This Sky

by Autumn Doughton

  I don’t realize how terrified I am until I see Landon’s car, parked crookedly between some scrubby palms and a trashcan on the side of the road.

  Then I’m crying. Wet, hot tears are pooling in the palms of my hands. And I’m laughing too. Crying because I’d been imagining the worst. Laughing because I know that we at least have a chance to get this thing right.

  It’s windy but not cold outside the car. I leave my shoes in the backseat and take off running on the path that leads down to the rocky beach where air and water meet. As I round the last bend, the wind picks up, coming in from the south and whipping up dry sand around me. I wipe my eyes and pull my hair to the side, twisting it and tucking it into a makeshift knot.

  It’s not completely dark yet and it doesn’t take me long to find him. There are five surfers waiting on the break. They’re pretty far out but I know which one is Landon right away. He’s on his knees, his back to me, his gaze facing west. He’s backlit by the very last tendrils of daylight—shades of blue, soft and greying like well-worn denim.

  Before I can make it down to the shoreline and figure out what to do next, a wave mounts beyond the break. It begins slowly, a rising shadow against the deepening horizon, and starts to pick up speed as it closes in on the break.

  Landon’s head twists and he falls to his stomach. His arms start to go. I watch his body tighten and his feet get into position. Though I know it’s coming, I still catch a thrill when he explodes from the board all at once and cuts to the side, ahead of the water now. He’s fast and smooth, all graceful lines and power as he slips into the channel of the wave.

  When I reach the spot where the sand turns wet, I sit down and pull my knees up to my chest and watch. I watch him fly and zigzag through the water. I watch and I wait for the moment his head tilts just right and he spots me on the beach. I wait for the lift of his shoulders—that slight tick of recognition that reverberates down my spine like the stroke of a kick drum. And I wait for the bend in his legs and hips as he shifts the nose of the board toward shore. Toward me.

  Swallowing down my nerves, I stand from the sand and walk out to meet him.

  Water is dripping down his chin. He’s carrying one of his surfboards. His hair is slicked back and dark, and his soggy lashes are fanned out like spider legs. Right away, I can see the pain in his eyes.

  “Hi,” he says quietly, scrubbing his fingers over his mouth.

  “Hi,” I say like nothing has happened, like everything has happened.

  Landon sets his board down with a soft whump. Then we just look at each other for a moment. My heart is going like a hummingbird’s wings and I’m thinking, So now what? For the past few hours, I’ve thought of nothing but Landon, but now that I’m in front of him, I feel clueless. In my head, the plan never went past locating him.

  I take a breath and wing it. “Claudia told me about your mom. I’m so sorry.”

  His jaw goes tight. He nods and stares back at me almost like it’s a challenge. “Julie told me about Ren.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Then bravely, I take a step toward him.

  “Here’s the thing,” I start, my voice sounding more solid than I’m expecting. “I know a lot has happened but I don’t want to do this.”

  Landon’s lips pull apart and I realize he’s completely misunderstood what I’ve said.

  “No, no,” I backtrack quickly, shaking my head and wagging my hands. So much for getting this right. “That’s not what I—” Ugh. Deep breath. Try again. “I don’t want to do this.” I point, but he’s still not getting it.

  “I don’t want to lose something good the minute I’ve found it!” I shout this time, like raising the volume of my voice will make my intention clearer. My pulse is going dizzyingly fast. “I don’t want to be scared anymore, Landon. I know you’re hurt but I don’t want you to push me away. Don’t you see what I’m saying?” He makes no move and I keep going. “I don’t want a stupid misunderstanding to be the end of it all. And I don’t want the clichéd movie moment where we each go our own way for a bit and thoughtful indie music plays in the background while we figure it all out. I… I can’t—I don’t want that at all,” I gasp. I’m crying again—shit—I’m really crying. I can’t help it. It’s kind of been a doozy of a day.

