[Beachwood Bay 02.0] Unbroken

by Melody Grace

  “I can take care of myself!” I insist angrily.

  “Didn’t look like it to me.” Emerson’s voice is a low drawl.

  I bridle at the ownership in his tone. “I had it all under control. You just don’t know me anymore!”

  Something flickers across his face even in the dark, and I feel a stab of regret slice through me. Oh God, I shouldn’t have said that. Then his harsh look fades away, and for a moment, Emerson’s eyes meet mine: naked and vulnerable.

  “You came back,” he says softly. He takes a half-step towards me, and despite all my anger, I find my body frozen in place, yearning for him to touch me—sweep me in his arms, like before.

  Closer, my mind cries out. Close the distance between us.

  “You came back,” he says again, like he can’t believe it himself. There’s wonder in his eyes, fierce and breathless. “All this time, I kept watching the door, like you might walk through it. And now, here you are.”

  I inhale in a sharp rush, hating myself even as I feel the surge of delight course through me at the words.

  He was watching for me? He wanted to see me again?

  After the way we ended things, I figured for sure beyond any doubt that I was the last person on earth he’d ever want to see again. He told me that he never wanted to hear from me: no emails, no calls, nothing. That he would rather cut me from his life completely than pretend we could ever be just friends.

  It’s hurt me more than anything, imagining that he was out there somewhere, hating me. Regretting me.

  But now…?

  My heart catches in my throat but I push down my runaway thoughts. “You shouldn’t have looked for me,” I say quickly. “I told you, I wasn’t coming back.”

  Emerson’s face darkens again. “I remember. Believe me, I remember everything.”

  That last day suddenly springs into my mind: the funeral service, damp winds blowing on the desolate clifftop. Emerson at my side, holding me up when I thought I didn’t have the strength to keep it together. And then, just when I thought I couldn’t hurt more than I already did—when I thought my heart was broken all the way—Emerson proved there was still something left to destroy.

  I meet Emerson’s eyes, and I can tell from his expression, he’s remembering it too.

  “And I’m not back,” I babble quickly, clutching at my keys. “Not for real. We’re selling the house; I’m just here to pack it up. A couple of days. Then I’ll be gone.”

  Forever.

  The word hangs in the air between us.

  Emerson’s face smoothes out, totally blank.

  “Sure.” He shrugs, suddenly casual. “I should have figured. I mean, there’s nothing left here for you anymore.”

  His words slam through me like a physical blow. I try to hide my dismay. Nothing left here for you anymore. I know I shouldn’t have expected anything different, but still, my heart aches at his casual tone, like he’s talking about the weather instead of us.

  “Right,” I say, fighting back the tears stinging in the back of my throat. “I’ll be gone by next week. You won’t see me again.”

  Emerson gives a curt nod. “You need help packing up?”

  My skin burns. Now he’s being polite, as if we’re distant strangers he’s offering to lend a hand.

  “No,” I choke out. The only thing worse than his anger is his detached obligation. “I don’t need anything from you! I never did!”

  Emerson’s whole body tenses. “That’s right,” he says, giving me a cruel smile. His eyes glint, dark in the shadows. “You didn’t.”

  I flinch again at his blow, and the bitterness in his voice. It tears me up inside to hear him sound like this, but why should I be surprised? He was the one who took our love and tore it in two, like I was nothing to him. Like those hot, fierce summer nights and all his whispered promises had been nothing but a dream.

  I know I should go now, just get in my car and leave, but I still can’t move. His presence is magnetic, and even through his anger, and the turmoil of my guilty emotions, I feel the call of his body to mine, here in the middle of the empty parking lot. The sound of a car engine passes in the distance, and then it’s silent again, nothing but shadows, and the faint drift of noise and laughter through the tavern windows.

  I stare at him, frozen. Muscle memory, they call it: when you do something so many times that it becomes automatic, beyond all rational thought. To be so close to him, and not reach out…hold him…kiss him. It takes all the self-control I have not to give in to the temptation.

