I returned to our table to find a glass of cola on my side. I finished it quickly and thanked the waitress when she brought me a refill with our meal. “Let me guess, you two are on your way to the shore,” our waitress commented
“How’d you know?” Garrett asked.
“Kids like you come through here all the time,” she replied. “All dressed up after a dance.”
“I haven’t been to the shore since mom had Nick,” Garrett said between mouthfuls after the waitress left. “We used to go every summer before that. We stayed in a house right on the beach. Have you ever been?”
“To the shore?”
“No, the moon,” Garrett laughed. “Of course the shore.”
“Once,” I smiled and answered. “With Maggie when I was about seven or eight. She got it into her head one morning that she wanted to watch the sun rise from the beach, so she pulled me out of bed and dressed me in my favorite bathing suit. It was pink and had all the Disney princesses on the front—”
“Oh, I bet that was cute.”
“Whatever, I was adorable.”
“I’m sure.” Garrett stuffed a forkful of waffle into his mouth and washed it down with some orange juice. “Which part of the shore?” He asked after he’d swallowed.
“Wildwood,” I replied, remembering the disastrous trip clearly. “Maggie talked the whole trip down about the time she’d gone with her mother before she died. She told me all about the boardwalk and the rides and about how much fun we’d have together. I wanted desperately to believe her.”
Garrett stopped chewing and reached across the table to take my hand. For as long as I’d known him I’d never had one completely honest conversation with him about Maggie and yet he seemed to instinctively know that this story was one that was hard for me to tell.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing at first. We sat on the beach, wrapped together in a blanket, and waited for the sun to come up. And when it did, I was almost sad to see it because I knew it was the end of one of the best moments I’d ever spent with my mother.”
“Did you get to go on the rides at least?”
I shook my head and looked down at my plate, still overflowing with food, but I’d lost my appetite. “We walked to the boardwalk when Maggie grew bored with the sunrise, but the stores were all closed and the rides were shut down.”
“You got there too early?”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “By about six months. It was the middle of January.”
“You want me to wrap this up to go?” The waitress interrupted from behind me as she placed a manicured hand on my untouched plate of sausage.
I nodded and stopped speaking and when the waitress returned with my to-go bag I took it out to the car to feed Charlie while Garrett paid the bill at the cashier station by the door. I opened the door and called Charlie to me. He came to life once he smelled the food, hopping from the truck, pushing his nose against my leg, and whining until I opened the Styrofoam container.
I didn’t tell Garrett about the snow on the beach or that Maggie dragged me around in that bathing suit and a pair of flip-flops like it was eighty degrees and sunny. I didn’t tell him that I nearly froze to death when she insisted that I take a swim. What good would it have done now? It was in the past. And I think finally I was ready to move on.
Chapter Eighteen
Garrett
We dropped Charlie off at the no-kill shelter around three am. Abby hugged him around his collar but she didn’t cry. Not even a single tear. I thought for sure I’d see something considering how upset she’d been about his potential demise. But nothing. She just hugged him goodbye and thanked the shelter lady who put Charlie on a leash and dragged him away.
Back in the truck she scanned radio stations but couldn’t settle on one so she turned it off and rested her head on my shoulder. She stared straight through the windshield as we drove along the shoreline. “Stop here,” she finally said when we approached a rocky stretch of ocean on the southern tip of New Jersey. I slowed the truck to a stop along the sidewalk and put it into park. Abby jumped down and ran across the boardwalk to the rocks beyond so I followed. “Come on,” she hollered. “I want to go swimming.”
I watched her strip in the moonlight, down to the short slip she wore under her long dress, while I took a seat on the rocky shore and removed my slick black shoes. We had to have looked pretty ridiculous, all dressed up, delivering a dog in the middle of the night.
“Are you coming?” she turned around and questioned.
“Give me a minute. I have more clothes on here than you do.”
