“You’re here because your Daddy asked for my advice, and I told him your ol’ half-cocked Memaw might be able to get through to you. That, and the ocean.” She snaps her fingers and sways back and forth. “Heartaches are healed by the sea.” She smiles and cuts her eyes at me. “I think it’s the salt.”
I pick up her near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. “I think it’s the whiskey.”
She rips the bottle from my hand and clutches it between her droopy boobs. “Everything in moderation, my dear.” She plunks the bottle on the counter and gives it a rough shove. It slides neatly back to its place. Obviously, she’s done that more than once. “Which brings up another important topic. House rules.”
I palm each side of my face, propping my elbows on the counter, and blow out a loud breath. Of course there’ll be rules. Not that I need any sort of lecture since I’ve basically been living as a nun who took all the big vows—silence, sobriety, chastity. Pretty hard to cause trouble when your life is as bland as a saltine cracker.
Memaw wallops the butcher-block in front of me. The unexpected thwack nearly sends me backpedaling right off the stool. “Don’t start. I ain’t trying to run your life.”
I steady myself and trace a small group of linear gashes on the island top with my fingertip. “I don’t have a life, remember? I sulk alone in my room with my journal and my music.”
Her eyes bore into me as she stands, hands planted on her hips. “Self-imposed exile, from what I hear, which brings me to rule number one.” She walks to a framed chalkboard on the kitchen wall where last week’s shopping list is scribbled.
Bacon. Avocados. Wine. Soap. Drill Bit. Duct tape. Nope, not an ordinary grandmother.
She swipes the black eraser across the surface, words disappearing into a haze of white dust, then grabs a chunky stick of chalk from the metal ledge. Tink, tink, tink. She stands back and stabs her finger beside the new verbiage.
Get a life
I flick my eyes between her and the board. “Can we narrow that down a bit?”
She smirks, arching her sparse eyebrows into the midst of her forehead wrinkles, then steps back to the board again. Tink, tink, tink. Shortly afterwards, a small subset appears underneath.
Get a life
Try everything at least once
Fall in love—with yourself, someone else, or your situation
Fear nothing
Be present
She turns toward me. Two white circular smudges mar her black tank top where she leaned in a little too close. “Better?”
“Much.”
“Good. Two more to go.” She moves back to the board. Tink, tink, tink.
Have fun
It’s that thing that makes you smile and laugh. A lot.
Be safe
If you drink, don’t drive. If you drive, don’t drink. Always use protection.
She steps back and waves her hand in front of the board. “I took the liberty of giving you a few helpful notes before you had to ask.”
I squint at the words. Surely I’m misreading. No way she’s condoning going out, getting drunk, and having sex. I shake my head. “Number three isn’t applicable to me.”
“You’re seventeen. Situations arise, circumstances change, and I’d rather you be prepared than not. Too many ostrich parents out there nowadays.” She jabs her thumb against her chest. “Memaw keeps it real.”
Real? Memaw single-handedly just gave me the longest talk on drinking and sex I’ve ever received outside the public-school system. I moved to Edisto Island and somehow entered an alternate universe. That’s the only explanation.
She drops the chalk on the ledge with a clink. “Questions?”
My brain may have exploded. Or liquefied. Other grandmas are out there baking cookies and knitting, and mine just greenlighted sex and booze. Talk about your freak flag. I have the Memaw that doesn’t just wave hers, she hoists that bitch on a flagpole.
When I don’t respond, she says, “Good. Let’s go see your room.”
When Dad was pushing this whole idea on me, he kept saying Memaw’s house was beautiful and comfortable—general bullshit terms because he’s never even seen it. She and Grandpa used to live in Charleston, but she picked up and moved here less than a week after his funeral, which coincidentally was the last time we’d seen her.
At least his guesswork is on point.
This house is nice. In addition to the large kitchen, there’s a spacious living room with comfy recliners and a full entertainment package, as well as three bedrooms and two baths upstairs. The décor is beachy—the slightly predictable shell paintings and nautical maps against blue, green, and sand-hued walls—freckled with flashes of vibrant-colored wooden signs with slightly inappropriate beach sayings. The more I survey the house, the more I find.
