This Sky

by Autumn Doughton

  Gemma is looking at him and laughing.

  I’m looking at Gemma. She’s brilliant and dewy. The oatmeal-colored sweater she had on earlier is drooped limply over her arm. Her soft brown hair is falling around her naked shoulders, tickling the skin below her collarbone. Slim tracks of sunlight dust her face, exposing a smattering of faint freckles over the bridge of her nose and cheeks.

  And it’s like I’m being dragged into something big and powerful. Time seems to stretch out, making ripples of energy all around me. It reminds me of that moment when a wave starts to build below the surface. You can’t see it, but you can feel the friction—the rush of water being sucked back into the mouth of the ocean.

  For once, I’m not thinking about the void—that tense ache gnawing on my gut. I’m not thinking about what a failure I am. I’m not thinking about the past. I’m not thinking about Abby. I’m not thinking about school or bills or anything but this precise moment.

  “So,” I say.

  “So,” she says back, her mouth lifting at the corners.

  “So…” Now I’m smiling too.

  “What happened there?” she asks and points to my knee, where a faint red scar line peeks from the top of the flesh-colored brace I wear when I surf.

  “Shark attack,” I tell her.

  Her eyes get huge with a mixture of disbelief and interest. Her mouth falls open, exposing a row of slightly crooked bottom teeth.

  “No,” she breathes. Her mouth closes and she rubs at this little line in the middle of her forehead, above her glasses. It’s so cute.

  I want to laugh but I keep my face an austere mask, my lips serious. I nod. “A great white actually.”

  She slumps back against the door of the apartment. Her prismatic eyes narrow down to two slits and she says, “You’re fucking with me?”

  “I’m fucking with you,” I confirm, finally letting myself chuckle. “I tore up my ACL when I was fourteen. I had surgery and it healed but it still gives me trouble sometimes if I’m not careful. The brace is just a precaution I wear whenever I know I’m going to be putting strain on it.”

  “How’d you tear it?”

  “Surfing. I was on the junior tour at the time. We were at a competition and I got nailed by another rider. I blacked out but they told me later that I hit the bottom at a funny angle and my knee bent the wrong way. I was lucky that I surfaced at all.”

  She’s surprised, maybe a little impressed. “The junior tour? That sounds serious. Is it like some kind of surfing competition thingy?”

  Surfing competition thingy? I shrug in a way that I hope is off-handed. “Something like that.”

  I don’t tell her that a few years after the junior tour, I was on the pro tour and almost took home the ASP title. I don’t tell her that I was voted Rookie of the Year and that there was a six-page spread about me in Sport’s Illustrated. I don’t tell her that two years ago I earned almost a million dollars in prize money and was signed on for a five-year endorsement deal. I don’t tell her any of this because then I would have to explain about the drugs and the arrest and my guilt. And I’d have to tell her that I blew everything.

  Standing here, she has no idea who I am, and I have to admit that I like it. Right now, I am a clean slate—there are no expectations, no presumptions, and no judgment. And I have to wonder, if Gemma knew all of it, would she still be looking at me like she thinks I’m somebody worth her while?

  “At fourteen?”

  “Yes.”

  She offers up a bright smile. “That’s amazing. I mean, it sounds amazing.”

  Her tone is definitely curious and I can tell she’s about to ask more about surfing and the junior tour so I decide to take this conversation on a tangent. “So what were you like?”

  Her head goes to the side. She frowns, punches out her chin a little. “What do you mean?”

  “When you were fourteen,” I clarify.

  She lifts her face to study me and her eyes change, lightening to a metallic green. “I don’t know. Mostly I was lame.”

  It’s such an honest thing to say that something swells inside of me. “I don’t believe that.”

  “It’s the truth. I wanted to be an actress, if that tells you anything.”

  “Drama club?” I guess.

