“Yeah?” She drops her skateboard and curses. Whichever grandparent is on the other line tsks. “Sorry. Hello?”
“Willa. It’s your grandmother.” Her grandparents are not without kindness and in fact have been very generous to her over the years. After all, they could have kicked her out long ago or raised her rent to what it should be, which is well out of Willa’s budget. But they have never quite let go of the notion that it was Willa who got her mom’s life so far off track so young, forcing them to come to the rescue twenty-two years ago.
“Hi, Grandma,” Willa says, fake-chirpy, pacing the living room. “How are you?”
“I’m fine; I’m fine,” her grandmother says, brusque at first, then remembers her manners. “How are you, Willa?”
“I’m well.” She walks and turns, walks and turns. Her grandparents do not call to chat. “So, what’s going on? Everything okay?”
* * *
Willa breaks the news to Bodhi over drinks. The Oyster Bar is quiet tonight, just a handful of regulars. Soon enough it will be packed with tourists, and by then, Willa doesn’t know where she’ll be or how she’ll be, post-race.
“Three weeks isn’t terrible,” Bodhi says, after Willa explains that her grandparents want to rent out the cottage for spring break this year. Her grandfather has been dealing with some health problems, and her grandparents need the extra money. Guilt and frustration war inside Willa; she wants her grandfather to be okay, of course, but she doesn’t want to scramble to find somewhere to stay. Not right now.
“Just wish it wasn’t the three weeks right before the race. Like, I’d go visit my mom, but…” She wouldn’t anyway, actually, but now she can’t even if she did want to.
“Yeah.” Bodhi spins on her chair and looks around. “Didn’t you say a bunch of people were coming?” Willa shrugs. She did say that. “Anyway, I’ll probably just stay with Hunter. You could too.”
Willa makes a face. First, she knows without confirming it that Bodhi and Hunter are still sleeping together and two, Willa finds Hunter irritating after about three minutes. Three weeks would be— “Nah. I’ll figure something out.”
They order a second drink and talk about a friend who got a job offer in Raleigh and is leaving the island. Then Bodhi starts to get restless, and Willa is sure that Lane isn’t going to stop by at all. She’s relieved, then guilty about being relieved, then mad all over again that it’s Bodhi who caught Lane’s eye and not her, that Bodhi already has so many people to choose from and the one time that Willa likes someone—
“Hey, it’s your sailing coach again. Man, she’s everywhere lately.”
Willa looks up, and her heart stutters. She makes an excuse to leave and somehow manages to walk home and not right into the ocean.
Ch. 15
As the days get warmer, the sail shop gets busier. Willa pulls as many shifts as possible, despite Robin and Jenn’s insistence that she can take as much time as she needs to practice. But Bodhi is out somewhere more often than not these days, and someone needs to be at the shop. She’d also rather not think about what Bodhi and Lane might be up to. On the night that Willa left Lane and Bodhi at the Oyster Bar, Bodhi didn’t come home until two a.m., disheveled and flushed, and Willa slammed her bedroom door closed harder than she’d meant to. They haven’t spoken at all since then. And anyway, working a lot also means she doesn’t have to worry about the race or finding a place to stay during spring break. It’s easier to tell herself that things will be fine if she barely has time to think about it all.
One week before she has to be out of the cottage, Willa passes long lines of cars and mostly full hotel parking lots on her way into work. The pavement is hot beneath the soles of her Vans. Soon the island will be packed to the brim with tourists, and by then Willa will have either completed the race successfully or ruined her life completely. At least the whole thing will be over, one way or another.
The customers come nearly non-stop, not a long line of them, but there’s not a moment all day when she or Robin or Jenn aren’t busy helping one person with customers milling around in the store or impatiently waiting their turn to be helped. Willa is helping someone decide on a rash guard that blocks UV rays, while Robin searches the store for an item she can’t seem to find.
“I’m not sure…” Robin says, brows furrowed as she flips through one rack, then another. “Spinlock, you said?” The customer nods, and Robin’s brows pinch tighter.
