Jess was feeling good, the tequila sweeping through her mind like a high tide, washing away everything she didn’t want to think about. She saw the turnoff at the side of the road and pointed.

​

“There it is, Annie. Can you see it in the dark? Don’t miss it!”

​

It was night and the dirt road to the beach was rough. Every time the four-wheel drive went over a rock or dipped into a hollow, the jolt made the liquor slosh in Jess’ stomach. Annie was driving like an old lady. Jess remembered how fast they used to fly down the road when they were kids, in the junky old Ford that was her first car, ocher clouds of dust exploding into the air behind them as they rushed to get to the latest party at the beach; to see and be seen. It had all seemed so important, as if the beach was the church of their youth; the bonfires their altars. The beer and cheap liquor, stolen from their parents or begged from strangers in front of the liquor store with thrust-out hands clutching pooled-together dollars — can you buy us some vodka? — the sacrament they shared in celebration of an eternal youth they were sure was never going to end.

​

Except her youth had ended; and her old life, too. The life with Mike that had started right on this beach. The life she’d had for twenty-two years. All of it gone. Disappeared into thin air when her husband’s dick disappeared into the receptionist at his car dealership. What a cliché: the old wife traded in for the trophy. When Jess thought about it, which was a lot more often than she wanted to, a scene always popped into her head of Madison — of course her name was Madison — standing in the living room, wearing one of the slutty outfits Jess always imagined her wearing. Legs spread wide, hands on hips, while everything Jess owned was sucked up in between her young, tan, mile-long legs as if Madison’s vagina was the most powerful life-sucking vacuum cleaner ever invented.

​

At least that’s what she pictured. She’d never actually seen Madison except for that one time right after Mike had left and she went down to the dealership to talk to him. When she’d walked in, Mike was standing at the reception desk smiling at the girl, leaning over her desk. It was obvious what was going on. It always was. Jess called the dealership later and disguised her voice to find out the girl’s name.

​

Her whole life had been taken away from her by a barely-out-of-her-teens slut with a bad blond dye job, who hadn’t yet gotten tired of pretending she liked giving blow jobs.

​

Annie parked the car. “I don’t know, Jess. Aren’t we a little too old to be getting sand in our underwear?”

​

There were six or seven other cars in the gravel lot, but Jess only recognized one of them. There’d been a notice on the bulletin board at work all week — Party at the Beach on Saturday — and all the kids had been talking about it. She smelled marijuana. Two guys in shorts and t-shirts were leaning against the side of a car, passing a joint back and forth.

​

Annie looked like she was ready to leave before they even saw the beach. Jessica doubted she’d be able to get an Uber to drive down a dirt road to a tucked-away beach if Annie left her high and dry.

​

“C’mon, it will be fun. We’ll relive our youth.” Jess grabbed the two bottles of tequila and the blanket, and Annie grabbed the folding chairs from the back of the SUV.

​

Annie gave her a doubtful look but followed her down the path to the beach. Jessica turned on the flashlight function of her phone so they wouldn’t trip over a rock or a root and fall flat on their faces. It was so dark and hard to see. How had they even found their way back then? She didn’t remember carrying flashlights around.

​

Everybody she worked with was younger than she was. She’d wanted to get some kind of job, but the only thing she’d ever done before she got pregnant with Chrissy and she and Mike got married was wait tables. She meant to decide whether to go back to school or start a business after Brett, her youngest, got older, but there were always things in the way. Social events at the club she was asked to run, or school stuff for the kids. They were constantly remodeling or redecorating the house, adding an addition, or reconfiguring what was already there. Mike liked to keep upgrading. That kept her busy, and it’s not like they’d needed the extra money her income would have brought in. Mike had been running the car dealerships for his father by the time he was thirty-three, and then the old man passed away and Mike took over everything.

​

Now, with their separation and both the kids off at college, Mike was giving her a hard time about money. Which wouldn’t be a problem once everything was settled but was a pain in the ass now. Ever since he had told her he wanted a divorce and moved into a rented condo in town, Jess had been feeling bitter and sorry for herself. She was no longer spending time at the club. All the club friends went Mike’s way, of course. He had the membership, and the dealerships, and all the other ships, all in a row. Madison was probably already on the ladies’ golf committee and attending the luncheons on Wednesdays.

​

Thank God she’d reconnected with Annie. They had been besties all through high school, but then had drifted apart after Jess got married. Then one day at the grocery store, a few weeks after Mike left, when she was thinking she didn’t have a friend in the world she could count on, she’d looked up and there was Annie, smiling at her.

