by Amy Sparling
I take a step back. “I am not riding that thing.”
He holds the helmet closer to me. “It only goes 40 miles an hour.”
“You can die at much slower speeds,” I say.
When he smirks he’s so cute you barely even notice the scar on his cheek. “I’m a good driver. I promise.”
“I guess if it’s an emergency…” I say as I take the helmet and lower it over my head.
He nods. “It’s an emergency.”
I reach for the little straps that hang down by my chin, but I can’t get them to click together at the buckle. Jeremy steps forward, a cute smile playing on his lips. “Is this your first time wearing a helmet?”
I consider it for a moment. “I think so.”
He grins. “May I?”
I nod. He steps closer, bringing the amazing scent of his cologne with him. He smells like summertime. I watch him while he tilts the angle of the helmet, adjusting it to fit properly on my head. Then he takes the straps and moves them together, his fingers leaving a trail of goosebumps as they graze my skin. The buckle clicks together, and he takes a step back, his hands falling away from my face. “There we go.”
I swallow. I don’t know why the close contact felt so powerful just now. Maybe because I’ve been almost completely alone for the last three weeks.
He climbs on the scooter and starts it up. The motor is quiet and wimpy-sounding and it relaxes some of my fears. It’s not like this thing is a race-worthy street bike. He looks back at me. “Ready?”
“Where’s your helmet?” I ask.
“I only have the one.”
I frown. “That’s not safe.”
“As long as my passenger is safe, we’re all good.”
Something in the way he says it makes my heart flutter. This random guy cares about my well-being more than my own boyfriend did. I bite back my anxiety of riding on a motorcycle and I climb onto the back. I’ve seen enough movies and motorcycles in real life to know that the person on the back has to hold onto the driver so they don’t fall off. But the idea of wrapping my arms around Jeremy makes me more nervous than the idea of riding a motorcycle. But I don’t want to fly off the back of this thing, so I grab onto his sides.
A few minutes later, I don’t know what I was worried about. The scooter is not fast at all. I feel like I could be pedaling a bicycle and still keep up with him. I relax as we turn out of the neighborhood and onto the main road. The beautiful beach is on our right, and to our left are tons of beach houses and the occasional gas station or surf shop. The south side of Sterling Beach is more residential, and I remember from my trips here as a kid that the north end of the beach is the tourist area with a boardwalk and lots of souvenir shops.
As we ride along, we pass some beautiful houses that could probably be called beach mansions. I take in their beauty as much as the beauty of the beach on the other side of the road. Since it’s summer, the beach is filled with families, surfers, and even some dogs on long leashes.
I close my eyes, my arms around Jeremy’s waist to keep me steady, and I take in the smell of the ocean, the feeling of the warm summer sun on my skin. Maybe being here isn’t so bad at after all.
We ride all the way to the touristic boardwalk and come to a stop at a bright blue building with crisp white trim. Murdoch’s Gift Shop is engraved on the wooden sign above the door. Jeremy parks the bike and I climb off. Even in the warm summer sun, my body feels cold with all the space between us now.
I’m able to take off the helmet on my own, but a silly part inside of me kind of wants to ask for his help. I take a deep breath and try to stop thinking of his fingers on my cheek.
“So what’s the emergency?” I say, looking around. The gift shop isn’t on fire or anything. There are no screaming people fleeing from a shark in the waters. Everything is calm and normal.
Jeremy smooths down his windswept hair. “We need to get a souvenir for my little nephew. He’s seven and he already has a bunch of Sterling Beach T-shirts, so maybe something else, but it needs to have the Sterling Beach logo on it.”
I put my hands on my hips. “You need help picking out a gift for a little kid?”
“Yep,” he says, all matter-of-factly. “My sister and brother-in-law come down here every summer but this year they got stuck working and can’t visit, and my nephew is devastated about it. I want to get him a gift to cheer him up.”
“That’s not an emergency.”
