Crash Around Me

by Piper Lennox

  “Huh.” He’s got his brow furrowed, but I recognize the look: cogs turning, my idea taking hold. “That could work, actually.” He skirts the Segway around a pothole. Far less graceful and tech-savvy, I hit it dead-on and have to jump off before I fall. He laughs so hard, he has to brake.

  When we’ve gained our speed again, he shakes his head. “Shit. I just realized that if I do the route you’re talking about, I’ll have to stake the whole thing out and get landscaping up there. And when our property ends, I have to get permission from the landowners…. No way I can do all that in less than a week. And that’s not even counting the days we’d need this thing up and running for guests, so I can give the Kalanis data to make a decision.”

  While he talks, I see the crease between his eyebrows deepen. His smile trickles into a line, and he runs his hand from his chest down to his stomach.

  “Lot of work for one guy,” I point out. He nods wearily. “So—not that I’m not having fun—but...why are you hanging out with me, instead?”

  I meant to make him laugh again, praying for a glimpse of that smile that gives me a feeling like I’m drinking martinis and dancing to Sinatra in a lounge somewhere. Instead, he pulls more of the antacids I gave him from his pocket, wedged back into their paper tube as best he could.

  “You really need to see a doctor, if you do have an ulcer.”

  His look is withering. “Thank you.”

  “Unless you want a hole in your intestine,” I go on. “You know they can bleed and tear, right?”

  He pushes back his hair and ignores me.

  “So you didn’t know that.”

  Luka checks his watch. I check mine. Oscar is probably still asleep on the suite’s sofa; my phone hasn’t made a single noise since I’ve been out here.

  “If I go to a doctor, will you grab dinner with me afterward?”

  I reel, so much so that my Segway lurches in reverse. I correct and hiccup it forward.

  “As friends,” he adds softly. His gaze trips to my left hand. The ring might as well be shackling me to our suite’s door, I feel so tethered. So stuck.

  This is exactly why I don’t do relationships—why six months with Oscar, all 180-some vanilla days, was a milestone I’d never been able, nor cared enough, to reach. I shouldn’t feel guilty or wrong for hanging out with someone, or grabbing dinner with a friend. I shouldn’t have to wait until another person is asleep before I feel like I’m really on vacation.

  My shoulders square themselves. “Sure.”

  His brow raises, and there it is. That smile like the vibrations of piano strings and the smooth, cool rim of a martini glass.

  Ten

  Luka

  “This is not what I meant.”

  I sign my name with a flourish on the clipboard, writing “walk-in” under the appointment time, and flick the pen down the countertop to Tanya with a wink. “You just said I had to go to a doctor. Not my fault you weren’t specific enough.”

  “Okay,” she deadpans, flicking it back, “but it seemed pretty obvious I meant a human doctor.” Behind her, a Pekinese starts barking at a terrier, which sets off some hissing in two carriers across the waiting room. She winces until the noise dies down and says, “Not a vet.”

  “The Harlowes are medical geniuses. Just because they focus on animals instead of people doesn’t make them any less qualified.”

  “It literally does.” She follows me to two empty chairs. The Harlowe & Harlowe Veterinary Practice is newly renovated from the squat brick building I remember from childhood; now, floor-to-ceiling glass lines the waiting area, and the view is a panorama of the neighborhood below. We sit, Tanya sighs, and I wink again.

  “Lu—” The receptionist, still chewing the granola bar in her hand, stops short and scans the room with an amused look. “Luka Williams.” When she spots me, she shakes her head and waves the clipboard at the doors. “Go on back.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you do this on a regular basis?” Tanya whispers, smoothing her ponytail as we make our way to the back.

  “Not a regular basis. I’m more of an...occasional, longtime drop-in.”

  “What is it this time, Luka?” Hannah hides her smile as she closes the door of the examination room behind her. “Another surfing injury?”

  “No stitches required,” I assure her. “Quick question: do dogs get ulcers?”

