by K. L Randis
“Ugh,” I said, abandoning the last gulp at the bottom. “How’d you do that so fast?”
“Practice, just like how we’re going to practice to make you the fastest you can be by race day,” he said, reaching into his pocket as his phone vibrated again.
“Ah, I should take this,” he said, pushing his stool from the bar. He maneuvered his way to the outside deck, scraping his work boots against the floor and running his hand down the length of his shirt to rid it of the condensation that had been transferred from his beer glass.
“He’s hot,” Meg said behind me.
I jumped. “Hi friend, didn’t see you there.”
“I know,” Meg said, winking. “Your gaze was busy on other thinnnnnngs.”
“He’s okay.”
“Like I said, you never were very good at determining who was or wasn’t easy on the eyes. I am telling you he is.”
Trying not to make it obvious, I watched Jackson in my peripherals. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the screen for a brief moment before returning it to his pocket, shaking his head in disgust. He stuffed both hands in his pockets then, staring out onto the ocean. A breeze rustled his t-shirt and I could almost smell his cologne wafting into the bar. He remained solidified to the deck, unmoving. Thinking there was a chance he wasn’t coming back inside, I pushed my stool away from the bar to make my way toward him.
I stood next to him for a solid minute, rubbing my arms in the chilly breeze and watching his gaze hover over the ocean in front of us. He wasn’t staring at anything in particular, but everything at the same time. A hollow, befuddled expression filled his eyes and I shuddered. Part of me wanted to go back inside, the silence between us deafening. Instead, I wondered if he just needed…
His reflexes were astonishing. My wrist was clenched in his grasp almost the instant I touched his shoulder. I didn’t mean to yell out, and I could see Meg running out from behind the bar. Jackson’s breaths were shallow, forced, and he looked at my hand like it was a grenade.
“We’re okay, Meg,” I said, keeping my voice level as she approached, my eyes locked on Jackson’s face.
“Pip?” she questioned, approaching us like she was stepping over eggshells on the floor.
“We’re good, right Jackson?” I asked.
He blinked at me, the laughing, full-of-life Jackson nowhere to be found. He nodded, robotic movements answering the question.
“Meg, we’re going to walk off the deck and onto the beach for a minute.”
“Pip, I don’t think—”
“Come on, Jackson. Walk with me.”
At first he stood motionless as I slowly uncurled his fingers from around my wrist. They had already begun to bruise but I didn’t bring it to his attention. The sand was just off the deck, and I was thankful it was mid-day. There was barely anyone inside, never mind out on the deck to watch us. I guided him to the sand, offering my other palm for him to take. He did, and the sensation of my fingers intertwined with his caused him to look down at his hand.
“Sit with me,” I said. Gently bending my knees, I lowered myself to the beach and sat in the frigid sand, grabbing a handful.
Jackson complied, bending his knees. He faltered for a moment as he crouched down, sitting with me.
“Open your hand,” I said. He did, and I put the sand into his palm, pulling his fingers apart to let it sift through the gaps like a waterfall. “You feel that?” I asked, gauging his responsiveness.
“Again?” he asked, opening his palm but staring past me. I nodded, breathing a little easier as the color returned to his face and the clenched fist of his other hand relaxed.
After sifting the sand through his fingers two more times, I eased back into conversation. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Jackson. I shouldn’t have touched your shoulder like that.”
“When did you touch me?” he asked. When his eyes met mine they were genuinely afraid.
I didn’t answer.
“Pippa, did I do something? Did I—?” He looked me over, looking for any obvious signs he had hurt me.
“You kids okay out here?” Meg yelled, interrupting from the deck.
“We were just talking, everything’s good. We’ll be back inside in a minute.”
“Meg,” Jackson called out, staring at me with the softest eyes I’ve ever seen. “Get me my check, please.”
Meg didn’t ask questions as we both paid our tabs and walked to the parking lot. Neither of us said anything, and we lingered by our cars for an awkward amount of time not knowing how to fill the silence.
“So you’ll call me?”
“Hmmm…” he said, half-aware of why he would do such a thing. He nodded, taking a deep breath. “Oh yeah, the marathon. Boston. Yeah, I’ll call then.”
“Not just for that,” I said, moving toward him. An invisible tether pulled me in his direction, and I made sure his eyes weren’t off in the distance when I reached for his hand. “Anytime you want to,” I assured, my hand brushing the top of his.
He looked down, his fingers twitching to fight off the urge to take my hand. Forcing a smile he nodded again. Then he turned to open his door, starting the engine once he was inside.
Adrenaline had sobered me up and I found myself headed home instead of back into the bar to talk to Meg.
Pulling up to my house I stopped to grab the mail before heading inside, flicking through letters as a distraction.
That’s when I saw it.
“I made it,” I whispered, reading over the acceptance letter after ripping it open. Punching the air I grabbed my phone, tapping the screen like a lunatic to tell Meg that I was officially a qualified runner for the Boston Marathon.