Willa apologizes to the customer she’s helping, saying that she’ll be right back, and pops over to take a guess. “The Rig-Sense?” It’s a product she was sent recently to promote on her Instagram, a new type of rig tension device used to measure the line tension on small boats. “It’s right over here,” she says, leading the customer to where the devices are hung on a hook. She directs the customer buying a rash guard to the register and on the way, pulls down a Rig-Sense. “Do you already have the app? It’s such a great way to log your rig settings…”
The days are getting longer now; the island is flush with daylight. By the time the store closes and Willa cashes out the register, the sun is just starting to set, dancing pink and orange across the ocean waves. She doesn’t really want to go home. Though she doubts Bodhi will be there, she isn’t in the mood to take that chance. Avoiding Lane has been easier, though Willa both dreads and hopes they’ll eventually run into each other. She hesitates outside the store long enough that Robin and Jenn catch up to her after locking up.
“What a day!” Robin says, making a whew gesture across her forehead.
“And what would we have done without you, hmm?” Jenn smiles and smooths Willa’s hair in a motherly gesture that makes affection blossom in Willa’s chest.
“Ah, well.” She ducks her head blushing. “You have Bodhi.”
“Yes.” Robin and Jenn exchange a glance. “We do have Bodhi. Who we love! Very much. But who is…”
“Bodhi,” Robin fills in.
It makes Willa chuckle, the exasperated affection. She knows it well. In fact, she should probably get home and try to catch Bodhi between her hookups and kayaking trips and hiking excursions and wake boarding and partying to make up with her. Willa has no claim on Lane and therefore no right to be jealous. It’s not Bodhi’s fault that she’s, well, Bodhi.
“I should prob—” Willa starts, speaking at the same time as Robin.
“Sorry. I was just saying, we haven’t had a chance to see you in action.”
“Action?” Willa squints; the sun has dipped low enough to be right at sight line, blinding her as she looks at the women.
“Yes, since you’ve been sailing again, training for the race. We’re just so excited!” Jenn clasps her hands in front of her and leans over, as if she’s sharing a secret. “Could we get a little preview?”
For a flash, Willa wants to blurt out the truth. Robin and Jenn’s unwarranted belief in her seizes Willa’s lungs, squeezing at her heart. How could she lie to them, these two people who have been nothing but kind and supportive, who treat her no differently than their own daughter? Who have faith in her, a person who is not at all who she claims to be, when they really shouldn’t. But would they understand that Willa didn’t lie because she wanted to trick them, but because she so badly wants to be that person whom they see?
“Sure,” Willa hears herself saying, with a fake confidence she’s gotten much too good at. “I’d love to show you.”
Somehow, with Jenn and Robin’s eager eyes watching, Willa is able to do what she hasn’t been able to do in weeks. She climbs aboard her little borrowed boat, pulls lines and tightens rigs and raises the mainsail without incident. She’s slow and little awkward, but she manages just fine. Willa checks the rudder, finds the wind direction, adjusts the tension in the sails, loops the anchor from the dock. Somehow, it’s as if Lane is with her, guiding her hand as she steers carefully out of the marina. It’s Lane’s steady, no-nonse
nse voice that keeps her from clipping another boat that’s moored at the end of the dock, Lane’s imagined solid presence that steadies Willa’s grip on the lines as she steers out into the open waters.
Jenn and Robin whoop and cheer from the dock. It would almost be enough, their joy, this genuine moment, even if Willa doesn’t win the race. Almost. She sails far enough away that Robin and Jenn become dark silhouettes on the dock, then makes a wobbly turn and heads back.
Bodhi isn’t at the cottage when Willa makes it home after dark; no bike is parked in her spot and no lights are on. But an impeccably detailed white SUV is parked on the curb.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Lane makes her way down the packed-sand driveway and up the stairs until she’s tucked under the porch light next to Willa. “I guess you didn’t get my text?”
