Trying It All

by Christi Barth

  He slowed to a brisk walk just past the triangular stainless steel grid of the Delta Solar sculpture outside the Air and Space Museum. Being late to meet Summer was bad enough. Arriving late and sweaty would definitely be a nonstarter.

  Riley cast a glance at the reflecting pool in front of the Grant Memorial. Thought about how good it would feel to take a long-cut through there and cool off his feet. But he didn’t dare risk being any later. He and Summer had enough history of snapping at each other over practically nothing. Giving her a real reason to bite his head off would be dating hara-kiri.

  The Friday night jazz concerts in the Sculpture Garden were popular. Good thing Summer had texted him a photo of her straw hat so he could find her in the elbow-to-elbow crowd. Although that hat was a crowd all by itself. The floppy brim was so wide he figured they could both sit on it if they had to park it in the grass.

  Everything underneath that hat, though…Late as he was, Riley paused to take in the view. Because all the multimillion-dollar statues sprinkled around the garden didn’t come close to being as beautiful as Summer Sheridan. Her white sundress with big, interlocking red circles cut low over her breasts. It exposed so much skin, still dusted with a honey-colored glow from their weekend at the beach. The wide-as-his-pants—both legs—hat brim shaded most of her face, but a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses almost as big as the hat gave her a movie-star appearance. As did the siren red lips pursed together the same as when she was anticipating his kiss. Summer was his own personal Jolly Rancher—luscious sweetness wrapped in a tight package.

  Instead of leading off with a “Hello,” Riley tapped her bare shoulder and led off with, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why?” she asked calmly, tilting her head to look up at him.

  Huh? For once, he’d given her a more-than-decent reason to light into him, and she didn’t take the bait? Riley sure as hell thought he deserved a few verbal whip cracks for being so late. Maybe she was one of those people who made you list exactly why you were sorry. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”

  Still as calm as could be, Summer shrugged one beautifully bare shoulder. “You said it was an emergency.”

  “Yeah.” His eyes closed for a second, picturing the chaos he’d left behind in the bullpen staging area of the office. “Two semis collided on Interstate 85 leading into Atlanta. One was an oil tanker. More than fifty cars are involved, with injuries. Traffic’s backed up for miles. I had to pull together a Go Team, mobilize them, do the interagency thing with the police and sheriff departments down there—because of course it was right on the city/county line. It all went down right at the start of rush hour, too.”

  “It sounds horrible.”

  Riley figured he’d come off as callous if he waved it off as all in a day’s work. Because it was horrible. While also being pretty much the norm for him. He split the difference. “Not the worst I’ve ever dealt with. Not the best, either.”

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t be on a plane headed down there right now?”

  “Positive. I have a previous engagement.” He gestured toward the giant fountain, surrounded by people tapping their toes and swaying to the jazz band on the opposite side. “If you’ll still have me, that is.”

  “What is going on with you?” Summer shot off the marble bench. Planted her fists on her hips. Uh-huh. There was the fiery backlash he’d been expecting. “Why wouldn’t I still have you? Are you trying to weasel out of tonight?”

  “No!” There still was zero clarity as to whether or not it was a good idea. Riley wanted to be here, though. Wanted to be with Summer on this nice September night, holding hands and enjoying the music. He’d thought about it all day. He’d taken cologne to the office to slap on before leaving. Along with green shorts and an orange plaid button-down so that he wouldn’t look like some weird spy lurker in his suit. “But I thought you’d be pissed that I’m late.”

  Lifting her right hand, she ticked off points on her red-tipped fingers. “You had a more- than-solid reason. You texted to alert me—twice. What sort of high-maintenance, self-centered bitch would possibly complain about that?”

  “Seriously? Every woman I’ve dated since I started at the NTSB. Oh, and my parents.”

  Crossing her eyes, she said, “Seriously?”

