You

by Nella Tyler

  “Summer…” I stood up and he started to reach for me, but thought better of it. “Please don’t go. If you don’t want to go to the gala, that’s fine-”

  “I don’t want to go, but thanks for the offer. I’ll see you for our lesson tomorrow – if you still want to teach me.”

  “Of course, I still want to teach you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Summer…” Suddenly, I was closer to crying than I had been since I was fourteen years old. I had convinced myself a long time ago it was a sign of weakness and I had no room for it in my life. But it just dawned on me that this was the first time I’d ever gotten asked out on a real date and it was by a beautiful man that I really liked, but I couldn’t accept. Dressing me up for one night is not going to change who I am and dancing with him in fancy clothes will only remind me of what I will never have. Besides, I don’t know how to dance. I had to go before the fucking tears fought their way out and made me look even more pathetic than I already did. I practically ran out the door of his apartment and down the stairs without looking back. I was filled with an anxiety I hadn’t felt in a very long time, and I was also filled with want. I want him. I want to go out on his arm, and just once, I want to know what it feels like to be “normal.” The more time I spend with Drake, the more I begin to want things I can’t ever have. That’s not a good thing. I need to stop.

  I hit the bottom landing and pushed through the stairwell door into the lobby. There was a young couple waiting for the elevator and when they saw me, the man wrapped his hand around his woman’s waist and pulled her in close while keeping one eye on me. In their defense, I just had some wild sex…I’m sure my hair is a matted-up mess.

  The doorman pulled open the door, but he barely looked at me as I slipped through. Even when I looked up at him, he continued to stare over the top of my head like he was afraid to look at my face. It dawned on me then. This is who I am. I’m half as big as most men and even smaller than their women, but they’re afraid of me. They think that I’m going to rob them or stab them or…who knows? They think that because I’m homeless, it makes me a bad person. They think that I chose this life.

  *******

  I don’t usually walk alone at night, but tonight I made an exception. I’d gone back to the homestead after I left Drake and tried having a private conversation with Phoebe about what I should do. Bennie overheard and had to put in his two cents. I knew that he’s just jealous, but there’s a part of me that can’t stop the echo of his words in my head:

  “He’s not like us, Summer.”

  “Why does that have to be a bad thing?”

  “When has a housie ever really wanted to know you? In the five years you’ve been on the streets, how many times has one of them even looked you in the eye?”

  “A lot of people helped me out when I was on my own. They gave me blankets and money-”

  “They give you those things so they don’t have to feel guilty when they go home and lay in their comfortable, warm beds at night. This guy is no different – except he wants to take from you. as well.”

  “He’s not taking anything that I’m not giving willingly.” That was meant to sting and from the look on Bennie’s face I could see that it hit its target.

  He swallowed hard and said, “What happens when he gets bored with you, Summer? I mean, do you really think that whatever you have with this guy is going to last? Do you really think you can fit in with his friends and his family?”

  His words stung as badly as mine had, but I refused to let him see that. “Wow, you just assume I’m so boring he won’t be able to stand me after a few weeks, huh?” Before he could say anything else I said, “Never mind. None of this is really any of your business is it, Bennie? You’re not my father, my husband, or my boss, so I’ll do what I want and if there are consequences, I’ll deal with those, too. How dare you try to tell me who I will or will not fit in with?!”

  I’d stormed out then and took off walking. Hours later now, I had walked up and down the beach, watching the tourists. I watched them hold hands and kiss. I watched them play with their kids. I watched them come and go in their nice clothes and designer swimwear. I watched them go into the little shops and come out with big bags and go into the nice restaurants and come out with full bellies. I saw them pass me without making eye contact, and I watched them step over the homeless that littered the streets as if they were invisible – or worse yet, a pile of dog crap that might stain their designer shoes.

  I wanted to prove Bennie wrong. I wanted to make eye contact with just one of these people and see something in their eyes that said we were equal. But I walked all day and that never happened. What I saw only proved that he was right, and the hell of it was, I already knew that. As the sun went down, I continued to walk along the beach, thinking back to when I first came to that conclusion. Somewhere in the past two weeks with Drake, I’d almost forgotten five years of hard lessons.

  After I left the foster home, I lived in an almost constant state of fear. It was so bad at first that I almost went back a few times. I slept in bus terminals and in back alleys, but I only slept during the day. I never closed my eyes at night. The night was filled with street lights that made shadows that I feared, men who thought I was easy prey, and lots and lots of other monsters. If one of them found me, I wanted to be awake and alert so that I could fight. I got good at fighting. I even carried a knife for a while. I came really close to using it one time on a man who had a penchant for little girls. I was fifteen, but I looked twelve and that fact sickeningly seemed to excite him. The fact that I wanted to stick the knife in his guts and twist it sideways after I kicked him in the balls and took him out of commission scared me enough to throw the knife away.

  From then on out, I’d slept out in the open during the day while people stepped over and around me. I’d lie on the cold cement in whatever city I happened to be in at the time and smell the booze and old urine or the expensive perfumes and colognes of the housies as they rushed by.