I locked my phone and set it down on the counter, smiling like a buffoon. My smile faded as I thought about who I wanted to tell next, Jackson popping into my head unannounced.
Opening my phone I slid through my messages and found his name, scanning the only text he had sent me:
Hey it’s Jackson, you’ll remember me as the guy who lost the beach race. Dinner?
I sighed, remembering his breath on my lips and the way he cradled my head just before I hit the ground.
Jackson had hit the ground at The Inlet, I watched it happen, and I didn’t see the signs before he fell.
“Just ask if he’s okay,” I said out loud. Starting to type, I filled up the spot to reply and tell him he’d better prepare to train me just to start off the conversation.
Almost as if in direct response, three gray dots bubbled up on the bottom of the screen when I was mid-sentence, indicating that Jackson was writing something at the same time.
I held my breath as the bubbles danced across the screen in a lazy rhythm. After a moment passed I wondered if he was typing something lengthy or typing and deleting what he was saying.
Then, they stopped.
I stared at the screen for a full three minutes, waiting for the bubbles to reappear.
They never did.
I deleted what I wrote and stared a while longer. Locking my phone I pushed it away from me on the counter, burying my head in my hands.
Curiosity consumed me, wanting to know why he never pushed send.
All he managed to give me were three gray dots.
Chapter Six
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did your parents die?” I was flat on my back staring up at the sky, grabbing onto my left shin and pulling my knee to my belly to get a deeper stretch.
Jackson stood facing the waves, his right foot in his hand as he teeter-tottered to gain balance and stretch his thigh. “”You were twenty minutes late and you want to start out with that topic?”
“I texted you I was going to be late,” I protested.
“You didn’t say why.”
“I didn’t think I needed to, I’m a busy person,” I said, wanting him to drop it. “Oh, I mean not that you’re not busy, I was just saying—”
“They were poisoned.”
I sat upright, wat
ching for tells on his face that he was kidding. “What?”
“They were poisoned.”
“At the same time?”
Jackson nodded. “At the same time and in the same way.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“Their car,” he replied, nonchalantly.
I struggled to follow. “How did their car poison them, Jackson?” I put my hands behind me and spread them out into the sand, feeling around with restlessness.
The method of training that Jackson preferred consisted of short bouts of running intervals with gaps of stretching and rest in-between. Normally I’d protest, since the short bursts of two to four miles weren’t enough to fully unleash all of the adrenaline I had. One week into training I found myself gravitating in favor of the stretching parts, preferring it to running since it gave us a chance to pause and get to know each other better.
The legs on Jackson were intimidating. He was a workhorse, digging his feet into the ground and connecting like a wire finding its ground. An unlimited stamina harbored inside of him, and at times I felt like I was pushing myself too hard. An injury would ruin everything. Somehow he knew exactly when I was about to max out, slowing down to a trot just as I was trigged with muscle exhaustion.
“Jackson?” I asked again, wondering if he didn’t hear my question. “We don’t have to talk about it if—”
“They had a luxury car with keyless entry. Quietest motor on the market, they said.” He paused, clearing his throat, and lingered a second too long before continuing.
“Oh no…” I said, suddenly seeing through the foggy overtones.
“They were out to dinner one night, and Dad had one too many whiskey sours talking with a client so Mom had to drive home. She wasn’t used to driving his car and she left it running in the garage. All night. They never woke up.”
I brought my hand to my mouth. “Did you find them?”
“I didn’t. I was at a neighbor’s spending the night since they knew they’d be out late. It was two weeks before I graduated high school so my parents didn’t care about a mid-week sleepover. Our housekeeper found them, and we heard her screams from three houses down. I ran home, Mom took the key fob out but forgot to shut the car off. It just looked like they were sleeping in their beds upstairs. I’m sure they didn’t feel a thing.”
“You went inside?”
“I didn’t think twice. I just ran in.”
“You could’ve been killed too.”
“I didn’t consider it.”
“You’re lucky you got out of there.”
“I can’t remember things, sometimes.”
“Huh?” I asked, not sure if we were shifting topics to what happened the other day at The Inlet.
“I wouldn’t leave their sides until the ambulance got there. I inhaled enough that it impacted my memory, just slightly. You’d never know unless I told you. It wasn’t too noticeable at first. Maybe I would forget my jacket before heading home from work or didn’t call someone back when I said I would, nothing dangerous. Now…” He trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
Nodding, I wondered how much of his hospital stay was the responsibility of that accident versus his medical charts telling me he was a veteran with PTSD. The lost look on his face that day at The Inlet was painful to see, he truly didn’t remember grabbing me and I was willing to bet the majority of his recollection from his hospital stay had also been extinguished.
“That’s one hell of a freak accident,” I said.
“It’s actually way more common than people think. Twenty-eight people died last year from the same thing. There’s several lawsuits open but I didn’t want to get caught up in that, I wasn’t around anyway afterwards.”
“So is that what made you join the military? Was your dad a veteran or did you just need to get away?”
