At that moment, hunched into a jean jacket, a dark scowl on his face as he skateboarded past, Abe had looked as miserable as she felt. That’s what it looks like when you’re missing a parent. It had been the moment the seed of her crush had been planted, blooming with the kitten incident. Then she’d made sure she’d never spoken more than a passing civility to him until recently. She wished she’d been in a position to ask him this question long, long ago. ‘What happened?’
Abe exhaled heavily and rolled onto his back. He looked up at the ceiling, his eyes dull.
Fiona said, ‘Is it your worst thing?’
Instead of answering her, he said, ‘Why don’t you fall in love, Snowflake?’
She hesitated. Then she whispered, ‘Not good enough.’
‘None of them were?’
‘Me. I never was.’ The real surprise was that the simple truth didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, out in the open air.
‘My story’s worse than yours,’ said Abe.
‘Try me, Sailor.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Say what you mean to say, and stick to your word. Try not to say ribbing when you mean moss stitch. Apologize when necessary and always, always carry a safety pin. – E. C.
His story was so much worse.
It was so bad, he’d never actually told anyone the full truth.
Ever.
Not his mother, not the cops, not the paramedics who’d whisked him to the hospital, not the Coast Guard patrolman. Not even the chaplain who had come to see him late that night. Abe could remember almost everything that guy had been wearing. No clerical collar for him, the chaplain had been wearing a Rip Curl sweatshirt and jeans with a hole at the knee. He’d looked younger than Abe’s dad. There was no way he knew a thing about God. Abe had stared at the wall – cream and blank – until the chaplain had given up and walked out, his keys jingling cheerfully as he went. Abe had just rolled over in the hospital bed, not caring that he accidentally ripped out an IV line as he did so. It hurt, but it didn’t matter.
Now, with Fiona’s skin pressed against his, Abe said, ‘Tell me what you already know about it.’
Fiona’s voice was small, but she didn’t sound scared. Just careful, as if she were weighing her words before she said them. ‘There was a storm that night. You two were out fishing, coming back late. The boat capsized, and you swam in to get help.’
When she said it, it just sounded sad. Tragedy.
‘Facts are right, mostly,’ he said. Outside the houseboat, a motorboat with a misfiring engine – probably Louie’s – chugged by. A low wake rocked through. ‘Storm came up fast. I was the one who thought we could get farther out to open sea, and took us too far before we turned back. The grunion were running, and my dad laughed. He liked seeing me get excited about fishing. Fish-and-chip off the old block, he’d say. So we were out too far when the swells started. That would have been fine, but I did a stupid thing and I tacked south when we were too close to the rocks. I was just trying to get us in too fast, and I ignored Dad when he said so. I believed I was a man, and I think Dad was choosing to let me learn the hard way. He was probably going to take over any minute. He’d slap me on the head and bark orders at me, and we’d get in safe like we always did. But a big wave hit us starboard, and she took on water. Of course, it wasn’t the first time that had ever happened to us, and we could have recovered from it. But Dad, who never lost his footing, slipped and hit his head on the rail as he went down. He was out for about a minute, and the whole while I was trying to wake him up and stop the bleeding … there was just so much blood, everywhere. I fell in it on the deck. When I did that, I lost control of what I should have been doing with the sails. Dad always said no matter what, you keep an eye on your masts.’
‘But your dad had –’ Her hand was warm on his arm.
Abe shrugged off her touch. ‘Even if your dad hits the deck and you think for one terrible second that he’s dead, you don’t take your eye off the sails. You just don’t. Three more sets of waves pummel us, and we capsized. My whole life sailing, my dad’s whole career at sea, and that had never happened. We’d trained for it, yeah, but when you’re being choked with seawater and trying to keep your fingers dug into your father’s life jacket, you can’t think of anything past getting air into your lungs.’
