah? And?”

“And what?”

“Do you like it?”

I shrugged. “For the most part. I mean, I think for a lot of people, I’m always going to be an outsider—maybe my great-great-great-grandchildren will eventually be considered locals.”

“So,” Cole said with a smirk. “You want kids.”

“The jury’s still out.”

“Aren’t you bored?”

“Without kids? No, trust me, I’m enough of a mess all by myself.” I took a drink. “You mean here in Hastings Rock, I guess. No, not at all. It’s beautiful. I love hiking. Well, maybe not hiking, but I love being outside in nature. I grew up in Portsmouth, so it’s nice being by the water. And Hemlock House is amazing.”

All he said was “Huh.”

He brought the bottle to his lips. He really did have a nice mouth, and he caught me looking now and smiled around the brown glass. I could feel another of those frontal assaults coming: the high-octane flirting that was a kind of demand, asking me to—what? Well, I thought I had an idea, and it made me unwrap and re-wrap my hand around my glass.

Before he could get started, I said, “I guess I’m lonely. A little. Sometimes.”

In the wake of my own words, I decided the only merciful thing at this point would be to drag my sorry butt out behind the Otter Slide and put me down gently.

But Cole’s eyebrows knitted together, and he blinked. “Uh, yeah. I get that.” He must have seen the confusion in my face because he gave a broken little laugh. “Come on, man. You want to talk about being a mess? I’m thirty, I’ve got no life, no friends. I’m hanging out in a bar in Hastings Rock.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“No, God.” He made a frustrated noise. “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant. But, like, guys my age, they have their lives together. They have jobs. They have their own families. And I’m still getting dragged around by my grandma, going on vacation wherever she says we’re going. Ten years ago, it was whatever. Now, what do I do? If Mom gives me my allowance, I go out and blow it. There are plenty of people who will be your friend as long as you’re buying drinks. Then I’m broke, and you know what? People aren’t so friendly. They’re all younger. They have jobs. They go to school. God, do you know what it’s like, partying with twenty-year-olds? It’s terrible, man. I don’t even know what a meme is.”

That jarred a laugh loose from me.

Cole offered that stunner smile again. “You’ve got a nice laugh. You’re way too good for me, just so you know. I’m telling you because I’m a little bit too high and because you’re sweet: you should run away.”

“If you don’t like your life,” I said, “why don’t you change it? I know it’s easier said than done, but you’ve got resources, right? You could go to school if you wanted a degree. If not, I bet your parents would help you get started in another business or trade.”

He made a small, nasty noise that I realized, a beat later, was a ha. “You don’t know my parents. They wanted two Masons: perfect little toys that would do whatever they wanted. If I want to go to college, I have to do a business degree or a law degree or an accounting degree, so I can work in the family business. If I want a job, I have to work in the family business.”

“You don’t have to ask your family for everything. You’re friendly and polite. I’m sure you could get an entry-level job and start building your work experience. Or take out loans for school—”

He spoke as though he hadn’t heard me. His voice was thicker, and I wondered how much he’d already had to drink (or smoke); it sounded like it was starting to hit him now. “Everything they wanted, Mason did. And look how messed up he is. He’s getting married because he thinks he has to; he doesn’t even know if he loves her, but he’s going to marry her anyway. They’ll probably be together forever too, like Mom and Dad.” Cole stopped, and his throat worked, and he rubbed red-rimmed eyes. “I know I shouldn’t be happy about what happened today. I know I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t be happy. But it’s been so many years, my whole life, of hearing how perfect Mason is, and being compared to him, and being told what a screw-up I am. God, did you see their faces when he told them what he was going to do with that stupid money? They were so freaking mad.”

The words sounded thrilled, almost gleeful, but I remembered how, when Mason had made his announcement, Cole had curled his hands into fists. How he had stared at his brother.

“Do you mind if I—” Cole slid out of the booth, patting himself down, and mumbled, “I’ll be right back.”

That, I decided, was my cue to call it a night. I checked with Seely to make sure he’d paid for our drinks, ignored the questioning look in her eye, and headed for the door. Sneaking out on people during a date wasn’t exactly the best behavior, but neither was going to the restroom to get high.