Willa put her phone in her backpack before her little sailing demonstration and forgot to check it after. She pulls it out to find a text from Lane that simply reads “coming by” so she isn’t sure what difference it would have made, really.
“Come on in.” Willa unlocks the door and steps inside, flipping on the bright light in the foyer, but Lane doesn’t follow.
“Actually…” She slips a bag off her shoulder and holds it out. “I just wanted to drop this off.” When Willa takes it in confusion, she adds, “It’s just some of my old sailing gear. Since you don’t have any of your own I thought— I mean Bodhi probably has some stuff you could borrow, but—” Bodhi’s name on Lane’s lips makes something sour curdle in Willa’s stomach.
“Thanks. I’ll get it back to you when the race is done.”
Willa doesn’t manage to keep the sourness from her voice, and it seems to bring Lane up short. Her eyes scan Willa’s face, then settle at her own feet. “No. Keep it. Um.”
Willa is confounded. The gesture is kind and generous, but Lane seems almost chagrined, as if the gear was merely a segue into something else.
And then, of course, it dawns on Willa. “Bodhi’s not here. But I can track her down.”
She figured that Lane and Bodhi would have exchanged numbers at least, though it wouldn’t be the first time Bodhi has slept with someone and soon thereafter became a ghost. She may be jealous and bitter, but Bodhi is still her best friend and she still cares about Lane. “The thing is, Bo is like the ocean.” Lane gives her a puzzled look. “Beautiful and free and impossible to contain.”
Lane’s eyes narrow. “Okay…”
“Okay, well. Thanks for the gear. Goodnight.” She starts to close the door, making a mental note to tell Bodhi that she needs to take Lane out on a proper date. Someone like Lane isn’t going to be okay with catching Bodhi’s attention whenever the wind blows or when Bodhi doesn’t have something more interesting going on. She’s not Hunter.
“Wait, Willa.”
Willa pauses with the door half-shut, and Lane opens her mouth to stay something, but doesn’t. She just blinks again and shakes her head and says, “Nothing. Never mind. If I don’t see you before, then…” That look again, something in Lane’s eyes, something more, that Willa can’t sort out. “Um. Good luck at the race.”
Ch. 16
“Hey, it’s Willa. Again. Still wondering if I could crash with you for a bit? Call me if you get this soon.”
Willa packs her backpack, rolls her pillow into her sleeping bag, and makes a few more desperate phone calls. As Porter Island prepares for an onslaught of tourists, everyone she knows has disappeared. She shouldn’t be surprised, as a lot of the locals tend to go elsewhere for spring break—why stick around and deal with the traffic and packed beaches and long waits at every restaurant and bar and gas station when they don’t have to—yet for some reason she assumed someone would be here. She tries Bodhi again, desperate enough to take her up on the offer to stay at Hunter’s, but the two of them left to sail up the chain of Outer Banks islands yesterday and are camping on one of the undeveloped islands where there is no cell reception or Internet access.
“Crap.” Willa stuffs some protein bars into the front pocket of her backpack just as the front door clicks and jiggles; someone is turning a key in the deadbolt. “Crap, crap.”
Willa grabs a phone charger and some cash, double checks that the trunk holding all of her worldly possessions is locked and tucked away under the bed, then dashes out the sliding glass back door just as a family with Midwestern accents and way too much oversized luggage bangs their way inside. She throws her bag over the deck railing, then her sleeping bag, and then jumps over herself, landing in the soft sand not quite delicately. She was supposed to be out of the cottage last night and she knows this family will tour the place inside and out, oohing over what they like and making note for their future complaints about anything they don’t. She has just enough time to take a #morningview picture beneath her favorite loblolly tree before she hears the sliding door scrape open. She’s three doors down before she realizes she forgot to grab her skateboard from the carport.
At some point, Willa hopes, she will learn to plan ahead, be practical, perhaps even take care of something important before her back is against the wall and she is out of options, but for now she just has a series of if onlys to work with.
