by Ward, Tracey
“Yeah, I can’t sleep.”
“Me either. I’ve gotta take Molly to the airport in the morning. My ass is gonna be dragging.”
“Where is she from?”
“Mars as far as I can tell.”
I stifle a laugh, careful not to get too loud and wake up Sleeping Beauty across the hall. Heather and Asper haven’t spoken since their fight. I’ve never seen Asper so relaxed.
“You’re not going home for Christmas?” he asks, but he knows I’m not. I’m the only one who isn’t. Day after tomorrow I’ll be alone in the apartment for the next three weeks. Through Christmas and New Year’s.
“No,” I reply, shaking my head. “Can’t afford it. I’ll be here watching Christmas specials and eating all of Molly’s sugar cubes.”
“God, that’s depressing.”
“That’s the holidays.”
“What about the guy?”
I shrug. “What guy?”
“Don’t act dumb. You know the guy. The one you don’t talk about.”
“How do you know about him if I don’t talk about him?”
“Because he sent you that package. Lawson, right?”
My back goes stiff. “What package? Where is it?”
He frowns. “You don’t have it?”
“No.”
He turns and goes into the kitchen with me close on his heels. He looks around, spinning in circles and retracing steps I don’t know, but he comes up empty. Then his shoulders slump.
“She’s unbelievable,” he groans.
“Who?”
He storms down the hall, passing me quickly. “One guess.”
I’m shocked when he throws open Heather’s door. He flicks on the light and starts rooting through piles of clothes that cover every surface.
Heather sits up in her bed slowly, blinking against the light.
“What’s happening?” she moans.
“Where is it, Heather?” Asper demands. He tosses a hot pink thong at her face before toppling a pile of skirts to the floor.
She glares at him with a pout, then turns her angry stare to me. “Will you please remind that asshole that I’m not speaking to him and will you tell him to get the hell out of my room?!”
“Not until you tell me where the box is,” he tells her hotly. “The one I told you to give to Rachel.”
“Rachel, please tell the asshole I don’t remember anything and I won’t remember anything until I get an apology.”
“Heather, where is it?” I ask her urgently.
She shrugs, looking away like a petulant child. “I don’t what you’re talking about. No one gave me a box. Must have been a ghost.”
I move in close, leaning over the bed on my knuckles and putting my face up to hers until she can’t look away. Until I’m in her eyes and her space. “You better tell me where that box is,” I warn her softly, “or the only ghost around here will be you, do you understand me? I’m from Cali, bitch. You don’t wanna fuck with me.”
She’s all talk. Pure bravado and attitude used to hiding behind her daddy and his money that crumbles under my stare.
“Top shelf of the closet,” she tells me quickly, her eyes tight and worried.
Asper steps over more mess and reaches for the shelf. He pulls down a small cardboard box with brown packaging tape around the outside. Tape that’s been cut.
“She opened it,” he tells me, handing it over.
I turn to look at Heather, but she shakes her head hard. “It’s all there. I didn’t take anything. I just looked. He’s hot. Congrats.”
I don’t respond. I leave the room and head across the hall for mine, hearing Asper mutter a curse at her as he follows me.
I put the box on my bed and take a step back, watching it. Waiting for it to move. To tell me what to do, but it doesn’t have to because I already know. I knew before I found it.
“What’s in it?” Asper asks, back to leaning in my doorway.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want some privacy to open it?”
“No,” I answer instantly. “I want something else. A favor.”
“Sure. What do you need?”
I turn and throw open my closet. I pull my suitcase out and toss it open on the bed next to the box.
“A ride to the airport tomorrow,” I tell him decidedly. “I’m going home.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
I don’t open the box until I’m in the air. Until I’ve boarded the plane and I’m allowed to play Candy Crush on my phone for the next five hours. But I don’t. Instead I pull the brown box from my carry on and I set it on the tray in front of me. The flight is light, not many passengers, and there’s no one next to me. No one to see me read the return address on the label. To see me smile faintly when I read the city.
Malibu.
He got out, I think happily.
Inside is a jersey. A bright red surfer’s jersey with the words ‘Cascais Billabong’ written across the stomach and ‘WSL’ just under the collar. It takes me a second to remember why I know that name, Cascais, but then it hits me. Portugal. Lawson competed in the Cascais Billabong Pro in Portugal.
Did he win?
I pull the satiny material of the jersey into my lap and dive inside the box. There’s a postcard with a picture of a gorgeous, rocky beach on the front and the words ‘Wish you were here’ scribbled across the back with a small heart in the corner. I smile at it before pulling out the only thing left in the box – a picture. It’s of Lawson and three other guys standing on a podium. He’s wearing the red jersey. He’s smiling and gorgeous, totally natural under the attention of a crowd of strangers in a foreign country. The guy next to him is holding up a trophy while Lawson and the third guy wave to the crowd. He obviously didn’t win, not first place, but he must have taken second or third. My money is on second.