He smirks. “I never said the emergency was mine.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “So who’s emergency is it?”
“Yours.” He starts walking toward the gift shop and I run to catch up with him.
“How exactly am I having an emergency right now?”
He holds open the door for me, but I stop short, staring at him for an answer.
“You’ve been cooped up in that house for weeks now. I haven’t seen you on the beach at all, and that’s just not right. Mr. Clint says you refuse to come out of your room, and well, that’s an emergency. I thought I would try to cheer you up.”
I can think of about one million ways to argue with him right now, but the softness in his eyes tells me he didn’t lie to me to be mean. He just genuinely wants to make my summer a little brighter.
“You could have just asked me,” I say as I walk into the gift shop. “I would have come with you.”
He falls in step with me. “Good to know.”
Six
The ride back home feels too short. As soon as I see Grandad’s house in the distance, I’m suddenly not ready to get off the scooter again. I certainly don’t want to go back up to my room. I might not admit this to Jeremy but getting out of the house today had been a great idea. We walked all around the gift shop, played with the hermit crabs, and picked out matching neon green sunglasses. I put them on just for fun but Jeremy had insisted on buying us both a pair.
I’m wearing them now as we ride back home, the shopping bag filled with Jeremy’s nephew’s gift tucked in the crook of my arm. My other arm is wrapped around his side. I try to keep my grip as loose as possible but occasionally we hit a bump in the road and I can feel the ripples of his abs. Lane did not have abs like this.
Not that it matters, I tell myself. Lane is no longer my boyfriend and Jeremy never will be.
My grandad stands at the top of the stairs when we arrive. I wonder how long he’s been there, if he’s keeping tabs on me. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.
Jeremy stops, but keeps the motor running. I want to ask him to stay a while but I can’t find the words to say it, so I just climb off the scooter. “Thanks for the emergency fix,” I say, smiling at him. Our sunglasses have an orange-blue mirror tint to the lenses and I can see myself in the reflection while I look at him.
“Anytime.”
He looks like he might want to say more, but then he looks up instead, and waves at Grandad. “Thanks for letting me borrow your granddaughter.”
“You hungry?” he calls out.
“Always,” Jeremy says.
Grandad nods. “You can stay for dinner. I’m grilling ribs. They’ll be ready in about an hour.”
“Sounds good, sir.”
Grandad nods once and then walks off, presumably back to the grill at the other end of the porch. Jeremy turns off the scooter. “You know… I don’t think we’ve fully fixed your emergency,” he says.
“Oh yeah?” My heart jumps for joy. Maybe our little hang out session doesn’t have to end so soon. “What else do we need to do?”
His hand reaches behind his head and he stares up at me. I’m the taller one now that he’s sitting on the scooter and I’m standing. He gives me an unsure grin. “Walk on the beach?”
I grin right back at him. “Sounds fun.”
We walk to the edge of Grandad’s property, where the grass thins and then becomes sand. My dad always talks about how he could sell this place and make a lot of money because it’s right on the ocean and ocean properties are highly covet
ed. My grandad always says that my dad can do whatever he wants with the place after he’s dead. I know Dad will probably want to sell it right away when that fateful day comes, but right now as I’m standing here, gazing out at the beautiful Atlantic Ocean, a super cute guy standing next to me, I wonder if I could convince my dad to keep it. Maybe even let me live here one day.
I take a step forward and Jeremy grabs my hand. “Wait!”
I look at him, unable to speak because he’s holding my hand, and it’s making my whole body feel fuzzy and warm.
He releases my hand and kicks off his shoes. “You can’t wear sandals on the beach.”
“You can’t?” My voice is back, now that we’re not touching. Funny how this boy can render me mute just like that. I follow his lead and kick off my sandals.
He shakes his head. “No way. You don’t get the full beach walk experience if you’re wearing shoes.”
“Good point.”
