He says nothing.
I drop my panties to the sand and reach behind me to unhook my bra. As soon as I’m free, I’m running to the ocean.
The water’s cold, a lot colder than I thought it would be in July. I gasp, my muscles seizing, and I freeze in place, the water licking my upper thighs. My arms are crossed tightly across my chest, and I clasp my hands around my upper arms. Squeezing, I will myself to warm up. A wave hits me, advancing the cold up to my belly button.
“It helps if you just dive in. Do it all at once,” a deep voice says shockingly close to my ear. My arms automatically tighten over my breasts, as if he can see anything in this dark.
“Miguel?”
“Hey, Anna,” he says. “Glad you came.” Heat radiates from his body—he’s standing close to me, and suddenly all I can think about is how ridiculously naked I am, only water separating us. I shift back, trying not to draw attention to the move—pretty sure I’m about as subtle as a giraffe in a coffee shop.
He splashes me, laughing. “I’m serious, just duck under. It’ll be warmer after.”
When I don’t reply, he says, “I’ll do it with you. Count of three, okay?”
“Four,” I say.
“Huh?”
“Count of four.”
“Okay, whatever you say.” He counts, slowly, and on four, I let my legs turn to jelly.
The water covers my head, cold and intense and wonderful. I stay beneath the surface, letting the waves move me softly over the ocean floor, until my lungs burn. Then I stay a bit longer, finally rushing to the surface when my body starts screaming for breath. The air hits my skin, rushes into my lungs, dances through my hair. It’s cold now, and the water is like a warm hug, holding me tight, keeping me safe. Miguel is still there, so close, but now I’m relaxed, caring about nothing beyond the sensation of the ocean flowing around my body. It’s speaking to me, singing lullabies, tempting me to become part of it. I could stay here forever.
Clouds shift, and the moon shines down on us, silvery, glinting across the ripples in the water. We bob with the waves, and more people splash in to join us. I can’t make out faces, don’t care who they are. I slip onto my back on top of the ocean. Water invades my ears, shutting out the world, and I’m all alone, just me and the ocean. And thoughts of Storm. Number 6.
Chapter 19
Cameron’s not on the beach when I swim to shore. I slip into my clothes, forcing them over my sticky, wet skin. With a wave to the rest of the group, who are still splashing in the waves, I head back to the bonfire.
I do a full loop around the blaze, and Cameron is nowhere to be seen. Clem is reclined in a beach chair, Sabine perched on his lap. She smiles at me and waggles her fingertips. The fire dries my skin, making it feel tight, the salt itching my pores. I ask Sabine, “Have you seen Cameron?”
“Who?”
“Chris,” Clem says with a smirk.
“Oh yeah! He came back up about twenty minutes ago and asked me to tell you, um…”
“That he went back to the room,” Clem finishes for her.
I’m nodding, but not sure why. “Oh, okay. I should probably go, too. Thanks for inviting us.”
“You want us to walk you back?” Sabine asks. One look at her face tells me that the last thing she wants is to leave Clem’s lap right now, so I shake my head.
“I’ll be fine.” I give her a quick hug.
“My last name is Martin,” she says. “Find me on Facebook?”
“Will do. Thanks again.”
The walk back to the hotel is quiet, the boardwalk having gone to bed while I was at the party. The rhythmic rush of the ocean is my only company as I make my way through the streets. I creep into the room, tiptoeing through the dark. Cameron is asleep on the bed, snoring softly, so I climb in next to him, wide awake.
The ocean is still on my skin, the rush of the night still in my heart.
“Let’s go,” Cameron says, too loudly, the next morning. I pry my eyes open, squint into the light of the room.
“What time is it?” I croak.
“Seven thirty.”
I roll over and pull the blankets up to cover my head. “You did not seriously just wake me up at seven thirty in the morning.”
“We were on the road way before this yesterday,” he says. I hear the sound of a zipper followed by the shuffle of items being shoved into his bag.
