The Funeral of a Good Girl
By – TempestRaces
Chapter 66 – Of Fast Cars and Anything but Easy
"What're you doin' here?" Vince asked in a growl, showing his question was directed to Tempest by grabbing her wrist in his free hand. The other was holding the handle of the case his guitar was in.
"I dunno." She wouldn't break her eye contact with Bryce to look his way.
"Really?" The banality of his tone belayed itself with the underlying tone of hostility.
"Ask your boy."
"I didn't ask my boy. I asked you."
She shrugged flippantly to cover her anger. "I don't have an answer for you so I guess you'll just have to deal."
"If I'd wanted you here, I'd have asked you to come."
"That's patently obvious."
"So why're you here?"
"Jesus Christ V. I brought her. I didn't tell her where we were going or why. I just went and got her and brought her."
Vince turned his hot gaze onto Bryce. "So that why she's wearing your jacket?"
"Yeah. We came on the bike."
Vince turned his look back on Tempest. "You got on the back of his bike? With him?"
"Generally how it's done V," Bryce answered for her.
"You? Shut up." Vince delivered in a tone that would have had pretty much anyone in the free world but Bryce cowering under the table. Bryce just held his hands up as if to say ok and backed off. For the moment. "You don't belong here. You belong at the fort. You're not part of what I do here." Always careful to keep his two lives very separate for reasons of his own, her presence started to blur the line and he didn't like it. He liked her at home with her cousin, with their friends. But he liked her here, sitting with his friend too. Something had to be done to put things back in their place. "You're a step above a racer chaser for crying out loud. Like some racer attitude Barbie."
"For a good time, call, huh? Kinda what I figured. I'm a caricature to you. Not a whole person but an over-exaggerated drawing of an easy girl in a fast car. Go fuck yourself." She shrugged out of the heavy leather coat she was still wearing and tossed it on the bench which essentially tossed Vince's hold on her as well, before with her final parting shot she took off for the door. Bryce made a grab for her arm and missed, and they watched her disappear into the murky night as the door snapped shut behind her.
"What the fuck did you bring her here for?" Vince growled. He couldn't believe how poorly this had ended, and it was all Bryce's fault.
"Because you didn't," Bryce answered simply, shrugging slightly.
"Ever stop to think there mighta been a reason for that?"
"I figure you had one. I also know it was a stupid one so I over ruled you."
"My life is my life."
"Yeah, but you're fucking it up. And you're fuckin that kid up too. So that's why I started to give a care. You're just pissed off because now she might know you're human and not some super callous thug that drives too fast and drinks too much and snaps her in half for fun when he wants to." There was a challenge in Bryce's eyes. Vince knew without a doubt it wouldn't go unanswered. He'd either respond now or later, and later it would be even more at Bryce's convenience.
"I don't snap her in half for fun." He ran a hand through his disordered hair. "I can't seem to help it. Scares the shit outta me."
"I know," Bryce stood up in preparation for leaving, and threw an arm around Vince's shoulders in a brotherly way. "It's supposed to, you know?"
"Meeting a girl is supposed to scare the shit outta me?" Vince looked at his friend incredulously.
"No, meeting the girl is supposed to. You're just supposed to be happier to have found her than you are scared to have found her, you know? Too bad you're too thick to get the order right. Now go find her."
"What'd you mean go find her? She'll take her car and run home."
Bryce pulled a pensive face. "Gotta figure you'd be right if she had her car. Came with me on my bike, remember?"
"Fuck me," Vince growled. "Headstrong fucking female. Do you have any sweet clue how far she might have gotten by now?"
"How far could she honestly get on foot V?"
"Far as she wants." Vince shook his head. "I guess I better get after her." He left Bryce with one last look, a look that conveyed he was by no means done being pissed as hell with his friend. That he was simply letting it go for the sake of tracking down the pissed off package of trouble that had somehow become his responsibility. He looked all around the parking lot before getting in his car and driving around all the side streets within a ten minute run. He never found her. But when he found one of the little lit street side shelters for the bus, he had an epiphany and started cussing up a storm. Of course the she devil had hopped on the first bus that had gone by and was by now god only knew where.
