They lined up their tattoos to form a seamless picture, and my eyes grew wide with fascination and envy. I didn’t even know the story behind it yet, but my heart ached just seeing the two of them lying together like that, like two pieces forming one whole person right in front of my eyes. Momentarily, I thought of me and Elias. I pictured the two of us in their place. Andrew’s half of the tattoo was of a woman wearing a long, graceful see-through white gown that was pressed against the sensual curves of her body by the wind. Tendrils of flowing fabric blew behind her as she reached out her arms to the male figure inked on Camryn’s ribs. I gaped down at the detail, mesmerized by the beautiful complexity of every perfect line. The tattoos were enormous, stretching from the tops of their ribs down almost to their hips.

I glanced back at Elias with an idea rampant on my face. He looked nervous. And he should’ve been, because he knew what I was thinking: that I was ready to drag him to the closest tattoo shop.

“That. Is. Awesome,” I said, looking back at Camryn and Andrew. “Who are they?”

“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Andrew answered. “From the Greek legend.”

“A tragic tale of true love,” Camryn added.

Andrew squeezed his arms around her.

“Well, nothing seems tragic about the two of you,” Tate said and lit up a cigarette.

I finally managed to pry myself away. “I think it’s beautiful,” I said as I made my way back to sit between Elias’s legs. “And I guess it better be, because I know that had to hurt like hell.”

“Yeah, it definitely hurt,” Camryn said. “But it was worth every hour of pain.”

We all sat around the blazing bonfire and talked mostly about benign things for a long time, but it didn’t take long for Camryn and me to hit it off. Even before she started getting buzzed and overly talkative, we talked more than anyone. Normally it would be me and Grace, but she was too wrapped up in Caleb this time to be my sidekick. At one point, I was so into my conversation with Camryn, and I felt so comfortable with her, that I almost slipped up and mentioned we lived in Georgia. Elias noticed how close I was getting to saying things I shouldn’t, and that was when he entered the conversation and started talking about concerts we had all been to.

“Maroon 5 are great live,” I said.

“I know!” Camryn said with excitement in her eyes. “I saw them in concert with my best friend, Nat, and they were amazing! Not too many bands who sound almost just like they do on their album.”

“Yeah, that’s the truth,” I said and took the last drink of my beer. “Did you say you’re from North Carolina?”

Camryn sat Indian style on the sand.

“Yeah, but Andrew and I don’t really live there now.”

“Where do you live?” Tate asked. He took a long pull from his cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs. “Texas?”

“No, we sort of… travel,” Camryn said. She had pretty bright blue eyes; I’d noticed them when the light from the fire hit her face at just the right angle. And a cute, oval-shaped face.

“Travel?” I asked. “What, like driving around in an RV?”

“Not exactly,” Camryn said. “We just have the car.”

“Why do you travel?” Johanna asked.

I saw the way Andrew looked at her upon hearing her voice, and he wasn’t pleased, to say the least. It was pretty obvious he had noticed the way she had been eyeballing him all night. He ignored her and looked back over at us. “We play music together.”

“What, you’re like in a band?” Johanna asked with a valley-girl accent.

I rolled my eyes. Her desperation was getting ridiculous.

Andrew looked right at her this time, which kind of surprised me. “Sort of,” he said, but that’s all the answer he gave her. I realized it was intentional.

“What kind of music do you play?” Caleb asked. He sat, as usual, between Grace and Johanna, not caring in the slightest what anyone thought of him being with two girls.

Andrew took a drink of his beer and answered, “Classic rock, blues and folk rock, stuff like that.”

“You’ll have to play for us!” I said excitedly. I was buzzed myself by this time.

Camryn turned around to look at Andrew, and she was animated by the idea. “You could. You’ve got the acoustic in the backseat.”

“Nah, I’m not up to it right now,” Andrew said.

“Oh come on, baby, why not?”

“Yeah, man, if you’ve got a guitar with you and know how to play, that’d be awesome,” Tate jumped in.

Caving to the peer pressure, and probably more so to not wanting to say no to his fiancée, Andrew got up and walked to his car. He came back carrying a guitar.

“You’re going to sing with me,” he said to Camryn as he sat back down beside her.

“Nooo! I’m too buzzed!” She kissed him on the mouth and sat next to me and Elias, probably to get out of it.

“All right, what do you want me to sing?” Andrew asked.

“Hey, whatever you feel like, man,” Tate said.

Andrew sat there in thought for a moment as though shuffling through a hundred different songs in his mind and decided on “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers. My mom used to listen to that song all the time, so I was no stranger to it. And damn, Andrew could sing. As if he wasn’t already tattooed and gorgeous and could play the guitar like a pro, his voice was something to be reckoned with. I sat up between Elias’s legs, my body swaying side to side with the music, letting it run through me.

All of us were getting into it, even Elias, who wasn’t at all threatened by Andrew, because he knew he had no reason to be. I’d made sure of that early on.

Andrew belted out the last chorus and the song ended.

“That was great!” I said excitedly.

“Man, you weren’t fuckin’ playing’ around,” Tate said and lit up a joint.

“Play another one,” I said, laying back against Elias. He wrapped me in his arms, and I felt his chin press softly against the top of my head.

Tate passed the joint to Camryn first but she just looked at it for a moment. She shook her head at Tate and said, “No thanks—I think I’ll just stick to liquor tonight.”

Andrew played a few more songs by the bonfire and Camryn finally did sing one with him. They were both very talented. I thought they should be playing shows somewhere.

