The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline(302)

I’d taken up quite a few of the offers I’d gotten, but I kept it on the down low because despite everything I thought about Seb’s Mrs. Wilson, he missed her—and she’d been his first.

I was really surprised when he told me that, because I’d always assumed that he and Brenda had got it on. He said they hadn’t, and I believed it. What I didn’t tell him was that Brenda was singing a different tune—pretty loudly, too.

Sebastian is like my brother and I’d helped get him the summer job at La Jolla club where I already had part-time work. It had been good. Hell, it had been great. But then the whole cluster fuck with Caroline Wilson had happened.

I couldn’t believe my best friend had been so dumb as to get involved with a married woman. Not just involved, but fucking deaf, dumb and blind in love with her. And even though she was like 30, which is practically ancient, I had to admit she was hot—a total babe, if I’m honest.

Seb said that they loved each other. At first, skeptical had been my middle name but it seemed like it was true. She’d left her husband for my friend, and lost everything in her old life. The last words that she said to him before they sent her away was that she loved him.

Well, that’s what he told me she’d said. She was speaking Italian at the time so I guess it was like a private message from her to him. But there was no doubting what I saw in his eyes. The mindbender was she was in love with him, too.

But, like I said, she was 30 and even now Seb was still six weeks away from his 18th birthday. Seb’s asshole dad threatened to have Caroline arrested if she didn’t leave quietly. Not only that, but she has the Statute of Limitations hanging over her for the next three years. If they contact each other, Donald will try and have her sent to prison, or at the very least, get her name put on a sex offender registry.

And Seb was falling apart. He’d been in pieces since she’d gone. He kept saying that she was the only good thing that he had in his life. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was holding onto the hope that they could be together again in three years, I think he might have done something even more dumb.

It scared me to see how desperate he was.

But when I thought about it, it wasn’t that surprising either. Seb had a shitty mom and a bastard of a father. There were no grandparents, as far as I knew, and my own mom and dad had been more parents to him than his own. So there’d just been Caroline Wilson.

Mom was still watching me, and I realized that I’d left her hanging.

“Can Seb come and stay with us? I mean, it’s only like six weeks—maybe a couple of months—and then he’ll be joining the Marines and he’ll be away from here.”

“I don’t know,” she said, slowly. “I’d love to say yes, but I can’t see Donald and Estelle going for it.”

“Mom, they freakin’ hate him! His dad is whaling on him, his mom yells at him all the time or is drunk off her ass! He’s miserable—it just sucks. He’s damn near my brother!”

She sighed heavily.

“Has he said that Donald hits him?”

“No, but it’s pretty fu… freakin’ obvious.”

She shook her head and muttered something under breath that I couldn’t catch.

“I’ll speak to your father.”

That’s all I could do for now.

“Okay, thanks, Mom. I gotta go—Seb and I got the late shift so I won’t be home till after midnight.”

She pulled me into a tight hug, which took me by surprise. She didn’t usually go around hugging people that much, even me.

When I got to Seb’s place, I leaned on the horn. We were cutting it close and he should have been outside waiting for me.

I saw the front door open and Seb walked out. Limped might have been a better word, and he’d got his hood pulled up.

“Ah shit, man! Not again!”

He didn’t speak as he pulled himself onto the front seat, but I could see that his cheek was bruised and he had a black eye.

I shook my head. “No way Perez will let you work looking like that.”

“The other guy looks worse,” he said, an ironic smile twisting his mouth.

I put the van in drive and headed out to La Jolla. Seb didn’t speak the whole way, just stared out of the window, but I don’t think he was looking at the passing scenery.

I parked around the back of the country club and jumped out. Seb was moving slowly, holding his ribs.

His luck was so shitty that I really shouldn’t have been surprised when Miss Perez walked out at the exact moment we were heading in.

She did a double take when she saw Seb.

“What happened to you this time, Mr. Hunter?” she snapped. “Another surfing accident? Tripped over paving stone on the sidewalk? I don’t think so. It’s quite clear to me that you’ve been fighting. Well, I can’t have you upset the members by them seeing you like that. You’ve had one warning already and…”