She giggled and dived into the water not waiting for me to jump with her. I think she trusted that I’d never let her go alone. That I would follow. That I would always follow her.
I removed the remainder of my tuxedo, stripping down to my boxers and leaped from the rocks into the thrashing water below. “Holy shit,” I hollered when I surfaced. “The water’s fricking cold.”
“Don’t be such a chicken shit, Scott,” Abby hollered back, clearly remembering the night at the bridge when I’d said those words to her. She’d issued the challenge this time and I met it, swimming further into the ocean to where her head bobbed up and down in the water.
“Your lips are blue,” I told her once I reached her.
“That’s ‘cause the water’s cold,” she replied through chattering teeth.
“I told you.”
She laughed and so did I. “I don’t care,” she screamed into the endless night. “I just want to enjoy this moment. Here with you, I feel like everything will be all right, like nothing can bother me or hurt me. I feel invincible.”
I took it all in—the smell of the salty sea air, the moonlight glinting off her skin, her wet hair—trying to experience what she was experiencing at that moment. “I want to kiss you,” I told her, surprising myself with the honesty and the intensity of my words.
She looked down from the sky and into my eyes. “I want you to kiss me,” she replied. I hesitated a moment and she laughed again. “Well, are you going to do it or not?” she asked.
“If I do this,” I told her. “And you kiss me back, you can’t take it away tomorrow. You can’t pretend nothing happened. I don’t think my heart can take it. If you kiss me back tonight, you gotta mean it.”
She swam closer to me in the water and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I mean it,” she promised before she leaned in and kissed me.
My body grew warmer with her touch. Suddenly the water wasn’t so damn cold. I pulled her closer to me, craving the warmth, the feel of her body pressed to mine. I never wanted to let her go and we stayed like that—locked together in our embrace—for what felt like forever, until I felt Abby shuddering against me.
“You’re freezing, aren’t you?” I asked. Abby shivered, wrapping her arms around her body and nodding. Together we swam back to shore and climbed up onto the rocks. “I’m so cold,” Abby complained in a trembling voice.
I rubbed my hands up and down her arms, trying to warm her up. “Swimming was your bright idea, remember?” I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her again. “I can think of a few ways to warm you up.”
“And they would be?”
“Option one: I could run to the truck and get you my jacket,” I told her.
“And option two?”
“I could kiss you again.”
She smiled, her teeth still clacking together. “I like option two.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
She wrapped her wet arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, then she rolled over onto the rocks, bringing me down on top of her. I brought my mouth to hers, melting into the warmth of her kiss again.
I moved my hand up her slip and she stopped to whisper in my ear and asked if I had protection. “I’ll be right back,” I told her, hopping to my feet and jogging to the spot on the rocks where we’d left our clothes. I rifled through my pocket for my wallet and pulled
it out only to find it didn’t have what I was looking for. I remembered slipping one into my tuxedo jacket pocket so I ran back to the truck to find it, but when I got to the truck I couldn’t find my jacket.
“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, realizing I’d left my jacket in Dr. Cross’ office. I could see it clearly now, when I went to get the keys I set it down on her desk. I must’ve forgotten to pick it back up.
“What?” Abby asked coming up behind me.
I didn’t want to worry her so I lied. “I can’t find one,” I told her.
“Oh,” she said and she sounded as disappointed as I felt. “May as well get out of the cold then.”
I went back to gather our discarded clothing while Abby climbed into the truck and cranked up the heat. “What now?” I asked when I returned to the truck and slid behind the wheel.
“Home, I guess,” she replied. I groaned and she reached out to stroke my hair. “We have to go back, Garrett,” she said and I immediately understood why. Penn State. The Scouts. Swimming. The one thing that still meant more to Abby than me.
Chapter Nineteen
Abby
I jumped from the truck before Garrett had even shifted into park. I raced up the walkway and through the double doors, heading for the locker rooms where I was sure I’d stashed a spare swimsuit. I had exactly eighteen minutes to get dressed and warmed up.