Tate came back from the Jeep carrying a stack of Solo cups, a bottle of Seagram’s 7, and a bottle of Sprite. Jen went to work mixing drinks and passing them around.

“Have at it, man,” Tate urged Andrew. “Don’t worry about driving anywhere tonight. Cops don’t even know about this place.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll have a cup,” Andrew said.

When it came Camryn’s turn, the two of them went back and forth about whether or not it was a good idea, but ultimately she decided that it was. She had already turned down the joint.

Maybe it was the weed and the alcohol, but before too long I was talking to Camryn about, of all things, tampon brands and eventually the best kind of shampoo. She asked me about my bracelets, to which I made sure not to let her get as close as Grace had the other night at the beach house, worried it would be a similar scene all over again. I could open up to Elias about what I did, but no one else out here had any business knowing. The music continuously funneled from the Jeep.

“Andrew, I need to pee,” Camryn said.

He took her cup from her hand and set it on the sand. “I need to take a piss too,” he said.

Tate pointed behind them with another cigarette between his fingers and said, “Go around that way. There’s no glass and shit to step on over there.”

Andrew set his cup next to Camryn’s and helped her up. Once they slipped into the darkness, Elias thought it was a good idea, too, and stood up. “I’ll be back in a few,” he said. He looked down at me. “You need to use the bathroom?”

“Nah, I’m good,” I said.

He smiled and walked in the opposite direction of Andrew and Camryn, past the vehicles, to relieve himself.

Grace left Caleb’s lap and came over to me, laying her head on my shoulder.

“Have you been watching Johanna?” she whispered.

I looked over at Johanna trailing her fingers down Caleb’s bicep muscle, a vacant look on her face. She always appeared high or just not all there in general. I wondered what went on inside her head, other than thoughts of Caleb, and now this new guy, Andrew. Eventually, I had to believe that nothing else went on inside there.

“You mean her drooling over Andrew? Yeah, kind of hard not to notice. Doesn’t Caleb care?”

Grace chuckled and raised her head from my shoulder. “Not really,” she said. “He pulled me behind the Jeep earlier and told me he wanted her gone.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

She shook her head, glanced over at Johanna and Caleb again, and then added, “There’s something seriously wrong with that girl.”

“That’s an understatement. How long have you known her?”

“Just a few months. She moved into my apartment building.”

Caleb got up and started digging around in his pockets. It may have been just to get away from Johanna for a moment.

“Why doesn’t he just tell her that he’s not into her anymore?”

“Because she lives in Virginia,” Grace said quietly. “He may be an ass sometimes, but he won’t leave her stranded so far away from home. I told him when we were at the Jeep he should just get her a bus ticket back to Norfolk.”

“What did he say to that?”

Grace brushed her long, dark hair away from her shoulders. She drew her knees up, leaned back, and propped herself up on her elbows.

“He said that’s probably what he’ll do.”

“Hey,” I said, “why are you with him, anyway? I mean, he doesn’t exactly seem like boyfriend material.”

Grace smiled and let her bare knees sway side to side. “I’m not lookin’ for a boyfriend,” she said. “I just want to have fun. Got out of a bad relationship not long ago, and I ain’t in any hurry to jump into another one.”

I could understand where she was coming from. Not that I felt the same way, though.

“So, what did Elias say about your wrists?” Grace asked, lowering her voice.

I crossed my legs and hid my hands in between them, my fingers moving over the bracelets absently. I didn’t want to talk about this, but I really liked Grace and I wanted her to know that.

“He was upset, naturally,” I said. “But we’re OK. Elias understands me.”

Grace smiled slimly, glanced at my wrists, and then let her body slouch farther in between her shoulders.

“I never told anyone this before,” she said, looking out ahead of her, “but I had an older brother. Jacob. He was in the military. Two years in Iraq.” She glanced at me once and said, “He put a bullet in his head six weeks after he got home,” and then she looked away. Her gaze was fixated on the darkness, but I knew she was seeing her brother’s face.

My heart fell. I twisted around on the sand to face her. “That’s… so fucked up, Grace. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded and smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s the best way to describe it. Fucked up. He was in a bad place for a really long time. No one knew.” She gestured one hand in a backtracking fashion. “Well, we knew something was wrong. He was different when he came home. Isolated. And he had real bad anger issues. But we didn’t know he was capable of suicide.” Then her face fell, shadowed by the memory and her own guilt, which I knew she’d probably carry around forever. “We didn’t know until it was too late. The second chancers are lucky.” She pointed at me then, and her smile grew. “You’re lucky. Don’t ever forget it.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I wanted to agree with her, but knowing that her brother wasn’t so lucky, I felt awful and thought it best to say nothing at all.

Grace changed the mood quickly as she raised up and dusted the sand from the palms of her hands. Then she reached around and pulled her bikini bottoms from her butt crack.

“Damn, I have too much ass to be wearing Jen’s bathing suits,” she grumbled as the bikini elastic snapped around her butt cheek.

“I think I do, too,” I said and laughed with her.

Tate and Jen were making out over on the blanket, Jen’s small body looking like a permanent fixture on top of his. Johanna looked bored sitting over there by herself, twirling her hair around her index finger. Caleb walked from cup to cup, dropping something into each one as he passed by.

“What’s that?” I asked when he made it over to us.

One side of Caleb’s mouth lifted into a grin. He dropped whatever it was into my cup. And then one in Elias’s.