  Tanya squints at me, tilting her head in confusion, but Hannah puts her hands into her lab coat pockets and nods. She knows my roundabout ways well, by now.

  “They can.”

  “Good. Then you can tell me if I’ve got one.”

  “It’d be easier to stitch you up again, honestly.” Her eyes catch on Tanya. “Hi.”

  “Oh, sorry—Hannah, this is my friend, Tanya. Tanya, Hannah Harlowe.” While they shake hello, I explain, “The Harlowes are friends with my parents. I went to school with their daughter.” Hannah pats the exam table, so I sit. “How is Colby, by the way?”

  “Still doing reception for that office in California.” She motions to my shirt buttons; I undo the top three and brace for the chill of the stethoscope. “I don’t know why she doesn’t just come back here. Her dad and I would give her a lot more hands-on experience before she starts vet school. Deep breath.”

  I inhale. She holds up her finger, listening, then nods. I exhale and repeat, until she pulls the scope back. “Kai’s the same way. I offered him a job as the surf instructor at Port last Christmas, but he turned it down..”

  “Didn’t know you guys offered surf lessons.”

  “We don’t. I could’ve created a whole team for him, gotten a wave simulator set up off the deck—”

  “Sometimes I think you won’t be satisfied until that eyesore’s taking up the entire island,” Hannah teases. From the corner of my eye, I see Tanya stiffen. “I’m not hearing anything unusual with your heart or lungs. What’s been going on?”

  “Burning pain, right here.” I motion to the space between my ribs and belly button. “Sometimes it spreads to my back. But it’s more...burn-y, in my chest.”

  “Any throat pain?”

  “At night, yeah. Like a stinging thing that comes and goes.”

  “Worse with stress?” I nod. “You take a lot of NSAIDs or anything?”

  I shake my head.

  Hannah clicks and unclicks a pen inside her pocket as she thinks. “It might be H. pylori, maybe overproduction of stomach acid. I can’t test you for any of that here, though. You need a human doctor.”

  “Told you,” Tanya sings quietly. I ignore her.

  “Here’s the thing—I don’t have time for appointments and tests and stuff yet. Can you just tell me if it’s, like, dire, or if I can wait a couple weeks?”

  Hannah gives me a smile-sigh combo and clicks her pen again, this time fishing it from her pocket and writing something on a lemon Starburst wrapper. When her daughter and I were working on a science project in middle school, a pile of them sat on their dining table at all times. Colby and I ate the pink and red ones, sorted the yellows into the mound for her mother to breeze by and grab a handful whenever she passed through, and abandoned the orange ones in a glass dish that, to my knowledge, no one ever touched.

  “Try some esomeprazole. You can get it over the counter—it reduces stomach acid. Antacids should help, too. Watch for any bloody vomit or stools—”

  “Got it,” I interrupt. Tanya snorts. “Thank you.”

  “Let’s see how that cut healed, while you’re here.” Without waiting for me to show her, Hannah crouches and lifts my pant leg to examine the scar. She and her daughter aren’t exactly experts in social situations; she doesn’t seem to notice or care that I’m hopping away.

  “All healed. Thanks, Hannah.” Finally, she lets go of my leg. I motion to Tanya to come on. The longer I’m here, the more probing questions I’ll get.

  “Tell your parents I said hey. Rochelle told me they stopped by yesterday.” She follows us to the reception area. “I think it real
ly helped.”

  My stomach aches again. This time, I know it’s guilt, the same flavor Dad heaped on me yesterday in the kitchen. Before I push through the door, I look at her.

  “Yeah. I, uh…I hope she’s doing okay. And that you guys are, too.”

  “Thank you.” Hannah pats my arm, half-affectionate, half shooing me away. “Keep me posted on the ulcer.”

  “Will do.” I wave. Tanya tells Hannah it was nice to meet her, and we’re gone.

  “Who’s Rochelle?” she asks, as soon as we’re back at our Segways. I stashed them around the building behind the dumpsters; she makes a face at the odor as we ride past and head for the road.

