by Ward, Tracey
“I got an e-mail back from the law firm in Boston,” I finally speak up.
Dad glances quickly at Mom. “Oh yeah?” he asks me. “What’d they say?”
“They can’t hold my job for me until the fall. They need someone now. They already called in their second choice.”
“That was fast,” he grumbles.
I shrug. “It’s not their fault. They planned on me being there today. I couldn’t follow through.”
“Yeah, but—“ Mom starts.
“It doesn’t matter,” I cut her off, knowing where she’s going. “If I was having a baby, if I was dead on the side of the road, if I was drunk in a bar or laid out with a hangover – it’s all the same to them. I didn’t show up. I lost my spot. That’s the end of it.”
“What about in the fall when you’re able to be there? Can’t you apply again then?”
“The job was for the year. June to June. The person they pulled in today, they’re staying all year. There is no job to apply for in the fall.”
“It just seems so unfair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Dad says, speaking around a cheek full of pasta. His eyes are on his fork as he skewers more tubes coated in bright red sauce. “She can’t work there this summer so she can’t work there at all. We’ll have to figure something else out.”
“We’ll buy you another plane ticket in the fall,” Mom assures me.
I drop my arm to the table with a thump. “How? With what money?”
“We’ll use the credit card.”
“That’s how you bought the first one. It’s why we’re all sweating balls in here instead of running the AC.”
Mom sighs. “I don’t ask a lot of you two, but can we at least not talk about sweaty balls at the dinner table?”
Dad lifts another forkful of pasta into his mouth. “Your mom is right, Rachel. Have some manners.”
“While we’re talking about manners, Rich, maybe you could stop talking with your mouth full.”
“We gave you sweaty balls, honey. Don’t get greedy.”
“I never agreed to give up sweaty balls,” I remind them.
Mom groans. “I’m ashamed to know you both.”
“I was thinking about trying to get a job here.”
The both pause, Dad with his fork venturing toward his mouth again and Mom with her hand fanning the back of her neck.
“Where exactly?” Mom asks slowly.
“I don’t know. Somewhere close.”
“It’d have to be,” Dad says as though it’s obvious. As though he’s arguing with me rather than agreeing with me.
“What would you do?” Mom asks.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Anything.”
“Rachel, you can’t do anything.”
“I’m not crippled,” I insist sharply.
“No one said you are, but you are hurt. You’ve been out of the hospital for one day. Give yourself time to heal.”
“I don’t have time!” I bite loudly, my patience evaporating in the oven we’re living in. “I needed that job to make money to survive off of during the school year. Now I need to spend the summer trying to save up for another plane ticket on top of money for living expenses at school. I’ll have to find another job during the school year in Boston, but I can’t do anything about that yet. All I can do is take care of things here and that means getting a job.”
“We’ll buy your plane ticket for you. You don’t have to kill yourself trying to make up that money.”
“No. No more. Don’t spend any more money on me. Spend it on yourselves for once.”
I stand from the table, forgetting my leg and stumbling as it can’t support my weight when I ask it to. I fall forward, sending the entire table rocking. Mom’s iced tea spills. Dad’s fork falls to his plate with a dissonant clatter.
All eyes are on me and I feel myself flushing with embarrassment and anger. With the heat of the house and the thickness of the air in my lungs.
I grab my crutches from the wall behind me and I hurry out of the room as fast as I can.
They let me go without a word.
I meant to go into the front yard. To get outside and see if I can taste the ocean on the air, but I can’t. The world is still, the branches on the trees hanging low and tired. Lazy. Stagnant.
I pull my keys from my pocket and fumble my way into my car, kicking the AC on high immediately. When I go to the push the brake to kick it into reverse I whimper. I nearly cry out at the scalding pain the movement rushes through my thigh, but still I do it. I release it blissfully, gently tap the gas, and back out of the driveway before my parents can stop me. I’m on painkillers and I can barely use my right leg – I should not be driving. But I can’t stay in the house another minute. Two days ago I was nearly brought to tears over the thought of leaving it. Now I’m dying inside having to stay.
I have no fucking clue what’s wrong with me.
I start using my left leg to drive. It’s weird and I have to focus hard to do it, but it helps. It makes it easier and luckily Isla Azul is not a big town. Six blocks gets me on the main strip. A quarter mile to the south lands me in the Frosty Freeze drive-thru getting my hands on a strawberry milkshake. Whatever that shark cost me in blood, I’m going to gain it back in fat, and then some.
Where to go next leaves me stumped. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be inside the Frosty Freeze, or even in the parking lot where people can see me. Everyone in town knows about what happened. Everyone will want to talk about it. I just want to eat my ice cream in silence, think about what a colossal mess my life is, and listen to some whiny music.
I find myself at the ocean, but it feels more like the ocean found me. Like it was waiting for me. Like it knew I was hiding from it before I did, but now that I’m here I know; I want nothing to do with it.
I don’t even roll down my windows like I used to. I was looking for the smell of it on the air earlier but now that I know I can find it, I don’t want it. Just sitting in this parking lot looking out over the lonely stretch of empty sand leading down into the dark horizon has me shivering, goosebumps popping up over every inch of my skin. My leg aches like it’s on fire. Like it remembers.
