by Ward, Tracey
And I don’t know if it’s the beer or the weed or the way he looks by the water, but when the sun goes down and the bonfire goes up, I lean in and kiss Lawson Daniel. In front of everyone. Full on the mouth, with my tongue. With my heart in my throat. And that beautiful bastard kisses me back. No hesitation. No reservations.
He drives me home an hour later when my buzz starts to gather too many z’s and I feel like I’ll fall asleep on my feet. We ride with the windows down, 311 Love Song on the stereo, and smiles on our faces as we sing along. He has an amazing voice – deep and reverberating. Everything Lawson does is amazing. I tell him as much, making him laugh and accuse me of being high.
He’s not wrong. But neither am I.
As I get out of the car smiling with cheeks that ache from a night full of the expression and a spirit that feels lighter than it has in months, I think that Lawson Daniel is absolutely fucking amazing.
Chapter Twelve
Come 6 A.M. the next morning, I think Lawson Daniel is absolutely fucking evil.
“Rachel,” Dad barks through my bedroom door. He pounds it once hard, rattling the wood in the frame. “You got a visitor out here.”
I groan incoherently.
“Rach.”
“Who is it?” I shout, my eyes still shut, my face half pressed into the pillow.
“Lawson.”
I pry open one eye reluctantly. The world is shifty, wavy and rippling just outside of focus.
“No,” I moan, closing my eye again.
“Rachel,” Dad warns heavily, “I’m leaving for work in twenty minutes. I’m not leaving him alone in the house with you.”
“We’re not alone. Mom is here. And also, I’m not twelve years old. I don’t need a chaperone.”
He opens the door and comes inside, towering over my bed. I reopen my blurry eye and stare up at him. “Your mom sleeps like the dead and you’re my daughter. You will always be twelve years old to me. Or six years old.”
“Dad.”
“Six years old and running naked through the yard every chance you get.”
“Stop. I’m up.”
“Picking up dog shit and pretending it’s cake. Very realistically pretending, if I remember right.”
I throw the thin sheet off my body, bemoaning the fact that the house hasn’t cooled at all overnight. “Dad, I said I’m up.”
“I don’t know if I do remember,” he muses, heading for the door. “I’ll see if your mom has some pictures to jog my memory. Maybe Lawson can help me look.”
I run for the door, shoving past him. “Move it, old man!”
“Take it outside,” he calls after me.
I freeze, turning to stare at him. “Take what outside exactly?”
“Your shenanigans.”
“Is that… do you mean sex?” I whisper, shocked.
He glares at me. “No, I’m not telling you to go outside and have sex with Lawson Daniel.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“Shit cake,” he says menacingly.
I put up my hands in surrender. “Fine, oh my God, fine! I’ll tell him to get out.”
It’s surreal seeing Lawson in my living room. Like having the Hamburgler come to your house and hang out. Everybody knows who he is but nobody really knows the guy. He definitely doesn’t make house calls.
He’s wearing board shorts I’ve never seen before, a Captain America t-shirt that feels incredibly ironic, and he’s carrying a small brown paper bag that’s growing dark on the edges with grease.
He grins appreciatively when he sees me and I realize I’ve come flying out of my bedroom in nothing but running shorts I’ve never run in before and a tank top with no bra.
I quickly fold my arms over my chest. “What are you doing here?”
He holds out the bag to me. “I brought you breakfast.”
“At six in the morning?”
“It’s the most important meal of the day.”
“And I’ll definitely get on it in a couple hours.”
“Eh,” he says doubtfully, eying the grease stains on the bad. “This might have dissolved into a puddle by then. Besides, you’ll miss the best waves in a couple of hours.”
I shake my head. “I’m not going surfing with you.”
“I didn’t think you would, not yet.”
“Not ever.”
His grin widens. “Never say never.”
“I didn’t.”
“I guess you didn’t. But I’m not asking you to surf. I’m asking you to put your feet in the water today.”
“You ask me to do a lot of things, did you notice that?”
He gestures to my clothes. “Are you ready? You’re going like that?”
I half sigh, half groan and snatch the bag out of his hand. “Give me two minutes. I’ll get changed.”
He blinks, a little shocked. “Wow, really? I had a whole bunch of arguments locked and loaded.”
“I figured you would, so why fight it? You’d stand here trying to wear me down for the next two hours and I won’t get any more sleep either way. I might as well eat this bag of lard and go with you.”
“I have coffee in the car.”
“You just shaved my prep time down to one minute. I’ll be right out.”
Lawson goes outside to the wait in the car and I run to my room to change. I don’t know where Dad is, probably in the kitchen, and I’m not super eager to face him. He definitely doesn’t like me even speaking to Lawson and he will absolutely hate me throwing on a bikini under my clothes and heading for the beach with him. But it’s what I want to do. It’s what I need to do.
When we’re on our way to the beach I open the bag and find a breakfast sandwich inside. It looks homemade and when I bite into it I almost die of delicious.
“Whoa,” I mutter, my mouth full of food.
