Speaking of cute guys, she wondered what the story was with Jude. He acted like a creep, and fairly convincingly, but she didn’t think he was one. Not really, not deep down. He was smart and he was troubled. Mean also. The jab about her tattoo being a tramp stamp had hurt, even though she was reasonably sure she’d kept the pain from showing. The signals she’d been hoping to send off with it were rebellious and tough, not cheap and easy. Guess Alice had been right about its being a shitty idea. But back to Jude. Charlie was curious about him. She wanted to get to know him better, and she hoped that wouldn’t cause a problem with her new alpha-blond BFF. She’d tried to probe Cybill a little on the way back from the bonfire. Cybill’s tone when she discussed Jude was casual, flip almost. (“Jude’s great, but he’s full of shit,” she’d said, then swatted the air with a dismissive hand flick.) But something told Charlie that that was just a front, that Cybill’s feelings for him ran deep, and that if she, Charlie, was going to proceed, she’d better do so with caution. Not that she was totally sure she wanted to proceed. The fact that Jude was Cybill’s second cousin once removed disturbed her, and disturbed was the word for it, attracting her every bit as much as it repelled her. She found their behavior sick in a decadent, sophisticated, sexy way—and also sick in a flat-out way. The truth of the matter was, she was shocked by the relationship, which she didn’t care to admit, even to herself. She liked to think of herself as unshockable, as too experienced by life to be capable of being shocked, certainly by anything a couple of soft, sheltered, namby-pamby private schoolers might do. But she was.

“Shit,” Charlie said, stopping in her tracks. They were walking on a little garden path—pretty, narrow, with carefully random bits of plants and flowers—that ran alongside the golf course, down to the ocean.

Alice looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Cybill said a quarter of a mile down the beach, but I forgot to ask in which direction. And she and Sasha and Bianca are probably long gone by now.”

“Hit the water and take a left,” a voice said.