Mari pursed her lips and looked around at the dark forest they were slowly driving through. She could see a lightening at the end of the road and knew they were driving toward the water. What was she doing? She was driving down a dark road in the middle of a night to go be alone with a man who wasn’t her fiancé.
“But Mari?”
She turned and faced him.
“I’m not trying to pressure you here, okay? I just wanna surf with you.”
Again, it was the perfect thing to say. She sighed and nodded.
Twenty minutes later they were side by side and silently paddling out into the surf. The sun was just beginning to rise and there were actually some decent swells out here. It was better than the surf by the boardwalk, that was for sure. Mari was grateful to Jay for showing her.
They didn’t speak. Mari took one wave in and Jay took another. After a while, when the sun was split across the horizon, they both lay on their backs on their boards, watching the clouds get set on fire.
“Can I ask a question?” Jay asked.
She tilted her head to look at him. “Shoot.”
“Remember that first night at the hotel? When you had the nightmare and I woke you up?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”
Mari turned and really studied him, their boards started floating away from one another and Jay automatically reached out to hold hers in place. The position was intimate. Lying next to one another the way they had done in the supply closet back at the island. But it was also buffered by the motion of the waves beneath them, by the sky opening up over them, their wet suits, the caws of the pinwheeling seagulls.
“Yeah, I remember. You’re still thinking about that?”
Jay shrugged. “I think about all of it. But when you had the dream I didn’t know you well enough to ask you yet. What it was about. And then when I did know you well enough to ask, well, everything was moving so fast and I never asked. I’ve wondered about it since. Was it just a nightmare about the hurricane coming? You were yelling about the water.”
“No,” Mari shook her head sadly. “I was dreaming about my parents. About the night they died.”
Jay slipped his hand around hers as they bobbed over the ocean, staring up at the sunrise. The information sliced through his heart. Made his stomach tight with dread and nausea and sadness for her. “You don’t have to tell me, Mari. I’m sorry I asked.”
“No,” she squeezed his hand. “It’s okay. It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to. It’s been fifteen years now.”
She rolled her head away from the sky and looked straight into his eyes. And the gesture arrested him. It was just like Mari to do that. She never turned away or took the easy way out. If she had something hard to tell him, she told him right in his eyes.
“Their car was on a bridge that collapsed back home in Sioux Falls. They fell into the river below. They drowned.”
“Oh god,” Jay muttered and couldn’t help but pull her halfway onto his surfboard so that her head rested on his shoulder. He didn’t know if this was what she meant by “a problem” or not, but in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He knew what she needed. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder for just a second. “Must have torn a hole into your life.”
She froze for a second before she rolled back to her surfboard. “That’s exactly what happened.”
Her words from earlier came echoing back to him. I just don’t want to tear my life apart to do it. He could understand that. She’d already had to patch her life back together when her parents died. And she’d likely had to do it again after the hurricane. She was asking him not to make her do it a third time.
He was quiet. He understood where she was coming from and that made it a lot harder. Jay had been truthful. He was feeling too many things to know exactly what it was that he wanted from Mari. But he highly suspected that he already knew how he was going to feel when the dust settled. He was going to want her. The way a man wants a woman. The way a husband wanted his wife. And telling her was going to present her with a terrible choice.
Jay let out a full breath. But today wasn’t that day. Today he was too mixed up to do anything but float alongside her, listening to the ocean rise and fall around them.
“Do you have that dream a lot? About them?”
“More often these days, for some reason. I used to have them every night. Right after they died. I wasn’t in the car with them, but I would dream that I was. And always that the water was rushing toward me, trapping me. I was terrified of water for two or so years after they died. And one day, when the dreams had gotten so bad I could barely close my eyes without seeing it, I signed up for a swim class at the Y around the corner from my apartment in Boston. And the swim class led to a scuba certification class. And then I went on a vacation to Hawaii to test out my new scuba chops. And that’s where I first got interested in surfing. The rest is history. If the sport was on the water, I learned how to do it.”
“Did it help with the dreams? Battling your fear of the water?”
“Yeah,” Mari nodded. “It really did.”
“But you said you’ve been having them more often lately?”
“Yeah,” she shook her head. “I’m not sure what that’s all about. Probably because I moved and hadn’t spent much time out on the water or something. Anyways. I’m cold. Wanna go in?”
Jay nodded and paddled in behind her. His thoughts churning the whole way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Linc found her, Mari was chewing her lip and sitting on the kitchen counter, a half eaten apple in one hand. Her gaze was firmly out the window toward the evergreens in the backyard.
He hesitated for half a second before he cursed himself. It wouldn’t do to go getting weird around her now, just because he’d learned some new information about her. Just because there was a whole new section of her life that he was gonna have to figure out how to incorporate. She was still his Mari. The same woman he’d been with for three years, serious about for two.
“Everything alright?” Linc asked as he crossed to the cabinet next to her, pulled out a water glass for an excuse at something to do while he talked to her.
“Oh. Yeah.”