I was only halfway across the bar when the door swung open, and two men stepped inside. They were making out furiously, hands and lips and tongues everywhere. A wave of confusion rolled over me because one of them was Cole. It took a moment before I realized that I was looking at Mason—the longer, side-part waves were one giveaway, and the different clothes helped too. The other guy had a strong, lean build, and beautiful dark hair, and yes, a cute butt—

A familiar butt.

“Hugo?” I said his name out loud without meaning to, but it didn’t matter; the swell of music and voices covered it up.

It was definitely Hugo, and he was tongue-wrestling with Mason like his life was on the line. If the groom-to-be (I guess, ex-groom-to-be) had any reservations, it was hard to tell—he was currently trying to pull Hugo’s shirt off.

When my brain rebooted, I had a single, panicked thought: get out. I glanced around, trying to find anything—a fire exit, a cat flap, an enchanted wardrobe to Narnia. Then Mason shouted, and I turned toward the noise.

He and Hugo had separated. Hugo slumped against the wall; he looked drunker than I’d ever seen him, and I was amazed he was still (semi) upright. Mason had a hand to his cheek; something red glistened beneath his fingers. Blood.

The woman who stood in front of Mason, fingers still curled into claws, was short and full bodied, with long, dark hair and first-class makeup. Penny, the maid of honor, held up her hands like she might try to tear Mason’s face off again, and she shouted a stream of words that are not fit for TV before the 9pm watershed. Everyone in the bar had stopped their conversations; the only sound now came from the music—somebody had put on “Call Me Maybe.”

Cole stumbled through a press of bodies and stared at the scene that was still unfolding. He looked, if anything, even more stoned, and his voice had a grating slowness as he stared at his brother and Hugo and Penny and said, “What’s going on?”

Penny issued a final stream of invective, pushed past Hugo, and disappeared outside. Hugo looked like he was still standing only by the grace of God; his eyes were trying to roll up in his head. Mason grabbed napkins and held them to his bleeding cheek, and red seeped through the paper.

Cole was still staring. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you have to ruin everything?”

Mason said some of those post-watershed words. Cole said some back. Mason said some more. Cole said a few new ones. And then they launched themselves at each other. They crashed into a table and flipped it. It crashed to the floor. Glasses and bottles shattered. Someone screamed. The brothers rolled across the vinyl flooring, hammering at each other. It didn’t look like a scuffle. It didn’t even look like a brawl. It looked like two guys trying to kill each other, only they were too far gone to make much progress at it.

I started forward—I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but somebody had to separate them. Before I could reach them, though, Deputy Bobby was there. He got Cole by the collar, and with seemingly no effort at all, heaved him up and off Mason. He shoved Cole toward me, and when Cole stumbled, I steadied him. Deputy Bobby picked Mason up and said, “Sir, step outside with me—”

Mason shook him off. He stumbled toward the door, grabbed Hugo by the arm, and pushed out into the night. Cole was trembling, leaning heavily against me. Deputy Bobby looked at us. A flash fire ran through me, and I couldn’t meet his eyes.

Before Deputy Bobby could speak, Cole mumbled, “I’m going.” He turned toward me, not quite looking at me, and mumbled, “I’m sorry.” Then limped out of the bar.

The music was still playing, and I wanted to know how long this song could be, because it felt like it had been going for hours. Everyone was staring. Sweat prickled under my arms and across my back. I could feel myself shrinking inside my skin. Voices began to pick up—first whispers, then a laugh. I took another of those panicked looks, but the only door seemed to be the one that led out to the parking lot. I couldn’t go that way; Mason and Cole and Hugo might be out there—any of them or all of them.

“Are you okay—” Deputy Bobby asked.

I managed to nod before I ran into the restroom and locked the door behind me.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it wasn’t exactly the ideal place to hide until civilization collapsed and we all reverted to roving bands of murderous scrappers. That was my initial plan. The restroom had a little hopper window that was open, and I stood under it where the air was cool and smelled like pine duff and wet concrete. After a while, when it became obvious that a Mad Max-style apocalypse wasn’t going to happen in the next five or ten minutes, I washed my face and dried off with paper towels.