​

For months, practically the only time she left the house was to hang out with Annie or go for her daily run. If she had to be a divorced forty-year-old woman with no career, at least she wasn’t going to be a divorced, fat, forty-year-old woman with no career. She still looked good. Forty was only really old if your husband was fucking a 20-year-old.

​

Besides, since the kids weren’t living at home — they both had decided to stay at college and work through the summer — she’d decided to start telling everybody she was thirty-five.

​

She’d been listlessly scrolling through the employment websites on her phone one day, not because she was seriously looking, but because it soothed her to look for jobs she could get if she had to. There was an ad for wait staff at a restaurant opening up in the town center. Upscale, farm-to-table Americana with craft cocktails at the bar. She could do that. It might be fun to get out of the house.

​

She got her hair cut and her roots done, put on a pushup bra, and unbuttoned an extra button on her shirt. She talked to the manager who was interviewing her as if the only thing she wanted more than a waitress job was to get into his not-a-day-over-thirty pants, and he hired her on the spot. She still had it. Forty was the new thirty-five. Maybe even the new thirty.

​

All of the floor staff were younger than her by at least a decade, but she did well. She knew how to talk to people. How to cajole the kitchen staff, who were almost all men older than the wait staff, and prone to temper tantrums over dinners left under the warming lights or no temperatures noted on steaks. She knew how to flirt and joke with the male customers, especially the over-fifty guys who drooled over the college-age waitresses but saved the real passes for Jess because she let them think they might have an actual chance with her. She cleaned up on tips.

​

She could hear music coming from the beach as they walked down the path. Rap. A hard beat and no melody. Not exactly Tom Petty or Guns and Roses. Not even Madonna.

​

The beach looked larger than she remembered. Weren’t things supposed to look smaller when you went back? Like the tiny desks in grade schools, and the backyard of the house you grew up in? The beach seemed to reach out forever in both directions. Someone had started a bonfire, and there was a keg in a tub of ice, and the music was coming out of five or six portable speakers strewn around the blankets, beach chairs, and coolers.

​

“Wow, some things never change,” Annie said. “Sure you’re okay?”

​

Annie was smiling and Jess was glad she was finally in the mood for a little nostalgia. Annie looked good, too. Not as good as Jess did, of course, but good for Annie. She’d always been attractive in a girl next-door kind of way, but her new haircut looked great, and she’d let her stylist cover the grey streak. Jess assumed Annie was upping her game because she and her boyfriend were getting hot and heavy. Jess had never met him. He traveled a lot for his job, which worked out well because it gave Annie a lot of time to hang out with her.

​

“Stop, already. Of course I’m fine. It was a long time ago.” They walked over to a spot ten or twelve feet from the fire, laid down the blanket, and unfolded their camp chairs.

​

Jess saw one of the waitresses from work — Laura — glance their way. When Jess waved at her, Laura gave her a faint smile and an insipid wave back. She was standing next to Jorge, one of the chefs. Jorge had been trying to get with Laura ever since the restaurant opened. There was no way in hell she was going to go out with him.

​

“Wow, he’s cute,” Annie said.

​

“Yep. But he doesn’t stand a chance with Laura unless she decides to slum it before she goes back to Cornell in September.”

​

Annie gave her a side glance as they watched Jorge hit on Laura. “Maybe he needs an experienced woman to show him what a real woman needs.”

​

“He probably does, but that sounds tiring. Unless I make him do all the work.” She and Annie exploded into a fit of drunken giggles.

​

She was having fun sitting on the beach, drinking and joking with Annie like they used to when they were kids. And lately, she had been thinking of hooking up with someone. She wasn’t dead, after all. Mike was out getting laid while she was sitting at home; maybe it was time to even up the score before it was too late. When was the last time a man had looked at her like he couldn’t think of anything but getting inside her as soon as was humanly possible? She missed that. Mike used to look at her that way all the time, even before they were together. She’d liked looking into his eyes and seeing how much he wanted her. He hadn’t cared that she was David’s girl, or that she and David had been together since they were fifteen.

​

She’d met David in sophomore English class. He was new to school and had shaggy dark hair that was always falling in his eyes, and wore jeans and old concert tees from the seventies. David didn’t have any friends at school yet, just a guitar that he played pretty well and kept in the back of his old Chevy. She was still a frizzy-haired, brace-wearing, chubby girl in those days, listening to N’Sync and drooling over Justin Timberlake with her bestie Annie. David was smart and deep and artistic, at least as judged by a fifteen-year-old girl. He wrote short stories and poetry about velvet nights and starry skies that he read out loud in class. One day he sat with her and Annie at lunch.

