“Yeah, that was really nice of them.”
“I don’t know if I told you this,” she said, waiting for the daily sales report to print. “Actually, now I’m pretty sure I didn’t. But before I broke up with Connor, I started working at Thee Southern Belle.”
I looked at her, unsure what that was. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s a strip club,” she said, as nonchalantly as if she were talking about an ice-cream shop. “The bad thing was, they stay open until five a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. I couldn’t take too much of that, so after four or five months, I went looking for something else and found this place. The money’s not as good here, but at least we don’t stay open all fucking night, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking that the schedule would be the last thing I’d worry about if I worked in a strip club. I had never considered doing anything like that. I didn’t have any particular opinion of girls who did, though. That was their business, not mine.
But after what happened to me, the thought of displaying my naked body to strangers made me tremble. The difference was that Rebecca chose to do it. I’d had no choice in the matter.
. . . . .
I didn’t see Drew for several more days. It was late afternoon and the waves were kicking up as a line of thunderstorms approached the coast, so I decided to get some surfing in.
About twenty minutes into it, I saw him. He was walking down the beach with Cliff, who was on a leash this time, almost pulling Drew along, barking and chasing seagulls.
I got up on the board and rode a wave in, trying to end up farther down the beach in the direction that Drew was heading so I could cut him off.
It worked out just like that, and when I sloshed through the foamy receding water, we were only yards apart. Cliff ran toward me, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. He stopped just short as Drew tugged on the leash.
I stood in front of him. “I have your money.”
Drew wore cargo shorts and sunglasses. His shirtless chest was broad and well-muscled, and I wished I’d had on my sunglasses so it hadn’t been so obvious that I was staring.
I shifted my gaze upward to his face. He lifted his glasses and moved them to the top of his head, pushing his hair back with it. Maybe it was the humidity, but for some reason his hair appeared to have more curls in it today. There was a little sunlight where the incoming clouds hadn’t filled in the sky yet. It highlighted the golden blond tips of his hair and illuminated his gray-blue eyes.
My eyes moved to his mouth as he smiled and spoke. “You already paid me back by having lunch with me.”
I started to say something, but he cut me off.
“I’m glad you let me take you home the other day, and that you know who I am. But again, I’m sorry for what I said in the restaurant.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I’d like to.”
Cliff barked, catching my attention and saving me from standing there frozen, speechless and feeling put on the spot. I looked down and watched what was probably a one-hundred pound dog barking violently at a sand crab that was smaller than one of the dog’s paws and probably weighed just a few ounces.
I bent down and petted Cliff’s head and he looked up at me. “You’re so intimidating.”
I didn’t look up but I heard Drew’s voice. “You talking to him or me?”
“Very funny.” I stood straight up. “Are you coming back this way or do you want to wait here while I get your money?”
He shook his head. “You can go get it, but I won’t accept it.”
“Yeah, you will. I appreciate what you did for me, but I don’t want to be in debt to you.”
“You wouldn’t be in debt to me, but even if you were it wouldn’t be so bad. I don’t charge interest, so I’m cheaper than banks way more reasonable than those payday loan places.”
I gave him a quizzical look. “You’re kind of weird, you know that?”
He nodded.
“I mean, not in a bad way.” I had to correct myself quickly.
“Good, then come to a party with me tonight.”
I wasn’t expecting him to ask me out. I’m not sure why, though. He was blunt and possessed boundless confidence, and I was beginning to realize that I probably shouldn’t be surprised by anything he did. “What kind of party?”
“On the beach. You can wear what you have on.”
I looked down at myself, then back up at him. “Yeah, I think not.”
“You think not…as in you won’t come to the party or you won’t wear that?”
Cliff barked and pulled on the leash, urging Drew to get moving again.
I stepped to the side. “Looks like he wants to get going.”
Drew took a few steps and started walking backwards as Cliff led the way down the beach. “Seven o’clock. I’ll pick you up at your place.”
I sighed, unsure of what I wanted to do. “Maybe.”
“Maybe’s good enough for now. See you at seven.”
Chapter Six
I stopped at the outdoor showers on the way off the beach, then walked to my car.
The sidewalks were crowded with others leaving the beach with floats, kites, and coolers in tow. Groups of people were waiting outside the restaurants and the ice-cream stand was mobbed by kids.
As I got ready for the party, I wavered on whether I really wanted to go, but had a feeling Drew would talk me into it when he arrived.
Ten minutes before seven, I heard the rumble of the old truck. I looked out the window and saw him get out and go into his grandparents’ house. He came out a few minutes later and I stepped outside to meet him as he walked toward the carriage house.
He looked as he always did—shorts and a t-shirt, but he wasn’t wearing a hat this time and a stiff breeze was blowing his hair to one side of his head.
He walked around to the passenger’s side to open the door for me as we met at the truck.
I gave him a sideways glance, surprised. “Wow. Special treatment, I see.”
