Kicking Eternity

by Ann Lee Miller

  “You’ve got some serious muscle for a girl.”

  Drew stopped and grabbed her forearm. He ran the back of his finger over the swell of her biceps. “Pump iron?”

  “Ice cream.” She yanked her arm away. “My last job was dipping ice cream. And I didn’t hit you that hard. Wuss.”

  “Are we twelve again?”

  She ignored him.

  “The guy you marry better get the list—doesn’t submit well, might be stronger than you, name calling—”

  “Jud didn’t need your list to change his mind about marrying me.”

  Drew’s chin whipped back toward her. “Wh—what?

  “My sick sense of humor. Jud was headed for the pastorate. He thought he’d be the one to change my mind about Africa.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No. And evidently no other guys at Mid Florida Bible College wanted to go to Africa because I didn’t have another date for the next three years of college.”

  “He broke your heart?” Drew’s eyes crinkled at the corners as he peered at her.

  “I thought so at the time.” She waved it away.

  “How do you feel about going to Africa single?”

  “I sure don’t have the gift of celibacy.”

  One corner of Drew’s mouth twitched.

  She blushed.

  “How do you know? This I want to hear!”

  She looked out to sea. “If God loves me—and I know He does—He will either give me a husband in the next,” she looked at her watch, “two months, one week, three days, six hours. Or He has the guy waiting for me in Africa. Or He will be enough for me.” She crossed her arms and walked into the wind ahead of Drew.

  When Drew caught up to her, she looked over at him. “What about you?”

  “Race you to the jetty!” Drew took off at a dead run.

  She laughed and ran after him. “You wait and see, Drew Martin, I’ll get the truth out of you!”

  Chapter 9

  Raine watched the campers and their counselors filter toward the road. In the light from the dying campfire, Jesse crouched beside Kallie with Jillian asleep in her lap. Firelight reflected off the blond of Kallie’s hair.

  What would it be like to have a husband, a child? She shook the thought off. Lord, I believe You will get me to Africa over the obstacles of my father, and Cal—

  As if he’d heard her prayer, Cal hunkered down beside her on the sand. She looked up at the glow of yellow flame on Cal’s face. Her heart picked up speed. She’d never seen him attend campfire. What was he doing here?

  Night shadowed his eyes. “Stick around a few?”

  She leaned forward, about to stand. “I, uh, I have to get going.”

  “Just a couple of minutes. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  What could she say? ‘No’ would be rude. “Just a few minutes.”

  “Jess,” Cal called to his brother, “I’ll douse the fire.” He popped up and walked toward Jesse.

  Jesse looked up, surprised.

  Cal reached for the bucket. “You get your girls home.” Cal jutted his chin toward Kallie who was rubbing her back with one hand.

  Jesse grinned at Cal. “Thanks, bro!”

  Cal headed toward the water. Jesse scooped up Jillian and draped her limp form over one shoulder. He held a hand out to Kallie. She grabbed it and hefted her pregnant body from the sand.

  Lord— Raine’s heart groaned.

  Jesse and Kallie waved and moved toward the road to follow the string of campers threading toward camp.

  The bucket sloshed seawater as Cal set it down. He sat facing her, knees drawn up in front of him. One hand clasped his wrist. “I want to paint you.”

  She sucked in a breath. What?

  “Your eyes are as big as sand dollars. Don’t freak, okay? I’ve wanted to paint you since the first time I saw you on the Canteen porch. You’ve got great bone structure. You could sit for me after dinner for like… a week.”

  No! The answer is ‘no’! “When will you surf?” She grasped at something, anything, to buy time to think.

  “If I want to surf, I can get my butt out of bed in the morning.”

  “I don’t know,” she hedged. She didn’t want Cal staring at her for who knew how long.

  “Look, I’m an artist. I don’t see someone every day I want to paint.”

  All she could think about was how they were alone in the firelight right now. God, help me.

