by Marr, Maggie
“Yeah. Which is funny because I’ve met Jack and to be honest, from all the stories I’ve heard, you’re exactly what he wanted too.”
My chest tightens.
“Sometimes it’s about timing,” Torrey says. “My best friend Becca went through something similar with her husband Jake and what felt like miscommunication turned out to be timing…and miscommunication…but definitely timing. And having the tough conversations.” Torrey sighs. “I mean if you love them, you have to have the tough conversations. Did you have the tough conversation? I mean really have it?”
Deep breath. “No…I didn’t.” I close my eyes. “I left and when I went back out…he…he wasn’t there.”
“But because you told him to leave, right? I mean you told him to go—”
“He should know—”
“No he shouldn’t. I mean, come on. If you want your words to have meaning, then you have to take responsibility for saying them. You wanted an apology and he gave you one. You told him to go and he did.”
I nibble the inside of my cheek. “I don’t love what you’re saying.”
“I know. There’ve been a ton of times when I don’t love what my friends say, either. But that’s why we have them. Our friends. Right? They’re the people that actually say the things we know, but can’t quite admit to ourselves aren’t they?”
“We’re not done yet, are we? Jack and I.”
“That depends, I guess.”
“On what?”
“On whether you want to have that really hard conversation. The one that you’ve avoided. The one that sorts out just exactly what he meant when he told you why he left you in Phuket. You might not like what you hear, but you’ll come to terms either way.”
“Either way?”
“Yeah, you’ll either work through it or say goodbye.”
“No more in between. No more ‘what-ifs’ and ‘why-nots’ to hang my hat on.”
“Scary stuff right? When you actually have the conversations and know where both of you stand. But it’s the only way forward, isn’t it? You come out clean either way.”
“How’d you get so smart?” I ask.
“So many bad boyfriends before your brother.” Torrey laughts. “Bad, bad, bad.”
“But they got you here. To him. To each other.”
“Exactly. They got us to here.”
We say goodbye and I click off. While her words aren’t what I wanted to hear, they’re exactly what I needed to hear. No more hiding behind my anger about being left in Phuket. I got my apology and some good sex, too. Time to be a grown up and actually have the tough conversation that I’ve avoided since I arrived in LA. After our conversation, this relationship will go one way or the other. We’ll move forward together or I’ll continue down my path alone, but I’ll finally know why. I’ll understand more about Jack, and also more about me. Deep breath.
Fear catapults through my body. Why does it feel easier to not know? To inhabit this in-between limbo? The discomfort of inhabiting the in-between space is more comfortable than the finality of the no, because until I hear ‘no’ there’s always hope—the place where the ‘what-if’s’ and the ‘why-nots’ live.
Not anymore. Now, it’s time to find out the truth behind Jack’s words.
9
Jack
I walk up the beach and away from the waves. Emma slides through my mind. How can she not after last night? I stare at the Pacific. Infinite blue bleeds into a pink and purple sky. The sun drops near the water. Not even surfing and waves will clear my head tonight.
I turn toward my place and walk across the sand. I hurt Emma with my words. I press my hand to the scar on my temple. Did my words not make sense? Was I unclear? Ever since the accident, I question how I communicate and what I say. Second-guessing how I communicate.
I won’t ever be the same as I was before the accident, but that doesn’t mean I’m worse…just different. I glance at my back gate and stop.
Emma.
Her hair floats on the wind. Her skin glows from the light of the sunset. This vision of Em, in a short floral skirt, and t-shirt, and flip-flops, is identical to the picture of Em that I eternally hold in my mind.
My little surfer girl.
We were both so young. So in love. So naive. So…
Her blue eyes sparkle in the setting sunlight.
Heat pounds through my body. My cock twitches. I fight the desire to pick her up and carry her into my house and take her. Take her as I did last night, as I will forever want to take her, to convince her that she should be mine no matter how damaged or how different I am now. That we can find a way to make our two worlds work even with our different desires.
I walk to her. She smells of sunshine and lemon.
“Hey,” she says. She drops her gaze for an instant and then looks up at me through her eyelashes. Almost like she was eighteen again and we were falling in love. “I..I uh…wondered if we could talk?”
I nod. I open the back gate and let her walk onto my patio. Deep breath. There’s a whole lot to say and my heart hurts because I’m completely unsure how this is going to end, but one way or another, this limbo that I’ve inhabited where Em is concerned will end now.
Inside my place I light a fire and we sit on the couch. I stop myself from pulling her onto my lap and wrapping her in my arms; pressing my nose into her curls; kissing down the curve of her neck and pulling that T-shirt off her body.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
I look into her big brilliant blue eyes.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. It’s me who’s sorry.”
“You already apologized. And just because I didn’t like what you were saying at the time, doesn’t mean it’s not words that I needed to hear. Things that need to be said.” She breathes deep and closes her eyes. She exhales and gazes at me with laser-like precision. “I shouldn’t have told you to leave without getting to say whatever you needed to say.” She dips her head. “That’s the exact same thing that you did to me that made me so upset,” she says.