  “That’s not even a little funny.” Riley grabbed her hand. Turned it over, lifted it to his mouth and planted a kiss on the inside of her wrist. Because he appreciated her surprisingly levelheaded approach to his sometimes crazy schedule. “Our conversational bar needs to be higher than just sparring or echoing each other.”

  “I was too stunned to think of a proper response.” Pulling away, she bent down to retrieve two plastic cups. “Here, I got us sangria at the café. Aka the only time it’s okay to put ice in wine.”

  As she poured from a plastic pitcher filled with wine and fruit, Riley sighed. In relief. Summer wasn’t mad—wasn’t even a little ticked off—that he’d been late. And she’d ordered drinks. Moved forward with the date to be ready for when he did arrive. This was a whole new approach from a woman. He liked it. Not that he was ready to relinquish control or anything. But he sure didn’t mind having an equal partner in a relationship.

  He took the pitcher from her. They ambled forward to stand at the low concrete edge of the enormous circular fountain, along with about thirty other people enjoying the mist flying through the air. For all he knew, it was probably art, too. Like the ten-foot-tall red and blue typewriter eraser or the Chagall mosaic. All Riley cared about? That he was catching cool droplets on his arms and legs from the high, arcing jets of water that shot toward the center.

  They toasted, with a dull, plasticky click barely audible over the music, the laughter, and the splashing. After a long sip, Summer touched his arm. “Women really have a problem with your job? With what—the extra hours and unexpected trips away?”

  “Didn’t you hassle me two weeks ago about going into the office on a holiday weekend?”

  “Yes. But that was just yanking your chain for the hell of it.” Summer hip-checked him. The way you would a friend…except that now he knew exactly how her hips could roll and pump, Riley had heat rising beneath his skin at that simple bump. “I worked that weekend, too. You don’t have the kind of job that clocks in and out at exactly the eight-hour mark. You make a difference.”

  What an emotional gut punch. That she knew. That she got him. That she understood. Riley lifted the brim of her hat so that he could get to her face. He knew enough about women to know that he’d be in trouble for smearing her lipstick, so he dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Thank you.”

  “For acknowledging the simple fact that your job saves lives, prevents tragedies?”

  “Yes.”

  After another long sip, Summer cocked her head to the side. “Want to repay me?”

  “Depends on where this is headed.”

  “Tell me why. Tell me why you’re so driven to make a difference. I’ll bet you went to college someplace fancy, right?”

  “Princeton. But I didn’t so much have a choice,” he hurried to explain. It wasn’t for the historic and infamous eating clubs that could network you for life. Or for the prestige. At least, that hadn’t been Riley’s reason. Or at all his decision. “My dad, my grandfather, his father and so on, they all went there—if you’re a Ness, that’s the only school where you apply.”

  “So you’ve got a degree that could get you a hugely bankable job, oh, anywhere. From what I hear you’ve got a big fat trust fund, too. There’s no visible reason why you have to put in all those hours at a less-than-glamorous position. Tell me what drives you to do it.”

  Riley knew this was a turning point. He could blow by the question. Summer would get mad at his dodging it—and rightly so. They’d fight, the evening would end badly, and whatever was going on between them would be done. Their truce would probably sputter out, too.

  Or he could tell her. He could tell her the story he’d never shared with anyone outside
the ACSs and a string of therapists. Now that he knew she’d survived a traumatic event, too, it made him feel safe enough to open up to Summer. There’d be no overblown pity or sympathy or gasps.

  But there would be a level of empathy, a knowledge of how what had happened never really went away. Even with the risk of if it making him come off as weak in her eyes. Because he wanted her to know the truth about who he really was. About the incident that had formed the whole rest of his life. Suddenly Riley wanted to tell her more than anything in the world. He craned his neck to look around for a spot where he wouldn’t be sharing his deepest, darkest secret with ten other people.

  “Let’s go over there.” He gestured with his wine cup at a sculpture that was a replica of the entrance to the Paris subway. Green cast-iron lamp poles that arched like trees in the wind marked the entrance to the small deck that jutted into the garden. The small space was encircled with fanciful green wrought-iron fencing. They sat down on a curved bench.