  Wind blew off the ocean feeding the fire. Now she could see Cal’s eyes boring into hers. She shook her head. “I can’t, Cal—”

  “Why?”

  “It’s the same conversation we keep having.”

  “You’re avoiding me. I used to see you fifteen times a day. This is the first time I’ve seen you this week, and I had to come looking for you.”

  “I’m busy—”

  “I don’t care if you hate my guts. Sit for me and I’ll leave you alone the rest of the summer. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. It’s easier to paint without conversation anyway. You can pray for all I care.”

  For you. “Okay, I’ll do it.” She had to get someplace where there were bright lights and people. Away from Cal.

  “You will?”

  She laughed at his expression. “You look like you only got through half your arguments.”

  He stood. “Am I that transparent?”

  “Not usually.”

  He tossed the water onto the fire. The embers sputtered while Cal went for a second bucket. She didn’t have a right to ask God to douse her feelings, not when she’d agreed to spend a week of evenings with Cal.

  Cal emptied the second bucket onto the dying fire.

  She helped him kick sand over the charred wood.

  They turned toward the seawall and hiked in the soft sand toward the road without speaking. Lights glowed in windows of the cement block duplexes, remnants of the sixties, that lined the street. Overhead, pine branches swayed, their needles filtering the moonlight before it reached the pavement.

  She looked at Cal. “You’re not a pariah.” A circle of streetlight bathed his face, but his expression gave nothing away.

  “I like you.” She looked away stepping into the shadow between streetlights. “You’re honest. You don’t let me keep things superficial…”

  Their footsteps scuffed along the road into camp. Say something!

  Cal stopped in front of her cabin. “Thanks—for sitting for me. And for—what you said.” His voice was hoarse.

  She stood on the porch and watched him walk away. She was so sunk.

  #

  Raine’s cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Eddie. Adrenaline streaked through her body as she opened his text. Her skin went clammy in the night air.

  “Yesterday, 4 p.m., bullet missed me. Maybe you’re right.”

  She sank onto the step of her cabin. Four was the exact time of yesterday’s meltdown over Eddie. What if—what if God had been urging her to “pray now” for Eddie because he was in crisis? Her prayers had been all about her and not about Eddie. Peace settled over her. Yes. Thank You. Next time she’d pray for Eddie.

  “Right about what?” she texted back.

  “That God is watching out for me. Even when I’ve ditched Him.”

  She punched the letters into her phone. “It’s true.”

  “I was scared. Really scared.”

  Panic curled in the bottom of her stomach. “You okay?”

  “Shaken. I hate my life.”

  Oh God, don’t let him be suicidal. “Teen Challenge.”

  “Maybe.”

  Thank You, Jesus.

  #

  Drew headed toward the Canteen porch. Time to get to work.

  He should have seen it coming—Rainey asking him what he thought about marriage. He’d only gotten out of answering by literally running away. What was he going to say the next time she asked? That he promised to marry Sam? But, man, he sure wouldn’t mind kissing Rainey first.
Her family thinking he was a candidate for Rainey’s husband had affected him more than he wanted to admit.

  He looked at the post-it stuck to his “office” door—a padlocked cupboard built into the Canteen porch that housed the athletic equipment. Use athletic field or gym today. Jake.

  Keenan read the note over Drew’s shoulder. “Dude. I was looking forward to some killer water polo today.”

  “Me too. What’s Jake thinking? I was out there for an hour this morning. It was humid as all get out, but not a dark cloud in the sky.”

  “Über cautious, man.”

  Keenan was right. Drew’s boss, Jake, was like a grandma when it came to safety issues. Jake had some close calls with storms when he ran his cruising business. But they would be fifteen yards from dry land playing water polo today. He’d watch for lightning. If it rained, so what? The kids would already be wet.

  Drew looked down at the junior highers bunching around the Canteen steps. “We’re hitting the beach!”

  A cheer went up.