  I can see in his eyes that Emerson feels it too. And he was never about the self-control.

  Before I can react, he’s closing the distance between us in a few powerful strides. He stops, just inches away, so close I can feel the heat of his body radiating through his T-shirt.

  Close enough to touch.

  But still, I fight it, desperate. I clench my fingers at my sides to stop myself from reaching up and running them through that dark hair of his, to feel the soft scratch of his stubble, trace the outline of his jaw. I always thought I could draw his face by heart, but now, so close, I want to discover it all over again.

  Emerson stares down at me, his eyes piercing my every defense until I’m sure he can see everything I’m feeling: my whole soul open and waiting for him. His eyes are hot as he reaches out and slowly traces the line of my jaw.

  I shudder. A shock sparks through me where his hand brushes my face: hot and wild, it courses like quicksilver through my body—pooling low in my stomach.

  Desire.

  But still, I can’t move. I’m caught in the mesmerizing trap of his gaze, powerless to do anything as Emerson’s fingers slowly trace down my face. His thumb comes to rest on my lower lip, rough against my skin.

  I gasp a ragged breath. Every nerve in my body is lit up, sparkling with need. My world shrinks, contracting to just his eyes, and touch, and the low, deep pull in my stomach.

  I ache for him.

  Emerson leans closer, breath hot against my cheek. I shudder again with the physicality of it, the pure, overwhelming desire. My eyes drift shut, so there’s nothing but feeling—no light, or world outside, just his body pressing closer to mine. A distant part of me is screaming to break away, but I can’t move, I can barely even breathe.

  His lips find my ear. He whispers, rough and low.

  “Well… almost nothing.”

  I feel a sudden rush of cold air as Emerson steps back away from me. I open my eyes to find him staring at me. His face is harshly set, a cruel smirk of triumph on his lips.

  Triumph!

  I gasp, humiliation crashing through me. This is all a game to him, trying to prove some point. And I fell for it! My cheeks burn, desire falling away as quickly as it came. Instead, it’s replaced with fury.

  “You asshole!” I yell, shoving him away from me.

  Emerson laughs, hard and metallic, like it’s all a big joke.

  Inside, I’m cringing. I can’t imagine how I must have looked to him just now, panting after the smallest touch. Like a desperate little girl, I realize, shameful. Like a total miserable loser.

  “You fucking jerk!” I scream again, trying to block out the humiliation with anger. “Get away from me!”

  Emerson backs off, hands raised in surrender. His expression is mocking, and in the dark, he suddenly looks like a stranger: so harsh and remote.

  I fumble my keys into the Camaro lock. “Just leave me alone,” I yell again, my whole body shaking. The door finally opens, and I slide into the seat. I slam the door and yank the keys in the ignition, sparking the engine to life. I speed away, tires squealing, but as I roar out of the parking lot, I can’t resist one last look back in the rearview mirror.

  Emerson is nowhere to be seen. He didn’t stay to watch me go.

  I force my eyes onto the road again, but I can’t keep the tears back any longer. They spill down my cheeks, hot and anguished. Pain floods my chest, a wretched ache.

  That isn’t the
man I fell in love with.

  The realization is a fresh blow. The man who taunted me, so cruel, he’s not the Emerson I used to know. Emerson lived on the edge, sure, but he was always playful, so full of sharp energy and restless determination. The man back there was darker, bitter, and battle-scarred. He looked at me with a grim determination, getting a perverse satisfaction from my humiliation the old Emerson would never have dreamed of.

  What happened to turn him into this person? Unease bubbles to the surface of my mind, whispers I can’t hold back.

  What if it’s all my fault?

  Chapter Three

  I can’t sleep.

  All through the night, I lie awake in the single guest bedroom, clutching the covers to my body and replaying the humiliating scene from the parking lot. Over and over, I see the mocking expression in his eyes, feel the rough stubble of his cheek scratch against mine…

  Feel the ache of my body calling out to him.

  No!

  I leap out of bed and pull on my sweater. I flip every light on as I head downstairs, as if the brightness can chase away my shadows, and attack the packing again with a vengeance—channeling all my pent up angst into the task ahead of me.