Lawson looks at me with a smile. “You like it?”
“I’m in love with it. Where did you get this?”
“I made it.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nope. I seriously made it.”
“I can’t believe you cook.” I take another bite, my mouth watering around the savory bit of ham, the perfectly cooked egg, and the smooth, cool flavor of avocado. “And well too.”
“I’m awesome at everything, remember?”
“That was a joke last night. Today it’s a matter of fact.”
He chuckles, watching me take another bite. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Love it,” I remind him. “I love it.” I take a sip of the coffee he’s brought me and nearly spit it back in the cup. “Your coffee game, however, is seriously weak.”
“Yeah, that’s not me. That’s my stepmom.”
I cringe. “Oops. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s terrible and she knows it. We all know it but we can’t talk about it because she’s trying to be helpful. She wakes up at dawn with me and makes us coffee while I cook breakfast.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yeah,” he says, not sounding at all convincing.
I ball up the empty paper bag, wishing it had another sandwich inside. Will he judge if I lick the bag? Probably.
“You don’t like spending time with her?” I ask about his stepmom.
“It’s not that. She’s cool. She just tries so damn hard. She gets involved in everything we do. She wakes up with me when I get ready to surf but what I really want is to be alone. To be inside my head in silence, but she wants to talk. A lot.”
“What does she want to talk about?”
“Aaron.”
That name is like a bombshell. It jolts me, shakes me, throws me for a loop that I don’t know how to get right from.
I lick my lips, keeping my eyes forward. “Why is she hung up on him?”
Is it for the same reason the entire town is hung up on him? Because he disappeared without a trace a year ago and you’re entirely family refuses to talk about him?
“She’s worried about him.”
Lawson pulls us into the parking lot and kills the engine. We’re the only ones here. The beach is covered in a fine morning fog that’s slowly shifting to the north. It passes over the sand, over the car, like ghosts on parade.
“Because he won’t talk about things,” he says quietly, his voice deep and full of so much something that I feel lightheaded from the weight of it. But what ‘it’ is, I’m not sure.
“About things he’s seen in the Navy?”
“Yeah.”
“Lawson,” I ask gently, my blood pounding through my veins, “did something happen to him?”
He stares out the windshield at the fog and the water and the waves. He doesn’t answer me and I’m not even a hundred percent sure he heard me. Finally he runs his hand over his eyes, down onto his mouth, and blows into his palm harshly.
“It’s getting late,” he tells me briskly. “Let’s get down there.”
Lawson walks with me to the circle of logs we sat on last night by the bonfire. The place where I kissed him in front of everyone, and that reminder has me wondering when I’ll get a call from Katy. Probably a little closer to a normal waking hour and I’m grateful for this small window of time where I’m free. Where it’s just Lawson and I and us being whatever the hell we want to be. No questions. No expectations.
“You okay right here?” he asks, dropping his towel and already reaching up to pull his shirt off over the back of his head.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
He grins, balling up his shirt in his hands. “You could always come closer. Sit by the water.”
I laugh, short and unimpressed. “I could strip down naked and swim out to the middle of the ocean, but I’m not gonna do it.”
“I’ll do it with you.”
I point to the water. “Go. Surf. This is what you drug me out of bed for, so do it.”
He picks up his board and tucks it under his arm before leaning down to where I’m sitting on the log. He kisses me quickly and softly. “That’s not why I brought you out here.”
“Oh no? Why then?”
“Because I like having you around, Rachel.”
I look at his arms but I can’t tell if it happened. If he felt anything.
“Does it still do it for you saying my name like that?” I ask him. “Even after the other night?”
He stands up straight, smiling roguishly. “No. It does something way different now.”
He takes off at a sprint down the beach, not bothering to give me a chance to reply and that’s okay. I have no idea what I would have said to that.
He hits the water like it’s not even there, running through it until he can lay on his board and start to paddle with long, strong strokes. A wave comes at him and he grabs his board, diving them under the break as one and coming up on the other side. He’s out there in the calm faster than seems natural, his body made for the water. For navigating it. For riding it.
Watching Lawson surf is like listening to music. It’s all about timing and balance. Just the right amount of a million different things that come together in a perfectly pitched work of art that you can’t walk away from.
You see all of these surfer movies or people doing it on TV shows and they almost never wipe out. They’re on their board riding in the curl like it’s the easiest thing in the world, but it’s not. Spend a day on the beach and watch the amateurs go at it, even the good ones, and you’ll see them eat shit more times than you could ever imagine. So often you wonder why they even bother getting back up. But it’s not about riding perfectly every time. Not for the ones who really love it. It’s about riding that one wave in a million that you get right. That you fall in step with the ocean on and you roll together. You ride with it, not on it.
It’s only the gifted few that can consistently ride the waves like they’re born of them. That can feel it in the movement of the water when a wave is coming. That hear it in the sound of the spray. It’s people like Lawson who make it look easy when it’s anything but. What it’s really like is riding a wild animal – untamed and unpredictable. You have to have the instinct to do it. You have to love the beast or she’ll buck you.