  Summer touched his leg. God, Riley loved how often she found an excuse to touch him. To connect. To make him feel wanted and important. “Just because I asked doesn’t mean you have to answer. Not right now, anyway. I don’t want to push you.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, you do. Your curiosity is burning so hot right now that it’s melting the ice in your cup.”

  “All right.” Bright red lips pursed, then pouted. “I want to push you, but I won’t. How’s that for honesty?”

  “Good enough to get you the story.” After a quick tap of their glasses, and then a long-ass swig for his already parched throat, Riley continued. “Do you know about what happened to the five of us back in high school? Why we’re called the ACSs?”

  “Just the headline version.”

  Yeah. Everyone in Delmarva knew the headline version. Because the press had been all over them like lice. “The Italian press branded us the ‘American Soccer Survivors’. Our team, from Roosevelt Prep, had earned a spot at a huge international soccer competition. We were in Italy for two weeks. We won every game and made it to the finals. Being young and stupid, we decided to spend our free day skiing in Switzerland.”

  Summer’s head dipped. “As one does,” she said in a throaty purr that mocked the privileges he’d taken for granted growing up.

  He didn’t anymore.

  Riley didn’t take anything for granted anymore. Almost dying had a way of realigning your priorities for a lifetime.

  But instead of being all existentially serious/boring/depressing, he lifted one corner of his mouth. “Hey, you’ve gotta seize the day, right? It didn’t take much to talk the team’s driver into borrowing one of the buses and getting us over the border. The powder was deep. We all had beer and felt like gods because we did it legally in Switzerland. Spent the night, but when we got up the next day, Logan was missing. He’d gotten lucky with a local. Santos insisted on driving us back without him.”

  Summer tapped her fingertip against her cheek. “Isn’t there a bro-code about leaving no man behind?”

  “Not when you’re underage and an adult gives you an ultimatum. We knew Logan had his passport and his credit cards. Figured he’d hire a chopper or something and maybe beat us back. We were literally high on life, coming back from that epic adventure. Talking a mile a minute. Laughing. Being silly. I pestered Santos.”

  “The driver?”

  “Yeah. I wanted him to finish telling a dirty joke. I kept hammering at him. Wheedling. So when a fox darted across the road, he wasn’t paying attention. Didn’t see it until too late. He jerked the wheel. We skidded.”

  Riley could still hear the screech of the tires locking. The metallic whine as the bus scraped the guardrail. The hollow, upside-down feeling in his stomach when they ran out of guardrail and the bus tumbled down the cliff. Somersaulting. Them being bounced around like Ping-Pong balls. Except for Santos. Dead before they stopped rolling. Impaled.

  “Then what?” she prompted. Summer’s fingers were laced with his now. Riley had no idea when that had happened. When she’d taken his sangria away and grabbed on tight. All he knew was that it helped. Helped bring him out of the nightmarish memory and back into the now twilight-dim garden, filled with the soft swish of a metal brush on a snare drum, and the snick of cymbals.

  “We went down the mountainside. When we finally stopped, the bus burst into flames. The four of us barely made it out before it exploded. With all of our coats and cellphones still inside.”

  Her fingertips whitened around his palm, she clenched so hard. “Only four of you?”

  “Yeah. A tree came through the front window. Skewered right through the wheel and Santos. Don’t know if it happened before or after the tree, but his neck was broken, too. We all could tell just by looking at him that it was too late.”

  “I’ll bet that didn’t make it any easier to leave him behind.”

  Wow. Nobody—not his friends, not the army of shrinks who dissected his feelings and memories and guilt and anxiety once they got back home—had ever picked up on that before. “No.”

  “I’m sorry you were forced to make that choice.”

  “It sucked. As did the next three days. We were hundreds of feet below where we actually went off the road. Not even on a road. We spent the first night in a cave. That was where Griff popped my dislocated shoulder back into place.”