Abe fought the urge to get up. To pace. To get the hell out of this room. To get outside where he could breathe. He shimmied up the sheets and pried open the little window over the bed. He heard Digit land on the porch outside, making that mumbling-meow noise that said he’d probably caught a wharf rat.
Abe breathed.
Fiona pulled away from him, as if she knew he was feeling submerged. As soon as she did, he wanted her back. Close. Abe wrapped his fingers around her calf and she put her arm back on his shoulder.
‘The ocean – it was like it was possessed that night. I knew it in every mood. I’d seen it in what I’d thought were its most challenging storms. And this one – was different. It tugged the boat out from under us, I swear it did. It sucked it down, and it tried to take us with it. I managed to hook my leg into a stack of two life preservers. They broke my kneecap as we fell off the boat, right before it went down. I had Dad, though, holding him in both my arms. The preservers kept me afloat enough to keep his head up. He woke when we hit the water, and shit, when he really figured out what was going on, he was pissed.’ The memory was enough to make Abe’s chest tight. ‘He tried not to show it, though. That was maybe the worst part.’ He paused, but only for a second. He could do this. He could tell her.
‘He was just so encouraging, damn it. You can do it, he said. That’s my boy. Get us in, he said. Kick hard. Hell, I could hardly move my left leg and it was taking all my strength to kick with my right to keep us afloat. We were going hypothermic, and we both knew it. We were less than a thousand yards off shore. I could smell it. Smell the land. I could see the lighthouse’s beam.’
For the first time, Abe wondered where Fiona had been when they were in the water. Fiona’s father had still been the keeper then. Had she been in the attached house? It had always looked so bright and cheery, there below the lighthouse. The front porch light beamed, a tiny miniature light below the great one swiping its way along the coast.
‘He told me to stay with him. That someone would be looking for us, and the ocean was too strong for me alone. But I wanted to swim for it. Toward the light. So he tried to swim with me. For me. But something … something had happened when he hit his head. He didn’t quite know how to move his arms together, at the same time. He was slurring. I don’t know, maybe he’d had a stroke, maybe that’s why he fell on deck. His words were tangled up, like fish in a net. Maybe he never would have made it anyway. Shore swim, he started saying. Light shore. Swim. Hope swim. Swim hope. I didn’t know if he was hoping I’d swim or if he was saying the name of the boat. Or my mother. He started to cry.’ Abe choked. This was worse, so much worse than he’d thought it would be. ‘He was clear about one thing, though. Don’t leave me. He begged me not to leave him.’
Abe felt Fiona shift next to him. He didn’t lower his eyes from the paint on the ceiling, but he felt her slide along him, fitting herself into the space next to him. He ignored the fact that his vision was going blurry. He hadn’t thought about that moment in … years. He was so good at it. Keeping it down, buried. Because there was no world in which it could possibly be okay that your father was dead, drowned, gone, taken by the ocean because you fucked up so big it was broken, everything was broken forever.
‘I left him.’
‘You had to,’ said Fiona softly, her head now tucked against his shoulder.
‘That’s the thing. I didn’t have to do anything. But I told him I was going to get help. When he finally understood me, he said, his words still garbled, to swim for the lighthouse. That the lighthouse had gotten him through every storm before, and it would save us. I left him. I went toward it, even though I knew maybe he was right. Maybe
they were already looking for us.’
‘You’d have found that out when you swam in. Were they?’
God. ‘No. We hadn’t been out long enough to be missed.’
‘So you were right. No one was looking. You had to get help for him.’
Something flared in him, small and ugly. Fiona didn’t get to defend the worst decision he’d ever made. She wasn’t allowed to. No one was. ‘I swam away from him. I chose to leave. I knew he probably wouldn’t be able to hold on to the preservers long enough for me to get help, for the Coast Guard to launch a boat or a helicopter. I knew I was leaving him to die.’ Abe paused, making sure she heard him. He gave it time to sink in.