I flip the picture over hopefully. He doesn’t let me down.
There’s a note penned across the back.
Second place ain’t bad.
“Called it,” I sing to myself quietly.
Got out of my backyard. You were right. It’s better out here.
I reread it three times, still smiling and so proud and happy for him that I’m nearly bursting. I wish I could use my phone to look up the rankings online. The season is over, but I want to know – did he stay in the top sixteen? Did he qualify for the World Tour next year?
It’s another four and a half hours before I can find out.
***
He didn’t make it.
I stare in disbelief at my phone as I wait for the luggage carousel to start spinning and spit out my stuff, but the numbers don’t change. He wasn’t even in the top twenty, let alone the top sixteen.
His numbers disappeared after the two events in Portugal that he attended. He placed in the second one, though not as highly as the first, and with no more competitions under his belt for the rest of the year he couldn’t keep up with the growing scores of the other competitors. They were still traveling, hitting up Japan and Tahiti. Hawaii and Brazil while Lawson apparently stayed home. I wonder if it had anything to do with his brother.
The room bursts into action as yellow lights flash, a monotone alarm sounds, and the belt starts to weave its path in front of me. I watch it go, feeling mesmerized.
I could call him. I could call my parents or Katy. I probably should. I haven’t told anyone I’m home. I’ve gotten into the habit of not talking to people about how I feel or what I’m doing. It feels weird to think about calling Lawson, though. To hear his voice on the phone and not in person. But am I going to Malibu? It’d be smarter to head home on the bus toward Santa Barbara. I would bypass Malibu all together.
It’s what I should do, but is it what I want to do? When am I going to start doing what I want and not what I should?
“Today,” I whisper to myself
The old woman standing next to me at the luggage carousel glances over uneasily.
I smile at her, probably a littl
e maniacally, and sweep my bag off the belt as it slips by.
I hurry out the doors into the cool early morning air of a southern California winter. I have a coat on but it’s unbuttoned. No mittens, no scarves. No frostbite. It’s heaven. It’s everything that’s right with the world and nothing that was wrong with Boston. If any part of me doubted coming home was the right choice, it shuts the hell up right then and there.
And when I get on a bus to Malibu, it starts to sing.
When the bus drops me off I take a cab to the ocean front condominium at the return address on the box. I leave my suitcase with the man at the small desk by the elevators, telling him I’m there to see Lawson Daniel.
“I’ll call him and let him know you’re here,” he tells me, reaching for the phone.
I put my hand out to stop him. “He won’t be up there.”
“Oh. How do you know?”
“Because I know him,” I reply with a grin. “I know where he is.”
When I reach the beach on the other side of the building I’m not surprised to find I’m right. He’s there on the horizon waiting for a wave, his legs in the water on either side of Layla. It’s such a familiar sight that it takes my breath away and replaces it with something else. Something warm and full that sits heavily in my body until I’ve sunk down into the sand.
I sit and watch him surf the way I used to in the early morning. It’s cooler now. Softer and gentler than it was in the summer heat. It feels more comfortable than it ever has and I think it’s because I know it’s right this time. I went out, I tried the world, and I found it lacking. Nothing on this earth can feel as good as being home for me. Nothing can ever be as good as him.
He takes two waves before he spots me, but when he does his reaction is immediate. He comes to shore instantaneously, riding Layla as far as she’ll carry him and then he’s running with her up the beach. I smile, standing to greet him, but I’m not ready for the force of his embrace when it comes. His hug takes my legs out from under me, his body knocking me backward so hard I’m clinging to him to stay upright and he’s laughing and wet and strong. He’s holding me up as he’s knocking me down and I giggle against his shoulder like a little kid.
“You’re back?” he asks breathily, his mad sprint from the water taking its toll on his voice.
I nod my head against him, his wet hair dripping down into mine. Onto my smiling face. “I’m back.”
He leans back, not letting me go. “When? When did you get back?”
“A little over an hour ago.”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
I feel his body literally soften with relief. “What happened?”
“I failed,” I chuckle lightly.
He grins. “Me too.”
“We’re a couple of losers, aren’t we?”
Lawson laughs, reaching up to push my windblown hair from my eyes. “You’re my loser.”
“Are you still mine?”
“Always, Rach. I’ll always be your loser.”
He leans down to kiss me softly, sweetly, and then I’m in his arms again. I’m pressed against him with my face to the ocean and the sun on my skin and I can’t even remember what it was like to not be here with him. It’s like the tide has already taken the memory away, sifting it with the sand, dispersing it with the grains until it’s lost and unrecognizable.
“Congratulations on Portugal,” I tell him quietly.
“You got your present?”
“I did. I love it.”
“I lost the second one.”
“I know. But you tried.”
He kisses the top of my head. “So did you.”
“They told me I’m good but not good enough.”
“Ouch.”
“It was the best news I’ve gotten since I found out I still had my leg.”