“Yesterday, we were in the creepiest motel in the continental US. Seriously, what’s the hurry?”
He sighs. “I just don’t want to be here, okay? Let’s move on.”
“I’m going back to sleep.”
The bed bounces violently and the blanket is jerked away from me. Cameron is inches from my face, anger painted all over his face.
“What the hell, Cam!” My anger matches his.
“Have a good night?”
“Yes, thank you. Now, leave me alone.”
“Get up.”
“No.”
His face softens a tiny bit. “Please, can we just get on the road? You can sleep in the car.”
I pull the pillow from under my head and press it over my face. “What are the chances you’ll let my sleep if I say no?”
“Not great,” he says.
“Fine.” I sit up, throw the pillow at him. “But we are stopping for coffee.”
The boardwalk is dead this early in the morning, yet we manage to find a little espresso stand tucked into the side of a building. It’s ridiculously overpriced, but I’m willing to barter my firstborn for a good latte at this time of day.
The barista hands us our drinks, and Cameron turns toward the car, but I stop him and head the other way.
“Where are we going?” He’s still angry.
“I need to grab a picture.” I pull the Polaroid from where I tucked it into my purse and head to the beach. Cameron follows. Once we’re on the sand, with no buildings between us and the water, I stop and raise the camera to my eyes.
“Sure you don’t want to strip down for that, make sure it’s really accurate?”
“Shut up,” I snap. “Just take my picture.”
He grabs the camera from my hand, and we burrow our drinks in the sand. I walk down the beach, just to the high-tide line, then turn to face him. Throwing my arms out from my sides, I tilt my face to the sky and remember the freedom of floating last night, nothing separating me from the rush of the ocean.
“Okay, crazy girl,” Cameron calls, “we’re done.” He’s holding the picture in one hand, waving it back and forth slowly. He smiles as I approach him, and it shocks me to find how much I’ve missed seeing that smile since yesterday. I reach for the picture.
Cameron pulls his hand back, keeping the photo just out of my grip. “Nope,” he says. “Not until we are in the car.”
We kick the sand on our slow walk back, knocking one another like bumper cars as we make our way through the hills and valleys of the beach.
“Where are we headed next?” Cameron asks as we cross the boardwalk.
I shrug. “I have no idea. South, I guess.”
At the car, Cam opens my door for me then says, “Outer Banks?”
“Okay?…”
He runs around the front of the car and slides into the driver’s seat, cranking the engine. “I did some research last night when you were… you know. Outer Banks—”
“When did you have time for research? You barely left before me.”
He waves me off with a flip of his wrist. “Don’t worry about it. They have lighthouses and parasailing, and it’s on the way to Carolina Beach.”
“Meaning, it’s pretty much perfect?”
“Exactly.”
I recline my seat, prop my bare feet on the dashboard. “Outer Banks it is. Onward, Jeeves.”
“Why do you think she wanted to do it?” Cameron’s voice cuts through the silence of our drive just as we leave Virgo Beach.
“Do what?”
“Skinny dipping. I can’t figure that one out.”
> I shrug. “Who knows. Why did she put any of these things on the list?”
He flicks on the blinker and switches lanes, passing a motorhome pulling a car and a boat. The Monte Carlo feels like an ant next to an elephant. “The lighthouse thing makes total sense.”
“It does?”
“Yeah. Don’t you remember that summer your grandma took us to the library, and Storm would get the same book, like, every week?”
“Kinda, I guess.” I don’t remember at all, but I can’t bring myself to admit out loud that I’ve forgotten. It’s like forgetting a piece of Storm—a piece of myself—and I won’t do that. Can’t.
“The girl in that book lived in a lighthouse. Well, not in a lighthouse, but her dad was the lighthouse keeper or something, so they lived right next to it. And she got to go up into the lighthouse all the time, and I think it was magic. But maybe I made that part up.”
“How did I not know that?”
He shrugs. “Don’t know. But Storm talked about it all the time. For years. She would go on and on about how she wanted to find an old, decommissioned lighthouse and rehab it to live in. I guess that’s a thing you can do. She saw a show or something.”