  “Hannah’s sister. She owns that house on Cramer I told you about. The one in pre-foreclosure. Her, uh…her daughter died, last year.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Eden was pretty young. Like, Kai’s age.”

  She stops, falling behind. I pivot the Segway and circle back.

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t saying ‘wow’ about that girl dying.” Her eyes are wide, and that green steels itself on my face. “I was saying it about you. How can you bid on a house when you know the person losing it?”

  “Hey, it’s not like Rochelle will be out on the street, all right? She basically lives with the Harlowes now. She has ever since Eden died. I don’t think she even wants the house, she’s let it go so much.”

  I can’t handle the disgust painting her face. It turns my guilt to anger in a flash. Who is she to judge?

  “Somebody’s going to get that house.” My words are the very same I issued to Dad yesterday in the kitchen, but this time, they’re simple and smooth as a knife. Just stating facts. “Might as well be me.”

  She scoffs again. “Way to convince me you aren’t heartless.”

  Now it’s me who stops. “Rochelle could still save her house, if she wanted to. It’s not my fault she’s been skipping payments.” I lean forward, farther this time, and veer around her. “I totally feel for her, but...but people die. You can’t let it take over your entire life.”

  “Losing a child and losing a brother are different things,” she says. “And everyone grieves in different ways. So maybe it was easy for you to not let Noe’s death take over your life, but that doesn’t—”

  “Where do you want to eat?”

  She’s not even fazed by the topic change. We do that often enough with each other: switch the track without warning. Remind the other that, after all, this is temporary.

  Her silence hits my back like ice, and I expect her to call off the doctor-and-dinner deal. It’s not like she needs me. She’s got somebody waiting for her.

  “Burgers,” she says.

  “Since when do you go for paper napkins?”

  “Since always.” The flash of green from behind her hair, as she looks at me with a shyness I know isn’t real, cranks up my heartbeat. “You’re the one who always took me to fancy places. I never asked.”

  A protest springs to my lips. But then I think about this, paging through every visit, each dinner over soft candlelight and hard drinks, and realize she’s right. She didn’t ask. I assumed.

  “Well,” I flounder, instead of admitting it, “you never said you didn’t like those places, either.”

  “I do like them. I’m just saying, burgers are nice, too.” She laughs to herself. “But, yeah, if I could eat every meal in a five-star restaurant, I probably would.”

  Once you marry Oscar, I think, you can. I laugh, too, but it’s so damn fake, I don’t know how she doesn’t catch it.

  “What was the cut the vet was talking about?” Tanya peers under the table, but I don’t show her. “And do you really go to her for surfing injuries?”

  “Sometimes, if they need a few stitches. Don’t make that face. Fixing people and pets aren’t as unrelated as you think.”

  “Do you get a treat at the end? A nice flea bath?”

  I kick her feet. She smiles and kicks mine back.

  “I know it’s weird, but I get seen way faster by the Harlowes. Even if it’s just them trying to get rid of me.” I pour us each a beer from the pitcher she ordered, another surprise. I’ve never seen her drink anything but top shelf liquor.

  “So the cut,” she prompts.

  “There was a groundswell at North Shore after Christmas. Like, just perfect sets, all day. But I got stupid, didn’t notice the shoulder—”

  “English, please.”

  I nudge her feet again. “Big storm, far away, equals good waves here.”

  “With you so far.”

  “Anyway, I picked a wave that was, in retrospect, not a good one. It closed out, knocked me off, and I cut myself on a broken bottle or something, when I hit the bottom. Jake saw and lost his shit, but it wasn’t as bad as it looked. A lot of blood, but not too deep.”

  She pulls a face. “Glad you’re okay. But knowing you, you’ve probably gotten even more since then, huh?”

  I sip and lick the foam from my lip to stall. “I haven’t gone surfing since then, actually. Not because I got hurt. I just…haven’t had time.”

  “Once again, then, I’m going to ask why you’re spending time with me, instead.” The bowl of orange slices she ordered wobbles as she grabs two, one in each hand, and squeezes the juice into her glass. “You could be out on the water.”

