LoveLines

by S. Walden

  I nodded and pulled my sweatshirt over my head. I couldn’t even try to describe the sound that escaped Reece’s lips.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  I reached up and pinched his cheek before stripping my pants and tossing my clothes in the back seat. I pulled out my pink and aqua custom Channel Island board and waggled my eyebrows at Reece.

  “You surf?” he asked.

  “Every now and again. It’s been a little while, but I couldn’t pass up hurricane waves,” I said.

  Didn’t seem to compute.

  “You surf?” he asked again.

  “I learned when I was eight. My psychologist said it was good for me—that it would teach me that I couldn’t control every aspect of my life. Especially if a shark attacked.” I winked. He didn’t laugh. Not one of my better jokes.

  “You surf?”

  “Oh my God,” Christopher muttered. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  He led the way down the beach, far away from the pier. (No one wants to slam against pilings.) The wind had definitely picked up since yesterday. Holly was expected to make landfall some time tomorrow afternoon, and Reece and I were already well-prepared. We boarded my windows, and Reece even helped Soledad’s husband prepare their home.

  There’s a strong sense of community in a coastal town when a storm comes. People help each other. It’s like the world suddenly turns good for about a week. Even in the midst of impending destruction, you can feel the goodness all around you. It’s palpable, and it restores your faith in human kindness.

  Reece bought enough groceries to last us a month and told me I owed him five hundred blow jobs for ignoring my advice to wait. He went to the store early and discovered the shelves everywhere were nearly empty. Luckily he was still able to find milk.

  “Milk, Bailey,” he said as we put the groceries away. “Remember the milk you said I didn’t need to buy early? Hmm? What on earth would we have done without it?”

  I said nothing. Just started in on my mouth exercises for all those blow jobs.

  Classes on campus were obviously cancelled, and students who couldn’t travel home hunkered down in Randall Library to ride out the storm. Businesses boarded up, Wrightsville Beach was under a mandatory evacuation, and news updates urged Wilmington residents to leave as well. I called my parents this morning to make sure Dad finished boarding the windows. Nicki and Brad planned to stay with them. Dad begged me to stay, too, but I told him I’d be fine with Reece.

  I looked out onto the Atlantic, watching her slap and crash onto the shore, her waves building higher and higher as the minutes ticked.

  “Bailey, I really don’t want you doing this,” Reece said. “You’re really tiny, and that ocean looks angry.”

  “Let the girl do her thing,” Christopher interjected.

  Reece turned to him. “And that goes for you, too!”

  Christopher raised his eyebrows. “What? So I can’t surf ‘cause I’m black and I’m short? You’re a condescending jerk.”

  “I don’t feel comfortable with any of this!” Reece said. “If you two die, I’m left with Camden, and I cannot be left with just Camden!”

  “Reece, sometimes you just gotta let go, okay?” I replied. “You’ve no idea how therapeutic this is for me. I need it.”

  He looked at me desperately.

  “I respect the water, Reece. I know when it’s time to turn around.” I looked back out onto the ocean and said what I always say right before I run toward the waves: “You’re bigger! You’re stronger! And I give you mad props!”

  “Is that a thing you—”

  “Shhh! Don’t ruin it,” I said.

  Reece fell silent.

  “You’re bigger! You’re stronger! And I give you mad props!!” I turned to my boyfriend and grinned. “Cowabunga, dude.” And then I was gone in a flash, racing down the bank, running full speed into the chilly water.

  I collapsed on my board and started pumping my arms feverishly. I never had the best upper body strength. It made surfing on a normal, semi-windy day difficult. But pre-hurricane winds were something else entirely. My arms started burning before I made it over the third choppy wave.

  “Come on!” I cried, pushing harder, harder out to sea. I wanted that big one. It was coming—a wall of water you usually only saw on the West Coast. So huge, so beautiful and frightening and everything a hurricane wave was supposed to be. I breathed in. Knees up. She came faster than I expected. Feet planted. Catch it! Catch it, Bailey!

