by Ward, Tracey
I fight the urge to shake my head. To tell him no and leave that room, maybe even that beach. I’ve made a lot of progress lately. I was in the water today up to my neck and I didn’t panic and die. It’s only been a month. What does he expect from me? What does he want?
“I’ve asked you not to thank me,” he reminds me.
I laugh shakily. “And you want this instead.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re blackmailing me again.”
“Yeah.”
“Why do I have to go with you? Can’t you ride her by yourself?”
“No.”
I raise my eyebrows expectantly. “That’s it? That’s your argument?”
He grins. “Yeah.”
“Lawson,” I sigh reluctantly.
He steps forward, one hand on his board and his other on my face and his lips against mine, hot and earnest. He kisses me deeply, slowly, until my hands are on his waist to steady me and my breathing is slowed to almost nothing. Until we’re both breathless and burning.
“Rachel,” he says roughly, quietly.
I don’t know if it does anything to him to say my name anymore, but it does something to me to hear it. It lights me up inside, slow like the light. Growing and growing, warming and filling the empty spaces, the dark corners. He heals me, he illuminates me. He makes me golden. And I know I him this. I owe myself this, I owe her this.
I reach out with shaking fingers until I feel the board. The roughness of the wax. Of the sand from its last ride. It feels warm under my fingertips, somehow still covered in summer sun despite being locked away and hidden from its rays.
Lawson holds me close with one arm, both of us loosely clutching Layla, and when he breaks away to look down into my eyes I don’t have to tell him yes. He already knows. He can read it in my face. In my touch. He can read me the way he reads the waves.
And the smile he gives me in reply is absolutely everything.
***
We bob on the water, the dark liquid reaching up and coating my legs. Coating his. It touches my scar and retreats, comes back to kiss it again before disappearing shyly. It tickles and makes me smile and a small amount of my absolute terror dissolves in its wake.
True to his word weeks ago, Lawson sits close behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. And just as he promised, I feel safe. I feel good because it’s where I belong. On the ocean. With him.
“Thank you,” he murmurs in my ear.
I smile into the growing darkness. “I’ll say you’re welcome to close the conversation, but don’t ever thank me again, okay?”
I can feel his chuckle through his body against my back. “Okay.”
Laughter ripples out across the water. A splash as someone topples drunkenly off their board. The water is full of other surfers, some with their girl’s on their board in front of them the way Lawson and I are. The sun is gone, the last of its burn fading out under the horizon, and we’re all eagerly waiting for the fireworks to start.
I’m shaking slightly. It’s not the cool of the water or the dropping temperature of the coming night. It’s the déjà vu. It’s the time of day when I nearly died and that fact is not lost on me. But I’m trying to keep my cool because I want to be okay. I want to be in this moment and not fear it. I want to love it.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, his arms tightening around my body.
“I think so.”
“That’s the problem. You’re thinking too much. You’re thinking about that night, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you?” I challenge.
I feel him shake his head before resting his chin on my shoulder. “I’m thinking about right now. I’m thinking about you in that bikini. I’m thinking about the way the water looks on your skin. The way you smell like coconut. The way you taste when I kiss you. How dark your hair is when it’s wet.” He runs his palms across my stomach, fanning them out and tickling my sides. His lips fall to my shoulder where he kisses me softly. “How absolutely fucking beautiful you are in the water.”
I lean back against him, laying my hands on his thighs. I’m not surprised by his touch. It’s been building all day and as anxious as I am, as wound tightly as my body is, I want him to soothe it. I want him to make this better. Easier. I want to be free.
I focus on the feel of the contoured planes of his chest, wet and slick against my back. The slow rhythm of his stomach as he breathes. The hard push of him building between his legs.
His mouth becomes more brave, his tongue dancing across my skin and tasting the salt lingering there. I breathe slowly as his hands move lower. Deeper. My legs are spread by the board and when his fingers find the inside of my thighs, when they trace higher to the edge of my bikini bottom, I gasp sharply.
“People can see us,” I whisper, the words not exactly a protest.
He shakes his head. “It’s too dark. They can’t see anything.”
Lawson pushes aside my swimsuit, delving his fingers underneath and immediately I’m clenching my hands on his thighs and rolling my head back against his shoulder. He moves slowly, methodically. He listens to the notes I play in the back of my throat and matches my rhythm, a perfect harmony that makes me blind and shaky. The rocking of the board is pressing him against me and he groans and grinds, taking as he’s giving. Shuddering with a moan when my hand reaches around behind me to take hold of him.
Suddenly the night explodes in fire and light. White sparks, blue flame, and a shimmering sky of color reflecting off the water as a loud crack breaks above us. We’re surrounded by people staring up at the sky, watching the fireworks as they illuminate the night as though it were day, but we don’t stop. I never want this to stop. He’s building the tempo, demanding I follow. He’s racing us forward, entering the curl, and the wave is crashing down around us with such force that I can’t even find my voice to scream when it all comes to a head.
I let it overtake me. I let it pull me under, and he holds me as it does, as we’re both gasping and gulping for air. He whispers to me, sweet and low, promising to keep me afloat. To help me home.