If only she had asked to stay at a friend’s place sooner. If only she hadn’t already told Robin and Jenn she was set and didn’t need to stay with them. If only she had found a second job when the sail shop was slow and saved some money for a hotel. If only she had booked a cheap room way back when there were rooms available. If only her boat had a cabin. If only she’d asked Bodhi if she could use her boat, which does have a cabin. If only she’d never signed up for this stupid race in the first place and could have left the island instead of staying on and pretending to train for the race. If only she wasn’t the human embodiment of accidentally making a toilet overflow at someone else’s house with no idea of how to stop the disaster, what to do about it, or how to tell anyone what happened.
“Hey, it’s Willa. Again…”
Backpack slung over one arm, sleeping bag gripped in the other, Willa heads toward the sail shop. Without her skateboard, the few miles there seem unending. The pavement is hot, and the air is thick and sticky. Jenn and Robin are both working today; they usually do on Sundays when the store is open shorter hours, so Willa plans to swallow her pride and tell them that she does need a place to stay then stash her stuff at the store and sit on her boat for a while. When she finally makes it to the main road near the row of busy restaurants, however, the sky has filled with heavy gray clouds. Near the upscale hotels, the wind pushes against her, and she picks up her pace. By the time she makes it to the section of condominiums near Hunter’s place, it’s raining. In her last dash to Hunter’s porch, she gets soaked. And though she knows Bodhi and Hunter aren’t there, Willa pounds on the door.
Crap.
She probably should have checked the weather forecast, though that would involve having foresight and not being an idiot, so of course she wasn’t prepared for rain. With no choice but to wait it out on the porch, Willa sinks to the ground, huddled in a dirty corner with her damp backpack and sleeping bag clutched to her chest. Her phone is mercifully dry, but no one has called or messaged back. When was the last time Hunter swept her porch, Willa wonders, kicking at a cobweb filled with dead leaves and deader bugs. She has to keep the cottage clean or her grandparents will never let her hear the end of it. That’s the difference, she supposes, between being allowed to borrow something instead of having it handed to her on a silver platter. What does Bodhi see in Hunter, Willa thinks, flicking away an old cigarette butt. What does Bodhi see in anyone? Lane, for instance.
Someone in a hooded black coat and waterproof boots passes on the sidewalk. Willa tracks their journey to the kiosk that houses dozens of little metal mailboxes. They collect their mail and head back, head down. Willa’s sure the sail shop sells that brand of coat, the boots too. It’s not just rain
gear but foul weather gear for sailing. “Do you sail?” She wants to yell through the clatter of heavy rain. “Want to take my place in a very prestigious race? Want to take my name, assume my identity, and take over my crappy life while you’re at it?” But she says nothing.
“What are you doing here?” The person in the coat stops, staring at her. Lane’s face peers out from beneath the hood.
Willa expected Lane’s home to have a vibe similar to her parents’ mausoleum-esque house, only smaller. But as Lane ushers her in and goes off in search of a towel, she discovers that Lane’s place is cozy and warm and modern, thoughtfully put together the way Willa imagines she would do in her own home. The condo layout is just like Hunter’s with a large living area, a small kitchen leading to a small deck, and a bedroom and bathroom down a short hallway. The furniture looks new: a squashy brown leather couch, a round table by a large window, a big shelf on one wall that’s painted white, and another matching shelf that holds a TV and a record player. The walls are painted in various off-white hues: almost-beige in the living room, just a hint of green tint in the kitchen, eggshell in the hallway, pale gray in the bathroom, and, in what little Willa can see of the one bedroom, the faintest hint of light, light blue. Instead of the cold, untouched feel of the Cordova’s huge house, it has the vibe of someone who has had years to cultivate their taste, to select just the right decor pieces and furniture, the feel of someone who has, over time, gathered enough accouterments and knickknacks to fill shelves and drawers and collect on tabletops, unlike Willa, whose personal items more or less fit in the damp bag at her feet, who has to be ready to pack her all of her things and disappear for weeks or months.
Tack & Jibe Page 7