  After the junior high cabins played, the elementary kids’ game devolved into water dodge ball. Now, two cabins of senior high boys were out for blood. He and Keenan dispensed with officiating to join in the game. The floating goals were taking a beating when the guys fired on goal. They had to call time-outs more than once to reassemble the PVC pipes that held the net. This is what Drew loved about his job, being smack dab in the middle of a game, the shouts and grunts, the ball whizzing between players. Stu sailed into the air to block Keenan’s pass. Bubba Franks, who swam for New Smyrna Beach High School, nailed a goal so hard the net broke loose from the piping.

  Not seeing a need to stop for a minor repair, Drew swam to retrieve the ball where it had veered toward shore. He rifled it back into play. Separated from the other players, Drew heard an odd sound, or maybe it was the absence of sound that should be there. He sensed more than saw something menacing. His gaze flicked toward the horizon. An asphalt-gray water spout, maybe ten stories high, barreled toward them.

  “Run! Everyone out!” He waved his arms. In his mind he could see the decimated shrimp boats on the front page after a spout touched down in the Keys.

  The boys were too focused on the shouts and the game to hear him. “Danger! Run!” Not even Keenan noticed him.

  He turned and dove with the waves heading for shore and swam hard for the beach. The ocean in his mouth tasted like fear. His eyes stung. Please God! Get the boys out, now! His lungs felt like they were about to burst.

  He hit the shallows running and pummeled into the dry sand where his whistle lay on a towel. Thank God.

  He put the whistle to his lips and blew a long shrill blast. The funnel was moving fast bearing down on them as though they were the bull’s-eye. He made huge arcs in the air with a red T-shirt he grabbed off the sand. Please God! He took a quick breath and blew again.

  Keenan’s head jerked toward him, and he sprung into action, yelling, grabbing boys by an arm, a handful of hair, the shoulder of a shirt. In seconds all the boys were scrambling for shore. Faster, faster! The spout was closing in on them, looking like it was going to chew up the last seven guys in the water. Drew ran into the waves, grabbing arms, sling-shotting boys toward shore.

  “Run!” he panted, “Run hard for camp!” If they could make it past the tree line—

  Chapter 10

  Aly looked up from the kitchen duty schedule she was working on as Cal flung into her office. He yanked the MP3 player headphones out of her ears.

  “Twister!” was all he said between sucking in air. When she didn’t move, he grabbed her biceps and shoved her under the desk. “The whole camp is holed up in the dining hall. Waterspout gone wild.”

  Cal’s shoulder smashed up against hers in the gloom under her desk. Her head spun. Her tailbone smarted from hitting the floor. The scent of Cal’s deodorant and the sound of his short, loud breaths filled the cutout between the side drawers of her desk.

  “I came looking for you when I didn’t see you in the dining hall.”

  Good thing. Obviously, Gar hadn’t given her the same consideration.

  “Is the spout going to hit us?” She twisted her head toward Cal.

  “You’re shaking.” He slid his arm around her. “Even if it hits us dead on, there are two blocks of land between us and the ocean to slow it down. Besides, this dinosaur of a desk must weigh three hundred pounds. You’re safe.”

  Cal’s breathing settled into its normal cadence, smelling faintly of mint. She’d never been this close to him, and it felt right somehow. To Raine, Cal was a risk, but to her he was security. Cal’s friendship had been constant for the past six years when boyfriends changed with the shades of her lip gloss.

  Cal rubbed the fabric of her short sleeved jacket between his fingers. “Man, Aly, you look all grown up this summer. Fancy duds. I’m used to little Aly in shorts and T-shirts.”

  Pretzeled into the small space, she still managed to elbow him in the ribs. She was only two years younger. “You see me stuck at fourteen when we met.”

  Cal laughed, and she felt his chest rumble against her. “Maybe, but you sure didn’t look fourteen when we met. I had to keep reminding myself you were only in eighth grade.”

  She swiveled her head so she could see his eyes in the shadow. “Really?”

  “Let’s see,” Cal ticked off on his fingers, “freshman year you went with Grant Fallon—”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Soph it was Geoff Ramirez and Jon Archer. Then, I graduated and tried not to know who you were going out with.”