  “Your friend had to do that to you? Your, I presume, very injured friend with no real training did that?”

  It certainly hadn’t been Riley’s first choice. Now that he had his own first aid certification, he was implicitly aware of just how much of a leap it’d been for a frightened teenager to perform that medical maneuver with zero guidance. Bleeding. Crouched in the dirt with just the wall of a cave to push against.

  “Well, since he was captain of the soccer team, the coach made Griff take first aid. He’d never practiced, not even on a dummy. But it gave him the practical knowledge of what to do. And he had the big brass balls to do it because, frankly, I couldn’t have gotten any worse. Had three broken ribs, too, and the shoulder not being in the socket just pulled my chest down and made it even harder to breathe.”

  Not being able to get enough air was the scariest feeling—and still was, to this day—that Riley’d ever had. The memory woke him up in the middle of the night, gasping, at least twice a year.

  Summer sucked in a sharp, surprised breath. Guess he’d pegged that wrong. On the other hand, even with his dry retelling, censoring out all the fear and blood and screaming, Riley had to admit it was one hell of a story. She lifted his hand to her lips and then sandwiched it between both of hers. “On top of not having food, water, painkillers, or any means of signaling for help?”

  “Yep. That sums it up.”

  “No wonder the press branded you ‘survivors.’ ” She shook her head so hard the big, floppy hat flew off and landed on the opposite bench. “What’s the Italian for ‘miracle’? That would’ve been more to the point.”

  “Miracolo,” Riley murmured automatically as he reached over to retrieve her hat.

  “What’s that?”

  “That’s Italian for ‘miracle.’ ”

  Eyes narrowed, Summer said, “Hang on. You speak Italian? You didn’t mention that when you were wowing me with your fluency.”

  “I don’t speak it. But the Italian regiment that rescued us, they kept repeating it. So did the nurses at the hospital.” Riley reached across her for his cup. Drained it until the ice clinked against his teeth—along with a chunk of orange that almost bumpered out onto his nose.

  “You were flailing on your own for three days.”

  “Not on my own,” he corrected. “We had each other. Griff, Knox, Josh, and I survived because we were a team. Blood brothers.”

  “I get the feeling that isn’t a metaphor. You really…what…cut your palms and smeared your blood together?” At his nod, Summer wrinkled her nose adorably. “Boys are gross.”

  “We couldn’t even drive yet. What else was there to do
on a Saturday night but huddle under a full moon and take a solemn oath with your closest friends?”

  Leaning back and giving him the stare that rolled judgment down her nose like a bowling ball down an alley, Summer said, “Ah, we went to the movies. An activity with no potential for infection.”

  The pre-crash version of Riley would’ve grinned. Said Where’s the fun in that? But he hadn’t been that reckless boy in more than ten years. “Guess that’s the classic Mars versus Venus dichotomy. Our vow—and the smeared blood—only started the process that turned us into brothers. The crash cemented it.”

  She tapped his calf with her foot. “Logan, too? Even though he wasn’t there?”

  Always Logan, too. Back then, when he was apart from them for three days, and now, when he’d spend three months away on the other side of the world. “Worrying and wondering about Logan gave us some strong motivation to keep going. Besides, there was no way just the four of us would kick it on that frozen mountain. The five of us did everything together.”

  Riley finished Summer’s sangria, too. He hadn’t death-marched his way through this story in years. It hadn’t gotten any easier. Riley took a deep breath. Looked left over to where he knew the National Archives sat behind the trees. But he didn’t see the neoclassical limestone columns of the façade. All he saw was snow and ice and the eerily blue sky they’d all feared would be the last thing they’d ever see.

  “Then he rescued us.”

  “Logan did?” Disbelief raised her voice to a near-squeak.

  “He can be tenacious. Stubborn as shit. He snuck out with the Italian regiment sent to search for us. When they wanted to quit, he ran away, forcing them to keep going. Then he found us. All by himself.” Which had been perfect. The best fucking day of their lives. “And it was the five of us again. Like it should be.”