Her eyes gave him absolutely no hints at what to do or say next. “What are you thinking about?” He internally winced. He sounded like a middle school girl trying to wheedle information out of her first crush.
Mari shrugged. “I guess I was thinking about our first year together.”
“Oh yeah?” He was delighted to hear she’d been thinking about him and not… anyone else.
“Yeah,” Mari said as she kicked her hanging feet in slow circles. “I was thinking about how much you helped me with everything.”
Linc nodded. He didn’t need to ask about what everything meant. He’d been there. As beautiful as she was, as put together as her professional life was, her personal life had been in total chaos. Linc had been amazed to learn that her parents had died more than a decade before. The way she’d been grieving them had seemed fresh. A tumbler kicked into place in Linc’s brain. Oh. “You, uh, weren’t just grieving your parents when I met you, were you?”
Her eyes met his and not for the first time, Linc wished she wasn’t quite so scrupulously honest. “Yes and no. I was really grieving Jay, I think. I wasn’t sure if he was alive. But I knew that no matter what, I’d never see him again. And I think all that sadness triggered sadness that I’d never really addressed about my parents’ deaths. I was too young when it happened, to really understand all the ways them dying would affect my life. And after the hurricane, after Jay, it all kind of came tumbling down on me.”
Linc nodded. He gulped and asked a question that had been pecking at the back of his mind for far too long. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about the hurricane?”
Mari let out a long, slow breath. One that told him she didn’t like the answer any better than he was going to. But of course, she
was going to tell him the truth. “Part of me wanted to forget it. It was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. And thinking about it was painful. And I guess, I had no idea how to talk about it. Parts of it were still so confusing. Just the simple, like, what the hell was that? I don’t know. It was easier to sweep it under the rug.” Her eyes held his. “But I see now that that wasn’t the right move. It was selfish. I was demanding all this comfort from you but I wasn’t giving you all the information.”
Finding it was the only thing he could do amidst his scrambled, raw feelings, Linc waved a hand through the air, as if to scrub her actions from the record. “Mari, people do crazy things when they’re grieving. And you don’t owe me anything.” He paused. “You’re being too hard on yourself.”
A moment later, he cursed himself for hesitating again. As a general rule, Linc was a nice guy, he did his best not to resent anyone or hold on to any crusty feelings. But this Jay guy was starting to bother him. Twice he had Linc second guessing what to do next with Mari when for three years things had been perfectly natural between them.
So he swept an arm out, held her close, and she rested her head on his shoulder. Linc hugged her, nice and gentle. A zing of worry skittered up his spine. He needed to support her. He needed to comfort her, just like always. So why didn’t this feel right?
***
A few days later, Jay sat at his mother’s kitchen table, attempting, and failing, to interpret her pointed silence.
He’d just explained to her everything about his Mari situation, barring some of the more sexual details. But even so, he’d been more detailed in his descriptions of his feelings for Mari than he had with anyone else. For some reason, Jay absolutely needed his mother to understand what was going on with him.
Kat Brady was a magical woman in a lot of ways. She was tough and smart and the things she was rooting for just always kind of… panned out. The only thing that hadn’t gone her way was when Jay’s dad had abandoned them twenty years before. But to Jay’s thinking, that had kind of turned out for the best as well. They were better off without him.
The absence of a father had made Jay even closer to his mother. There was very little that they kept from one another. Which was why, he supposed, his mother was so quiet after he’d told her all about Mari.
He watched as she carefully sorted silverware into their appropriate slots in the drawer until he thought he’d tear his hair out. Gently hip checking her out of the way, Jay took the handful of silverware and started sorting it himself.
She went back to the fridge and pulled out some lettuce to wash for the salad she was about to make.
Finally, when Jay thought he’d scream if she didn’t say anything, she said something. “That’s a hell of a thing to keep to yourself for five years, Jay.”
“I know, Ma. I know. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, I just—”
She held up a hand and he instantly fell silent. “I’m not mad you kept it from me, honey. I’m just sad that you held it inside for all that time. That’s the kind of sadness that can change you if you let it. And you kept it all close to your heart this whole time? I’m just sad you were so burdened and I didn’t even know.”
Jay listened carefully to her words. And then he scoffed. “Come on, Ma. You knew. You knew a little bit.”
“Well,” Kat shrugged and shook back her stylish salt and pepper hair. “I knew that there was something you weren’t telling me. And that it probably had to do with a girl. And considering I started getting that feeling right around the time you came back from the hurricane, I figured you’d met her down there.”
“So you pretty much had all of it figured out,” Jay laughed.
“Well,” Kat shrugged again. “I didn’t know her name.”
She grinned at her son. But it fell away as she considered the predicament that he was in. “Have you talked to Marcus and Eli about it yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you ask them what they would do in your situation?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me guess. Marcus said that he would run in there, guns blazing, and get his girl old west style. And Eli said that no matter what, her happiness was tantamount, no matter if they ended up together or not.”
Jay raised an eyebrow at his omniscient mother. “You’re good.”