“You’re late, Rhoades,” Coach Scott yelled as I raced by. “And what in the hell are you wearing?”
I didn’t bother answering but I looked down at my heels and my blue dress as I changed. I had to have looked pretty foolish but if I could’ve, I’d have worn it forever. Stayed in that moment with Garrett forever.
I pulled my swimsuit on and stuffed my hair under a cap. “Cutting it close, don’t you think?” Jeff asked while I stretched beside the pool. I was surprised he was even speaking to me after last night.
“About last night,” I started.
“Don’t worry about,” he said. “I always knew you had a thing for Garrett. It’s no big deal. You too look good together. Besides, I got to hook up with Zoe last night, so I should thank him for that one.” He nodded his head toward the crowd and I looked up to find Garrett in the bleachers, sitting there still clad in his tuxedo. He looked ridiculous but he’d refused to go home and change, saying he didn’t want to miss my race.
I won my first race for him and not for the scouts and when I pulled myself up out of the water, I looked for him in the stands and not for the two men up front in their suits. But when I looked to the spot where he’d been earlier, he was gone.
“Looking for your little boyfriend,” a familiar voice asked from behind me. I turned to find Paul Ford standing there with a smug look twisting his face into a cruel expression. “You won’t find him.”
“And why’s that?”
“Sheriff just took him down to the station for questioning. ‘Bout time too. Finally, someone’s gonna pay for what happened to my brother,” Paul told me and then walked away before I could reply.
“You’re up in two minutes, Rhoades,” Coach Scott called so I ran over to where he stood.
“I have to go,” I told him.
“What? Have you lost your mind?” He pointed to the two men sitting in the bleachers. “They’re here for you. To see what you can do. To offer you a future. Why on God’s green Earth would you need to leave?”
“Sheriff Wilson just took Garrett down to the station,” I confessed. “Because of something I did. I have to help him.”
“You really gonna throw away everything you’ve worked for over some boy?”
“He’s not just some boy. He’s your son,” I cried, surprised that Coach Scott wasn’t more concerned that the police had taken his son.
“So I know better than anyone that he’s not worth it.”
“You’re wrong,” I told him. “Garrett’s worth more than everyone in this town put together. More than swimming. More than scholarships. I don’t need any of it so long as I have him. I’d waste away in this town willingly so long as he was by my side.” Once the words were out there I knew that I meant them. That Garrett meant more to me than anything else in the world. That the dreams I’d had had only made sense when I’d dreamed that Garrett was with me. If he wanted to stay in Little Bend and work a ranch, I’d stay.
I pulled a pair of running shorts on over my bathing suit and stepped into a spare pair of sneakers that were sitting at the bottom of my locker, then I ran into town toward the police station. “Garrett didn’t do it,” I practically shouted at Sheriff Wilson when I burst through the station door. Sheriff Wilson looked up at me, puzzled, then led me into the closet-sized room and set me down in a chair. “Start at the beginning,” he told me and so I did.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It started that first night at the river with Garrett, when I’d returned home late, wearing only Garrett’s sweater. I was sure Tom and Maggie would be at the bar, so I hadn’t bothered to get dressed. It was stupid but I’d wanted to stay wrapped in Garrett’s clothing for as long as I could.
Tom was home, sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for me when I walked through the front door. He startled me and I’d dropped my clothes to the floor. “You’re late,” he told me and I knew he was just looking for a fight. After all, I didn’t have a curfew, so how could I have been late?
“Where you been?” he asked when I didn’t reply. I started toward my bedroom. I knew there was no talking to him when he got like that. But he cut me off, exiting the kitchen into the hallway and blocking my route.
“What do you want, Tom?” I asked.
“I want to know where you’ve been. You were with that boy, weren’t you? Of course you were.” He leaned in. Took a whiff of my hair. “I can smell him on you.”