I have no words. She was my sister, my idol. The person I knew better than anyone else. And I had no idea how much she loved lighthouses, that she wanted to live in one. We used to tell each other everything, make our crazy plans together, and I feel empty inside knowing that I was left out of this one—or had maybe been too busy to listen.
“You okay?” Cameron’s voice is soft, lacking the lightness it had just moments ago.
“Fine,” I say.
“Liar.”
“I just don’t get why she didn’t tell me. If she loved lighthouses so freaking much, how did I not know about it?”
“I don’t know, Anna. It’s not like she went around telling everyone that.”
“You just said she talked about it all the time!” I’m yelling now, but I don’t care.
Cameron goes silent, focusing all his attention on the road. The drive is beautiful, all lush trees and cow-dotted fields, the ocean peeking through occasionally, as if to remind us it’s still there. Up ahead, I can see the flashing lights of a construction crew. I watch the car in front of us, reading the stickers plastered over every inch of its back bumper. VIRGINIA IS FOR ALL LOVERS. WHAT DID SHAMU EVER DO TO YOU? OBX.
“What’s OBX?” I ask Cameron, happy to change the subject, to force myself not to dwell on lighthouses and Storm.
“Where we’re going.”
“The Outer Banks?”
“Yup.” That’s all, no further explanation, just one word and he goes back to staring out the windshield.
Turning to face him, I tuck my foot under the other thigh and say, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
He waves a hand dismissively and looks at my lap, to the picture I’m clutching there. “How’d it turn out?”
The Polaroid is slightly blurred, the early morning light making the image more yellow-gold than it should be. It’s beautiful. I stand there, my gauzy sundress drifting around my thighs. Head back, hair falling in manic waves around my shoulders. The sun dots the upper right-hand corner of the image, spilling rays across the frame, obscuring me.
“Perfect,” I say.
“What are you going to write on it?”
“I dunno.” I grab the Sharpie from the glove box then hold it hovering over the picture. “What do you think?”
“I think skinny dipping with a bunch of people you don’t know at all is insane.”
“What, would you rather I’d gone skinny dipping with you?”
Cameron makes a soft choking noise, and I watch him from the corner of my eye. His knuckles whiten and he readjusts his grip on the steering wheel. Red splotches rush into his cheeks.
“I got it!” I say, adjusting the Sharpie. I lower it to the image, right over my chest. It wasn’t the same without him.
Cameron cranes his neck toward me, and I yank the picture out of his view. “Uh-uh,” I tease. “No peeking.”
“You’re seriously going to go on this trip with me, dragging me along to all your little shenanigans, and you won’t even let me see what you wrote?”
“Pretty much.” I tuck the picture into the book, at #6: Go skinny dipping.
“I know where you keep the book,” he says. “I can just look one night while you’re sleeping. Or when you’re on one of your thousand daily bathroom breaks.”
“You could, but you won’t.” As I say it, I know it’s true. He won’t look if I ask him not to, because that’s just how Cameron is. How he’s always been. I slide the book back under my seat and say, “And I don’t go to the bathroom a thousand times a day.”
He laughs, loud, and when he snorts, the tension drifts from my shoulders. It’s good to have him back.
Chapter 20
I lean back in the chair and fold my hands over my stomach. “I think I’m going to explode.”
Cameron’s hand freezes in midair, a spoonful of yogurt halted on its path to his mouth. “Too much?”
I look around our hotel room, taking in the crazy amount of food still left uneaten. “Yeah. Just a bit.”
Yesterday’s drive to Nags Head took all day. It’s just over a hundred miles from Virgo Beach, but there was construction on about ninety of those miles. Crews had the road torn up every few miles, and we spent much of the day waiting for flaggers and pilot cars. Cameron and I talked the whole time, reliving stories of our childhood. We laughed and cried, remembering Storm, and it was exactly what we needed.