  I tumbled off the board, crashing into a whirlwind of bubbles, flipping like a ragdoll in the washing machine. I righted myself and popped out of the water, waving to Reece who, I’m sure, was having a heart attack at this very moment.

  “I’m cool!” I shouted, but I knew he couldn’t hear me.

  I climbed back on my board and paddled out.

  “Okay, baby doll. It’s one to zero. But you gotta be nicer. It’s been a while for me, and you know it,” I said, pumping by arms and watching as Huge Wave #2 approached . . . with a bit of an attitude, if I’m being perfectly honest. I sensed another wipeout in the very near future and shrank against my board.

  Pow! Smack! Splash!

  I churned in the ocean, finding it rather difficult to right myself this time. For a moment I swam in the opposite direction, deeper into the water. Bailey, what the fuck? I thought, turning around. I popped up and waved to Reece. He was shouting at me, hands cupped around his mouth. Probably demanding I get out of the water, but there was no way I was going anywhere until I caught at least one wave.

  I know what you’re thinking. Who’s this girl, right? People with “just so” lives do not surf. And you’re generally right. My father encouraged me to take up the sport as a way to manage my OCD. You can imagine my mother’s reaction. She was hysterical about it, wondering how a father could encourage a hobby that could wind up killing his child. That’s what she said to him. But Dad knew what he was doing, and the more I surfed, the better I was able to handle my schoolwork, the spontaneity of life as a child, the setbacks when my anxiety roared.

  It changed as I grew older. I couldn’t surf as much. While some of my rituals disappeared for good (the peas counting, for instance), others popped up, brand new and shiny and ready to make my life a living hell. I realized while I floated on my board that I needed to devote more time to surfing. Reece was definitely a big help—he eliminated my counting and 7:58 A.M. ritual—but I had a much longer history with surfing. In the event Reece decided to walk away, surfing would still be there.

  She was coming. She made the other two look like child’s play—stunted, weak waves compared to her grandeur. She deserved my words all over, and I paddled and huffed: “You’re bigger. You’re stronger. And I give you mad props.” Wait for it, Bailey. Wait . . . for . . . it . . .

  And then magic. Perfect timing. Stars aligning. You feel it come up through your heels as soon as they strike the board. You’ve got it. You’ve got her. She’s carrying you, pushing you, and you feel the majesty of her strength—a power that could squash you like a bug, fold you into the water and make you vanish from the world forever. You reach out your hand and touch her, the water pumping hard and fast upward, upward, pulling on your fingertips, begging you to lean a little closer. So you do. You lean further into her, charge forward with slippery swiftness. Then she kisses you goodbye and catapults you to shore.

  It’s like sex with nature.

  I fell off my board in the surf and walked to shore. I watched Reece tear down the beach, completely out of breath when he caught up to me.

  “What the fuck!” he screamed. “Bailey, oh my God! You’re, like, the hottest fucking chick I know!”

  I laughed. Christopher came out of nowhere and poked me from behind.

  “Girl, I give you that one,” he panted. “Missed it by a hair.”

  “Aww, shucks,” I teased, wringing my ponytail.

  “That’s cool. Rag on me. I don’t care,” Christopher joked. “I
caught six waves. How many did you catch?”

  I scowled at him. “All right, all right.”

  “Beboppin’ Bailey bags the big one,” Christopher went on. “I doubt we’ll get another like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Reece asked. “The storm’s picking up.”

  “Exactly,” I replied. “Remember how I said I respect the water?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s time to go,” I explained.

  Christopher nodded. “You gotta understand what ‘just in time’ means.” He waved his hand toward the water at surfers still riding. “You see those jokers? Man, they dumb. You gotta listen to your instinct when it’s time to go. You gotta feel it in the water, right Bailey?”

  I nodded, and we headed to our cars, fighting the wind that howled a last warning: Get out.

  Holly made landfall at 2:31 P.M. the following day. It remained a Category 2—just strong enough to rip people’s houses to shreds, tangle power lines, blow out the phones. The water damage would be the worst. My parents and I went back and forth about leaving. If the storm would have been elevated to a Category 3, we would have boarded up and headed west to Central North Carolina.