“I was at the river. Swimming.”
“And this is what you wear to go swimming, huh?” he asked, lifting the hem of the sweatshirt, revealing my wet underwear. I smacked his hand away so he slapped me across the cheek so hard I tasted blood. Thankfully he was drunk. He stumbled a little from the effort and I was able to get around him, into my bedroom. I locked door. Listened to him pounding away on the wood, telling me that I wasn’t to see Garrett again. That he wouldn’t have me walking half-dressed through town, embarrassing him.
Monday night, the night Tom died, Garrett called while I was working my shift at the bar. Asked me to meet him at the river that night. So I asked Uncle Jim if I could leave early. That way I could still be home on time and Tom wouldn’t know where I’d been. But Tom was waiting for me outside my uncle’s bar. Corned me in the alleyway. He asked me where I was headed so I lied and told him home.
“I’ll take you,” he offered, but I refused. “I’d rather walk,” I told him and then he hit me, this time jamming his fist into my stomach. He grabbed me by the wrist, tried to pull me to his car but I resisted. I pulled away and he slapped me across the cheek, sent me flying to the ground. I put my hands out to stop myself and winced in pain when my palms met the gravel.
“See what you made me do?” he accused and pulled me to my feet by my hair. I remember praying that Uncle Jim would walk out the door. That he would see Tom and what he’d done to me. I remember wishing Uncle Jim would kill him. I remember wanting him dead.
But no one came to save me and then I was in the passenger seat of Tom’s Buick but he wasn’t taking me home. “You wanna swim, Abby? I’ll take you swimming,” he told me. “It’ll be fun. Just like old times.”
He drove us down to Waverly. To the spot where we went swimming that first night when Tom had kissed me. When he’d told me I was beautiful.
I didn’t want to get out of the car when he parked. I had this terrible feeling that if I did, I wouldn’t be coming back. That all those wishes I’d made to become a part of the river would finally come true.
Tom opened the passenger side door, yanked me from the car. I fell onto my knees in the grass. He stripped down to his underwear. He pulled my up
, told me to get undressed. I shook my head no and he hit me again. Pushed me to the ground, kicked me in the stomach. I heaved and vomited on the grass and he kicked me again. I rolled over and I kicked back at him. I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to make him stop. I hit him square on the knee but it didn’t stop him. Just fueled his rage.
He got on top of me and I felt my stomach lurch again. He pinned my hands above my head with one hand and shoved the other up my shirt. I screamed and I thrashed beneath him but I couldn’t get him off. He was too big. Too strong. He kissed me on the mouth and I wanted to puke. He asked me if I still loved him and I spit in his face. “Come on, Abby,” he said, slapping me across the cheek again. “Be a good girl, Abby. You love me, right, Abby?”
He released my hands to undo the buttons on my jeans. He was looking down and I knew it was the only chance I’d get. I knew that he’d kill me when he was through with me. I scoured the ground with my fingertips for anything I could use and I came upon a rock. It was large. Hard and heavy and I could get my hand around it. I grasped it with my fingers and swung up, hitting Tom on the side of his head.
Blood splattered my face, my shirt and Tom collapsed, falling off of me and on to the ground. I pushed myself to my feet. Kicked him in the gut with all my strength and then I kicked him in the face. Again and again. I kicked him until I didn’t have the power to kick no more. Then I sat down on the beach and called the one person I knew would help me, no question asked. I called Garrett.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
“Abby,” Sheriff Wilson said when I’d finished telling my story. “I want to thank you for coming in here. For telling the truth. But I didn’t arrest Garrett for Tom’s murder.”
“But Paul…”
“Paul lied to you. I brought Garrett down here to ask about the break-in at Dr. Cross’ office. He left his jacket. Rented it from a place in Carthage. Turns out the store owner uses serial numbers on a patch sewed right into the lining for tuxes he rents out. Led us right to Garrett.”
Breathe Page 13