Drivers all around us grew more and more frustrated. Horns beeped regularly, and the guy in the truck in front of us threw a rude gesture out the window. The flaggers looked like they’d rather be anywhere else. But me? I could’ve stay in the car, in our memories, forever.
By the time we got here, we were exhausted, so we decided to wait till this morning to do any exploring. I called Aunt Morgan on the way here, and she snagged us this room. Then I called Piper, holding my breath until she answered.
“You have two minutes to tell me what’s going on,” she said, her voice deadly cold, “and it better be good or I’m hanging up.”
I stumbled over my words at first, but before long, it all poured out of me. Piper listened way longer than the two minutes she gave me. When I finished, all she had to say was, “Wow.” I could count on one hand the number of times Piper had been speechless, but she definitely was then.
Things weren’t perfect between us, but it was a start.
This morning, Cameron woke up early and ran downstairs to bring up more food than we could possibly eat for breakfast. Now, I’m not sure whether I need a nap or to puke. I’m stuffed.
Cameron drops the spoon back into the yogurt cup, his bite abandoned. “Maybe we should take a walk or something. You’ll want to digest a bit before we get there.”
“Get where?”
“I booked us for a parasail tour at nine.”
The room spins, and my breakfast fights at my throat in earnest now. “You what?”
“Number Fourteen. Go parasailing. They have great tours here.”
“I know what number fourteen is.” I bend forward, dropping my head between my knees. The compression doesn’t help my full stomach, but at least I can breathe again. I take deep, slow breaths—in through the nose, out through the mouth.
“What’s up?” Cameron’s voice sounds far away. A hand is on my shoulder now, warm and comforting.
“You have got to stop springing all these heights on me.”
“No, this will be different,” he insists. I raise my head just enough for my eyes to meet his, to make sure he’s being serious. His expression is soft, concerned. “I promise. You start on the ground, so by the time we’re up high, you’ll be having too much fun to care.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we. You didn’t think I would let you go parasailing alone, did you? We are going tandem.”
I
manage to sit up. The room isn’t spinning anymore, and I’m pretty sure breakfast is firmly stuck in my stomach—for the time being at least. “Lead with that next time, okay?”
He laughs. “I’ll try,” he says. “Now, go get dressed.”
“Aren’t you two just the cutest little couple I’ve seen all week?” The woman at the parasail shop circles toward us from behind the counter. She’s an explosion of pink—magenta tank top with white and pink rhinestones, white Bermuda shorts, fuchsia platform sandals. Her lips are so bright they nearly blind me, matching the hot pink streak in her platinum A-line. She looks to be about forty-five, and as she comes toward us, I brace myself for a hug. She looks like a hugger. She doesn’t disappoint.
“Oh, we’re not a couple,” I say into her Aqua Net–scented hair, but Cameron, beside me, simply says, “Thanks.”
She holds me back at arm’s length. “Well, you’re just the tiniest little thing. I’ll have to dig in the back rack to find a harness that fits you.”
Is she serious? In her platforms, she’s a good four inches shorter than I stand in my flip-flops. I glance at Cameron, who’s watching me with an amused smirk on his face. “Um, I’m Anna,” I say.
“Oh, honey pie, I know. Got your name written down. Your beau here told me all about you. Don’t you worry your pretty little face, dear. We’ll take good care of you.” She grabs my hand in one of hers, Cameron’s in her other. Her eyes mist over, and I’m afraid her smile might actually break her face in two. “Listen, I gotta go make sure everything is ready for y’all and find you some harnesses. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, but if you need anything before then, you just holler for me, ya hear? My name’s Bobbi Rae.”
“Thanks, Bobbi Rae,” Cameron says, his voice betraying laughter. She beams even brighter, if possible, then drops our hands and scuttles to the back office.
I raise an eyebrow and stare at Cameron. “Look at you, charming Miss Bobbi Rae. She might just take you home with her tonight.” I do my best to mimic Bobbi Rae’s thick accent, but end up sounding like I belong in a bad country music video.
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