  “You liked me?” Warmth bubbled up in her like a pan of homemade fudge on the stove. “—when you were painting me?”

  “Duh.” Cal’s smile was lopsided.

  And now he was painting Raine. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against Cal’s arm. It was firm under her neck. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “So I could get in line?”

  She didn’t move. The back of her head pressed against the desk. “Maybe there wouldn’t have been a line if you’d told me.”

  The howl of the wind startled her alert. A shutter banged on the outside of the office. Then, rain pelted the building with the force of a pressure sprayer. She curled into Cal and he held her. The fear crept out of her body. She could stay here forever.

  The rain eased off first, then the wind, until everything went eerily quiet.

  She crawled out from under the desk and crossed herself. Thank God they were okay. Nothing like a twister to turn a girl religious. Raine would laugh at that.

  Cal stretched, tugging his T-shirt taut across his chest.

  Her breath caught. Something had changed for her during the twister. She’d always known Cal was an attractive guy. But Cal’s searching for her and protecting her in his arms had woken up emotions that had been sleeping on the floor of her soul for a very long time.

  “Come on. Let’s go check out the damage.”

  “Cal.”

  He looked back at her.

  “Thanks for telling me. It means a lot.”

  “Sure, kid.” He flashed her a grin, threw an arm over her shoulder and moved them through the doorway.

  Ancient history to him. Today to her.

  #

  Drew and Keenan were the last to leave the beach, digging their heels into the soft sand as though they were running in slow motion. The wind whipped around them blowing sand in their eyes. The last of the boys were already on the blacktop speeding away from them.

  He pumped his legs harder. His bare feet hit asphalt. He took off for camp at a dead run, Keenan matching his strides step for step. Tree branches crashed in the distance. The wind howled behind them as they flew past the Welcome to New Smyrna Beach Surf and Sailing Camp sign.

  The camp looked vacant, like it had been closed for the season—minus the boards. He heard nothing but wind, then a shout through the dining hall screen. Bubba Franks’ crazy red head and one arm poked through the doors wa
ving them in. They tore up the steps and through the swinging doors. Bubba jammed chairs against the doors while he and Keenan hurtled into the room.

  “Drew!” Raine motioned him toward where she huddled under a table with the girls from her cabin. Keenan ducked under another table. Drew skidded to a stop and tumbled up against Raine. He dropped his head against his bent knees and sucked in air, his lungs feeling like fire. As his breathing slowed, he felt Raine’s hand rubbing circles on his back. Nice.

  Wind filled the room causing the building to shudder. The swinging doors broke loose and smacked hard against the walls. Leaves and twigs flew up against the screens and in through the open doors. Water sprayed at them through the screens on three sides of the building.

  And then, quiet. He melted against Raine in boneless relief. For a moment he felt nothing. Then guilt for disobeying Jake’s order rushed in like a mouth full of fluoride he couldn’t spit out.

  As everyone crawled out from under the tables, Jesse raised his fist in the air, the signal for silence. He bowed his head. “Thank You, we’re all safe. We don’t know what we’ll find out there, but right now, we’re grateful for life! Amen.”

  “Amens” echoed around the room. Jesse raised his fist again. “Elementary cabins clean up the dining hall and porch, the gazebo and the grounds between here and there. Junior high cabins…”

  Drew glanced at Raine whose attention focused on Jesse. He scanned the room looking for Jake and spotted him moving through the doorway—probably to assess damage to his baby, the Smyrna Queen. He went after Jake. Best to get his apologies over as soon as possible.

  #

  In the split second of quiet after the wind left the dining hall, Raine felt Drew slump against her. He smelled like sweat and sea, and she realized somewhere along the way she’d become okay with sharing personal space with Drew. Then he was gone in the pandemonium of the kids climbing out of their cocoons.

  As she scooted out from under the table, a hand reached out to her. She looked up.