Tattered Innocence

by Ann Lee Miller

  Her fingers stretched toward his, but her palms stayed glued to the table. I love you vibrated in the air trapped in her throat.

  “That kiss was probably the best kiss of my life. Incredible. I’m sorry it didn’t deliver for you.” His voice was tight, controlling his anger, but she felt its sting.

  Absolutely the best kiss of my life. But she refused to be the girl Jake settled for because he couldn’t have Gabrielle. “I have one word for you.” She breathed in the steam from her tea and released it. “Rebound.”

  Jake’s jaw dropped open. “That’s it? You won’t even consider us? You couldn’t kiss me like that and not l… have feelings for me.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I feel. You need to decide whether you’re over Gabrielle. Then, we’ll talk.” She slid off the bench, needing to get out of the cabin before she hurled herself at his chest. “I’ll see you Monday for the next sail.” She jogged up the steps and slid the hatch open.

  Rachel stuffed her belongings into two duffle bags. She sat on the floor between them and sobbed silently over her empty bin until she’d expelled enough pain to wash her face and exit the boat.

  Maybe moving out would help her make the final break. She’d pack a bag for each of the next two weeks—then it would all be over.

  Working for Jake, waiting for him to eventually get over Gabrielle, was too stupid, even for her. And Gabrielle’s crumbs would never be enough.

  On the pier, Jake took the duffels and walked beside her, lips pinched into a tight line. If he noticed she’d packed more than usual, he didn’t mention it.

  He leaned his forearms on the open window of her car, his hands dangling between her and the steering wheel. “I don’t want you to quit. Think about it for another couple of months.” His eyes, inches from hers, looked bleak now that his anger had run out. “Give me your answer in January.”

  She’d agree to anything to keep from bursting into tears. And she probably owed him more than two weeks’ notice anyway. Besides, two months with Jake sounded a whole lot better than two weeks. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  He didn’t move.

  Rachel memorized the tousled, yellow-white hair, the eyes deepened with emotion to chocolate. She shifted into reverse—forcing Jake to stand up.

  Jake’s words tumbled through the window as she pulled away from the curb. “You’re wrong. It’s not a rebound.”

  Jake peered at the green water through the cracks in the finger pier as he shuffled. His gaze drifted to the Queen’s waterline. He stopped, his stomach sinking, and shook his head.

  “What’s wrong with you, boy?”

  Jake startled at the sound of Leaf’s voice.

  Leaf stepped off the Escape beside him. “You look like someone stepped on your last jelly bean.”

  Even one of Gramps’ sayings couldn’t take the edge off today. “That run to the hurricane hole must have pried the buckling fiberglass loose from the hull. I’ve got to haul her ASAP or the hull will rot.” He knelt to get a better look. “The damn motor won’t start. And Rachel quit.”

  “No way!” Leaf’s wrinkles rearranged themselves into a mask of disbelief. “What happened?”

  “Drama. I’ve got two months to talk her out of it.” Jake stood. “Help me sail the Queen to the boatyard this afternoon?”

  “You got it.” Leaf shivered and pulled the hood string tighter on his ratty sweatshirt. “There must be something else I can do—Hey, I can get my hands on some Florida grow—”

  “I’m not smoking your weed.”

  “You need to take your mind off your troubles. And who said anything about it being mine?”

  Jake crossed the gangplank onto the Queen. “Just come aboard at three. I can’t handle the boat alone.” He descended into the aft cabin. Yanking Rachel’s bins open, he stared at the painted boards of the hull and swore. He felt as empty as the bins. He dropped the lids and they clattered shut, rankling like Gabs’ rejection all over again.

  He headed for his desk, through the door into the engine room. A new engine could cost ten thousand dollars, and God only knew how much to install—more than he had in the bank. And that wasn’t even counting the hull work. He sank into his chair and dropped his head into his hands.

  What would Gramps do in this situation?

  Pray.

  Rachel said he was good at praying. The proof would be in whether he got an answer.