Knock, knock!
I scream, jumping about a foot in the air as my heart explodes in my chest. Someone’s knocking on my window. Some soulless piece of shit who just scared an already freaked out girl out of her mind and looks an awful lot like a soaking wet Lawson Daniel.
“You okay?” he asks, his green eyes eerily dark.
I roll down my window, my skin still popping and prickling with adrenaline. “You scared the hell out of me,” I accuse breathlessly.
He smiles. “Sorry. I thought you saw me walking up from the beach.”
“No. I was kind of zoned out.”
I look at him, really look at him, and see that he’s in the same swim trunks he was in the last time I saw him. No shirt this time. Just his chest, sculpted and smooth with a thin peppering of golden brown hair that gets lost in the color of his skin.
I frown when I see the board under his arm. “You were surfing?”
“Yeah. It’s too hot to be doing anything else.”
“Out here? After what happened?” I ask incredulously.
He stands up straight, taking his face out of my window and replacing it with his abs. His six pack, glistening abs.
He’s doing this on purpose.
I shove my door open and force him to step back. He watches me stumble out of my car but he never asks if I’m alright or makes a move to help me. That right there, it takes a little of the fire out of my veins. It restores some small measure of my pride.
He’s doing that on purpose too.
I knock my door closed and lean back against it, blissfully relieving my leg of any strain. I nod to this surfboard tucked under his arm. It’s blue and yellow. Not the white that I remember. “Same beach, same shorts, but a different board at least?”
He nods his head and turns his back,
moving across the parking lot toward a black Subaru Outback. It looks brand new and since I’ve never known Lawson to have a job, I’m guessing his dad bought it for him. The Daniel family is the wealthiest in Isla Azul, though that’s not saying much. They’d barely be upper middle class in any big city in California, but compared to the rest of us they’re the Rockefellers. Alan Daniel has owned a boat dealership in Santa Barbara since before I was born. It’s almost a half hour away but he grew up in Isla Azul and apparently he never plans to leave. It’s a common mentality here. Contagious even.
Lawson lays the board on the rack across the car’s roof, snags a water bottle out of the back, and saunters slowly toward me. His feet are bare. They probably are most of the time. The hot sand, the rough coral – they don’t mean anything to him anymore. They’re as comfortable as carpet on his tempered Hobbit’s feet.
“I retired Layla,” he tells me before taking a sip of his water.
“Your board’s name was Layla?”
“Yep. She was one of my favorites, but she’s done. I hung her up for good.”
“Hung her where?”
“Should you be out driving?” he asks, gesturing to my car behind me and neatly changing the subject. “You got out of the hospital today, right? I don’t think you’re even supposed to be walking on that leg. Definitely shouldn’t be driving.”
“Probably not, but I had to get out.” I glance out over the dark water, another shiver vibrating through my blood. “I regret it now though.”
“Thinking about going in?”
I snap my eyes to his, stunned by the question. “No. Are you crazy? I almost died out there.”
“One out of how many times?”
“Excuse me?”
“How many times have you been in the ocean,” he points to the water behind him but keeps his eyes locked firmly on mine, “that stretch of ocean, and come out of it just fine?”
I shake my head. “That’s not the point.”
“It is, though. How many? Hundreds? Thousands?”
“I’m not you. I have interests outside of the ocean.”
“Okay, so hundreds. You’ve been in that water hundreds of times and one of those times things went south. One. What’s your favorite food?”
I chuckle in surprise. “What’s my favorite food?”
He takes a step toward me, lowering his voice but raising his lips in a small smile. “Do you answer every question with a question?”
“Do I—No.”
“What’s your favorite food?”
“Chicago style pizza. Stuffed crust.”
“If Chicago style pizza with stuffed crust gave you food poisoning one time, would you never eat it again?”
“Does it land me in the hospital?”
“Yes. But you’re out recklessly eating and driving again within a day.”
“I’m not reckless driving.”
“Would you eat it again?” he pushes.
“I don’t love the ocean the way I love pizza,” I answer him seriously. “I don’t love it the way you do. I could forgive pizza. I can’t forgive this.”
He nods his head, his face falling to the ground the way it did in my hospital room.
“I get that,” he says, his voice low. Earnest. The wind tries to take it, the roar of the ocean tries to steal it from my ears, but I find it. I grab onto it and I hang on his words. On his lips. “It’s not about loving it, though. It’s about overcoming it.” He looks up at me, his eyes intense. “It’s about not being afraid.”
“Why do you care?” I ask softly.
“Because I’ve seen what fear does to a person. You let it win once, even a little, and it starts to take over. Just a little more and a little more until you’re scared of everything and everyone. I’ve seen guys out there on the water who were fearless, but one wave takes them down and rattles them and suddenly they won’t go after it like they used to. They’re tourists. They take the easy way on everything until they don’t even bother anymore.”
I glance between him and the water, shifting on my feet and wincing at the pain it gives me. “Are you afraid of anything?”