​

It’s so easy to fall in love when you’re fifteen. Her relationship with David became all-consuming. They were like two people in the same skin, and she blossomed into adulthood as his girl. Her braces came off. She lost twenty pounds because you couldn’t eat chips if you were always necking with your boyfriend. She started buying fashion magazines instead of teen idol monthlies. She grew out her hair and saved up from her after-school job until she had enough money to go to the salon and get it streaked blond. David started calling her blondie and writing songs about how she was his sunshine and the light of his life, and they were going to be together forever. She had her first orgasm in the back seat of his Chevy.

​

She took a slug of tequila and passed the bottle to Annie. “We didn’t think to bring glasses.” She spied a bag of red solo cups next to the keg, and she got up and grabbed two, smiling and saying hi to the people she passed. Some of the guys were cute. Really young, but cute.

​

She poured a shot in each of the cups, handed one to Annie, and sat down with a sigh. It was good to be back at the beach, looking up at the star-filled sky and out at the gentle waves breaking on the shore. Why had she waited so long to come back here?

​

“You inviting me to this beach party reminded me of David,” Annie said. “Do you ever think about him?”

​

Jess took another drink from her cup. She was pretty drunk. Maybe slow down a little.

​

“I didn’t for a long time. But lately, I’ve been thinking about him a lot. Like what it would have been like if everything we’d planned had worked out. Would he have grown up to be a famous writer? A poet? Maybe a songwriter. Or would he have never made it and just been ordinary? Maybe we would have gotten married and been miserable, and he would have ended up tarring roofs for a living while I kept our double-wide clean and worked nights waiting tables at the diner, hoping for him to hit it big.”

​

“Maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad if you loved each other. I mean, you really loved each other. And you’re waiting tables now, right?”

​

Jess smirked at her. “Thank you so much for reminding me my life sucks.” Fuck it. She poured another shot in her glass and took another drink.

​

“You know I’m only joking, Jess. It’s good to see you out working and doing stuff. I’m really glad we reconnected.”

​

Jess was watching Jorge still trying to hit on Laura. Some men just didn’t realize how the world worked. “There’s a woman I knew from the club,” she said to Annie. “One day she was all depressed, and she tells me she just heard that the first guy she ever fell in love with — when she was nineteen — died after falling off a mountain in West Virginia while herding sheep. She was regretting that she had broken up with him and instead went with the guy who eventually became her husband, because looking back, she knew the sheepherder had been the love of her life and the man she should have stayed with.”

​

“I’m too drunk to figure out what you’re trying to tell me, Jess.”

​

“She was saying that instead of being married to a partner in a law firm and living in a million-dollar house, she would have rather, at that moment, been the widow of a shepherd who was so bad at sheep herding that he fell off a mountain.”

​

Annie had a puzzled frown on her face.

​

“I’m not a double-wide, night shift kind of person anymore, Annie. That’s all I’m saying. You make your choices and then you have to live with them.”

​

Jorge was standing with Kirk now, one of the bartenders. Kirk was tall and blond and beautiful, and looked like he should be surfing somewhere or making YouTube videos about how to pick up women. He flirted outrageously with the older women customers at work, who lapped up his attention like hungry cats lap up milk. She wouldn’t be surprised if he did more than flirt with some of them.

​

Laura had moved to sitting with a group of girls around the fire. Yeah, no way was Laura going to be sleeping with Jorge. She was out of his class. Jess took another swig from her cup and held up the bottle in the air while she shouted. “Hey Kirk, Jorge! We’ve got tequila here if anyone’s interested.”

​

God, I shouldn’ta drank so much. She and Annie had taken a walk down the beach after some little tight-body who Laura had invited to the party drank a good part of the second bottle of Jess’ tequila and left with Kirk. Didn’t see that comin’. She hoped the girl threw up in Kirk’s car.

​

Annie had suggested the walk, saying it would help them straighten up so she could drive home. It had sounded like a good idea, but now the bonfire looked like a little orange dot at the other end of the beach, and it seemed an endlessly long walk back to it.

​

“Let’s sit down a lil’ before we walk back.” Jess plopped down on a driftwood log. That was hard. She could feel the sand in her sneakers. She’d have to take them off and shake them out before they walked back. She put her cup down on the sand by her feet.