He chuckles silently, holding me close. The only sound is the roar of the ocean that’s on his skin and seeping into mine. “I’m gonna try again.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
He hesitates. “Will you?”
“No,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to. I know what I am and I know what I’m not now. I’m not a concert pianist, I’m a mixed tape. I don’t belong anywhere in the world but where I’m happy and California makes me happy.” I squeeze him hard. “You make me happy.”
“I’m gonna be gone a lot if I make another run at the World Tour.”
“I know.”
“Where will you be when I come back?”
I lean back, shaking my head, unsure what he’s asking. “I’ll be here.”
“Here in Malibu?”
“No.”
“Why not?” he asks frankly. “Don will hire you again. He’ll probably pay you better than before since you’re showing loyalty by coming back.”
“I can’t afford to live in Malibu, even with a raise.”
“I know a place you could afford.”
I laugh. “You always know a guy or a place or a band, don’t you?”
“I get around.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He lowers his brow playfully. “Ooh, low blow, Mason.”
I stand up on my toes to kiss him. “Now you’re being a tease,” I whisper.
I can feel him smiling against my lips. “Rachel.”
“Mmmm,” I hum, savoring the sound of my name in his deep tenor. It rolls through my body like warm honey, making me sinuous and sweet.
“My apartment is big,” he tells me quietly. “And lonely.”
“You should get a dog,” I joke.
“I don’t want a dog. I want you.”
“You have me.” I kiss him again, dying to get closer.
He leans away from me, taking his mouth out of reach. His eyes are serious and so, so green. “What do you say?”
I blink. “To what exactly? What are we talking about, Lawson?”
“You moving in with me.”
“I—“ I begin, unsure how to finish that sentence. “You want me to live with you?”
“Yeah. I’ll be gone a lot during the season, but I would love to come home to you every break.” He leans in again, making me soft. “So, what do you say?
I should think it through. I should talk to my parents about it. I should talk to Don first and make sure I’d actually have a job down here. I should at least ask what my share of the rent would be, but I don’t. Instead I ask myself what I want, tapping into my heart and not my head, and I know immediately, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
“Yes,” I tell him with a smile. “I say yes.”
Lawson glows happily as he leans in to kiss me. I let myself melt in his arms, into the sand, and when he pulls me toward the building to show me upstairs I’m on a cloud. I ride with him high up into the building to his condo with his hand in mine, his thumb running absently over my skin.
The place is amazing, all white walls and marble countertops. It doesn’t feel much like Lawson, though, and he’s quick to explain that it came furnished. Nothing here is really his.
He gives me a tour that ends in the living room looking out large windows that frame the ocean outside. It’s there that we stop, that the world stops, and we disappear from it for the next hour. I ask to see his scars, the ones he promised to show me in the hospital, and he grins that crooked, knowing grin of his before he agrees.
Lawson shows me slowly. It starts with his leg and ends with his clothes on the floor and my lips on his skin, tasting each story his body tells me the way he tasted mine. Seeing him, all of him. The truth and the lies, the rumors and the reality, and showing him every piece of me that I’ve never had the courage to share. My honesty. My whole heart, so full to bursting with him and the warmth of the sun that I’m near tears when his body finally finds mine. When our stories come together and the only truth that matters is this.
Is us.
Epilogue
“This summer’s gonna be another scorcher,” Lawson comments.
I watch as he
lifts Layla off the stand by the front door, the muscles on his back flexing and rolling under his tan skin. I know it’s all in my head but his skin looks darker than I’ve ever seen it. All that foreign sunlight giving him a deeper hue.
He got back late last night from Hawaii but the week before he’d been in Brazil. Two weeks before that he was in Japan. He brings me something small and touristy from every place he visits – a keychain, a magnet, a little figurine. I have a collection starting on the wall by the door with the date he came home written on the back of each one. I see it every time I leave the apartment, every time I come inside, and it makes me smile to know that even though he’s not here, he’s coming back. He always comes back to me.
“I can handle a hot summer as long as I have air conditioning,” I tell him from the kitchen.
I live in peace in the cold air inside the condo knowing my parents are feeling the relief as well. I convinced them to sell the piano they got me for Christmas and buy a new air conditioner for the house. They weren’t thrilled about it first. Not until earlier this month when the heat wave started. Now they’re all smiles.
“You’re letting that sausage cook too long,” Lawson warns me.
“Shit,” I mutter. I flip it over and see that he’s right. It’s getting charred on one side. “How did you know that?!”
“I was timing it.”
“You’re a friggin’ witch, is what happened,” I whisper.
“I heard that.”
“I stand by it! You should not have been able to hear that.”
He comes to stand across the counter from me, smiling at my anger. “You’re not as quiet as you think you are.”
“Maybe I wasn’t trying.”
“Maybe.”
I kill the heat on the stove, giving up. “Will you please make the sandwich for me?”
“Nope. You said you wanted to be able to make them when I’m gone. You’ve gotta learn how.”
“Dude, please,” I plead pathetically. “I’m so hungry.”