  “Oh yeah,” she confirms. “Drama club and camp and Shakespeare quotes. My parents are total nu-hippies, so that didn’t really help matters. I showed up with things like quinoa and flax seed granola bars topped with sunflower butter in my lunch box. I liked books more than a normal fourteen-year-old girl probably should, and old black and white movies, and Walt Whitman.”

  I’m getting the picture. “It doesn’t sound lame to me.”

  “I appreciate that, but get real. In high school these are not cool things.”

  “But you had friends?”

  “I had my family—my parents and brother,” she says, something in her eyes shifting. “And at school I had Julie, but that was pretty much it. The truth is that I spent a lot of my free time playing Gin Rummy and Crazy Eights with my elderly neighbor and her friends.”

  “Crazy Eights?” I laugh because I like the idea of Gemma playing card games with a bunch of old ladies. I’m picturing her at a round table with a cigar in her mouth and a bowler on her head.

  “Exactly. Barb made a mean apple crumble and was a shark with a deck of cards.” She makes a face. “How about you?”

  I can play Go Fish and that’s about it. “I’m okay I guess.”

  Gemma absently swipes her bangs from her forehead and snorts. “No, I meant, what were you like when you were fourteen?”

  “Well, I wasn’t playing Gin Rummy with a bunch of old ladies if that’s what you’re asking,” I tell her.

  “Right.” She nods once like she’s reminding herself of something. “Even then I’m sure you had the whole hot surfer vibe going for you.”

  I lift one eyebrow. “The whole hot surfer vibe?”

  “Don’t be coy. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” She switches into a terrible California surf accent and extends her pinkie and thumb in the Shaka sign. “Hang ten on that gnarly swell, brah!”

  I laugh. “Brah?”

  She laughs also. “Sorry, was that offensive?”

  “Nah,” I say, shaking my head. “I love being a stereotype.”

  “Just don’t tell me that you’re not aware that girls completely lose their minds over that kind of stuff,” she says, her voice going back to normal.

  At the moment, I’m only curious about what one girl loses her mind over. “I hate to break it to you, brah, but I don’t think anyone has said ‘hang ten’ in fifty years.”

  “I told you I used to hang out with my eighty-year-old neighbor and like old black and white movies. The old-timey jargon obviously wore off on me.”

  I laugh as I rotate her hand, letting my fingers remain against her sun-warmed skin for a second more than is necessary. “And when you do the Shaka, you always keep your palm facing your body.”

  She wrinkles her nose some more. “Sorry. If I’m being honest, I’ve avoided your people like the plague.”

  “My people?”

  “Yeah,” she says, smiling like the sun. “Your ilk.”

  I can’t help but smile back. “You know most people just don’t get it. There’s this feeling you have on a good surfing day. It’s you and the water and the air rushing all around you. It’s the closest I get to living all the way to the edges and only a surfer knows that feeling. Everything seems endless.” I pause to think about it. My eyes close and my free hand goes out to my side as if reaching for the water. “It’s pure oblivion.”

  When I finish talking, I worry that she’ll laugh at me for taking the description so far. But she doesn’t. She blows out a breath and says, “That sounds wonderful actually.”

  “It is. You should try it,” I say, noticing the way her dark lashes look against her light skin. For a moment, I let myself fall into a fantasy about putting my mouth the
re and feeling her delicate lashes flicker against the sensitive skin of my lips.

  “No way,” she says, blinking away the image.

  “Why not?”

  “Um… because.”

  “You live in California.”

  “So?”

  “That means you’re a Californian.” Now my heart is speeding up. Maybe it’s because five seconds ago I was thinking about attacking her with my mouth, or maybe it’s because right now I’m picturing Gemma on the water, a wetsuit clinging to every curve of her body and her wet hair trailing down her back.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means you have to try to surf at least once. It’s part of our state code of honor.”

  “Like a voting requirement?”

  “Right. It’s like cheering for the Lakers, hating Fresno for no real reason and thinking avocados and fro-yo make everything better.”

  For a moment, she goes quiet, considering it. “Have you forgotten that I fell off a stool the other night?”