  I cracked open a beer.

  “These hurricane parties are a real thing, then, huh?” Reece said, sliding a bowl of chips onto the coffee table.

  Most of my furniture was up on cinderblocks—about two feet high. Flooding was inevitable, even with all the sandbags we put around the house. We still had power, so the TV was on. We watched it sitting in cheap folding chairs. Reece wanted it glued to The Weather Channel, but I convinced him to flip back and forth between the storm and The History Channel. Hey, Benedict Arnold was on. I found him fascinating.

  “Yes,” I replied. “And they’re totally stupid and unsafe.”

  “What are they?”

  “Excuses to get plastered and do dumb shit,” I replied. “People throw them during the storm. And then they get drunk and go stand outside like a bunch of imbeciles.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what they do. It’s pretty common that at least one person dies.”

  Reece shook his head. “College students?”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. Last time it was a 65-year-old man.”

  We jumped as a tree cracked and slammed onto the road. It made a monstrous noise, and for a split second I thought it was going to crash into my house. I was fairly confident we’d be okay—my house is four-sided brick—but the roof was an altogether different story. It was the one weak point, like Smaug’s missing scale.

  “Bailey?”

  I grabbed the chips and my beer. “Come on.”

  The power flickered on and off. The wind screamed—high-pitched and angry. The noise outside grew louder, whipping about in a frenzy and finally knocking the power out for good. I grabbed the flashlight on my nightstand. We’d need it later.

  There’s really no slow build up to a hurricane. Once it makes landfall, everything moves fast. I know that makes no sense since the actual storm reduces significant speed when it hits land, but trust me: you don’t feel that way when the water comes. One minute there’s stillness while the storm is out to sea. In the next minute there’s destruction as soon as her toe hits the sandy shore. I knew the water would move fast. There was no way my house (or anyone’s, for that matter) could avoid flooding.

  Another crash outside. Screeching and buzzing—like metal tearing down a chalkboard. For a second I thought we were in the midst of a tornado instead.

  “Up,” I ordered, and Reece and I climbed into bed.

  “They really go outside in this?” he asked.

  “No. Right before.”

  “Are they crazy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are we gonna die?”

  “Reece, why on earth would you ask me that?”

  He just looked at me.

  “We’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I mean, we’ll have a hell of a lot of work to do starting tomorrow, but everything will be fine.”

  “Bailey!” Reece cried, pointing to my bedroom door.

  It was already starting—the water creeping under the door and rolling along my hardwoods.

  “Fucking sandbags,” I mumbled. “What are they good for?”

  “Bailey, how high will it go?” Reece asked. “I can’t remember.”

  He spent two weeks absorbing every little detail about this storm, learning more about hurricanes than even I knew. But I’d ridden out Category 2’s several times in my life. And the experience was far different from book knowledge. I knew he was alarmed, watching the water slink in, but I understood elevation and storm surge. I’d witnessed the surge many times. That was why I had Reece help me put all my most precious pieces of furniture two feet off the ground. I was almost positive the water wouldn’t reach that high.

  “Eat your chips, hon,” I said absently.

  “How far?” he insisted.

  “Reece, I don’t know,” I admitted, watching the water rush under the door. No more creeping. More like pouring in. “Fuck,” I whispered.

  “‘Fuck’? Why ‘fuck?’ What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Reece, calm down. I promise it’s fine. I said ‘fuck’ because I’m worried about my hardwoods buckling.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. “Your hardwoods? What if we get stuck on your roof?!”

  “That’s not gonna happen. The storm isn’t strong enough.” But I kept my eyes glued to the water, pouring pouring rushing pouring higher higher. A foot high. That’s okay. The eye is coming. That’s the peak. Doesn’t get any worse than that. We’ll see the water recede after.