‘When I finally got in, I could barely talk. They had to heat me up slow so I didn’t go into shock. The whole time, I was thinking about him, getting colder and colder out there, until he wasn’t cold anymore.’ Jesus Christ, why was Fiona still here? If he’d been alone right now, he would have put his head down and howled.
But instead, he kept talking. ‘Everyone else told me I was a hero. My mother hung on my neck until I thought she was going to suffocate me. They said it was a miracle. No one – no one – seemed to notice I’d done the worst thing a man could ever do. I’d left a man, my father, to die alone. I should have stayed with him. We both would have died, but he wouldn’t have been alone. I’ve never told anyone, not until now. I’ve never told anyone that I knew he was already hurt.’ Abe repeated the worst part, ‘I knew when I swam away from him I was abandoning him. Leaving him to die.’
He didn’t look at Fiona. Goddammit, if she wasn’t here, Abe might just have cried the way he had that night in the hospital, hours after the nurses with tragic eyes had tucked the sheets around him, hours after his mother had been sedated. He’d cried so hard that night he wondered if anyone in the whole world had any tears left – he’d used them all. It had reminded him of the way the boat had been taken down – a sinkhole of pain, a hellish whirlpool he’d always, always be trapped in, always be plunging down, down, down, spiraling – doomed to keep bawling like some inept Greek hero cursed to repeat his mistakes forever.
That was why he didn’t ever let himself cry.
Angrily, he cleared his throat.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Fiona.
She sounded so sure. Damn her. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’ Just like the chaplain that night. Just like the town, at the funeral. Just like anyone he’d ever met.
He sneaked a look sideways at her. He’d scored the blow he’d meant to – her eyes looked shocked. And hurt.
But she said, ‘No. I don’t.’
Her agreement surprised him. He’d expected her to insist that having chased her mother away – still alive – that she knew something about his pain.
‘It’s just,’ she went on, ‘I wish I could help some way. I can’t imagine going through that alone.’
‘I was okay,’ he lied, still unsure why he felt like he needed to push her away when all he wanted to do was roll over and bury his face in her soft hair. ‘I started dating Rayna right after that, in my senior year. She helped. Hot little body like that, she was made to distract red-blooded, teenaged males.’
Direct hit. Exactly what he’d been aiming for. Fiona’s face blanched but she didn’t even blink.
‘Woop,’ she said, swinging away from him leaving the sheet behind her, putting her feet on the floor. ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’
Naked, Fiona walked away from Abe’s bed as if she had no self-consciousness, though he knew she did. Her neck was held straight. Her posture was rigid. Her buttocks, perfectly shaped, swayed as she swung open the tiny door that led to the toilet. From the side, Abe caught a glance at her small breasts, her nipples soft and delicate, as she closed the door behind her. He heard running water and a soft sound like maybe she was blowing her nose.
He was such a dick.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Always be brave. – E. C.
Fiona took her time in the postage-stamp-sized bathroom. She washed her hands, then washed them again. His soap smelled like green grass. Looking into the miniature medicine cabinet, she found hydrogen peroxide, a stack of Band-Aids, one razor, and one can of shaving cream. A blue stick of deodorant was balanced on the edge of the sink. A clean washcloth.
A black towel. That was it. That’s all he had.
It didn’t matter that he’d brought up Rayna deliberately to throw her off. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t brave enough to actually push Fiona away, so he used words to do it.
Neither of those things changed the fact that he’d told her something he’d never told anyone else. That had been real. That had been brave.
Fiona stood up taller, pushing her breasts forward, sucking in her stomach. Hair – check. It was a pretty color, with a redness that sometimes shone in sunlight. She’d painted a Mercury Comet exactly this color once, and the owner had said it reminded him of a bay pony he’d had when he was young.
Her eyes, she decided, weren’t half bad. Right now they were more brown than green, but the brown was pretty, like the dark moss that grew at the base of the redwoods in the hills. She realized she liked how the color could change in a moment with her mood. That wasn’t something everyone had. What color were they when Abe kissed her? Did they go lighter or darker? If they looked like they did right now, he might think they were pretty. Quite pretty.
