Her Hometown Girl

by Lorelie Brown

  “No way! I want to go. Can you take me?”

  I freeze everything except for the way I look back up at her. “Are you teasing?”

  “No.” There’s simplicity in her eyes that tells me she’s being honest. Her mouth is curved into a slight smile. “I don’t want to, like, go on a safari where I’m shooting an endangered animal in a pen or anything. But being out in the woods and part of nature and really seeing what I could do? It’s an experience I haven’t had.”

  “Are you an experience junkie?”

  “Pretty much. I’ve already been snowboarding and skydiving and climbed mountains. I’m on the go a lot.”

  I’m a homebody. I can’t count how many times Jody complained about my reluctance to go out with her. I didn’t ever want to go shopping, or to parties, or to gallery openings. Movies hold very little appeal to me and red-carpet events even less.

  But taking Cai into the woods? That’s got appeal. “Ever been four wheeling?”

  She shakes her head. “Driven a baja buggy in Cabo though.”

  “Oh, it’s so much fun. Mine’s at home still.”

  “You still consider Idaho home?”

  I’ve never thought about it before, and suddenly I feel like a cat in a room of rocking chairs. I want to tuck in all the pieces of myself. Or better yet run and hide under a bed. “Is that bad?”

  “Why would it be?” She’s confused. I’ve confused her.

  The view out the window has slipped toward evening. We’ve been here longer than I thought. I bite my bottom lip. “Want to go for a walk on the beach?”

  She watches me for a longer moment than I’d like. She sees through me. I don’t even need her to say it. “Yeah, sure.”

  She tosses some cash on the table, and we both wave to Bonnie. Cai also waves to the little group of surfers. A couple wave back, and one flashes a hang-loose sign. It’s cute. Before I came to California, I thought people only did that in movies.

  Between the stonework deck of the bar and the sandy beach is a low wall. The lack of feeling in my cheeks says maybe I’ve had more to drink than I thought I did, so I sit to take off my flip-flops instead of kicking them off and having to lean down. I bury my toes in the still-warm sand and a happy sigh escapes me. “Idaho doesn’t have anything like this, but living in Los Feliz didn’t give me much time at the beach anyway. And my new place is in San Marino. Still no beach. It’s closer to school though.”

  “Are you getting your master’s?”

  “No, I’m a second-grade teacher at Woodbridge Academy.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  I shrug. “I’d be surprised if you had. It’s a super tiny private school.”

  Cai lets her shoes dangle from two fingers and holds her free hand toward me. “Come on. Let’s walk to the pier.”

  I squint south. The shadowy pier isn’t that far away. “Okay.”

  I tuck my hand in Cai’s as if it’s perfectly natural. We have no awkward bit where we try to figure out whose hand goes in front and no one’s wrist is bent at an unnatural angle. Everything as smooth as if I’d dreamed up a perfect date.

  I catch the tip of my tongue between my teeth. Worry jumps on me and weighs down my shoulders. Maybe I’m living in a land of wishful thinking. It took me so long to realize that Jody was mean. It took finding her sleeping with that guy to recast everything we’d been through in a harsh light. Only then did I understand that I’d often seen what I wanted to see or swallowed lies that I wanted to hear.

  Or walked away from subjects that were too hard to pursue because I was afraid of Jody’s reactions.

  My reactions are the ones that matter. I have to put myself first. If I can’t do that, I’m bound to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

  I squeeze Cai’s hand. “I understand if this is hard to talk about, but … I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. About why you avoid commitment?”

  Her sigh is easier than the snapping that I might have expected. The corners of her eyes don’t tense with anger or fury. That’s a good sign. “It’s hard to talk about.”

  “I kinda figured it would be.” I make my smile as endearing as I can. Except I’ve had three drinks, so there’s a strong possibility I’m simply embarrassing myself. Normal face. Normal face. “When someone makes a blanket statement like that, that they’re not looking for a relationship, one of two things are true.”