  “No, I’d be in my office.” I watch the bubbles rise in the pitcher and wonder why I suddenly feel so bummed out, just by stating a fact: I would be in my office right now, if I weren’t with her. There are at least twenty things I could be doing right now for the Segway trial, the new check-in system, and whatever other fires have erupted since I’ve been gone.

  “Back to the vet thing,” she says, and I prepare myself for more teasing. Instead, she tilts her head, trailing her finger around the rim of her glass. “I was kind of surprised you didn’t go off on her, when she made that crack about the resort taking over.”

  “Because the Harlowes don’t mean it when they say it. They’re just poking fun.”

  “So they like the resort?”

  I take another gulp of beer. It soothes the burn in my throat, though I’m sure it’ll make it much worse later. “They don’t like it or hate it. Like, on principle? They hate franchises and commercial stuff like that, because...that’s just how most locals are. But in practice, no. They don’t have a problem with it.”

  “Maybe because they know you can’t possibly compete with their business.” She takes a long drink, but I know she’s watching me for the subtlest sign of outrage. “Unless Port is adding an in-house vet practice anytime soon.”

  I’m determined not to fight with Tanya again. Something about our fights this trip are different from the others. They’re too real, cutting deeper than the arguments we’ve had before. Maybe it’s because we can’t make up in our usual way, channeling the tension into undressing each other that much faster.

  “Probably,” I say, laughing a little under my breath. It works. She sits straighter, surprised, and shuts up.

  Eleven

  Tanya

  I knew this was coming.

  I’ve been waiting for it all day. Thinking of it when I turned the ring on my finger to free the streak of tanning oil trapped behind it. Imagining it when I poured myself a fourth beer while Luka was still on his second.

  But when it happens, I’m still not ready for the hurricane that hits me.

  “It’s Kai,” Luka says, when his phone rings as we leave the burger joint. He parked our Segways right inside the entryway, a spot I was sure created a fire hazard, but which the owners—who nodded at him and asked about his parents; of course they were friends of his family, too—didn’t seem to mind one bit.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey!”

  I recognize Mollie’s voice immediately, even in the small, tinny chirp before Luka sets the phone to speaker.

  “Hey, Moll!” I snatch the phone from him. He doesn’t protest.

  “Oh, good,
you guys are together!” I hear her relay this fact to Kai in the background. They sound downright giddy. “I called your phone, but you didn’t pick up.”

  When I look at Luka, he shrugs. I dig through my purse; my phone isn’t there.

  “Sorry,” I tell her. “Must have left it in my room.”

  “That’s okay, now we can just tell you guys together.” She pauses. I can picture her right now, bouncing on her tiptoes, barely able to contain herself. “We’re engaged!”

  “All right, man, you did it!” Luka laughs and takes the phone back from me. “I thought you’d wimp out.”

  “Very funny,” Kai calls. In the background, we hear traffic and the car radio, turned low.

  “Congrats, Moll.” My smile is probably as big as hers, but the tears rising into my sinuses are definitely exclusive to me.

  Luka notices. He pulls the phone closer.

  “Yeah, congrats, you guys. Hope you like the ring, Mollie—we helped him pick it out. The one he almost got you was hideous.”

  Mollie’s laugh drowns Kai’s complaints. I miss her so much, suddenly, even though we’re now closer in distance than when I was on the mainland. Maybe it’s because there’s a big, blue ocean between us, instead of a map.

  Or, more likely, it’s because the one person I want to talk to about my abrupt, inexplicable sadness, to stay up late with and analyze why my happiness for her is cloudy and layered, is the one person I can’t.

  I power through more congratulations as they talk: she asks me to be her maid of honor; Kai asks Luka to be his best man. We both say yes, of course, do you even need to ask. The last thing we hear before they disconnect is Kai teasing her about something, and her laugh filtering through the speaker.

  Luka stares at the Call Ended screen, clicks the phone off, and looks at me.