He drove home, hoping that she would have by some chance found the bus that would drop her off close to the house. Her car was still at home, but a quick check of the house showed no sign of her. He retreated back out into the night. An oppressive atmosphere had developed over the course of the evening. The previously sunny, dry and hot day had become a muggy and overcast night, heavily weighted with moisture on the air and the smell of an impending storm of some proportions being blown around by a swiftly rising wind.
He headed off down the street with a squeal, no idea where he was going. If she had, as he figured, hopped on a bus, she could be anywhere. So where would she go if not home to either hide behind Leon, or take her car and run elsewhere? Following an instinct he wasn't even aware of, he turned the car toward the little stretch of beach the whole team figured they had the monopoly on. It wasn't a plan to find her there; far as he knew she wouldn't even know how to find her way back there. But he had a desire to be alone, to growl to himself, and it was as good a place as any. Plus, in his mind she was storms and sand, wind and waves. Violent light shows and fast motion, loud noise. Even if he never dreamed that he was doing anything that would lead him to her consciously, he was being dragged by an unseen force to the place that would feel the most like her.
So it came as quite a shock when he went to pull into the small gravel parking area to find himself looking down at the ocean to find a lone figure on the beach. "Son of a bitch," he mumbled, looking at the sky through his closed sunroof. "Trying to tell me something you son of a bitch?" He would believe in coincidence to a certain extent, but this was pushing it.
There was no moon, its light snuffed by the thick and smothering weight of the clouds heavy with rain and nature's repressed rage. But there was enough ambient light from the city lights down the strip to illuminate dimly the woman standing up to her knees in the water, hands holding the heavy fall of her rebellious hair up off the nape of her neck and out of the wind as the ocean soaked up her jeans, licking around her knees in waves growing more obvious as the weather kicked up more little by little. "Crazy chica. Gonna get herself killed if that lightning comes while she's still standing in the fuckin water," he growled to himself before getting out of his car and slamming the door. The wind carried the noise of the latching panel away toward the road, not granting the oblivious girl any hint of his presence, and in doing so seemingly laughing, as if to say 'you get no help from me, you're on your own.'
With a heartfelt sigh, he started down the sand toward where the frothing water licked at the damp shore.
Tempest felt her hands tangled in the silk of her hair, she felt the wind across her face, neck. Scented with salt water spray, sand and ocean flora. Felt the mist of ocean water drying on her skin, leaving a slightly gritty feeling in its wake as a salt and sand wash was left behind. She felt the water sucking at her feet, creeping up her pant legs with a cold caress that was most ominous. The ocean wasn't friendly at night with a storm brewing. It was cold and cruel and waiting to claim her if she just stepped out of line slightly. She could feel the cunning, knew it was waiting for her to step too far out, find her feet pulled out from under her as the undertow sucked her out to into the vast darkness, sucked her under with no one the wiser. She'd come here by accident. No one knew where she was. No one would miss her until later, when Vince showed up home without her, inquired where she was, and everyone realized they had simply assumed she was with him.
She tipped her head back and looked up at the grey clouds rolling over her head. They had a luminous, alive quality that the sky took on right before a storm to end all storms broke. Clouds more platinum than grey, shining with silver linings that did not hint at new beginnings or happily ever afters but at destruction and chaos instead. She knew she should get out of the water before the lightening hit. She just didn't care that much.
The ocean was home. The ocean was familiar. She lived her life surrounded by it. It was a constant. Anywhere she went, she knew that within ten minutes she could be close to it. Its cruelty wasn't for show, it wasn't to hurt anyone. It was just its nature. She understood the ocean. It was presently the one thing she was sure of. She released her hair, tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Wondered what on earth she had gotten herself into. The first drop of rain hit her face with a wet plop, to be followed quickly by another. The wind took her freed hair and whipped it around her face, slapping her cheeks just enough to be irritating. With her eyes closed against the rain. she simply stood, telling herself the next second would be the one that saw her leave the water, call Jesse to get a ride, head for home.
Seconds followed on the heels of the ones previous and she never made a move to leave her place. Slowly her hair got soaked, rain water ran down her cheeks and her under shirt got plastered to her damp skin rather than billowing around her in the wind, yet there she stood, still unwilling to do anything about it. Unwilling to call her cousin with the phone she was sure was rapidly being ruined by the weather as it rested in the back pocket of her pants, and admit that yet again, she had let Vince in only to watch him drop her and again refuse to be there to pick up the pieces.