Mermaids Smoke Seaweed.
Got Crabs?
Size Does Matter (featuring a fish holding a ruler in its fins).
Eat, Ship & Dive.
Toes in the Water. Ass in the Sand.
I grab my suitcase and put my foot on the first step when Memaw shakes her head. “I thought you might be more comfortable down here. Have your own space away from the old lady.” She grabs my other bag and walks down a short hall on the other side of the staircase to a white door in the far corner. I follow her in.
It’s twice as big as my room back home and sunny. Light pours in between the blue-and-white striped sheer curtains hanging floor to ceiling on each side of five large windows in the room, three of which overlook the Johnsons’ house. The other two flank a glass French door that leads out onto a sun deck. The white down comforter on the iron bed is covered in fuzzy chenille throw pillows and a matching blue blanket. Above the bed is a framed quote.
Everything I need to know in life, I learned at Memaw’s.
Words to live by, she says, but what I can’t tear my eyes away from is a pink-and-green floral print fabric doll. It matches nothing else in the room. That, and I don’t play with dolls. Haven’t in a whole bunch of years now.
She must catch me staring because she walks over and picks it up. “I got this for you.”
I take it and flip it over in my hands. Its arms, legs, and head are all rectangular, with X’s for eyes and yarn strings for hair. “Thanks, but I don’t play with dolls anymore.”
“This ain’t just any doll. It’s a DAMMIT! Doll.” She grabs its legs in her fists and swings it hard against the bedpost. “You beat him against the wall when you’re pissed off or stressed out. Here, try it.”
She tosses the doll back to me, and I give it a half-hearted swing against the shiplap wall.
She frowns. “Well that’s so weak it wasn’t worth a daggum, much less a dammit. We’re gonna work on that.”
I toss it back on the comforter and cross my arms in front of me. “I’m not a project, Memaw.” Why do I get the feeling I’ll be reminding her of this all summer?
She leans close and wags her finger in my face. “Of course you are. We’re all projects. Just a collection of messy weirdness walking around in skin suits. Gotta embrace that weirdness. Grab your passion.”
Grab my passion—the sentiment Jett threw in my face earlier. A low rumble echoes against the windowpanes and interrupts the memory. Next door, the familiar orange and black car idles in the Johnsons’ drive. Bo stands outside the passenger door, half leaning in the window, but Mr. Cool himself is nowhere to be seen, probably somewhere behind those dark tinted windows. The twinge of disappointment is quickly extinguished by the furious heat that boils in my stomach as I remember our conversation.
How could Jett make such assumptions when he didn’t even know me? And why was Memaw saying the same thing now? I’ve got passion.
Somewhere.
“You’re the second person who’s told me that today.”
She pulses her finger toward the ceiling. “Maybe somebody’s sending you a message?”
“Maybe.” I shrug my shoulders and finagle with the end cap on the iron bed pos
t, the metal hard and cold against my finger. It’s obvious she’s waiting on me to look up so she can challenge me, but I twirl my nails over the rails like they’re the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.
“I’m gonna let you get acclimated.” She sighs and walks to the desk. “Your TV remote and Wi-Fi password are here,” then swings open the door beside it, “and your closet.” A sapphire blue dress hangs on the middle of the wire rack. “I almost forgot. I also got you this.” She snatches it out and holds it up to the daylight.
I run my fingers across the gauzy fabric to the scoop neckline and teeny-tiny straps. It’s stunning in its simplicity and is exactly what I would’ve picked out for myself.
Before.
“It’s beautiful Memaw, but…I can’t wear it.”
“How come?” She holds the dress to me, pressing the hanger hard into my shoulders to correct my posture. “It looks like the right size. Your Daddy said a six, right?”
I chew my lower lip. “It has spaghetti straps.”
“And you don’t have a strapless bra?” She shakes her head, then stops and smiles. “Just go braless!”