  Landon looks away. He pushes both his hands into his hair—his trademark move—and takes a shaky breath. A hundred years later, he says, “Tell me, what do you want?”

  I don’t have the answers to the all the questions, but I do have the answer to this one.

  “I want you,” I say quickly. And as soon as the statement leaves my tongue, relief blooms in my chest. Because I see the look on his face and it’s the one I was hoping for. Inching closer, I go on, “I want strings.”

  “With me?” he asks, his voice a braid of disbelief and awe. His sad, dark eyes are wide as a yawning mouth.

  “No, with Wyatt,” I tease. “Yes, with you. I want promises and expectations. I want inside jokes. I want hand signals and the past and the future. All of it.”

  He blinks. “You want to sit on the same side of a booth as me?”

  My eyes are still wet but my mouth forms a smile. “Actually, that’s still a no.”

  “Flowers?”

  “Nu-uh, they don’t last,” I sniff.

  He considers this. “And you want things that last?”

  I rock on my toes and feel the damp sand roll beneath me. “With you I do.”

  “What about Ren?”

  “Don’t you get it?” I ask, reaching my hand out. I touch his arm through his wetsuit. “There is no Ren. Only you.”

  “Me?”

  “You.”

  “Why? I’m not—” Landon swallows. He looks at the place where I’m touching him. “Why?”

  Look, I’m not so naïve that I don’t understand how much we have to work out. Nothing between us is settled or done with.

  Landon has demons—maybe an entire closet full of skeletons. And his mother died today. Even if she was a drug addict who disappointed him and was never there for him, her death means something big. I get that.

  As for me—I still don’t know where I’m going, but I do know that I’m sick and tired of stopping myself before I have a chance to get there. I want the little victories. I want the joys and hurts and the mess. I want the burning rejections and the screaming invitations. I want risks. I want it all. I want to be the girl I was before—the one who hopped in her car, turned the music up, and drove across the country without a plan. I want the wind in my hair and the sun on my skin. And I refuse to spend another minute trapped inside this dark, stuffy cocoon.

  So I twine my fingers through his, push up on my toes, and I kiss him.

  I kiss him with the rising moon casting a shivering silver cone over us. With the dark water brushing up against our bare feet. With the dusty wind galloping around our bodies.

  I kiss him and I taste the cold, salty water in his mouth and the tears leaking from the inside corners of his eyes. I kiss him softly. Desperately. Like I’ve never kissed another person before. I kiss him and I press my fingers over his heart like I’m claiming it, like I’m saying, this is mine. And when he cups my face within the warm circle of his hands and kisses me back, I tell him the truth. “Because I love you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Gemma

  It’s been five days.

  I wish I could report that I poured honey all over Ren’s crotch and that was the end of it.

  I wish I could say after Landon and Claudia’s mother died, all the guilt and the hurt and the old feelings were resolved and put to rest.

  I wish I could tell you that when we kissed under the moon with the ocean at our feet, the camera pulled back, music swelled and the final credits started to roll up from the bottom of the screen.

  But, you’re too smart to buy into that ending, so I’ll give you the truth instead.

  The truth is that my bold move at the coffee shop was the equivalent of throwing gasoline on a f
ire. As it turns out, someone caught the whole thing on a camera phone. By nine that night, the video had been sold off to one of the gossipmonger websites. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  For days, photographers have camped out in front of the apartment complex just waiting for a glimpse of the girl who gave Ren Parkhurst what he had coming to him. The headlines are absurd.

  Girlfriend’s SWEET Revenge

  Sugar Pie, Honey—OH NO!

  I am, like, the unwilling Gloria Steinem of scorned women everywhere. Despite my protests, Smith and Julie have set up a webpage for me. Now, I get fan mail. Fan mail! Some of it’s nasty, but mostly, the messages come from women who thank me for living out their fantasies. And, actually, that part is pretty cool.