  More water, and Reece tossed the bowl of chips off the bed and grabbed me forcefully, pulling me close against his chest. I was alarmed at his rapid heartbeat, but then I reminded myself that Reece had never ridden out a hurricane in a house that was collecting more and more water by the minute. One and a half feet. Fucking one-story house. Fucking beach. Why the fuck did I live by the beach? I placed my hand over his heart, willing it to slow, trying to convey without words that I’d never let anything happen to him. He was frightened. I was angry. He thought about catastrophe. I thought about cost.

  Silence. Dead, dark silence. It settled in an instant. Eerie. Still. We were all boarded up. I couldn’t see the sun shine, but I knew she was shining. And I knew not to trust her. I could relay some good news, though. Maybe ease the tension. But Reece beat me to it.

  “Look, honey,” he said, pointing to the water. It was no longer rising. “Worst of it is over.”

  I peered over the side of the bed.

  “Really?” I asked, playing dumb. And just like that, we switched roles. I let him do all the encouraging and comforting because he’s a man, and men need to feel like men from time to time.

  “Yep. Just keep watching the water. You’ll see it go down some.”

  I nodded.

  “We’re in the eye,” he explained, and I smiled against his chest. “Don’t let it fool you. We’ve still got the other side of the storm to deal with, but we’re gonna be okay.”

  “I trust you,” I said.

  He held me tighter as the wind picked up again, whistling at first. Then it turned into a mournful cry. And then it graduated to a howling scream. I listened for his rapid heartbeat, but it was slow and steady instead, beating out confidence, not fear. We stared at the water, watching it hover at one and a half feet before it went down a fraction—barely noticeable. But we saw.

  “Thank God,” I whispered.

  Elevation. Storm surge. Wind speed. You can know all these things in your head, but when you’re watching the water rise higher and higher in your house, knowledge doesn’t matter. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t frightened that the water might keep on climbing. I won’t pretend I didn’t think about an escape plan—scrambling to the roof if necessary. How we would stay safe exposed to the wind that beat about the trees like they were flower stems.

  The water receded anot
her inch or so before it stayed level. There was nothing for us to do but go to sleep. My bed was safe, dry, and warm, and at the moment, it was all that mattered.

  ***

  I looked out onto my back yard, standing in two feet of water, tears streaming. Reece walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  I wiped my face. “I sh-shouldn’t be c-crying. I kn-knew to expect it.”

  “Why shouldn’t you cry? This is your oasis,” Reece replied.

  It was my oasis. Now it was just a junk heap of cracked pavers, shredded plants, and splintered wood. My pergola split in two—the one I built with Dad. My outdoor furniture was spared because we’d moved it into the garage before the storm. The stuff we couldn’t move? Annihilated.

  “P-people d—” I took a deep breath and tried again. “People died. I sh-shouldn’t cry over my p-plants.”

  Reece turned me gently to face him. “Hey, they’re not just plants, Bailey. They’re a part of you. They represent your hard work, your nurturing spirit. They represent all the time you spent planning and creating something beautiful. Don’t discount them. Don’t trivialize them. Yes, people died. Yes, people lost their houses. Yes, this town has been destroyed, but what happened to you matters, too.”

  I nodded.

  “Everyone’s pain is different,” Reece went on. “I don’t like when people compare. I don’t like when people marginalize their feelings because they think they’re not allowed to have them. Someone will always have a tougher go than you. Does that mean you’re not allowed to feel hurt? To be sad?”

  He kissed my forehead and walked to the shed. Or what was left of it.

  “What are you doing?” I croaked.

  “Seeing what’s salvageable,” he replied.

  “Everything’s destroyed,” I argued.

  He fished around in the debris and held up a shovel. The handle was missing, but it could still work.

  “Not everything.”

  There wasn’t much we could do until the water receded. We picked through what we could and set everything up on tables to dry out. Wilmington stood still for a week. No school. No work. In several parts of the city, people navigated schooners and canoes down the streets. All was quiet. The traffic lights didn’t work, but no one drove anywhere. Storm debris floated down the roads like driftwood: plastic bags, food containers, dirty diapers. A dead cat. I cried all over again when I saw the cat. Reece and I discovered it on a walk to Ace Hardware. We took a chance it was open only to learn that no one was home.