He grabbed at his chest as if having a heart attack. “My dad? A veteran? He wouldn’t have the grit.” The smile dissipated, and he stared at me. “I never said anything about being in the military.”
I stammered to find a reply. “Oh? I thought… yeah I could have sworn you mentioned something before.”
“I know for a fact I didn’t.”
He was sitting in the sand by then, hugging his knees. Most of the time we were dressed for chilly weather, so not much was exposed, but the sun had done his complexion a favor. Healthier than I had ever seen him when he was admitted, I stole a look at his arms, which were impressively flexed and being backlit by the sun.
“I guessed,” I said, still staring at his arms so I wouldn’t be tempted to divert my eyes from his when as I lied.
“You guessed?”
“You’re really fit and you keep your hair nice. I’d guess you go at least once a week to have it cut.”
“You guessed all that from my haircut?”
“You’re disciplined and hold yourself a certain way. Also, you’re bossy.”
“Am not.”
I opened my arms in a look-around-you way. “Yeah you’re not bossy at all, yet here we are, training for a marathon you have nothing to do with.”
“Kiss me,” he replied.
“What?” I looked around, not entirely sure who else I was expecting to see standing around us.
“Why do you look so surprised? I didn’t stutter, I said kiss me.” He opened his hands, curling his pointer finger in a come-hither motion.
“Jackson…I…”
“What? You don’t want to?”
“No!”
“No, you don’t want to kiss me?” The corner of his mouth started turning upward and something about it annoyed me. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or mocking me.
“No, I mean yes. I mean no, I didn’t say that I would not kiss you but…”
“But what?”
“But why?” I demanded.
“’Cause I’m bossy, right? That’s what bossy people do, they demand things.”
“I don’t even know you,” I replied. “Come on, tell me something funny about yourself instead.”
“Something funny?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Tell me a good story.”
He considered it for a minute, looking anywhere but my eyes. “I can’t seem to throw my garbage can away.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Yeah I can’t throw it away, every time I leave it at the curb for them to take they just think I don’t have any garbage for that can. It’s annoying, I’ve been trying to throw it away for months.”
My cheeks were pinched upward in laughter for what seemed like forever, and I was pretty sure I snorted just before catching my breath and settling down. “I actually couldn’t breathe there for a second,” I said, wiping away a tear.
He nodded at the success of his story, bringing his chin into his chest and staring at the sand between his feet. “You’re right. I don’t know you either. What about your parents?”
I stiffened. “What about them?”
“Well mine are dead, so I don’t have much to say about them. You’re a woman, yet you never bring up your mother or your father. That tells me you either have a bad relationship with them or they’re dead too.”
“Great hypothesis,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“So they’re dead?”
“Not exactly,” I replied.
“Enlighten me.”
“I don’t really know my father so there’s not much to tell. He left before I was born. My mom never talked about him much but she never had to, I didn’t ask.”
“Deadbeat?”
“A higher calling, actually.”
“He became a priest?”
“Eh, in a way. He was a doctor and he had the opportunity to travel to the remote village of Roka in western Battambang. Oh, that’s in—”
“Cambodia, I’m familiar.”
“Excuse me,” I said, holding up my hands and pushing back an invisible wall of air. Great, his mind is as beautiful as he is. “Yeah, well, long story short is he never came
back.” I held up my palms, shrugging my shoulders. “Too bad, so sad.”
“He didn’t try to write or come home to visit?”
“He was too busy saving the world, Mom said.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not at all,” I replied. “I never met him so there was no connection there and my mom found a really spectacular replacement father for me.”
Jackson laughed.
“No really,” I said, laughing with him. “He showed up to every dumb school event, every dance. He was everything he didn’t have to be.”
“Was?”
My laughter faded. “Heart attack.”
Jackson nodded, raising his eyebrows. “Always the great ones who go first, huh?”
“Something like that,” I said, looking out onto the water, feeling the salty air start to burn the corners of my eyes. “He’s a big reason why I got into the medical field. I thought maybe there was a way I could have saved him.”
“You’re a doctor? You never told me that. Where do you work?”
Busted.
“Not a doctor per say, I’m a registered nurse.” I flicked my shoe, hoping he would be satisfied with my answer and gloss over the subject.
“What hospital? Any of the local ones?” He was fishing and I knew I had a split-second choice to make. If I told him the truth now I’d probably never see him again and if I lied I’d be setting up our relationship to sleep in a bed of deception I’d have to address at a later time before he found out.
I needed more time.
“You probably wouldn’t know it, it’s a smaller hospital out past where my mom is, so it’s over an hour from here.”
I knew the question about my mother was next and it was a person and topic I only discussed with Meg so I braced myself, gearing to put my guard up.
“Your mom?” he asked gently, reading my face before he asked.
When I looked at Jackson his heart was on his sleeve. He had such an innate way of sensing my feelings just by looking at me and I appreciated it more than I could ever tell him out loud. When a man is perceptive enough to read a woman before she’s aware of what she feels, you know he’s pure. He should be kept, and appreciated and...