As the world erupts and disintegrates around us, he promises to stay with me.
Chapter Seventeen
Lawson keeps driving me to work for the next few weeks even though my leg is healing. I’m strong enough to drive and walk without help. I don’t even limp. It gets tired easily but the infection is long gone and my skin is carefully knitting itself back together.
The scar is for real. My leg will never look the same, not without a shitload of money and some good plastic surgery, but I’m not vain enough for that. Despite the heat and the overwhelming desire I have to wear nothing at all on my body, I buy capris and knee length skirts to cover my thigh. I do it because I don’t like to talk about it and I really don’t like when people stare at it, but if one of the guys down at Ambrose asks to see it, I’m not above showing it off. It’s different down there. It feels like it did on the beach with the surfers who admired it and saw it as a badge of honor instead of a disfigurement or a tragedy they’re glad they were able to avoid. They have much less of a ‘better her than me’ attitude about it and I kind of love them for that.
Lawson and I don’t question it that he picks me up every morning that I work. We don’t even discuss the fact that he’s on my doorstep at 6 a.m. with a brown paper bag and a crappy coffee on my days off. It’s natural to us. It’s become our new normal, like music and surfing. Like sex and sleeping under the stars.
But not to everyone. Not to the rest of the town. Not to Katy or my mom, and definitely not to my dad.
“He still won’t let Lawson in the house in the morning,” I mention to Mom as we cook dinner together.
She smiles, sweat glistening on her lip. She reaches up and pushes her hair away from her forehead with the back of her hand. “I know. I told him not to.”
“What? Why?”
“Because he’s Lawson Daniel.”
“Don’t say his name like that,” I mumble ir
ritably.
“Like what?”
“Like it’s a bad thing.”
“Ooh,” she pokes me in the side with her elbow, “you like him.”
Shit.
I shrug, leaning over the counter where I’m cutting peppers and avoiding her eager eyes. “He’s a cool guy,” I say indifferently.
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“Well, you can’t believe everything you hear. Sometimes you have to find things out for yourself.”
I can feel her watching me out of the corner of her eye. “I guess you’re right,” she eventually agrees.
We eat dinner without Dad. He’s pulling another double shift down at the garage and won’t be home until late. We’ll have a beer and a plate of kebabs waiting for him but he’ll probably fall asleep halfway through both, his feet propped up on the couch and his hat pulled low over his tired eyes. It’s the ritual that’s been in place all summer, longer than my ritual with Lawson, and I wish I could do something about it. I wish I could give them my paychecks. I wish I could buy them a new air conditioner. I wish I could talk him out of working these doubles to help pay my tuition so I don’t sink so deeply into debt with student loans, but they’d never let me. Everything they’ve done since the moment I showed talent playing piano has been to foster that gift. To pave the way for me to live my dream.
I don’t know how to tell them all I dream about lately is the green glow of the ocean and the cool breath of air conditioning.
The next morning Lawson is at my door, bright and early. He stands just at the edge of the threshold like a vampire waiting for admittance, an easy smile on his face.
“You ready to surf?” he asks hopefully.
I nab my breakfast out of his hand. “I’m ready to watch.”
“Surfing is not a spectator sport. Neither is life. You gotta get back in the game eventually.”
“Oh my God,” I laugh. “Take it easy, Yoda. It’s still early. I need coffee before I can take your pep talks seriously.”
“It’s extra bad today. She took a stab at ice coffee because of the heat.”
“Fantastic. I can’t wait.”
“You could stay,” a voice says from behind me.
I turn around to find my mom standing in the living room. I’m amazed she’s awake this early and even more amazed to find her dressed and ready for the world. She is not an early bird.
“Mom, what are you doing up?”
“Taking your advice.” She looks over my head to Lawson, casting him a warm smile. “Come on in, Lawson. I’ll make you both coffee if you agree to make me one of those breakfast sandwiches she keeps gloating about.”
“We don’t have time. He likes to get there early for the morning waves.”
“Do you have avocado and olive oil?” he asks my mom.
“I do,” she answers.
“Sausage patties, cheese, and English muffins?”
“All of it.”
“You got a deal.”
Mom disappears into the kitchen to start the coffee.
I round on Lawson, looking at him incredulously. “Aren’t you the guy who bitched at me earlier this week for taking the time to brush my teeth and, quote, ‘robbing you of some of the sickest waves the day had to offer?’?”
He touches my elbow lightly, scooting past me into the house. “We’ve got a little extra time.”
“Since when?”
“Since that wet mud coffee was pushed into my hands this morning. Besides,” he says, leaning down and kissing me gently on the cheek, “you’ve gotta make time for some things. Sometimes the little things are the big ones in life.”
I groan, shoving him toward the kitchen. “Go. Do whatever you gotta do, but please no more wisdom. It’s too early and you’re too cheesy.”
“Slow down. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in—“
“Go!”