He stepped to the side to give me room to get in. “I do this on all my dates. Standard operating procedure. Nothing special.”
I sat in the car and looked up at him. “So you have lots of dates.”
“Tons.”
“Well, good for you, because this isn’t a date.” I grabbed the door handle and pulled it closed, smiling at him through the old rattling window.
When he got in the truck, he smiled, looking over at me. “That wasn’t very nice.”
“Here’s your money.” I extended my hand toward him, holding the cash Marla and Rick had loaned me.
Drew adjusted the air-conditioning. “You don’t have to—”
“Fine, I’ll deposit it right here.” I cut him off, opened the glove compartment, and put the money in there. “The issue is settled. Let’s go to your party.”
We pulled away down the street.
“I guess you really do live up to what you said the other day.”
He didn’t answer right away, but then said, “Which part would that be?”
“That speech the other day in the restaurant…all that stuff about life…you sounded like you weren’t materialistic. This truck pretty much proves it.”
“You giving me shit about my sweet ride? You’re lucky I picked you up in this. My other mode of transportation is a bicycle with one seat. It doesn’t have a basket on the handlebars, but I could install one and give you rides if you want.”
“You’re odd.”
“You’ve already told me that.”
I laughed. “First impressions stay with me. So anyway…you never told me what you do for work.”
He reached to turn on some music, as though he were going to ignore the question.
I grabbed his hand to stop him. This was the first time we touched, and the instant thought of that made me pull my hand back quickly.
“I don’t have any communicable d
iseases, Leah, and I even washed my hands before I left my place.”
“You were going to turn on some music and not tell me.”
He shook his head. “Maybe later.”
“Oh, come on. Why is this some big secret? Are you a drug dealer or CIA assassin or something?”
“Maybe I am.”
“Which one?”
“Either.”
“Well, I don’t date drug dealers,” I said. “I haven’t decided about assassins yet.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t a date.”
I let out a frustrated sigh, even though I was enjoying this back-and-forth. It had been a while since I’d had any kind of verbal flirting going on in my life, and I was starting to realize just how much I missed it. And I felt safe with Drew. It was something about him. His demeanor, I suppose. That, and the fact that I knew his grandparents.
I looked out the window. We were getting near the end of the island, where a bridge crosses an inlet and where the next little town, Sullivan’s Island, begins. The bridge over Breach Inlet is wide and people were lined along the sides of it at dusk, some fishing while others took pictures. This was July, so the sun was still relatively high in the sky at this hour, but was on its way down. The ocean was to our left, and off to the right the marsh water and vegetation reflected the soft glow of the waning sun.
Taking in the scenery for a few moments almost put me in a trance, and then I snapped back to the fact that I was in the truck with Drew. “Where’s this party?”
“Near the lighthouse.”
“Do we need to bring anything?”
“Already took care of that. I have some refreshments in the trunk.”
“Do these things get busted a lot? I’m not twenty-one yet, and since I just got out of jail, the last thing I need is more trouble with the cops.” I’d also gotten rid of my fake ID, but I didn’t mention that.
He slowed the car down as he located a place to park. “Relax, Leah. You’ll be fine.”
Seconds later we were parking on the side of a street about two blocks from the beach. It took us a while to find an open spot. There were hundreds upon hundreds of cars already parked up and down all the side streets.
“This is what it looked like on the fourth of July,” I said. “How many people are going to be at this party?”
“No telling.”
Drew got out of the truck and once again came around to the passenger side to let me out.
“You don’t have to keep doing that.”
He pulled his shades up. “I want to.” He let his glasses drop back into place. “Let’s go.”
He started to walk around the front of the car and I remembered something. “Don’t we need to get your stuff out of the trunk?”
“Later,” he said, taking my hand in his in an unexpected move. I surprised myself by not pulling it away.
We walked with a large crowd to the public beach access, then down the sandy pathway, through the dunes, and onto the open beach.
Only it wasn’t totally open.
There were stakes in the sand with yellow warning tape around each of them, marking off a wide berth from the dunes to the water.
“What is this?”
“This,” Drew said, releasing my hand, “is the party.”
Behind each of the taped-off sections were crowds of people—lots of families with kids, lots of people holding up their phones to take pictures, and several local TV stations were there as well.
Drew took my hand again and we weaved our way through the people to get as close to the front as possible.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing?”
A cheer from the crowd went up and over the noise, Drew explained. “They’re releasing a loggerhead sea turtle here.”
I looked up at him. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “I heard about it last night. The turtle was sick and they had it at the aquarium hospital for almost a year. She’s better now, and they’re setting her free right here. There she is.” He pointed, and I followed his direction.