I loved her once, and watching Lawson glide over the glinting blue surface, the whitewater chasing playfully at his heels, it makes me ache in my chest. It makes me long for what I’ve lost.
It makes me brave.
As Lawson heads out to wait for another wave, I leave the log. I walk slowly down the shore in my bare feet, the cold morning sand still wet from the high tide that’s pulling out farther and farther. That’s calling to me like the Pied Piper, singing and dancing so close but so far away. It feels like I have to walk miles to reach the water, but once I’m there it feels like it happened too fast. Like maybe I’m not ready after all.
My stomach knots nervously as the water rushes toward my feet. It foams and bubbles along the edges, green and golden from the sand underneath. I wait patiently, my heart sitting silent in my chest until the water reaches my toes.
Then it explodes.
My breath bursts out in a loud gasp that sounds like a laugh. My blood pours through my body until my vision is pulsing with the race of my heart and my hands press against my mouth to contain the shout that wants to scream past my lips. I want to yell at the water. I want to tell it to fuck off. To tell it it’s a dick for betraying me the way it did.
And then I want to collapse inside of it. I want to be home and I want to be whole.
My body is at war with itself, a contradiction of everything, standing there a stone still, shaken mess. I want to be over it, I want to be me again, but I’m so fucking angry that I don’t know if I ever will be. It’s not the fear that has me frozen at the water’s edge. It’s the rage. The indignation at the absolute treachery I was handed.
“Is it happening?” Lawson asks, showing up out of nowhere. “Are we getting naked and swimming out?”
He’s standing in water up to his knees, his board back under his arm and his body dripping wet.
“I’m pissed off,” I tell him bluntly.
“At me?”
“No.”
“At who then?”
“The water.”
“For what?”
I scoff. “What do you think, Lawson?”
“Be mad at the shark, not the ocean. It’s not the ocean’s fault.”
“I can’t find the shark.” I point to the water swirling around him. “I can find the water.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Tell it to my leg.”
“Come over here.”
I frown at him. “What?”
He holds out his hand to me. “Come over here. Stand in the surf with me.”
“No.”
“No shark is coming up this far on the beach,” he reasons patiently. “If you know it’s the shark’s fault and not the ocean’s, then you shouldn’t have a problem getting in the water.”
I hesitate, my skin turning hot. “I could have drowned.”
“Because the shark pulled you under. You’re a strong swimmer. You were fine until he got there so again, not the water’s fault. Get over here.”
“You’re being bossy,” I stall. “Normally you ask me to do things. You don’t tell me.”
He sighs. “Rachel, will you please come stand in the water with me?”
“Well, since you said please.”
I don’t move.
“I’m missing some serious time out there,” he laments.
“Then go back out.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is important.”
I take a deep breath and a slow step toward him.
He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t even move, but the water does. It comes to greet me, slow and easy. Gentle and full of foam that tickles and pops effervescently over my skin. Up to my ankles. Then my shins. It leaves me, pulling out and taking the sand around me with it until I’m standing in a small hole created
by my weight and resistance. By my reluctance. I step outside of it, moving slowly. I keep my eyes on Lawson’s hand and it when I can reach it I put my palm against his just as a new wave washes over me. It reaches my shins, making me gasp, but Lawson threads his fingers through mine and he pulls me the last step toward him until I’m in it up to my thighs and my scar is almost under the water and my chest is against his, warm and wet.
He looks down at me with admiring eyes, a ghost of a grin on his lips. “You see?” he asks deeply. “You’re still alive.”
“I don’t want to go any further,” I reply rapidly.
“Okay. We won’t.” He squeezes my hand still clasped in his. “Thank you for coming this far.”
I laugh shakily. “Thank you for getting me here.”
“It feels good, doesn’t it?”
The waves rush forward, knocking Lawson in the back of the legs. He’s sturdy but he leans forward with the force, pushing into me. His face comes closer, his eyes look deeper, and his hold on my hand is softer. Warmer. Everything about him so strong and beautiful. So natural it’s hypnotic.
“It does,” I breathe, his mouth only inches away and closing. “It feels really good.”
Chapter Thirteen
“You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“No.”
Katy raises a skeptical eyebrow but I keep my poker face. I hold my ground and I deny it, not because I’m ashamed of it but because I like it. Because I’m protecting it. I don’t know what Lawson will say if one of his boys asks him if we’ve had sex, but judging by the fact that he didn’t know I slept with Baker back in high school I’m inclined to believe they’re at least a little bit mute about their extracurricular activities.
“Are you sure?”
I laugh, taking a greedy lick of my ice cream as it tries to dissolve down the side of the cone. “I think I’d know.”
“That kiss on the beach was pretty legit.”
“I was wasted. I barely remember it.”
“You didn’t seem that wasted.”
“That’s because I’m better at it than you are.”
Katy’s shoulders sag. “Are you really going to bring this up again?’
I smile. “I’m never going to let you forget it.”