Jeremy chuckles. “This might be a bigger emergency than I originally thought. Hadley, have you ever been to the beach?”
I give him a playful punch in the arm. “Yes,” I say sarcastically. “We have a beach at home. It’s about an hour drive from my house and we go in the summer sometimes.”
The sand squishes under my feet as we walk out toward the water. Unlike in the northern part of the city where all the tourists and hotels are, this beach is more secluded. The property owners don’t actually own the beach—the property line stops right where the sand starts—but I’ve noticed that people don’t really hang out here unless they live nearby.
He shoves his hands in his pockets as walk. “How do Texas beaches compare with Virginia?”
“You guys have way prettier beaches,” I admit. “We have the Gulf of Mexico and the sand is all muddy brown and covered in dead seaweed. The water is the same color.”
“Bummer.” He walks close to the water’s edge, letting his feet get wet every time the water rolls to the shore. “At least you have this beach. Are you still stuck here for the whole summer?”
I shrug and kick at a seashell. “I think so. I haven’t had any luck in begging my dad to let me go home.”
“Why do you want to go home so badly?” There’s a gentle hesitation in his question, something that hangs in the air and makes me feel like he’s looking for a very specific answer. Like I’m trying to get home to something. Or someone.
I shrug. “Honestly? I don’t even know. My dad is mad at me. My friends are stupid. My cousin let me take the fall for something I didn’t even do.” I kick at the sand again, but an incoming wave washes away my anger, leaving smooth sand in its wake. “Don’t even get me started on my stepsister.”
“Go ahead and talk about her,” he says. “I’m a good listener.”
I shake my head. That’s the second time he’s told me that, but I still don’t feel comfortable talking too much about too many personal things. “No. I can’t let her ruin my summer. She’s not worth it.”
“Agreed,” he says with a nod. “Life is too short to let anything stress you out.”
I laugh so suddenly I snort. “Please. You sound like a greeting card.”
“It’s true.”
I roll my eyes. “I hate to break it to you, Jeremy, but there are tons of things worth stressing out about.”
Jeremy’s tongue slides over his bottom lip. “Name three.”
My cheeks redden. The first thing that comes to mind is getting dumped on YouTube. But I can’t say that out loud. “Just… trust me,” I say, letting out a deep breath. “Life is stressful.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Every day is a gift, Hadley. You just have to see it like that, realize the precious value of what you’ve been given every day, and then little things that used to stress you out will feel like nothing.”
“Okay… you should definitely get a job writing greeting cards. I bet Hallmark would hire you in a heartbeat.”
His lips turn up in one corner. “You think I’m being cheesy.”
I shrug. “Maybe a little bit.”
He accepts my words and doesn’t act like they bother him. We walk in silence for a few steps and then I start feeling angsty. “Surely something stresses you out,” I say softly, looking over at him.
He draws in a deep breath, his shoulders straightening. Then he lets it out slowly and shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Oh, please,” I say, bumping into him with my elbow. “Everyone is stressed about something.”
Those dark blue eyes flit over, his contemplative gaze penetrating me. I’ve only been around Jeremy a few times, but every single time, it feels like there are things he’s not saying. Things he wants to say, things that might even be on the tip of his tongue, but I never get to hear them. Is he holding back for his sake, or mine?
“What is it?” I say, my voice barely a breath. “I can tell you’re thinking something.”
His lips quirk up just a little bit. He’s walking on my right side, so I can’t see the scar that mars his otherwise beautiful face. “I’m thinking a lot of things,” he says.
I swallow. Again, there’s something he’s not saying. “I’m a good listener.”
“It’s interesting,” he says, taking a hand out of his pocket to run it through his hair. “Talking to someone my age who doesn’t know me… that hasn’t happened since the accident.”
Okay. I can feel it. The weight of whatever is on his shoulders has been revealed.
“Accident?” I say so softly the ocean waves carry it away and I don’t know if he heard me. I know without a doubt he’s talking about whatever gave him those scars.