I sit at the table blissfully eating my sandwich and watching Lawson move around my mom’s kitchen like he belongs there. I wonder if he does. The way he cooks, I think he belongs in any kitchen anywhere. He talks to my mom as he works, showing her what he’s doing, and suggesting variations. Making her smile. Making her laugh.
She’s immediately smitten with him the way all women are and the part that makes me the happiest is that I can tell she’s smitten with the real him. Not the filler because that’s not what he’s giving her. He’s giving her Lawson. And she is just eating it up.
“My mom is a little in love with you,” I tell him an hour later when we’re finally on the road.
He chuckles. “She’s in love with the sandwich. It makes it hard to see straight.”
“Good. She can make one for my dad and he can get all confused too. Maybe let you start coming inside the house.”
“I doubt it, but that’s okay.”
“No it’s not.”
“Yeah, it really is, Rach.” He glances at me out of the corner of his eye. “I don’t want him to like me. It keeps me working for it. It keeps me honest.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s because you’re not a dude.”
“Thank goodness for that,” I mutter, taking a sip of my delicious replacement coffee.
“I want you to come over to the house.”
I pause, not sure I heard him right. “When?”
“Next Thursday night.”
“Why?”
“For dinner.”
“With your family?”
“Yeah.”
I roll my tongue in my mouth, choosing my next words carefully. “How much of your family.”
“All of it,” he answers heavily.
“Oh.”
He glances at me quickly, gauging my reaction. I’m not giving him much of one.
“Well, not my crazy Aunt Sue,” he clarifies. “She’s in rehab.”
“And not your mom.”
“No. She doesn’t come to Isla Azul. Her or her new husband.”
“What’s his name again?”
“Atticus.”
“That’s a bullshit name.”
He snorts. “It’s perfect if you’re a 1920’s barber.”
“Is he?”
“That would mean keeping a job. He doesn’t have time for that. He’s too busy updating his foodie blog.”
I wrinkle my nose in disgust. “Yuck.”
“Yeah.”
Five minutes later and we’re pulling into the beach parking lot, a place that’s starting to feel like a second home to me. When Lawson puts the car in park I reach for my door handle, but the lock snaps quickly into place.
I look at him, confused. “Am I being taken hostage?”
He shakes his head seriously. “You didn’t answer me.”
“Why do you want me to have dinner with your family, Lawson?”
“Because I like you and they’ll like you too.”
“Will I be allowed to talk about it to anyone?”
“No.”
“Then, no. I appreciate the invite, but I’d rather not. Not if I have to lie about it.”
I’ve taken him by surprise. Lawson is not accustomed to being told no on anything, and the fact that he’s offering me an invite into his home, into his life, is huge. The fact that I’m saying no is even bigger.
It’s not that I want to be different or stand out. I’m not telling him no simply so I can say I did. The honest truth is that I do not want to be part of the lie. I wish I didn’t know about Aaron being in town because I can’t do anything with the knowledge. I can’t help Katy, I can’t help Aaron, and I definitely can’t help Lawson because he’s not telling me everything. All I can do is listen, but if he takes me to dinner with his family, if I see Aaron, it jumps from being a secret to being a lie. I’ll have to lie to the girl who has been like a sister to me my entire life, and that is not something I’m willing to do. Not for any guy. Not even for Lawson Daniel.
“I don’t want to ask you to lie,” he
explains, taken aback by my answer.
“Then don’t,” I tell him, softening it with, “Please. I really can’t lie to Katy and if I have dinner with Aaron I’ll have to lie to her eventually. I don’t want to do that so please don’t put me in that position.”
He nods, his eyes locked on the steering wheel. On anything but me. “Yeah, I get that. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
He grins crookedly, looking at me sideways with an amused glint in his eyes.
It takes me a second to realize what he thinks is so funny. “Oh, give me a break! It’s been nearly two months. You’re still on this?”
“I told you, it’s fun for me.”
“I thought surfing was fun for you. Are you doing that today or did I get up before God to sit in a car with you and shoot the shit?”
“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug, settling into his seat. “I’m pretty good with this.”
“You’re not serious.”
He abruptly reclines his seat back, laying down. “I’m always serious.”
“You absolutely are not.”
“Well, I am right now. Lay down. Take a load off.”
“Lawson.”
He reaches into the back and pulls up a black baseball hat that he lays over his face. “You got your sandwich,” his voice comes out muffled and low. “What are you bitching about?”
“This is for real? We came out here to go to sleep?”
He lifts the hat off one eye. “I came out here to be with you. That’s what I’m doing.”
I sigh, feeling my heart constrict in my chest. “I never know when you’re serious.”
“I’m always serious,” he repeats, lowering the hat.
He’s not kidding. He’s taking a nap. Got me up at the crack of dawn to bring me to the beach and take a nap. What the hell?
Less than five minutes later and he’s quietly sawing logs under that damn hat. I’m not good at napping, never have been (just ask my mom, she’ll tell you all about what a horrible baby I was), so I unlock my door and step outside. Lawson doesn’t stir. I look in the window to find him lying there perfectly still and suddenly I realize that something is off. Something I can’t believe I didn’t notice until right now standing beside his car.