  “What’s that?” She seems amused with me, but I’m not backing down. I don’t think. I don’t mean to, at least.

  I tug Cai toward the water’s edge. The chill of damp sand catches me first. Then the cold water is next. I let white foam roll over my toes anyway. “Either they’re a full-on asshole …”

  “I don’t think that’s me.” She loops an arm around my shoulders.

  We face the dark sky. There’s an entire city, an entire country, an entire world at our back. It presses on me. I like the feeling, but only if I let it into me a little bit at a time. The mountains are so much safer. Maybe I should go home. “Or they have some deep dark secret.”

  “It’s not a secret. If you google my name, you can find me.” The low, dark tone of her voice sends goose bumps prickling across my arms. I want to take my questions back at the same time that I’m desperate to know her truths. “I did some interviews. ‘We’re looking for Xue. We love her. Please let her come home.’”

  My voice is a whisper. “Who’s Xue?”

  “Was.” She finally looks at me. There are shadows across her face. The beach is dark and we’re in the dark together, but I still don’t think she sees me. Not really. “She was my older sister.”

  “What happened to her?” I lean into her, my shoulder against her side. I wish I could say I was holding her up, but I’m not. She stands all on her own.

  “She was in college and walking away from campus. Abducted. Missing for more than seven months.” She sighs, a long and deep sound that’s filled with a whole family’s pain and anguish. “At least we eventually got to have a funeral.”

  “Oh god,” I breathe. “I’m so sorry. For you, for your family. When was it?”

  “High school.” She starts walking toward the pier again, slowly enough that I feel okay walking next to her. She’s not trying to get away. “I spent most of my freshman year searching the desert, hoping I wasn’t the one to find my sister’s body.”

  Cai

  The terror is sudden and fresh, as if it hasn’t been twenty-five years and as if I haven’t been to three different therapists to deal with issues that cropped up throughout my life. I taste copper and my bitter fear. When I swallow them, I nearly puke.

  I can’t believe I said that part of it. That my sister died, that it was a terrible experience, that we eventually had to bury her—all that I’ve told before. But I have never breathed a word of my fear at coming across a sun-bleached skull and knowing with my deep soul that it was Xue. It wasn’t anyone’s business but mine, and here I am spilling everything to this woman I barely know.

  Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s the fact that I hardly know more than her name, but I’ve seen her completely undone and still made of resiliency. Most people wouldn’t have been able to gather their thoughts and their sense of self the way Tansy had on her wedding day. I’m astonished by her continuing bravery.

  “This way,” I mutter, and break to head toward the pier like I had originally planned.

  Tansy follows me. I guess I didn’t expect that, because my surprise is a live animal that throat-punches my fear and takes its place. I’m not sure what I expected. That she would run away screaming? It’ll be an easier, quieter thing than that. We’ll have a couple of phone calls and maybe text a couple of times, and then she’ll just disappear. Another ghost in my life. I have so many, I could start a haunted house.

  “How old were you?”

  The wind snatches her voice away so that I barely hear her. It’s more than enough, though. “Fourteen.”

  “I’m sorry.”
r />   My feet drag me to a stop, almost against my will.

  Tansy’s hair is blowing in the breeze. With the light gone, I can’t see the color of the curl she pulls away from her mouth. I know that orange-red, though. I think I’ll see it in my dreams for a very, very long time. “You weren’t there.”

  “Believe it or not, that’s part of what I’m sorry for. I think maybe you were really alone.”

  I shake my head. “I had all my family with me. Cousins, aunts. Three out of four grandparents. My mom and dad.”

  “Not that kind of alone.”

  “What other kind is there?”

  We’re standing close. Toe to toe nearly, and it wouldn’t take much to put my hand on the waist of her jean shorts, under the open flannel shirt. Her gaze searches my face. I don’t know what she’s looking for.

  I’m not sure if I want her to find it.

  She lifts a single finger, lays it on my chest, just left of my sternum. “Alone in here. When you don’t have anyone with you.”