  No matter how long I lived this way, each time that I closed my eyes, I’d pray that when I woke up I’d find out that this was all a horrible nightmare. Grandpa would still be alive, and we’d be on our way to the next tournament. Of course, that was a prayer that could never be answered and each time I opened my eyes, I was still very much alone.

  I was always tired – not just tired, but exhausted to my very bones. I was always hungry. Some days, my stomach growled so much it was like it was speaking a language of its own. Some days, the little cup I sat out would be full at the end of the day and others there would be nothing. Occasionally, I wanted to give in to the lure of the alcohol and the drugs I was being offered constantly – just as an escape. But fear kept me from doing it. Fear motivated me to stay sober and clear-headed. The second I gave in to the need to go somewhere else in my mind, I’d be at the mercy of the monsters, and I couldn’t let that happen.

  Ironically, meeting Bennie has been the best thing that’s happened to me in five years. He was willing to help me without pressuring me to use drugs or sell my body. He was a street person with a moral code – a diamond in a pile of coal. My belly was fuller than it had been in years and most importantly, I learned to sleep at night. He made me feel safe and between him and the others, I never had to be alone. It was all I needed for a while, but recently, I’d started to yearn for more again and I have to ask myself, “Am I being greedy? Do I have a right to want more?” The rational side of me wants to answer that yes, I’m being greedy. If it wasn’t for Bennie and the others, I might be dead or worse by now. The side of me that still knew how to dream wanted to beg to differ. Why can’t I want more? Why can’t I rise up out of these fucking ashes and go on to do great things? I didn’t sell my body. I didn’t fry my brain on drugs or get addicted to alcohol. So I lived on the fringes of society for a few years…I could come back from that. Couldn’t I?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  DRAKE

  I waited in our spot on
Black’s Beach for almost an hour before I could convince myself that Summer wasn’t coming. When she left yesterday, I wanted to go after her, but I got the feeling that was the absolute wrong thing to do. Summer wasn’t like the girls I was used to dating – the ones who thrived on the drama and thrill of the break-up and the make-up. When she walked out, it was because she really needed to be alone and me chasing her would only piss her off.

  “Hey!” I looked in the direction of the voice. It was my buddy Lance. I’ve been blowing him off for over a week. Lance looks like a linebacker, and strictly judging from experiences I’ve had with him since the age of about twelve, women find him irresistible. I was looking at the scowl on his tan face now and wondering if the white blond hair and dark brown eyes would be enough to compensate for that look if you were a woman. “What the fuck, man? Is this where you’ve been hiding all week? You don’t take my calls; you don’t show up to surf…”

  “Sorry, man, I’ve been…distracted.”

  “Laguna is in two weeks and Bali a week after that. Sabrina says that guy from Catalyst is going to be at both of those competitions, man. If you’re seriously looking at doing this without Daddy’s money, you need to win. If they just wanted a model, they’d hire one.”

  He was right. He was actually just repeating words I’d spoken to him in the past. I was ready to do this on my own so that I could retire in my own time with my own money. I want out from underneath the old man’s thumb, once and for all. I’d had a few little sponsors here and there, but Catalyst is the largest manufacturer of beach clothing and accessories in the U.S. and most of Europe. My agent and ex-girlfriend Sabrina had been courting them for me for months. Scoring that sponsorship would keep me going for a few more years and by the time I was twenty five and ready to settle down somewhere and open my surfing school, I wouldn’t need a penny of Dad’s precious money. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t have anything to do with me spending time with Summer. If I wasn’t doing that, I’d be out trolling the bars and fucking random women.

  “I’ve been working out. I just needed some time to myself…sorry, man, I should have called you back.”

  “Time to you or time with a little homeless blonde with dreadlocks?”

  “What?”

  “I’ve seen you here with her. You’re teaching her to surf, but it’s a lot more than that isn’t it? You’re fucking her, too.”

  “What the hell are you doing sneaking around watching me? That’s creepy.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking around watching you. I saw you come down here yesterday and I was going to come down and surf with you. When I got down here you were teaching the homeless girl all kinds of fancy moves.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Man, you know I don’t care who you hook up with, but I’ve seen that chick on the streets. She’s hardcore. A company like Catalyst is going to be looking for a guy with a supermodel or at the least a hot surfer girl on his arm, not a street urchin.”

  “Fuck you, Lance! I said don’t talk about her like that. She’s not a fucking ‘street urchin.’”

  “Oh, so she actually has a job or at least a place to go and change her clothes every night? Because from what I’ve seen, she’s like a fucking cartoon character. She wears the same clothes every day.”

  Lance and I have been friends since grade school. He’s pissed me off before, but I’ve never hit him…until now. I punched him in the mouth and knocked him down into the sand. It was surreal. I watched myself do it and then looked down at him there on his ass looking up at me with the side of his mouth bleeding and a look of shock on his face. I knew I had overreacted.

  “Fuck… Man, I’m sorry…” I reached my hand out and he knocked it out of the way and jumped to his feet.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He wiped his mouth and looked at the blood on his hand in disbelief. “You’re hanging around with street people and all of a sudden you’re acting like an asshole.”