  My chest rumbles as I recall the scene. Gemma splayed on the floor, her blue dress twisted around her thighs, her face on fire. “No, I haven’t forgotten. I don’t think I will ever forget.” And I won’t.

  “Then you know there’s no way I could manage to balance myself on a tiny plank. On top of the water.”

  “Excuses, excuses.”

  “It’s not an excuse. It’s fact. Some things are immutable. Newton’s law of inertia. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. Relativity. Gemma Sayers and athletics do not mix.”

  I laugh some more. Fuck. I like this girl. I like her a lot.

  “Just one time,” I urge her.

  “I’d have no idea what to do.”

  “I can teach you.” Please say yes.

  She shakes her head. “It would be a disaster. I’d be a disaster.”

  “Everyone is bad in the beginning. The first time I surfed, I split my lip open and gave myself a black eye with the end of my board.”

  She points her finger at me. “Umm, if you’re trying to reassure me, you’re doing a crap job of it.”

  My chest rumbles. “I’ll borrow a wetsuit from Claudia and we can try later this week.”

  She stares at me with those multicolored eyes for a long moment. “I can’t imagine Claudia surfing. She seems more of the ass-kicking emo type.”

  I shrug. “She’s not half-bad actually. Our uncle was a big surfer back in his day. He made sure we were both on boards by the time we could walk.”

  Gemma thinks about this. She sucks her bottom lip in between her teeth.

  “Say yes,” I urge her in a low voice, my head swimming and my lips strangely numb. “Say yes,” I repeat, hating how much I want her to agree to this.

  She frowns and I can tell I’ve got her. I hold back a whoop of victory and wait for her to speak. “Maybe.”

  “I’ll take it,” I whisper quickly, before she can change her mind. “And Gemma?”

  She tips her head my way and moves her glasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger. Adorable. “Yeah?”

  I don’t think about it. I reach forward, lightly cup her chin and run my thumb against the soft corner of her mouth right where her lips meet. It’s rash but I can’t be sorry. Her skin is feathery under my touch and she’s close enough that I can feel her warm breath against my fingers. I think I even catch a hint of strawberry-flavored lip gloss.

  She laughs, but this time it’s a delicate kind of laugh. Almost like a sigh that changed its mind halfway through. “I had a hair?”

  “No,” I say, dropping my arm and backing away from her slowly, my eyes still holding hers. Wyatt follows, sticking close by my feet. “No hair this time.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Gemma

  The next few days pass by in a strange sort of blur.

  I spend half of my time crying over Ren and checking to see if he’s called or emailed me, and the other half obsessing over Landon and our morning at the beach. I remember the way his body had looked, glistening with sunlight as he toweled seawater from his skin. And I think of the feel of his fingers on my cheek and I catch myself shivering. Actually shivering.

  I tell Julie that my heart might be suffering some form of romantic schizophrenia. Her advice? Another scoop of ice cream.

  On Monday, I started my new job at Aunt Zola’s and discovered that waitressing is both exhausting and surprisingly fun. That first night, Claudia lets me shadow her as she waits tables. By Wednesday, I’m on my own with two high-tops and three booths.

  I keep hoping to see Landon at work or around the apartment complex, but on that front, I’m disappointed.

  I consider walking over to his apartment and just knocking, but I have no idea what to say. Should I make up some neighborly excuse like, “I’m in the middle of making cupcakes and am wondering if you happen to have any eggs?”

  Ugh. Everything I think of ends up sounding completely contrived, so I stay away.

  And I console myself with the knowledge that watching old movies with Weebit is far safer than opening myself up to another guy anyway.

  Just when I am almost convinced that Landon Young was simply a figment of my grief-addled imagination, he appears at the door in flesh and bone. He’s holding two surfboards.

  “Hey,” he says. “Are you up for your first lesson?”

  I have to blink a few times to make sure that I’m not seeing things.

  “You were serious?” I’m in my pajamas again and my hair is bad news. There’s a half-eaten bowl of soggy Cheerios in my hand.