  “You know how that feels?”

  “I do. I’ve been alone when I was with someone who was supposed to love me. Supposed to cherish me. And she didn’t.”

  Her mouth is a perfect bow. I cup the side of her face and scrub my thumb over her bottom lip. She lets me. In the dark, I see only the lighter shadow of her bottom teeth. “My family loves me.”

  “But did you trust them? Probably you did before and maybe you did afterward, but when you were walking through that desert? Looking. Hoping to find her and scared to death of finding her.” She slowly shakes her head. “You didn’t tell anyone that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I didn’t tell anyone when I was so hopeless either.”

  I kiss her. I want to, but I don’t mean to, and still I take her mouth before I can think it through. What kind of fucked-up nonseduction conversation is this? But then her hands fist in my tank top and little, delicate Tansy drags me closer to her at the same time that her mouth melts under mine. I lick into her, tasting the last dregs of sharp whiskey on her tongue. Taking it for my own.

  I fold one hand against the small of her back where she’s surprisingly lithe. Muscles shift under my touch as she moves closer to me. I gather her lips and tongue and teeth, and I don’t let her go. This is new. We’re new. I can’t tell if I’m catching a wave or being shoved under.

  I like her hands curled around my shirt, but I like the way her thumbs rub up and down my skin even more. I catch my breath and let it free between her lips.

  “We can’t do this,” I say against her mouth.

  Even as I say it, I notice how I’m pulling her closer and closer, until her breasts are brushing mine. Too many damn shirts and layers. I want to feel her tight nipples against me.

  “Probably not.” She breaks her mouth free, and for a shuddering heartbeat I think she’s going to free herself completely. Instead she opens her mouth against my neck.

  On instinct, I wrap a hand in her curls and yank. She hisses in a gasp and her eyes glimmer under lowered lashes. “Do you play like that?”

  “Do you?”

  “No,” she says and the answer surprises me. Until she tries to lower her head against the grip I still have on her at the same time that she presses her hips against me. “But I wanted to. Jody—” She cuts herself off.

  “You can say it.”

  “Jody said S&M was for desperate losers. Straight people pretending their lives could still be exciting.”

  “Jody sounds like a cunt.”

  She squeaks with laughter that breaks the mood and yet lets it build at the same time. “I guess she was. Is. I don’t know.”

  “Is. Definitely currently.” I gentle my hold on her hair, but the strands are still twined around my fingers.

  “I think you’re right. I’m lucky enough that I don’t have to deal with her anymore.”

  “You were right,” I admit. “I closed my family out for a long time. Went away to school on the East Coast for a couple years, before I dropped out. I still have distance, since they live down in San Diego. It’s never going to be the way it was, but it’s better now.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I like your smile.”

  It grows wide enough that I can see her dimples in the dark. “I’m glad for that too.”

  I start walking again, but this time I take her hand in mine. Our palms are matched. My fingers are a little bit longer than hers, but not by much. I hold one of her hands between both of mine, tracing the structure of her knuckles. Besotted swain and all that happy crappy, I guess, but I’m kind of loopy. This girl is special.

  Shit, or maybe I just want her to be special. I want a way outside my own head, someone to inspire a grand romance. I wasn’t playing earlier. Long-term relationships don’t happen to me or with me, and I didn’t mentioned this part, but I’ve been wondering for a while if it’s some kind of failing of mine. I’m too pragmatic to be passionate enough. Orgasms are orgasms and movie-watching buddies are great and someone to go to dinner with is wonderful. But there’s never been anyone I couldn’t live without after that initial flush of addiction and mesmerism.

  It never takes long before the magic wears off.

  And I wonder if maybe I’ll break this girl’s heart without trying too hard.

  The pier is quiet after dark. Where pier meets sidewalk, there’s a business that rents bikes and Segways during the daytime. The ice cream stand and bait shop at the end close at dusk. Ninety percent of the tourists and all the surfers have gone home to rest up for another day of chasing skin cancer tomorrow.