She tipped her head to one side and started tearing the washed lettuce into a bowl. “I’ve known those boys a long time. Almost as long as I’ve known you.”
“So if you know me so well, what do you think I’m gonna do about it?”
Kat considered for a minute. “I think you’re gonna take a beat to get your head on straight. And then when you know how you feel, you’re gonna be honest. And then you’re gonna let her get her head on straight.”
Jay sighed. “It’s not the most romantic tactic.”
Kat grinned. “Romance is overrated. Your father was romantic. But you and me? We’re similar. Straight shooters, but kind. That’s a good recipe right there. You can’t start a relationship on shaky ground and expect it to flourish. And the way you’re approaching this? Well, you want to build something with this girl. And that’s good. It requires honesty. And patience.”
Something in the way she was talking had Jay’s ears perking up. In the past, whenever she talked about relationships, she always talked in the past tense. But something about the way she was talking now made Jay think she was talking in the present tense.
He’d had the feeling, over the past few months, that his mother might be seeing someone.
“Hey there!” a familiar voice called as he slid through the unlocked door off the back porch. It was Ryan Bird, Eli’s dad. He had been Kat’s next door neighbor since Jay had been born. And he’d been more of a father to Jay than his own had been. Even before the asshole had abandoned them.
After Eli’s mother had died, Ryan and Kat had banded together to raise the boys. Marcus was always over at one of their houses anyways. So suddenly, they went from three family units to one. A cobbled together family. It had always just kind of worked. And it gave Jay peace of mind to know that Ryan was always just a yard away if his mom needed anything.
Jay stood to greet Ryan, he hadn’t known whether or not he’d see him on this trip to visit his mother. However, when Ryan stepped into the kitchen and walked over to kiss Kat on his cheek, Jay suddenly got the very strange feeling that he was intruding on their time. A strange sensation rose in his stomach and he wasn’t sure why. He’d seen Ryan kiss Kat on the cheek a thousand times over the last twenty years.
But there was something else in the room, something there that Jay could feel but couldn’t quite name.
“Staying for dinner with us, Ryan?” Kat cleared her throat and tipped her head back toward Jay.
“Jay!” Ryan exclaimed, as thrilled to see him as he would have been to see Eli or Marcus.
They hugged, good and hard, the way Ryan always hugged, and then pulled up chairs at the kitchen table.
“I hope you don’t mind me crashing. I’ve gotten spoiled over the last few years that if I smell something good coming from Kat’s house, I just kinda find my way over here.”
“No, no worries,” Jay replied easily, looking between the two of them like he was trying to read the language that was being thrown back and forth right now. He couldn’t have said exactly what it was, but he would have sworn they were communicating with one another somehow, Ryan and Kat, without looking or speaking.
Kat brought the salad to the table and then patted Jay on the shoulder to tell him it was time for him to bring the rest of the food over. Still perplexed, his mind absolutely spinning with suspicion, Jay opened his mouth to say something about it.
Kat beat him to the talking punch. “So, why don’t you tell Ryan about your mystery woman?”
“Mystery woman?” Ryan asked, his eyebrows flying upwards. He’d known that Jay hadn’t been terribly interested in any one particular woman ever since the hurricane and he’d always w
ondered about that. Jay wasn’t a rolling stone at heart. He was a romantic. Ryan knew that even as a boy, Jay had wanted a marriage someday. Something solid and real and true. He wondered if he was about to hear the reason that those natural inclinations had been put on hold for half a decade.
Jay kept his eyes on his mother for a half a second, knowing that she was probably executing some pretty stellar evasion tactics right about now. But the mention of Mari had his mind working double time. He found that she drowned all his other thoughts out. Suspicions about his mother’s romantic life could wait.
Jay sighed and plunked the food on the table. He sat heavily in the chair across from Ryan, tugging at his blonde hair.
“Well,” he started, and prepared to tell the whole story again. He realized, as he told it, that part of the reason he’d never told it before Mari had come into his life, was that the story felt unfinished. But there had been no end in sight. Jay had the strange feeling that right now, the universe was choosing between a few different endings for this story. Jay just needed to hold on.
***
Mari couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the gaggle of teen-aged girls who skittered past her as she ate her lunch. She took a humongous bite of her sandwich and chuckled as she watched them all giggle and lean on one another, chattering like a flock of sparrows as they spotted a corresponding group of boys across a courtyard.
Sometimes she couldn’t believe that she worked in a damn mall. But it had been the only available office space to rent and apparently most of the non-profits in Ocean City did the same thing. Rented the crappy offices on the second floor of the mall. Where no shoppers ever dared to go. Mari would have preferred to be working someplace with a little bit better of a view, but she supposed that people watching was a close second to a majestic natural landscape.
Even though she’d been working at the Ocean City branch of her organization for two months now, she’d only just realized that the mall’s indoor courtyard was the best place to eat lunch. The palm trees still dressed in Christmas lights, and the algae green fountain in the middle just added such a touch of classiness to the two-seater tables that were scattered around. She was being a brat, but really, she did like it, more than she thought she would.
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