  Outside, the storm dwindled to spitting gusts of rain against Rachel’s bedroom window. Inside, her heaving sobs subsided to intermittent hiccoughs from her diaphragm.

  She felt like Raggedy Ann ripped down the middle. Half of her knew she’d done the right thing. The other half wanted Jake on any terms. She burrowed deeper under the quilt and inhaled the Queen’s musty, salty scent from her sweatshirt.

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what she’d be doing now if she’d stayed in Jake’s arms after their run to the hurricane hole. She’d shake a pan of popcorn on the stove while Jake tinkered with the engine, kicked it, tinkered, kicked, and cursed the day he bought the rust bucket.

  Jake would get the engine to turn over or he wouldn’t. They’d talk about how much money the business lost this week. She’d brush a kiss across his lips and tell him everything would work out. Surprise, then a smile would break out in his eyes, white sun slicing through the clouds.

  She flopped over, turning her back on the fairy tale, and the bed creaked its complaint. If she’d stayed in Jake’s arms, she might have had sex—because she was just like Mama. But she’d refused to take that chance. She wasn’t getting crushed under a three-hundred-pound anvil of remorse. Not again. Never again. She sat up and scooped the sea of wadded tissues into the trash can.

  The text message alert chimed from her phone. Jake’s name shone in the window. Her heart raced as she flipped open her phone.

  Queen in dry dock, hull issues. No cruising 4 at least a week. Will let u know. Queen w/o water & u. Just wrong.

  Chapter 19

  Jake watched Keenan jump off the five-gallon resin can, hoist his sander onto a shoulder, and saunter toward him. He hadn’t seen Keenan since the teen boys’ cruise, but hiring him turned out to be one of Jake’s smarter business decisions. The kid grew on him. He was beginning to see through Keenan’s tough exterior.

  “Hey, man, dude, thanks for the job. I’m, like, learning a skill.”

  Jake smiled, remembering. “My old man taught me how to patch a hull the winter I turned seven. We refinished my Gramps’ eight-foot pram as a surprise. Gramps taught me how to sail that boat.”

  Keenan scratched his chin. “I guess you could say my dad taught me to sail. He wrote a check for me to cruise on the Queen.” Keenan switched on his sander and pressed it to a spot of buckling fiberglass several feet from Jake. “Never met him,” he said over the drone of the machines.

  “His loss. Every kid deserves a dad.” Jake jammed his sander against the hull, pissed at Keenan’s faceless father.

  A slide show of remodeling projects he’d helped Gramps with clicked through his head—skills that came in handy refitting the Queen. But even Gramps didn’t fill the hole Dad left. Jake strained to remember his father. Dad’s chain smoking and cryptic comments surfaced first. Then, a wisp of a memory floated to the present, Dad pacing the floor with a screaming baby in his arms. Pink. It must have been Nikki.

  Maybe Jake would have been a teen like Keenan—smoking weed and headed nowhere fast—if he hadn’t caught from Dad and Gramps that a man sucks it up and does the right thing. Maybe he could give Keenan a little of what Gramps gave him. And Rachel could keep on pointing Keenan in the right direction with her own brand of smart-mouthed encouragement.

  He needed to tell Rachel they made a good team. His thumb had hovered over her speed-dial number at least once a day. He needed to tell her the boatyard hauled the Queen and let him do the repair work himself for sixty-eight dollars a day dry dock rental. Replacing the engine injectors—that dribbled rather th
an sprayed fuel into the cylinders—would come in under a thousand dollars, that God answered his prayer. He had a dozen other things to say to her, but he had to talk to Gabs first.

  Rachel gave the porch swing a push, jerking it back into motion. “And Jake brought up marriage.”

  Cat jammed both feet to the porch floor and stopped the swing. “You’re kidding me!”

  “Nothing to get excited about. It’s not going to happen. After having a front row seat to Jake and his ex’s goodbye, I can’t imagine Jake moving on—at least, not anytime soon. Watch TV. Look at couples we went to school with. The relationship after a long one is always a short dead-end.”

  Cat huffed. “You love the guy. Let it happen.”