​

“Jess, I’ve never asked you this, but what happened? Why did David go off by himself? The cops wrote it off as some drunk kid doing something stupid and ending up dead, but…I’d never say this to anyone, Jess, you know that, but I saw you walking back to the group from down the beach, and I wondered…”

​

Jess narrowed her eyes at Annie, giving her the look she used to give the kids when they were about to give her some grief, like about why she hadn’t remembered to bring the snacks for soccer practice, or why she’d gotten blasted at the club and forgotten to pick them up from school.

​

“So what, Annie? David and I were burnin’ out by then. Mike had been hitting on me for a month. He was so po-popular. And really cute. I was eighteen. I was sooooooo pretty, ‘member?” She ran her hand through her long blond hair and flipped it over her shoulder. The shift in weight almost made her lose her balance and fall over, but she caught herself. “He wouldn’t give up trying to get with me, even though he knew I was with David. Every time I turned ‘round he was there, hittin’ on me. And Mike had money. My mother always said it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one. Everybody knew the car dealerships were going to be his someday. No worryin’ about a doublewide or a night shift there, amirite?” She reached over and whacked Annie on the shoulder, laughing.

​

“But David drowned. What happened? You and David went down the beach and you came back alone.”

​

“Why’s it matter? I didn’t want to be with David anymore. He wanted me to go away with him; jump in that junky ol’ car of his and head for New York City. Or Los Angeles.” She rolled her eyes at Annie. “So he could be famous. I told David I didn’t want to go to New York. And he was soooo disappointed. I broke his heart. So he got wasted. Really, really wasted.” She tried to open her eyes wider because they seemed to be trying to close on their own. “Kind of like me now. I said I wanted to be alone and go for a walk; Mike was waiting down the beach. I didn’t know David was following me.” She turned and smiled at Annie. “I made Mike wait for weeks. Teasin’ him and making him crazy. It was easy to reel him in.” Her smile turned into a frown. “But he’s always been easy to seduce. That lil bitch Madison even managed to seduce him right out of the house, which was a first.” My voice is so slurry. Maybe it’s time to go home. Just a few more minutes to get herself together and they’d walk back, and Annie would drop her off at home and she’d go to bed.

​

“What happened to David?”

​

Jess looked at Annie and then down at the sand and then back to her again. It would feel good to tell someone the truth, and Annie had been — was again — her best friend. She really should have told Annie years ago and unburdened herself. Annie would understand.

​

“I walked down the beach that night to tell Mike I was falling in love with him and that I broke up with David. It made so much more sense to be with Mike. I got halfway down the beach and saw David following me, so drunk he could barely walk. He tried to grab me…babbling about how he loved me, and I was his everything and he couldn’t live without me. I pulled my arm away, and he stumbled, and then he tripped and hit his head on a rock when he fell down.” She gestured at the rocks half-sunk in the sand along the shoreline. “His face was all bloody, and he was out of it, rambling about me being his sunshine and not wanting to live in the dark.”

​

“Did you leave him there? How did he get into the water? Why didn’t you come back to the party and call for help?”

​

She was so tired and drunk. Why was Annie asking her so many questions? What did it matter now? David had been dead for twenty-two years. She just wanted to go home and go to sleep on her twelve-hundred thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, in her million-dollar McMansion. Her eyelids felt like lead. Maybe she would just lie down on the sand for a little while and take a nap.

 

She felt Annie shake her arm, hard.

​

“Jess, wake up. What happened to David? What happened that he ended up drowned and washed up on the beach?”

​

What was with the endless questions? Annie was being a pain in the ass.

​

She pushed Annie’s hand away, mumbling. “I couldn’t…” She wiped away a bit of drool escaping out of the side of her mouth. “Dragged him into the water. Mike and I wanted to be together. He said he would love me and take care of me forever…that I shouldn’t worry.” Her anger rose up and it counteracted the booze for a moment, and she looked at Annie. “He promised me. But lately I’ve had plenty to worry about.” She tried to stand up, but her legs wouldn’t cooperate, so she just stared at the waves lapping at the shore, wearing it down, just like life was wearing her down. “I told him last week that if he didn’t come back, I was going to call the police and tell them he murdered David. I gave him until tomorrow to break the news to that little slut he’s sleeping with. I wish I could be there to see her face when Mike — ”

​

“Jess, look at me.”