My jaw drops open. A ludicrous idea, especially since it’s obvious now I inherited “the girls” from Memaw. I flick my finger back and forth between our matching chests. “Neither of us should ever, ever be braless. But…”
“But what?”
Silence drops like a heavy curtain between us. I swallow hard. “My scar. I have to wear sleeves to at least my elbow. And higher necklines.”
Her eyes blaze as she wags her head. “You don’t have to do nothing.”
“I kinda do, unless I want people gawking at me.”
Truthfully, no one except Dad has seen my scar. No one. Not even Emmalyn or Trent, who are supposed to be my closest friends. I slip my finger into the collar’s edge and pull it off my shoulder. The pinkish-silver chasm snakes its way from the top of my left breast into the hollow of my armpit then out across my bicep, its jagged journey pin-pricked by dots of white puckers where the stitches had laced me back together. “Tell me you don’t see that.”
I expect her eyes to pop from their sockets, her tongue to loll out. But nothing happens. She’s a statue, her face flat-lined.
“Oh, I see it, all right. There’s no denying it.”
I throw my free hand in the air. “Exactly! That’s why I—”
“I see courage. Strength. Survival. Purpose.” She points her finger at my scar with each word. “If people don’t see that, then their eyes don’t deserve to look at you.”
I snort and look at my sandals. The big boobs must be the limit of our genetic similarities. Our minds sure do operate on opposite wavelengths.
She grips my chin, bringing my eyes to hers. “Let me tell you something. There ain’t a person in this world who doesn’t have scars. Some people have them on their skin. Some people have them on their hearts. Some have both. You hide yours because you’re afraid. Afraid to love. Afraid to lose. It’s in your hands to turn something you call ugly into something beautiful.”
I glance down at my skin. Time healed the flesh in its own crude, primal way, but the wound is still raw. Gaping and oozing where only I can see. “This will never be beautiful.”
Without warning, she jerks up her shirt and pulls down the waistband of her capris, exposing a wrinkled, stretch-marked expanse of lower belly. Across the southern boundary and scarily close to her thank-you-Lord-they’re-still-covered privates, a curved stripe winds itself from one hip to the other. She rams her fingers into the mark. “See this?”
I nod. Frankly it’s all I can see at the moment, the way she’s thrusting her pelvis toward me with each finger jab. I’ll probably keep seeing it long after this moment. Maybe even in my dreams. A deep shudder courses through me as she continues.
“I was a real looker back in the day. Trim body, big boobs, long legs. Honey, I was hot. But after this scar, I quit wearing my bikinis on the beach, scared people were gonna look at me, judge me.”
Memaw in a bikini? Oh God, I can’t even.
She continues, “But then I got over myself. Decided to ignore the stares because this scar was more than an imperfection. It’s my badge of strength in enduring an emergency C-section. And I love it more now than I did then. Know why?”
I shake my head. How could anyone love a scar? A reminder of the pain.
“Because if this,” she runs her finger along the scar, “didn’t exist, then you wouldn’t exist. And the world sure would have missed out. Think about that.”
Chapter Four
A loud clanging rings through the darkness, pulling me out of a dreamless sleep, and a nutty sweetness filters under my closed door. What is that? Coffee? And pancakes? My stomach growls its response, but no matter the gnawing inside, I don’t feel like getting up yet. I push my head further into the pillow, the sides fluffing around me. The cotton sheets are too soft, the comforter too cozy, to even consider putting my bare feet on that cold hardwood floor.
I pick up my phone and swipe right. 7:04 a.m. It’s surprising Memaw hasn’t zipped in here already, ripping the covers off, singing some chirpy, weirded-out morning song. She used to do that when we were kids. It was cute then. I’d hate it now.
It’d taken an act of congress to escape her last night, and I hope I didn’t offend when I mumbled something about a headache and being super tired then darted to my room, slamming the door. That probably could have been taken as a slight. I needed some space, and from the looks of the six board games she had stacked on the coffee table, that obviously hadn’t been part of her evening plans.