  “Daddy always brags how he snagged Mama on the rebound. He thought he married up. You know, married a woman prettier than he rated.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Has my mom ever really loved my dad? Or did she marry on the rebound and regret it all these years?”

  “Where do you get this stuff? I look at my mom and think, eew, how did she ever kiss my dad with all his nose hair, much less produce me?” Cat shook her head. Her hair flung out like ropes and settled back into straight lines.

  “Remember my catching Mama holding hands with that creep with the black Corvette?”

  Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose. “I got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from seeing—”

  “More like Post Dramatic Stress Disorder.”

  “Just because you graduated from nursing school doesn’t mean you know everything. I started having those nightmares after Hall’s birth. I was only five and a half, and I’d seen all that blood. I woke up lots of nights screaming that Mama died. I used to give her my Flintstone vitamins. Even now, I still make the appointments for her annual physicals.”

  She shifted to face Cat. “After Fat Neck—and Mom’s going on an eleven day ‘vacation’—the dreams changed to Mom’s running away in his black ‘Vette.”

  Cat squeezed Rachel’s arm. “That was a long time ago, and your folks stayed together.”

  “Mama could still be in love with her high school boyfriend. She had an affair with him.”

  “Ask your mom about it and stop tormenting yourself.”

  “Would you want to discover your parents’ marriage was a lie?”

  Cat cupped Rachel’s face in her hands. “Everybody makes mistakes. You’ve always been way too hard on yourself. You’re beautiful, intelligent. Why is it so difficult to believe a guy could love you?” Cat’s hands dropped to her lap, leaving a residue of hope on her cheeks.

  Rachel shook it off. She hadn’t heard from Jake since he’d texted over a week ago.

  Rain forced them to knock off early, and Jake sent Keenan home for the night.

  Jake fired up the oven to warm the cabin.

  He slouched back into the dining nook. Hopefully, the plastic tarp he’d duct-taped over the patches would keep them dry.

  The galley light cast a glow across the table. Rain sheeted against the decks. The Queen sat unnaturally still, straight-jacketed into place by the jack stands.

  He pushed away the remains of a pan of mac and cheese, and scrolled down his phone contact list. Was the fact he hadn’t deleted Gabs’ number proof he still loved her? If he had any loyalty, he would love Gabs now. He’d thought he would love her for the rest of his life, but six months out, he’d changed girls with the ease of a chameleon changing colors.

  For weeks after Gabs dumped him he’d subsisted on Honey Nut Cheerios, went to Winn Dixie when he ran out of cereal or milk—the way he should have grieved for Gramps. Rachel thought some coal of love for Gabs remained to fan back to life. Somehow, the thought failed to generate enthusiasm.

  He pressed send before he could talk himself out of it.

  One ring and Gabs’ voice said, “Jake,” in his ear, lancing open the memory of her face, scent, the soft feel of her in his arms.

  “Hey.”

  While they exchanged how-are-yous and caught up, his mind flipped through and rejected all the openings he’d rehearsed.

  He cleared his throat.

  Silence crackled between them.

  He inhaled air and courage.

  “I called because I wondered… wondered if you’d thought about giving us another shot.”

  She sighed into the phone. “I don’t know if it could ever work. You adore sailing. I tolerated it. You didn’t like my parents, my life….”

  Truth slammed him. He’d been working so hard to gain her family’s acceptance and fit into their world, he never thought about whether he liked them. “Those things could have been overcome—”

  Gabs sighed into the phone. “Remember the day I told you I loved you?”

  Jake had beached the Queen on an island in the Indian River beyond the north bridge. When the tide went out, the boat listed to a fun-house tilt, exposing the port side of her hull.

  He’d hacked barnacles from the hull all day with a hammer and an over-sized putty knife. The top half of his wet suit floated at his hips as he worked. His muscles grumbled, and he had another four hours of daylight ahead.

  Gabs called his name, and his head jerked up. A hand anchored to the forestay, she held out a sweating Dr. Pepper from the bow.

  “I love you!” he blurted.