Two people were carrying the enormous sea turtle from the back of a truck, across the sand in the area that the yellow tape had marked off. The crowds on either side ooohhhed and aaahhhed as the animal passed by. The aquarium employees placed the turtle in the wet sand just where the waves ended, then they backed up and everyone waited.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, the turtle made her move. As one wave receded back into the ocean, she moved her flippers and lurched toward her natural home. She was so large, though, that this process had to be repeated a few times until she was in water deep enough to allow her to float.
Then, as everyone clapped and cheered, she disappeared beneath the surface of the Atlantic.
. . . . .
An hour later, the beach had cleared out for the most part and Drew and I had secured a little spot at the tip of the island where the ocean met the harbor.
After the sea turtle event, we’d gone back to his car to get a blanket and a cooler. He had packed dinner for us, and we had a beach picnic as we watched the setting sun.
I put an empty plastic container back in the cooler. “That was really amazing.”
He wiped his mouth with a napkin, then balled it up in his fist. “Thanks. It’s the first time I ever made it.”
I rolled my eyes, making sure he saw that I was doing it deliberately. I liked his dry sense of humor and the banter we had going even in this early stage of getting to know each other. “I’m not talking about the crab salad. Although that was really good. I mean the sea turtle release.”
“I thought you’d like that.”
For my major, I had observed marine biologists nursing sick and injured sea turtles back to health, and I mentioned it to him. “But I’ve never seen one being released into the ocean. Thanks for bringing me.”
Drew reached into the cooler. “No problem. I thought it was cool.” He pulled out a can of Arizona brand iced tea. “I almost forgot the drinks. I wasn’t sure which kind you might want—because I had no way of contacting you since we haven’t exchanged numbers yet—so I picked out a few of each flavor.”
He pulled out several cans. All different flavors of iced tea: southern style sweet tea, peach, lemon, raspberry and cranberry.
I couldn’t help but laugh at how strange it was. Cute, yes, but strange. I chose the peach and Drew said he’d never tried the cranberry before, so he was going to give it a go.
He was genuinely interested in my fascination with all things marine biology, and so we spent a good thirty minutes talking about that, with Drew asking really smart questions and me trying not to sound too geeky with the answers.
I realized then that he hadn’t told me a thing about what he’d been studying in college before the plane crash, so I asked him.
“Pre-law with a minor in psychology.”
“Impressive.”
He shrugged it off. “I used to think I wanted to go into law, but not anymore. And the psychology…I’ve just always had an interest in it even though I could never be a shrink.”
“Really? Why not?”
Drew sipped his tea. “This cranberry flavor isn’t so great.” He poured it out on the sand, then reached in the cooler for another flavor. “See? Getting all these different ones is already paying off.”
“You’re really good at avoiding questions.”
He looked at me as he opened the tea, a blank stare on his face. “I am?”
“Yeah, you really are.”
“Well, I can’t tell you everything about me, now can I? I mean, you haven’t told me everything about you. In fact, you got up and left the other day when I asked you a personal question.” He sipped from the can, keeping eye contact with me the whole time, as if to convey the message that he’d nailed me on that point.
“You’re right,” I said. “I guess we don’t need to talk about everything.”
“I’ll tell you why I couldn’t be a psychologist. I just don’
t want to think that much about thinking.”
I looked at him, a blank expression on my face.
“You can get too far into your own head,” he went on to explain. “I don’t want to do that, and there’s no way I want to get into the heads of other people. Except maybe you.”
I looked away from him, clearing my throat, a little nervous that he was going to put me on the spot again. But he didn’t.
“If you’ve given up on the lawyer and psychologist ideas,” I said, “what do you want to do?”
He answered without hesitating. “I want to do whatever I want to do. I can’t imagine a better life than that.”
Darkness was falling over the beach, the conversation was turning to more personal subjects, something I had hoped to avoid as long as I could.
I had looked away from him, but my attention was drawn back when I heard a single slap. Drew had used his open hand to smack a bug on his leg, and just then I started to feel the tiny prickly biting on my legs as well. I didn’t hit myself, but sort of brushed my hand down my leg.
“Did you notice how quickly the wind died down?” he asked.
“Yeah. That time of the night.”
“Now we’re joined by thousands of gnats and mosquitoes. Maybe time to call it an evening.”
I was disappointed. Sitting out here on the beach with him was nice, and I had a feeling the conversation would have turned away from the painful and personal stuff, back toward the fun and more enjoyable topics. Still, it was probably better not to take that chance.
. . . . .
When we got to the house I started to get out, but he stopped me, then got out and came around to my side of the car and opened the door.
As I stepped out I said, “If you’re trying to impress me, it’s working…but only a little.”
“Then I’ll walk you to your door, too.”
Great. I’d practically invited him to do that, when I really just wanted to say goodnight and go inside to take a shower and curl up with my iPad and watch a movie.
But he did walk me to my door and we stood on the small landing at the top of the stairs. I hadn’t left on the light next to the door, so we were in almost total darkness, but I could still faintly see his face.
Break My Fall (No Limits) Page 5