I burrow further under the covers, the comforter’s hem pulled so high it tickles my nose. The familiar haze of sleep creeps back in, my eyelids turning to lead curtains.
Raaaaawr, Raaaawr, Raaaawr.
The deep revs shoot ice through my veins as I bolt upright, and the wall, which borders my bed on the left side, vibrates. What the hell is that? The loud bursts give way to a deep, gravelly hum. I crawl out from the covers to the iron footboard, pulling back the sheer curtains.
Jett.
The sun glints off the front windshield as the engine silences, and the door pushes open partway, revealing glimpses of him. His flaxen hair is erratically tousled in one of those rebel-without-a-cause styles. He steps to the side and slams the door, twirling his keys a few times around his finger before plunging them into his pocket. The same black sneakers and frayed jeans from yesterday hit the sandy drive.
I swallow hard and readjust my stance closer to the window, my nose leaving a greasy mark on the pane. There’s something about him that pisses me off, but I can’t quit watching, and I don’t know if it’s a residual reaction from Bo and Gin’s obvious hero worship yesterday or from the way my lungs wilted in on themselves when his eyes bored into me.
Jett yawns, fisting his hands and extending them wide overhead. His black V-neck T-shirt pulls up enough to show tanned skin melting into the black elastic waistline of his boxers, which sit an inch above his jeans. He doesn’t have the rippled washboard abs from the magazines, but they’re firm, lean.
He straightens his shirt and bends down, checking his hair in the side mirror. I inch closer, lifting slightly to press even further over the edge of my bed. My left knee tangles in the bedsheet, and I slip, inadvertently smacking the window with my hand as I scramble to brace myself. The curtain swishes back to the side.
I’m a statue. No breathing. No blinking. Surely, he couldn’t hear that, right? He’s all the way next door. I ease my eyes above the sill.
Jett’s staring at my window, eyes locked, lips curled on each edge. He steps backwards and relaxes onto the fender. Propping his weight on the car, his long legs extend out in front of him and cross at the ankles. Without moving his eyes, he slides his phone from his pocket, pausing only a moment to wave at me with his free hand before dropping his head to concentrate on the screen.
I duck out of sight, slinking backwards to collapse into my sh
eets and yank the comforter to my chin. Maybe he thought it was Memaw. Yeah, that makes sense. He knows her and she knows him, and he’s probably already forgotten about me being in town anyway. I sigh. The oxygen washing through me quiets the terrible thumping in my chest. The last thing I need is some idiot guy thinking I’m hot for him.
My phone buzzes on the pillow beside me. One new notification—a friend request from Jett Ramsey.
Oh my God.
My phone is a bungee cord, pulling me back to it each and every time I wander away. At this rate, it’s going to take me all day to get dressed, braid my hair, and dab on some make-up. A little powder on my face in the en-suite bathroom mirror. A quick phone check. A smidge of gloss. Run back for another quick peek. The finishing touches on my French braid. Did my phone make a noise? Swipe. Nothing. Just the friend request hanging out there in cyberspace, Jett’s profile picture taunting me. Why? Why do I feel like everything to do with this boy is a challenge? And why is it affecting me?
Okay, so I’d done some perusing last night. It’d started innocent enough. I only wanted to see if Gin and Bo had a page, but somehow the nagging need to see if Jett had one took over. Just a peek. That’s what I’d told myself before I stalked through all of his social media pictures over the course of two hours. Most of it was restricted to friends-only content, but internet keyword searches came to the rescue with info dumps of his racing career stats and a gazillion pictures of him in those racing jumpsuits that zip up the front.
What the hell, CJ? I don’t even like this guy, so who gives a crap about a friend request? “You’re a dumbass,” I mumble to myself, clicking Accept.
Ding. You are now friends with Jett Ramsey.
Big whoop. So we’re friends, huh? Just like magic. I snort, pushing back the stupid girly giggles circulating inside and shake my head. Not like he’s going to show up at my door anytime soon.
As Much As I Ever Could Page 3