  Don’t think about him, Juliet, I tell myself sternly. Don’t think about what he’s become.

  I find an old FM radio on one of the shelves in the living room and plug it in, playing music loudly to drown out my wayward thoughts. At first, I tune it to my favorite country station, but every song seems to be about lost love and regret, so I flip the dial to a pop channel instead: blasting upbeat dance songs so loud I’m sure the neighbors can hear even half a mile away.

  I pack and tape and trash until I’m too exhausted to think. I can’t bring myself to look through all the photograph albums and mementos—the last thing I need is to dredge up even more history—so I just pile them in a box and move on. My muscles ache and my head hurts, but I don’t trust myself to stop, not for a minute. Not for even a second, to let the memory of Emerson’s eyes creep into my mind, so shadowed and dark.

  There was a time I couldn’t imagine him looking at me with such bitterness. Four years ago, we spent that summer in a tangle of breathless kisses, lying out on the beach under the hot blaze of sun, talking and laughing, just drinking each other in until the soft trace of his fingertips on my palm became too much to take and we would scramble, laughing, to find some privacy. Looking back, I can’t believe we were so shameless: sneaking off to the sand dunes, the flatbed of his truck, and the deserted woodlands on the outskirts of town…anyplace we could steal a moment together, dizzy with passion, our tongues and fingertips discovering foreign lands, our bodies sliding together in a glorious sweat.

  Closing my eyes to sink into the memory, I can almost taste him, salty on my tongue.

  Then I snap out of it. What are you doing? I scold myself. What happened to not thinking about him?

  All my happy memories of us together are just that: the past. I was young. I was stupid. I thought our love would last forever.

  I was wrong.

  Finally, night fades into dawn outside the window. I look around the room. The bookshelves are almost done, all the bric-a-brac divided up between donation boxes, and the few family heirlooms safely wrapped away.

  I go fix a cup of coffee over the stove in the kitchen. I think with longing of the new coffee shop in town, but there’s no way I’m going back there again, not if it means risking another run-in with Emerson. I settle for bitter instant grounds in a chipped mug, and take my brew and my textbooks out onto the back porch to watch the sun rise.

  I sit in the peeling old rocker and breathe in the salty morning air. The beach is a still, silent stretch of golden sands under a pale sky, waves lapping gently at the shore. You can’t tell where our property ends and the beach begins: the wild grasses creep up to the edge of the wooden porch, and then make way for the dunes rolling down to the ocean. Dad always used to yell at us for tracking sand into the house, but there’s no keeping it at bay. It would find a way everywhere, the same day we arrived: in the soles of shoes, between the pages of books, trailing up the stairs.

  I sip my coffee slowly, feeling the tug of sad nostalgia for those early, simpler times. We were happy here as kids, before the frayed edges of my parents’ marriage unraveled, one harsh insult at a time. But no, that’s not true—it was unraveling all along, I just couldn’t see it then. Back when I was younger, I didn’t notice the way Mom turned to him for affection, like a flower craning for the sun. I didn’t see the contempt in his eyes, as he looked at his family, or hear the slurring cruelty in his voice every night after one too many drinks.

  I often wonder what it cost her, to hide it from us. If she might have survived longer, if she wasn’t using all her strength to act like nothing was wrong.

  I shake off the memories, my gaze drifting to the small garden shed set up on the far side of the property. It’s just a hut, wooden planks and a tarp roof, but I set my textbooks aside and walk across the lawn as if drawn by a magnetic force, my feet bare in the morning dew-damp grass.

  I reach the shed and raise one hand, slowly pushing the door open. The hinges screech and stick, but it opens. I step inside.

  It’s dark: windows covered with thick black drapes to block out all the light. I open the door wider, and blink to adjust to the shadows. Slowly, my eyes start to make out the shapes in the small room. A sink, a long workbench, plastic washing buckets, a shelf full of chemicals. Everything exactly the way I left it.

  The darkroom.