“Maybe not the exact thing. You’re being generous. We’d just gotten engaged and I left you in a foreign country, and—”
Em holds up her hand, “Okay, I get it.” She shakes her head. “Not helping, going over all the details of our break-up again.”
“Break up? That’s a funny term, because it didn’t really seem like a break up did it?”
Em shifts her gaze and her lips soften. “No, it didn’t. It felt more like being abandoned.”
Ache lodges in my heart. “I didn’t want our relationship to end….I just….” The words won’t come and I stare out toward the ocean beyond.
“Jack, tell me,” she says, pressing me to use words that I can’t find.
“That’s just it, I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” She leans back on the couch and crosses her arms over her chest.
“I can’t, Em, that’s part of the problem. That’s part of why I left…the words…the things…all that…” I search her eyes and then I stare at the floor, not wanting to admit what I need to admit; not wanting to say the things to the woman that I love; not wanting to be judged wanting and not enough and limited. “Em, the accident didn’t just take my desire to surf the big waves, it took part of me,” —I press my finger to my head—“it took part of my mind.”
Em’s eyebrows soften and her mouth goes from a tight line to a soft o. She gazes from me to the sliders then back to me, “What are you saying? The doctors said—”
“The doctors said that I would likely recover all my abilities, and I have, for the most part, but it’s different. My mind is just different now. Words. Numbers. Phrases.” I shake my head. “I have to really work for them now. When I left that morning in Phuket, you’d already done so much for me and I knew, I knew that if we went ahead and eloped that we would be each other’s world and that what had happened to me would limit all that you could do and I couldn’t be the reason that you were limited
and I couldn’t figure out a way to say that.” I press my hand to my head. “Even now, I’m not sure I’m saying it right or making sense. I mean the store, yeah the books and the marketing were a mess, until I hired Presley to start doing both. And even then, I mean you saw the post-it notes in my office right? I put them everywhere.”
Em presses her fingertips to her forehead, a move she’s used for as long as I’ve known her, indicating she’s trying to think.
“So let me make sure I understand. You didn’t leave because you didn’t want me to be ambitious, you left because you believed that your…challenges after the accident—challenges that created permanent changes to you…you believed that those challenges would limit my ability to be ambitious?”
I nod. “Right.” I sit beside Emma. I reach for her hands. “I know how much you care for those you love and I knew that you wanted to build Bliss Boards into a huge company and I also knew that me and my challenges, as you put it, would slow you down. You’d think that I was your responsibility.” I squeeze her hands. “Do you remember the first six months after the accident? Did you go into the office once during that entire time?”
“You died. You were dead, Jack. They brought you back to life. I love you. Of course I stayed with you. I don’t…I wouldn’t change having stayed with you. You would’ve stayed with me.”
“I know but…” I look away. How do I say what comes next. How do I say it without sounding like a judgmental prick. “But after…me not being able to remember things and having to write things down that wasn’t the only thing…something about us…about or relationship shifted to.”.
She releases my hands. Sadness in her eyes. Sadness over what she expects me to say.
“You stopped loving me,” she whispers.
“No. If anything, I loved you even more. I had this need for you, to be with you. It was like you were my connection, my tether to life. I wanted you and needed you, but…the thing is…” I search her face. I soften my gaze. “We wanted different things.”
Emma stands. She presses her palms together. “I know you said that, but I don’t understand what you mean. I thought you meant that you didn’t like that I was ambitious that you didn’t want me to be that way—”
“Not only do I love that about you, I think you’re amazing because of it, but…I…I just didn’t want to be a part of it.” I shrug my shoulders. “I mean, running the Venice shop is enough pressure for me.”
Emma narrows her eyes at me.
“What? Our revenue is steady. We have a great business. We—”
“But it could be bigger,” Emma says.
“Exactly. It could be, but I don’t want that. I want a board shop that is well respected and part of the community. A place that people love and are familiar with. Between our surf school and our website, we’re really well covered. And I’m not the guy who’s going to open shops up and down the coast.” I shake my head. “No. I was that guy. Before the accident. I was driven to ride every wave and open a million stores and be the biggest, baddest, most amazing company in the world. I was ready for that…” My heart aches. “But Em, after the accident, I didn’t want that anymore.”
“But you could—”
“No, Em, you don’t understand. I didn’t want that, and I don’t feel badly for not wanting it. That’s where we’re different. I’m solid, Bubbles. I’m good with doing a great job running one Bliss Board shop in Venice. And I get it if you need to bring in someone to open a dozen new stores in California, but I’m not that guy and not only am I not that person, I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
Em widens her eyes as though she’s getting it. Completely getting what I’m telling her.
“So you don’t want that and you don’t feel badly about not wanting it?” she asks.
“Right.”
“And being around it? With me? And me wanting all that?”
“I’m afraid that I’d hold you back. That we…we just wouldn’t click because the life we want seems too different. You’re on this trajectory and I love watching it, but I don’t know if we can go along for each other’s ride.”
Em’s bottom lip quivers.
A weight lodges in my chest. Her eyes reflect the sadness wrapping around my heart.
In this moment we know that we love each other but that we may not be able to build a life around our love. I pull her into my arms.