  Another interesting development is that a friend of Claudia’s, who creates ten-minute sitcoms for the web and has a decent following, is now begging me to collaborate with him. He showed up at Aunt Zola’s during my shift last night and refused to leave until I gave him a “maybe.” Six margaritas later, hands clasped and crawling on his knees like a rejected suitor, he had his wish. We’re meeting tomorrow for coffee and brainstorming. Truth be told, I might be just a teeny-tiny bit excited about it.

  But the photographers who are living down in the parking lot? That does not strike my fancy at all. A world popping with flashbulbs and inappropriate questions launched like water balloons is not one I want to live in. Ever. Landon assures me that it’s going to blow over any minute. Julie agrees. She says that a Disney pop princess will get knocked up by a backup dancer or something and people will lose interest in me. My fingers are crossed.

  As for Landon and Claudia… How do you forgive? How do you live with the furious regret of should-have-been? How do you say goodbye when it doesn’t feel over? How do you accept that life doesn’t wait around for punctuation points and happily-ever-afters? How do you grieve through the anger?

  They’re still figuring it out.

  And each day is a struggle.

  Sometimes Landon is mad. He goes silent and distant and so far away that I think we’re living on opposite continents. These are the times, I crawl to him, trudging across land and sea, and I touch his face and speak to the shadows until he comes back to me.

  Sometimes he’s happy and we watch movies in his bed. Naked under the cool sheets. Our legs twisted together. My head resting on his chest. My hair rippling over his heart. And later we make spicy fish tacos for dinner and we put on music and dance lazy circles around his apartment. His hand—solid and real on my lower back. His breath tickling my ear. We tell each other the stories that live inside our heads. We smile. We laugh.

  And sometimes he’s sad. He writes entries in his journal—the one he started for school but now keeps mainly for himself. He cries. He tells me about the past. And when he does, I hold him to my body and kiss his cheeks, wet and warm with tears. I don’t know the right things to say, but I talk anyway. I tell him that I love him. I tell him that it’s going to be okay. And most of the time, I think he believes me.

  Tonight, with the sinking sun as our witness, we all go down to Oceanside Pier and we scatter Abigail Young’s ashes into the water.

  Landon squeezes my hand and holds his breath as we watch the ashes roll on the surface for a silent moment before being swallowed by the deep mouth of the Pacific. There are no words. No tears. But there is something else. Something small and round and hopeful that feels a lot like peace.

  When everyone else starts to leave—their footsteps sounding like horse hooves on the worn wooden planks—Landon holds me back. He pulls me close and tips my chin up so that I’m looking right into his eyes. And beneath the melting golden sky, he tells me that he loves me.

  And walking toward the car, with his words in my ears and his kiss, hot and sweet on my lips like melted sugar, I think about how I was wrong before. Maybe the point isn’t whether or not you become a moth or a butterfly. Maybe the point is that, either way, you’ve got wings.

  Landon

  Six in the morning. A Monday.

  I’m driving with the windows open and the music on. The sun is breaking in the east, spilling a yoke of burred gold and orange over the earth.

  Just before the freeway cuts toward Topanga, I pull off and park beneath the blue-grey shadow of a cliff. It was a long drive, but from what I can see of the break through the openings in the guardrail, well worth it.

  Wyatt makes an impatient sound and pops his head between the seats. I open the door and let him hop over my lap. Then I reach across the center console and brush my thumb back and forth on Gemma’s arm.

  Her eyelids flutter. “Are we here?” she mumbles, her voice slurred with sleep.

  I laugh softly. “We’re here.”

  She curls into the passenger door and smacks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Just give me a minute.”

  “I told you to stay home and sleep,” I whisper, leaning over to kiss the hollow indentation just above her collarbone.

  She squirms but lifts her arm up to hold me in place. “And I told you—if you’re serious about making a comeback then you’re going to need all the encouragement you can get.”

  I smile against her skin. “And how are you planning to encourage me to get ready for the tour?”