  Gabs’ voice coming through the phone jerked him back to the present. “I said I loved you automatically, like the I’m away message on my computer. The next thing I knew, you were grinning at me like I was the America’s Cup trophy, and we were picking a date. I should have thought things through better.” She paused. “Jake, I honestly don’t know what I felt for you.”

  He flinched as though she’d slapped him. “You must have felt something to say you’d marry me.”

  “Now that I—” she stopped.

  “You’ve met someone, someone you love.”

  Silence. “No….” Her voice lacked conviction. “Jake, I’d like to think about this. You’ve caught me off guard. I didn’t think you’d still be interested half a year after we broke up. Why don’t we talk after the holidays?”

  “I hope you’ll be happy together.” Jake fought to keep the hard edge out of his voice and failed.

  “No, it’s not like that. Never mind…. I like you Jake, but I just need some time.”

  Whatever. “Good bye, Gabs.”

  Jake stared at the blackness of the night, his anger dribbling down the porthole with the rain. The call had confirmed what he already knew on some level. He was over Gabs.

  He slumped back on the bench, letting Rachel flood into his mind. The Queen seemed to sigh around him waiting for Rachel’s return. Even with no guests aboard, she filled the boat with her presence, laughter, sassy mouth.

  Her mouth.

  That was one thing he’d like to run into again.

  Jake tossed the nine hundred and fifty eight dollar paint bill onto his desk and scrubbed his hands over his face. Note to self: all repairs will cost thirty percent more than my most realistic estimates. His mind circled back to Rachel, where it always went.

  He kicked his office chair at the desk. Rachel could have lined up a new job and met someone while he and Keenan spent patching the Queen and giving her three coats of bottom paint.

  He’d wanted to talk to Rachel all day every day. But he needed to think rationally, get his head on straight before approaching her. It was his own fault for blurting out marriage one kiss in. It wasn’t fair to Rachel to discuss the rest of their lives if all he had to offer was a love like he’d felt for Gabs’ that came with a six-month expiration date.

  But time had run out. The Queen went into the water tomorrow, followed by Thanksgiving in two days, and a packed cruise on Monday. He needed Rachel for his business to survive. They’d just have to figure things out on the fly.

  Chapter 20

  Rachel plodded behind the mower and breathed in the scent of cut-grass. She wished the whir of the motor would drown out Jake’s-in-love-but-n
ot-with-you sing-songing in her head. After eighteen days with no communication, it was time to look for another job. Another life. She almost felt masochistic enough to enroll full-time in college.

  Perspiration dampened a ratty T-shirt. Moist ringlets escaped their ponytail and tickled her neck. She bent and yanked sweat pants above her knees.

  Someone tapped on a horn.

  She glanced up and froze.

  Jake unfolded from his faded cream and maroon Explorer.

  Carbonation fizzed through her veins. She wiped sweat from her face with the crook of her arm. Couldn’t he have come when she looked—and smelled—better? She killed the mower.

  A smile split his face as he leaned on the fence.

  She stopped several feet away from him. “What do you expect me to mow the lawn in?” She plucked the faded-to-pink New Smyrna Beach High School T-shirt with her thumb and forefinger.

  Jake grinned. “Can’t I be glad to see you?”

  Rachel shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She knocked a clod of grass off her sneaker, avoiding his smile. Her eyes darted to his drying, recently-cut curls to his smooth chin, and settled on the crisp North Causeway Marine T-shirt she hadn’t seen before.

  “Keenan made J.V. basketball.”

  Rachel’s eyes swung to Jake’s.

  “He wants us to go to his first game Friday night.”

  She stepped toward him. “Yes!”

  He chuckled. “That’s the most enthusiastic response I’ve gotten asking a girl out in a while.”

  “Is he starting? Did he have a hard time adjusting to the gym floor?”

  “Ask him yourself—Friday night. I’ll swing by for you at 6:30?”

  She narrowed her eyes. It would feel weird, like a date. “Okay, sure.”

  His grin widened. He’d smiled more in the last five minutes than during the whole cruising season.