The warmth of her presses against my chest. The scent of lemons. Her breath mingling with mine. Waves stroke the shore beyond the open sliders. A fire crackles in the fireplace. Perfection and yet perhaps only perfection for a short while because life will intrude. The life that each of us wants.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I…you’re right there is a vision that I have for the company.”
I nod. “I know and that’s a big part of why I love you. Why I’ll always love you.” I press my lips to hers.
Heat flames through me. My cock twitches. I trace my hand over her cheek. She slides her tongue along my lips.
“Oh Jack,” she mumbles around our kiss.
She presses her hand to my shorts and unsnaps them. I press my hand to her breast and rub my thumb across her shirt. Her nipple tightens beneath the fabric.
She slips her hand into my pants and grasps my cock. A long, slow, smooth stroke down my shaft.
My belly tightens. Want, need, desire, course through my body. My cock is hard for her. She slides her finger through the come on the tip of my cock. I pull the edge of her t-shirt up and over her head.
“You’re beautiful,” I say. I dip my head and pull a tight nipple into my mouth. I roll the flesh around my tongue. I slide my hand under her skirt. I slip my finger beneath her panties and press my fingertip against her engorged nub.
“Oh Jack,” she moans. I slip her nipple from my mouth and reach down and lift her. Our lips press together. We’re up the stairs and into my bedroom. She slides down my body. I pull her skirt from her body.
“You’re fucking perfect,” I say.
I lift my arms and pull my t-shirt from my body. I lift her and lay her on my bed. She rocks her hips up and down, wanting my touch.
“I want you inside me,” she whispers. “Please, Jack.”
I smile. My cock is ready for her tight, wet spot. I place my body above her and I press my lips to her lips. A hot kiss full of promises but without satisfaction. I trail my mouth down her neck. Her hands claw at the comforter.
“Oh, please,” she gasps. She slides her hands through my hair. I trail my kisses over her belly. I stop at her mound. I press my hands to her inner thigh and spread her legs wide. Her desire for me slicks her sex.
I press my mouth to her and slide two fingers deep into her hot sex.
“Oh yes.” Her hips rise up and I press my hand to her hip, stilling her rhythm. She bites her bottom lip and pulls her eyebrows tight. I pull her deep into my mouth and stroke her with my tongue.
“Oh Jack,” she yells. Her muscles tighten and she falls over into pleasure. Her body relaxing from her climax. She pulls me up and away from her sex. She kisses me and reaches for my cock.
“Please Jack, please, I need you inside me.”
I stroke deep into her slick sex. She tightens around me. Her hips hitch up and down to meet my stroke. Desire whips through my body. A hot chord I can barely hold on to. She clutches her legs around my back. I won’t last much longer. She clutches my shoulders.
“Deeper, harder, please Jack, please.” Her eyes wild with pleasure.
I press into her body. My control slips. I slap my flesh against her flesh as I lose control and move faster and faster. My body tightens. Heat starts in my feet and travels up through my legs and through my balls. Tendrils of heat seeking release. My entire body stiffens and she tightens her sex around me, squeezing over and over until I am empty. I collapse against Emma’s body.
Fuck me. I’m spent. I pull her into my arms and press my lips to her nose.
“Emma I love you.”
&
nbsp; Her bottom lip trembles, her eyes hold tears. “I love you too.” She presses her lips to mine. We hold each other and fade away into the night.
10
Emma
I lift a small stack of printed spreadsheets from my office desk and drop them into the recycling bin to be shredded. Four weeks. I’ve been in LA for four weeks. The audit is finished, my report filed, and after Bliss Boards closes for the day, I leave for Mesquale.
Normally I’d be thrilled.
My phone rings and I pick it up.
“Ready for your vacation?” Brett asks. “You’ve certainly earned it. Love the numbers I’ve been seeing and your recommendations for expansion and how to keep the Venice Board shop just exactly the way it is as a flagship for the community. Plus their marketing? Who knew that we had a marketing genius there all along. I think it’s brilliant. Can’t wait for Presley to come to Sydney to whip us into shape!”
“Thanks,” I say. I toss another sheaf of papers into recycling. I peek out of my office and toward Jack’s which is right next door. He’s been in and out all day but he hasn’t really stopped by to chat about me leaving.
“Jack is good with all this?” Brett asks.
“I mean we’ve discussed it in broad strokes. But he wanted to get the report when you got the report.”
“It’s brilliant what he’s done there, isn’t it? Really managed to make the shop a part of the community. And up their marketing game.”
“He has,” I say. “People drive from all over LA to buy our products, go to surf school, meet him.”
“So next step? I mean is he on board with expanding?”
“I mean, he’s not opposed to the expansion, but he won’t be the guy going out doing it. He’s made that clear.”
“He’s different, isn’t he? Since the accident.” Brett’s voice is softer.
“Maybe we all are. There’s a whole host of emotions that I hadn’t dealt with. What about you?”
“Torrey,” Brett says. “Torrey helped me deal with all the emotions I avoided…but yeah before…I hadn’t really talked about what happened.”