I considered myself in the starting-to-tarnish mirror. Why did it have to be here? Why did it have to be tonight? Why did there have to be so many other people? Why did Deputy Bobby have to be one of them? And why couldn’t I be a normal person and not freak out at the slightest social discomfort?

Mirror-me didn’t have any answers. He also, because of the tarnish, occasionally looked like he didn’t have any eyebrows. I made sure they were still there. I checked my phone for news of a nuclear missile strike headed to Hastings Rock. (Nothing.) Finally, I made myself unbolt the door. A guy with a flattop and a golf polo pushed past me with a desperation I knew all too well.

When I stepped out into the bar, nobody booed, hissed, or, uh, catcalled, I guess? A couple of people glanced at me. A woman I recognized from the general store gave me a commiserating smile. An older guy with tremendous nose hair offered a thumbs up. I smiled back—or, at least, I tried to until I heard Deputy Bobby’s voice.

“I said I’m sorry. And I am sorry. But it’s my job—”

“No, it’s not.” That was West. “You’re not on duty. This was my night with Bobby, not with Deputy Mai. I want a night. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”

Deputy Bobby’s silence lasted a beat longer than I expected, but his voice had its usual firm calm as he said, “No, it’s not. But it’s also not that simple—”

“Of course not.” West sounded like he was crying. “I can’t do this with you tonight. Not again.” I thought maybe that was the end, but then West spoke again, his voice quavering with tears. “Don’t you see? This is why we have to get out of this stupid town.”

Movement on the other side of one of the pony walls drew my attention, and I caught a glimpse of West darting toward the door, wiping his eyes as he crossed the room.

I gave him a ten count, and then I left too. I told myself not to look back, but, of course, I did. Deputy Bobby was sitting alone in a booth, his head turned down over his beer, one hand buried in his thick, dark hair.

When I stepped outside, the night’s cool damp felt like a balm against my fevered cheeks. A pair of headlights were swinging out onto the road, and I could make out the familiar silhouette of West’s Jetta. The air smelled like cigarette smoke and weed and the lingering aroma of the Otter Slide’s industrial fryer. Gravel crunched underfoot as I made my way toward the Jeep.

And then I saw the foot.

Somebody had too much to drink was my first thought. I stared at the sneaker sticking out from around the side of the Otter Slide. But it was a familiar sneaker. I knew that sneaker because I had, after eight agonizing weeks of indecision, bought that sneaker. For Hugo. For his birthday. And it had felt like a victory because he’d said he loved them. It always made me happy when I saw him wearing them. And I realized I hadn’t even noticed that he’d been wearing them today, and I didn’t know what to make of that.

I walked around the side of the building. Hugo lay in the deeper shadows there; it was easy to believe that nobody had seen him, not unless they caught a chance glimpse of his foot sticking out. I recognized his soft snore. Mason had left him here, like this. Not just passed out, but passed out in public, next to a parking lot, in a town where Hugo didn’t know anyone. Mason hadn’t cared, though; he’d been too angry after his fights with Penny and Cole. Or maybe Mason hadn’t even noticed; Hugo had been blacking out, and Mason hadn’t been far behind.

Crouching, I said, “Hugo, wake up. We’ve got to go.”

Nothing came back to me except that soft snore.

I reached down to shake him. In all the years we’d been together, I’d never seen him trashed like this, and a part of me wondered if it was more than alcohol—if Mason, like his brother, indulged in other substances, and if he’d given Hugo something, maybe without Hugo even knowing. But as I was about to grab Hugo’s shoulder, I stopped.

Something small and brown lay on his leg.

I leaned down to inspect it. It was a coconut bead, like the ones on Mason’s necklace. I leaned back, trying to get more light, and spotted another bead. And another. They were all over the place like the necklace had snapped and the beads had flown everywhere. I started to breathe more quickly. My hands felt numb, and it was unexpectedly difficult to fumble my phone out of my pocket and turn on the flashlight.

He was lying a few feet away at the base of the dumpster. A wet smear, reddish black in the weak light, glistened on the side of the dumpster, marking where his head had slid along the metal. His eyes were half-closed and blank, and he wasn’t breathing, and although I wasn’t an expert, I knew as soon as I saw him that Mason was dead.