  “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to hit you, but you can’t talk about her like that. Just because she doesn’t have money doesn’t give you the right to call her names. You’re the one acting like an asshole. Summer is a person like anyone else and a better person than most people I know!”

  “You’re not just fucking this girl, you’re falling for her. Fuck, man…what is your family going to say when you take her home to dinner?”

  “She doesn’t have any intentions of coming home to dinner with me, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “She doesn’t have any intentions, but you do? Have you lost your fucking mind? Your father would bust a blood vessel in his head and your mother… Jesus, man, I wouldn’t want to be there for that meeting.”

  “Just shut the fuck up, Lance. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t, really? Remember sophomore year when you invited that girl, what the fuck was her name? Lucy or Linda….”

  “Lori.” I grimaced at the memory.

  “Yeah, that was it, Lori. Lori’s father was the janitor at our school and her mother was a hairdresser and they had like five or six kids, right?” When I didn’t answer him he went on, “She was a scholarship kid. You took her to your mother’s birthday dinner at Island Prime and she wore that funky-looking dress from the fifties or something-”

  “It was a vintage dress and she looked great.” Another time in my life I’d been sick of it all and tried to go my own way.

  “Right, and your mother told her she looked great and asked her where she bought the dress. Lori told her at the Salvation Army. Then your mother went on to ask what her parents did and how many kids there were in her family….”

  I was feeling nauseated just thinking about it. My father didn’t say two words my sister smirked the entire time. Lance had stared down at his plate as my dear, sweet mother went in for the kill. She smiled the entire time. She spoke politely. Poor Lori didn’t know what hit her; she just knew that somehow the sweet, polite lady had made her feel like shit. “Stop it! I’m not in high school any longer, and my mother and I had a big fight over that, remember? She hasn’t done that again.”

  “Is that because your talk set her straight or because you haven’t taken anyone home since that didn’t come from a pedigreed bloodline?” My head felt like it was going to explode. I started packing up my shit. “You’re taking off?”

  “I’m finished with this conversation.” I was pissed, but I was still hoping to appeal to the heart I knew he had, but hid well. “We’re grown-ups, Lance. Don’t you ever want to experience what it would be like to get to know someone who wasn’t handed things their entire life? How much more interesting would that be than the way we grew up? Instead of private school and nannies, public school and latch key. I’m sick of the same old same old. I like Summer, and I don’t care if she has a dollar or a dime in her pocket. I don’t care if she only owns one set of clothes. I don’t care where she lives or where she comes from. I like her, I want her, and anyone who has a problem with that can go fuck themselves.” When I stood up straight and looked back over at Lance, he was looking at Summer. I didn’t know how long she’d been standing there, but she was giving me a look I couldn’t quite interpret. “Summer.”

  She glanced nervously over at Lance. “I’m sorry I’m late. Are you leaving?”

  “It’s okay… No, I was going to because I thought you weren’t coming. I’m not leaving, but Lance was just taking off.”

  Lance smirked at me and gave Summer a look that I wanted to punch him in the mouth for, again. He picked up his board and as he walked off he said, “Remember Catalyst.”

  “Who’s Catalyst?” she asked me.

  “Nobody important,” I told her. “Are you ready to get started?”

  She dropped her board and before I knew it, she had her arms around me. Her mouth sought mine out and the next thing I knew, her delicious tongue was wrapped around mine. I was confused, but not stupid. I wrapped my arm
tighter around her waist and pulled her up off her feet and deepened the kiss. Nothing in my life thus far prepared me for how good this woman feels in my arms and I meant what I told Lance. Whoever doesn’t like it can go fuck themselves. When we finally had to come up for air, I said,

  “Not that I’m complaining, but what the hell was that?”

  She smiled and everything inside of me ignited. “Thank you. I almost didn’t come out today. I spent most of last night walking around, thinking about how worthless I was and how I didn’t mean anything to anyone in society. When I finally decided to come today, I thought I’d just thank you for your time and give you back the surfboard…and then I walked up on you defending me to that guy. Who the hell is he, anyways?”

  I smiled. “He used to be a very good friend, but after I punched him in the mouth today, who knows? By the way, don’t ever think those things about yourself. They’re absolutely not true.”

  She ignored the last part and with a laugh she said, “You punched him?”

  “Yeah, it was the pre-show you missed. He’s not a bad guy, really. It’s just the way he was raised. He has certain ideas about things…”

  “Like homeless people?”

  “Like anyone that’s not in our so-called social class. I’m sick of that social class bullshit. I’m sick of people telling me who I should or shouldn’t like. I’m sick of fake everything.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “What?”

  “To the gala. I’ll go with you, if you still want me to.”

  “I want you to, very much so. But there is one thing Lance said that was right. They’re going to be assholes to you. If I hear it-”

  “You’ll let it go. I don’t want to go to this gala only to watch you get thrown out by security. If your family hates me because of who I am then so be it, but they’re not going to hate me because you kick the shit out of someone at this fancy gala in my honor.”

  I couldn’t stop smiling. I couldn’t wait to see her all dressed up. Even if she went like she was right now, she’d still be the prettiest one there. I would do my best not to kick someone’s ass for being rude to her, but it would be damned hard. “So, you want to surf today or shop?”