  “I don’t come out here much during the day,” I say. We’re on the firm, wet sand closest to the water. A rogue wave sometimes chases all the way up to our toes.

  “Not into swimming?”

  “Not really. Or having all my tattoos fade just because I don’t take care of them.”

  Tansy pushes hair away from her neck. She’s looking out at the water, not at me. “The ocean is scary. Sometimes I want to go home to the mountains.”

  “There’s mountains in California.”

  She shrugs. “I guess you could call them that. Sort of dinky compared to what I’m used to.” I barely hear her sigh. “Or was used to. It’s been a long time since I’ve been home.”

  “How long?”

  “Four years.” She glances back at me, looking over her shoulder. “That’s too long to go without visiting your family, isn’t it?”

  “I think my mom would probably show up on my doorstep and bang on the door until I let her in after about four months.” My family is intrusive and nosy and I can’t imagine my life without them. “Why has it been so long? Did you have a fight?”

  “No. I mean, I’ve seen them. Mom and Dad have come to visit twice and my brother came when he graduated college. But I haven’t been to Idaho. It’s because of my ex. She wasn’t fond of anywhere that could remotely be called a flyover state.”

  I smooth her hair back from her face. The strands are more wiry than they look, but I love her hair. It’s practically alive. “Couldn’t you go without her?”

  Her laugh is wry and only a little bitter. “There’s no going anywhere without Jody. She’ll be unendurable for weeks.”

  “There was.”

  “What?”

  “There was no going anywhere without her. You’re free now.” The skin at the joint between her cheek and ear is incredibly soft under my thumb. I’ve touched plenty of girls in my life, but I swear she’s softer than any of them.

  And when her smile blooms, it’s so beautiful that I can feel its beauty in my chest. “You’re right. Man, that’s a nice thought. Thank you for that.”

  “I didn’t do it. You did, by walking away from your wedding.”

  “It wasn’t quite as easy as that.” Her smile dims a little. “It wasn’t all done that day. But thanks for the reminder, then.”

  “I like to be useful,” I tease.

  “Excellent personal
ity trait. It might make up for the fact that it kinda feels like you’re taking me somewhere murdery.”

  “Murdery?” I die laughing. “What?”

  She waves toward the even deeper shadows under the pier. “You seem to be heading under the pier? I’m not going under there, you realize that, right? I don’t mean to offend you, but I’d be really, really upset to be killed tonight.”

  “Oh god, I’m sorry.” I lift both hands, showing her my palms and trying not to laugh so hard that she thinks I’m dismissing her. “Yeah, I was headed there—it’s a place I like to go when I want some peace and quiet. The waves sound really cool. But we totally don’t have to. I understand, I promise.”

  “Good.” She tugs my hand toward the sidewalk and the lights of stores and cafés. San Sebastian is pretty quiet at night. “I think in a TV show, this is where I’d be all ‘No, since you’re willing to back down, we can go,’ but … still not going. Glad you’re responding well though.”

  “I’m sorry. My danger radar is a little warped.” I make myself shrug. “It’s a side effect, I guess. My friend Brooke’s nickname for me is Recky.”

  “Recky?”

  “As in reckless.”

  We pull to a stop on the sidewalk. Across the street begins the main drag of San Sebastian. I hear distant chatter and a note or two of saxophone from a sidewalk musician. It’s a nice place to hang out. Behind us is the steady roar of the ocean.

  I want to stay here with Tansy in the quiet between two worlds.

  I cup her face in my hands. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “I’m sorry if I overreacted.”

  “It’s fine. I’ll take you back one day when it’s sunny and there’s people around.”

  “Who can hear me scream if you try to stab me,” she says, but there’s a happy lilt in her voice.

  “I solemnly swear not to stab, maim, or strangle you.”

  Her head tilts. Her cloud of hair pours over my wrist with a tickle. “Does maim belong in that trio? I feel like it’s not up to snuff.”

  I narrow my eyes, studying her. “Was that a pun?”