  Gemma tilts her head back and uses her hands to pull my mouth up to hers. As our lips meet, she hesitates and just… breathes into me for a moment. I close my eyes, losing myself in the silk of her sleep-warmed skin and the gentle scent of her shampoo filling my head. My hands move lower, following the line of her body, sliding across her waist. I feel the tip of her tongue slip across the crease of my mouth. I groan and press myself against her. Her lips part and—

  “Wha—?” I tumble forward into an empty seat.

  When I blink my eyes open, I see that Gemma is standing outside the car with her hand braced on the door. The early sun is caught in her hair and on the tops of her shoulders.

  She shakes her head and sighs dramatically. “Landon, I don’t know how I’ll encourage you. I guess I’ll just have to come up with something.”

  I laugh. “Point well made.”

  “Well, come on then,” she says, impatiently waving her arm toward the beach. “Wyatt’s already down there barking his head off.”

  “You know, I’m not even sure this will work. I don’t know that I’ll get through qualifying, let alone make it into the rankings.”

  She shrugs. “I don’t think the point is whether or not you make it. I think the point is that you try.”

  I nod and ten minutes later, we’re paddling out on our boards. We pass the whitewater, ducking through the incoming waves, letting the ocean wash, salty and cold and so alive over our heads. When we reach the break, I remind Gemma to check her line on the beach so that the current won’t carry her too far. Then we rest for a minute—our stomachs pointed at the lightening sky, our fingertips drifting along the top of the water.

  “Do you worry that we’ll run out of things to talk about?” she says out of nowhere.

  I smile at the rising sun. “You’re kidding? We’ll always have something to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Our pet peeves,” I remind her.

  “We can’t fall back on that every time,” Gemma says.

  “We’ll think of something.”

  “Can you think of something right now?” she asks me.

  I rub my chest and chuckle. “Well, it’s hard when you put me on the spot.”

  “See?” she says like I’ve proved her point. “Nothing to talk about.”

  I sit up so that I can see her face. She’s frowning. “You’re serious?”

  “Well, what if you start surfing competitively again and you remember that you’re this amazing superstar and suddenly I seem very uninteresting?”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I assure her, looking west, over an ocean that seems endless from here. “Okay, I’ve got it. And it’s something we can debate for the rest
of our lives.”

  Gemma pushes her wet hair back and waits.

  “Try to name one thing that doesn’t go with either cheese or chocolate.”

  She laughs. “What do you mean?”

  “I propose that every food you can think of works with either cheese or chocolate and I challenge you to name a food that doesn’t.”

  “Anything?”

  “It can’t be too specific. Think of basic things like pasta, barbeque, ice cream. Deli sandwich. That kind of stuff.”

  “Okay.” She’s smiling now. “Zucchini.”

  “Zucchini? Nah, roasted zucchini sprinkled with parmesan cheese? That’s delicious.”

  Her laughter fills the sky. “Sushi?”

  “Lots of sushi rolls use cream cheese, which, by virtue of name alone, makes it a cheese.”

  “Peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she says, nodding.

  “I say you can add chocolate to that sandwich and have it be delicious.”

  Gemma thinks. “Hmmm… chips?”

  “Cheese dip,” I shoot back.

  “Candy canes?”

  “Chocolate-covered candy canes.”

  Our eyes meet and we both laugh.

  “Fine, you win this round but I’m warning you… I’ll be thinking,” she says in a teasing voice.

  “You can think about it for as long as it takes,” I tell her, not joking. “I’ll be waiting.”

  She looks at my face like she can’t quite believe I’m real. And when she finally smiles at me, it’s the answer to a million questions neither of us will have to ask again. It’s possibility, warm and glowing in the palm of my hand. It’s as true and infinite as this perfect sky.

  “Gemma, I love you forever.” And I do. I love her so much that it burns, that I wonder if anyone has ever loved another person like this before.

  If it’s possible, her smile gets wider. “I love you too. Forever.” She laughs happily. “Now, enough jabbering. Are you ready to start surfing?”