He laughs, coming to lean against my car next to me. I can feel him. His body close to mine, the bare skin of his arm brushing against the bare skin of mine. He smells like the sea. Like salt and sun. Like everything I wanted to bottle up and everything I’m dying to get away from. That’s Lawson to a T. Alluring and terrifying. Beautiful and dangerous.
“Everyone is afraid of something,” he tells me lightly.
“Okay, so what are you afraid of?”
“Ghosts.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he says, but his smile says he’s anything but.
Whatever window was open for viewing into Lawson Daniel, it’s closed now. He’s shut it up tight, replacing it with the suave bravado the world has come to know and love so well.
“Let me drive you home,” he says softly, his face surprisingly close to mine. “I wanna make sure you get there safe.”
He’s leaning toward me, his arm firmly pressed against me and his eyes baring down into mine.
Whoa, when did that happen? I think, instantly going on high alert.
I back away, leaving him leaning into the wind. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause you just about cried right then when you put weight on that leg.”
I open my door, already falling inside. “I’m good. I figured out how to drive with my left foot. Thanks, though.”
I go to pull my door closed but he grabs it above the window, holding it open.
“Hey, Rachel.”
I sigh before looking up at him. “Yeah?”
“Remember what I said about fear, okay?”
“I will. But I’m not afraid.”
He grins wickedly. “Not of anything?”
He knows why you’re running away, idiot. He knows why women do all of the things they do around him.
“Lawson Daniel,” I say breathily, my voice barely above a whisper, “can I be real with you?”
“You can be anything you want with me, Rachel Mason.”
I lean half out of the car, putting my face within inches from his. My breath rebounds off his lips, coming back to me smelling sweet. Like strawberries and ice cream.
“Given the choice between you and the shark,” I whisper, “I like my odds better with the shark.”
I yank my door closed, forcing him to stand up and step back. I can hear him laughing as I put my car in gear and back out of the parking lot. I don’t look back as I pull onto the coastal highway. I try not to think about the smell of him, the feel of him, his kindness and concern or the fullness of his laughter. I’ve nearly got him out of my head entirely as I pull into my driveway.
As I catch sight of a dark Subaru cruise by in my rearview mirror.
Chapter Five
“Hey, shark bait, what’s shakin’?”
“No,” I answer severely.
Wyatt chuckles, leaning his hands against the counter. His white Frosty Freeze ball cap is sitting high up on his head, his mop of black hair curling down around his forehead under the bill. The dark tendrils are wet with sweat, the heat from the grills in the back probably baking him as much as the summer sun was killing me outside.
“No to what?” he asks me, smiling easily.
“No to the nickname.” I hobble toward him, resisting the urge to plop down in any one of the chairs I pass along the way. “No to talking about it. No to being known as the girl who nearly died by shark.”
“What do you want to be known as?”
“The girl who got out of town, which is why I need to ask a favor.”
“Anything, shar—malade. Sharmalade.”
I tilt my head at him. “Really? That’s what you’re going with? That’s your save? Sharmalade.”
“I’m sticking to it.”
“Cool. Anyway,” I slide my resume onto the counter toward him, “I need a job and now
here is hiring. This is my last resort.”
“Flattering,” he deadpans.
I wince apologetically. “I’m too hot and too tired for flattery, sorry.”
He smiles faintly. “You want an ice water?”
“Can I bathe in it?”
“Can I watch?”
I laugh, instantly changing my tune. “I’ll take it in a cup.”
He fills a cup halfway up with ice and injects a quick stream of water inside before lidding it and handing it to me. I’ve never tasted anything better in my life.
“You been out in this heat all day?” he asks me.
“Ugh,” I groan, setting the cup down. “The last two days. I’ve been applying everywhere in town but nowhere is hiring. The high school kids snatched up all the part-time jobs.”
“Yeah, I know. We have three of them here.” He turns his head toward the back, raising his voice. “Little assholes too!”
“Douche!” someone shouts back from the fryer.
Wyatt shakes his head in annoyance. “I hope that fry oil burns his dick off.”
“Wow,” I whisper.
“Yeah, see? You don’t wanna work here. It’s no place for a lady.” He smirks, looking me up and down. “Or you.”
“Fuck you,” I chuckle.
“I take it back. Maybe you’d fit right in.”
I sigh in exhaustion, sliding onto one of the stools lined up in front of the counter. “I don’t want to work here. I don’t want to work anywhere in Isla Azul. I’m supposed to be in Boston by now running errands in a law firm and making above minimum wage. Now thanks to this,” I gesture disparagingly to my mangled leg, “I’m trapped here and I can’t even get a job selling ice cream for eight bucks an hour.”
Wyatt grimaces sympathetically, his face going serious. “You’d be on your feet all day here. You barely made it across the dining area without collapsing. You winced the whole way.”
“Did I really?”
“Whole way,” he repeats.
“I’ve been trying to go without the crutches. It’s been a week, I thought I was getting better. I thought it made me look more dependable to be without them. Sturdier.”
“It made me want to jump the counter and carry you just to make it stop.”