  Landon, however, is standing in front of me in a pair of board shorts and a plain t-shirt looking like a modern day Greek god.

  He rocks back on his heels and my heart does a little flip.

  “You were serious?” I ask again, thinking that just once I’d like this guy to see me when I’m not dressed like a hobo or falling off a stool. Is that too much to ask?

  “Of course I was serious,” he answers me, taking a step closer, his eyes searching my face. “Weren’t you?”

  Landon

  “One.”

  She rotates her arms.

  “Two.”

  She positions her hands flat on the deck just below her shoulders.

  “Three.”

  A spray of sand whips in the air as she comes up fast and throws both of her arms out for balance like I’ve shown her. She bends her legs at the knees to absorb the impact and centers her weight above the stringer.

  We’re on the beach and I’m taking her through a simulation of the pop-up. We’ve been at it for forty-five minutes and I’ve already talked about the basic mechanics of catching a wave and how to paddle out.

  “Well?” she asks, turning her head and looking at me expectantly. The sunlight catches on the dark gold streaks in her hair and floods her eyes with an improbable glassy blue.

  “Better,” I say and step over the nose of the board so that I’m behind her, close enough that I can smell her shampoo and the sweat on her skin.

  “It felt better,” she says, nodding.

  “Good. Now, next time try turning your left foot out a little more.” I watch with an appraising eye as she repositions her foot farther out on the board. “And you’ll feel more stable if you widen your legs another couple of inches and arch your back even more.” I press my fingertips just above the waistband of the stretchy dark grey bikini she’s got on to the bare skin of her lower back.

  She nods again. “Got it.”

  “I know you naturally want to look down to see where your feet land on the deck, but remember that if you keep your chin and eyes up you’ll have an easier time maintaining your balance.”

  “All right.”

  “And your hips,” I say, my hand skimming across the slope of her waist to align her hips with mine, “should be like this.” My thumb touches the edge of her suit and I have to fight to keep my fingers from pushing farther.

  “Okay,” she says, angling her neck so that my breath is mov
ing over her ear.

  I swallow hard and force myself to take a step back. Shit, all morning, I’ve been questioning every move I make. Scratch that. I’ve been questioning myself all week.

  Should I go over and talk to her? Or is it best to keep away? My thoughts about her have been all over the place. On Monday, I even asked Tish to switch up the schedule because I wasn’t ready to face Gemma at work. I figured I’d end up staring at her the whole night. How juvenile is that?

  Really, it’s almost embarrassing how strongly I react to every movement she makes. And being so close—touching her body, feeling her soft skin, watching her lithe muscles stretch as she pushes herself through the moves—has been a special kind of torture for me.

  Her eyes flutter and my stomach twists. She laughs and my heart pounds. Her fingers casually brush my wrist and my insides quake. What twenty-two year old gets buzzed and jittery like this over a girl?

  Gemma stretches her back, inadvertently pushing her chest forward. “So, sensei, what’s the verdict?”

  “You’re doing really well,” I tell her, my eyes cutting away so I don’t get caught staring at her breasts.

  She blows out an irregular breath and rubs her hands together. “Thanks. This is even harder than I thought it would be and I’m not even on the water yet.”

  You can say that again.

  “It is hard,” I find myself saying, “but once you figure it out, there’s nothing like it. Everything else disappears.”

  “Oblivion?” She has her hand cupped over her eyes to block the sun. A light wind picks up, whipping around us, blowing the ends of her hair against my forearms.

  “That’s right,” I say, smiling and reaching for our wetsuits. “So, are you ready to paddle out and see what you can do?”

  “Now?”

  I look back and see that her jaw is agape. “Yes, now.”

  With a dubious head nod, Gemma takes the wetsuit we borrowed from my sister and sucks her bottom lip between her teeth. “Do you really think I can do this? Don’t I have more beach work to do? I thought it would take a week to work our way to the actual water.”