  My grandpa built it, when he married my grandma. He was the photographer in the family, just a hobbyist, but he loved it enough to make this little darkroom, so my grandma wouldn’t complain about the chemicals and mess. He showed me how to develop my first roll of film here: exposing the print on special paper, and then soaking it in the chemical baths, until slowly, the image became clear.

  I practically lived in here that summer. If I wasn’t out with Emerson, I’d be here, working on my prints. And sometimes, he’d come too—standing behind me, kissing a burning trail down my neck as I pored over the negatives, his hands roving over my body…

  No! I warn myself sternly again. I am definitely not thinking about that.

  I go to the shelves and pull out an airtight box. Inside, I find canisters of undeveloped film and my old camera, wrapped in an oilcloth. I lift it out gently. It’s dusty, but undamaged: the large lens, the square glass viewfinder, and the settings that twist under my fingertips. It fits in my hand like it belongs there, yet another reminder of everything I left behind in this town that fateful summer.

  Feeling its familiar weight, a sense of rightness settles through me. A calm I haven’t felt in a long while, not for one moment since driving past county lines.

  I grab the bag of lenses hanging from the door, then turn on my heel and stride back to the house. I stop only to pull on my bikini and a pair of denim cut-offs, then I quickly lock up the house and slide into the Camaro, my camera resting in the passenger seat.

  Study and packing can wait. I need a break, and I know just the place to go.

  I drive out of town for about five miles, bumping along a dusty back road. The popular beaches are all back by the Cove: sheltered flat golden sands, and easy access to frozen drinks and ice cream treats. Out here, the dunes are wild and untamed: waves whipped by the wind, unprotected. I climb out of the car and leave my sneakers in a heap on the sand, feeling the grains between my toes. I take another deep breath, feeling the tension flow out of my tired limbs. This is what I needed: away from everything, just me and the ocean.

  I load a fresh film into the camera and lift it to my eye. It feels odd at first, like trying to use your hand after you’ve been sleeping on it and it’s all numb, but I click and wind on the film, and slowly, it all comes back to me. Color, and texture, and the twist of focus. And more than anything, the clarity, from looking at the world one step removed.

  I clamber up the dunes and
then race down to the beach in a rush of energy. The morning haze has lifted and the sun beats down, warming my bare arms and whipping my hair around me in a tangle. I reach the ocean and wade in, shrieking a little as the cold water surges against my legs.

  There’s a bark from further down the beach, and then a golden Labrador joins me in the shallows. He jumps and splashes around me, panting.

  I snap a few photos of him, laughing.

  “Hey buddy!” I reach down to pet him. He’s got a mangy old tennis ball in his mouth, so I lever it out and then fake throw it. “You want to go fetch?” I tease him, pretending to throw it a couple more times. He’s eager and bouncing, a ball of shaggy energy. “OK, go!”

  I toss the ball in to shore, and the dog takes off, bounding after it. I follow his path, zooming in to shoot more photos. Then my viewfinder lands on his owner in the distance, striding down from the dunes.

  I freeze.

  Emerson.

  I zoom in even further to check, but it’s him alright: casual in cut-off denim and bare feet, his naked torso tanned and cut. He bends down to pet the dog, grinning affectionately, then sends him racing off down the beach to fetch a piece of driftwood. He looks like a different person from last night, relaxed and carefree. More like the man I used to know.

  But that’s just because he hasn’t seen me yet.

  I lower my camera, my stomach suddenly tied up in knots. I want to run and hide, but out here on the windswept beach, there’s no hiding. I watch anxiously as he straightens up, scanning the shoreline. His eyes land on me, and even from here, I can see his body stiffen.

  There’s a long pause. For a minute I think he’s going to just turn around and leave without a word, but then he raises his hand in a hesitant wave.

  I wave back.

  Keep it together, Juliet, I tell myself. No more melting into a puddle of desire like last night.

  I slowly wade back towards shore, as Emerson walks out towards the ocean. We meet in the shallows, standing ten feet away from each other with cool water slipping around our feet.