He looks down at his feet while we walk, his toes curling into the wet sand with every step. “It was last year. Valentine’s Day, actually.”
My stomach clenches. I might have promised to be a good listener but talking about an old girlfriend isn’t high on my list of conversation topics.
“I only remember that because the hospital was full of pink and red decorations.”
The knots in my stomach loosen. Okay, so no girlfriend story. “What happened?”
“It was late, around nine o’clock. I was walking my dog like I always did, but we couldn’t walk on the beach like normal.”
He looks over at me and curls his lip. “Valentine’s Day makes couple do some gross things on the sand when they think it’s too dark for anyone to notice.”
“Ew,” I say.
He nods. “So, I took Buddy on the road for his walk. And… well… I had my earbuds in listening to music and I didn’t hear the car coming. It was a drunk driver, and he veered off the road and took us out.” He swallows hard, looking down at his right arm. Not at the scar, I realize, but at the tattoo.
“Buddy died on impact. I, uh…I survived, but there was a long time where I wished I hadn’t.”
“Oh my God,” I breathe. Tears flood my eyes as images of a poor dog lying dead on the road, Jeremy next to it clinging to life.
“I’ll spare you the gory details, but now I have sixteen pins and screws in my arm and shoulder. I had to have three surgeries on my face to fix my eye socket.” He turns to face me, and my eyes are drawn immediately to his scarred cheek. “Believe it or not, this thing looks really good for what happened to me.”
“It doesn’t look bad at all,” I say, and I realize I mean it. It was a little jarring at first, but now that I know him, I barely notice it.
“I didn’t know pain like that was possible,” he says. “I wanted to die. I prayed to die. I was stuck lying on the road holding my dead dog for two hours before someone drove by and saw me. The deadbeat degenerate who hit me was found miles away after he ran into a telephone pole and totaled his car.” He snorts sarcastically. “He had no injuries.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Jeremy, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says, offering me a small smile. “It made me the person I am. For as much as I wanted to die, I didn’t. I survived. And now…” he shrugs his shoulders and reac
hes for my hand, giving it a squeeze. “Now I don’t see things the way I used to. A stubbed toe, a traffic jam—nothing really bothers me anymore. Because I’m alive and that means I have the privilege to experience all of life. The good and the bad.”
“You are such a better person than I am,” I say.
He chuckles. “You seem like a great person to me.”
His eyes meet mine and I’m overcome with emotions. Grief for what he’s been through, inspiration for what he’s learned about life. He’s suffered through something unimaginable. All I did was get dumped and fail a class.
At some point in this conversation we stopped walking. Now we’re facing the water, and I notice the cool rush of it flooding over the tops of my feet. I wrap my hand around his arm and lower my head to his shoulder. “I’m sorry about your dog.”
“Thanks,” he says, letting his head lower on top of mine. “Buddy would have loved you.”
I don’t know what comes over me, but it’s a heavy feeling. Warm and comfortable and strong, like a blanket that settles over my shoulders and makes everything feel different somehow. We stand like this for a long while, watching the ocean dance under the beautiful blue sky.
“Hadley?” Jeremy says softly.
I look up at him. “Yes?”
He grins. The fading afternoon sunlight sparkles in his eyes, bathing him in a golden glow that makes him look even cuter than usual.
“Can I kiss you?”
My eyes widen. This is the last thing I expected him to say, but as soon as he says it, I realize it’s exactly what I want. My teeth press down on my bottom lip. I nod slowly.
His hand reaches up, his fingertips touching my cheek so lightly that I want to tilt my head and press into him. But I hold absolutely still as he takes a step closer to me. The ocean ripples water onto our feet. I am aware of the cool rush of water, the warm blazing feeling of his fingertips on my cheek, the intoxicating smell of his cologne. The blue of his eyes, so impossibly deep and filled with sincerity.