​

It was weird that Annie didn’t sound drunk. Or look drunk, either. Annie had been keeping up with her drink-for-drink all night. Hadn’t she?

​

“What?”

​

“Mike isn’t sleeping with Madison. She’s just some kid that he gave a job to because she was looking for something for the summer and her father buys a new car from the dealership every two years.”

​

“Bullshit. I know he’s sleeping with someone ’cause he…” Suddenly she couldn’t make her muscles contract the right way to keep her butt on the log, and she slithered to the sand. She rolled over and looked at the sky. Velvet nights and starry skies. That’s what she remembered. Where did she remember that from?

​

She saw Annie get up from the log and lean over to look in her eyes.

​

“It’s me, Jess. Mike and I have been sleeping together for the last two years. I went in to buy a car one day and we reconnected. My boyfriend who’s always away and who you’ve never met? It’s Mike. We’re in love. Finally, we decided to take the chance to be together, but he was so afraid of what you’d do. And you rose to the occasion and were your usual bitchy, controlling, lying self. No wonder even your kids don’t like you.”

​

Annie reached down and grabbed her arms, and Jess didn’t have enough energy to break away from Annie’s tight grip on her wrists because her limp muscles didn’t seem to be working.

​

“You killed David, Jess. You just admitted dragging him into the lake, and now you’re trying to blackmail Mike with the threat of a scandal so he’ll stay with you. Mike and I can’t have you ruining the life we’re planning.”

​

Annie was pulling her toward the water. Jess tried to dig in her heels, but Annie was so much stronger than her at the moment. She tried to speak, but now her lips and throat seemed paralyzed. Her mouth flopped open but the only noise she managed to produce was a groan.

​

“It was perfect when you told me about this stupid kids’ party,” Annie said. “The plan we’d been trying to come up with to get rid of you suddenly clicked into place. While you were at work, Mike went to your house and helped himself to Xanax and Soma and Vicodin out of your medicine cabinet. I spiked your drink while you were busy trying to get in Kirk’s pants. I’m going to be very distraught over your death because I didn’t realize what you were planning, how depressed you were. Tomorrow, the suicide note from you scheduled to arrive in my inbox will explain how sorry you are, and that you just couldn’t go on living with the guilt of having killed your boyfriend twenty-two years ago to be with Mike.

​

“Your best friend and your shattered husband — who loved you but was driven away by your bitterness and depression and your refusal to get any help — will console each other. We’ll fall in love. Your kids will be happy for us. I’ve already planned the wedding in my head. I’m thinking Hawaii would be nice. We’ll get married on the beach.”

​

Jess could feel dry sand against her lower back where her shirt had come untucked. Then the sand was wet and getting stuck in the waistband of her jeans as Annie tugged on her wrists, dragging her to the water. Jess tried to summon the will to fight against the drugs that wanted her to do nothing but float away on the promise of their pleasant dreams.

​

“Annie…wait.” Pushing out the words seemed as difficult as pushing a boulder up a hill, but she had to tell her. Annie had to understand what really happened. “Mike — ”

​

“Yes, Mike, Mike, Mike. All you’ve ever done is complain about him since I made a point to run into you at the grocery store. I had to listen to you pour out all that venom about the man I love and nod my head in agreement about what a bastard he was to you. You never deserved him. He told me the truth about you. About everything you ever accused him of doing, from all the affairs you imagined he had, to threatening to tell the police he killed David.”

​

Jess could smell the cool greenness of the lake and hear the undulating splash of the surf hitting the shore. It reminded her of summer and youth, and the unlimited possibilities of an 18-year-old’s future, and suddenly it didn’t seem that important to make sure Annie knew that it had been Mike who had dragged David into the water, holding him under the waves until David’s feeble struggling had stopped. Mike who David had said gave him the Quaalude he’d taken that night at the party. Mike, who when she ran up the beach to tell him David was hurt and she needed help, convinced her David had to be out of her life for good for them to have a chance to really be in love, because David would never give her up or let them be. Mike who told her no one would ever know.

​

Jess was sure Annie would eventually figure out what kind of man Mike was all on her own, without her help. Just like she had.

​

Jess felt the water seeping into her clothes. It didn’t feel bad — not bad at all. The water was like a refreshingly cool cloth run over fevered skin, and then she was floating, and she was so tired that she just wanted to drift away and go to sleep, and she rolled over and pulled the waves over her shoulders and she fell into the peaceful void of velvet nights and starry skies.

​