Fiona turned sideways and then back, giving herself a frank appraisal. Okay, she didn’t have Rayna’s lush curves or her ridiculously long legs. But Fiona’s breasts were high and pert. And if she took this moment to admit it to herself, she’d always kind of liked the way her belly was shaped. It wasn’t flat, but it wasn’t too big, either. Just right, really.
Sure, any red-blooded teenaged male would want to sleep with a teenage Rayna. She’d been something from the likes of television and movies back then. There had been no one prettier, no one more self-assured. No one was even as nice.
Fiona felt a wave of kindness directed at Rayna as she leaned in again toward the mirror. Maybe this was what being thirty-three meant. Letting go of the things that didn’t matter. That had never mattered. Embracing the things that were – she looked down again at her body – really, truly okay. That were good. Just the way they were.
Fiona opened the door of the bathroom, the handle turning smoothly for once.
Abe didn’t look at her. He was still lying on the bed, face-up, staring up at the low ceiling.
‘Hey,’ she said. She wanted to jump in the bed and pull the sheets over herself. She also wanted to throw her clothes on as fast as possible, jam her hat onto her head, and light out.
But she held her ground. Where she was. In the middle of the room. She would make him look at her. ‘Abe.’
He shut his eyes.
‘Atwell.’
Abe turned on his side and looked at her through hooded eyes. ‘You leavin’, Snowflake?’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Do I look like I’m dressed to leave?’
He twisted his mouth as if he were trying to push back a smile. ‘Uh-uh.’
This took bravery.
Courage.
Fiona had both running through her veins. Maybe it was just being near him. Maybe it was something more. She didn’t really care.
She crawled up, still naked, onto the bed. Abe hadn’t taken his eyes off her, and they were getting that storm-tossed look again. She was making that happen.
‘What if I told you I wanted you?’ Yep, that was her voice. Unwavering.
‘How?’
‘How –’ Okay, maybe her voice wavered a tiny bit.
Abe sat up higher on his elbow and stared. ‘How do you want me?’
‘You’re enjoying this.’
The smile broke over his face then, and he reached for her, pulling her toward him. ‘How could I not? You’re incredible. Gorgeous. You’re perfect. And I’m a fucking tool.’
‘You were an ass, yeah.’ Fiona loved how he w
rapped his arms around her, bringing her along him as if they’d done this a million times before.
‘I didn’t mean to be. It was just …’ His voice trailed off, and he pressed his lips against the top of her shoulder. He gave her a gentle bite, grating her skin with his teeth. Finally he said, ‘You make me say things I don’t normally say. You make me feel. Period.’
‘And you don’t like it.’
Abe twisted, rolling Fiona all the way under him. She gasped as she felt how hard he was. How ready.
‘Scares the shit out of me,’ he said. ‘Most of the time I don’t like it at all.’ His breathing was faster, and so was hers. All he had to do was open her legs, and he could be inside her – she was so wet he’d encounter absolutely no resistance.
But he didn’t. He held himself above her. ‘And then other times,’ he continued, ‘I love it.’
He said the word love slowly, as if he was tasting it. Testing it.
Fiona wound her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, relishing the feeling of power that still rushed through her veins. The kiss was intense – hot, wet, and so fast from the very moment their lips met, as if they were on a deadline, and they had to hurry, hurry, more, more, now.
It was then Fiona knew. When they weren’t talking, when he was trailing his tongue down her ribcage, she knew. This wasn’t a crush. Not anymore.
She loved this man. This stubborn, cranky, stuck-in-the-past sailor who might never change. She loved him.
The thought was astonishing. And there was no way in hell she was going to tell him.
Instead, she stopped his mouth. Kicking with her legs, pulling on the sheets, she wrestled her way down so that their faces were close again, so that their bodies were flush.
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