by Laney Wylde
There was a warm hand on my calf. “How are you feeling?” Jake’s eyes were soft like milk chocolate, his expression expectant and anxious as he searched my face.
I wiped a tear from my cheek. “Jake, I can’t…” I shook my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t think about it.”
“You stayed?”
“Well, yeah. I had never seen A League of Their Own before. Tom Hanks was phenomenal.” He smirked, and I laughed even though it stabbed pain through forehead. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded.
“Where was your dad buried?”
“Uh, he wasn’t. He was cremated. We scattered his ashes in the water at Harris Beach.”
He glanced up and around to think, then nodded. “Okay, that’ll work.”
* * *
At the late red sunset, we walked down to the beach, following the fallen tree my dad and I used to read against. Barefoot, I led Jake by the hand to the water where we said goodbye to my father. I took off my sweatshirt, then my jean shorts, throwing both in the sand. Then I slipped my fingers under Jake’s shirt and pulled it over his head.
He followed me until I was hip-deep in the water, until the surf was too loud for me to hear anything on the shore. I dove under a shimmering wave as it crashed in front of me. The icy water rolled through my long hair and down my spine, arching the small of my back and bending my knees. I came up for air, watching the purple sky burn fuchsia at the horizon. Jake’s shaking hand slid over my waist. Poor guy had no fat to keep him warm. I had never seen him put more than his feet in the ocean.
He combed his fingers through his hair and said, “Beat you to the next wave.” He took off into the water in front of me and dove into a cresting wave, shaking his hair out like a dog when he resurfaced. I swam out to meet him, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling my body close to his. Cold skin to skin, we shivered and laughed through chattering teeth as the waves rocked us and occasionally tumbled us to the sand.
Wrapped together in a towel on the shore, we watched the violet sky darken to black and the stars appear one by one. “This will be July 17 from now on,” Jake whispered against my cheek.
“Every year?”
“Every year.”
7
MAY 2016
“Babe, for the thousandth time, no,” Jake hissed, shutting the door to his bedroom and closing us inside. He stepped over a half-filled cardboard box on his way across the room, which was pretty much the only thing he had packed for his move in three weeks.
A few of his older friends had been renting a house for almost a year now, and they were counting on Jake to take the recently vacated third bedroom. Jake was eager to get out of his parents’ house so he could have me sleep over without parking two blocks away and climbing out the window in the morning. His mom caught us naked and asleep in his bed a couple of months back. It could have been worse, especially as Jake didn’t have a lock on his door. But a screaming match erupted between Jake and her with Michael caught in the crossfire. I was bad for Jake, according to his mom, dragging him down or corrupting him or something like that. It was hard to hear her exact words from Jake’s room. All that to say it was time for him to have his own place.
“Jake, I need a legitimate reason.” I slapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. “And not, ‘Oh, I’m Jake. All I do is box and brood and ride my motorcycle because I’m too cool for everything.’”
“First,” he pointed my way, “that was a terrible impression of me.”
“No. That was spot-on.” It was. I did an excellent Jake.
“Second, I told you when we started dating that I’m just not into dances and all that high school shit.”
“I asked for a legitimate reason.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Uh, how about: I don’t want to go,” he said as he threw his shirt at the pile of laundry in the corner of his room.
“In the last year and a half, when have I ever asked you to go to a dance? I’m only asking this time because I have to go. I’m on court.”
“Yeah, so you’ll have a date built in.” He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms over his bare chest.
“Are you serious? Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of Ryan?”
“Of course not.”
My eyes fell to his chest. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt?”
“Sawyer, really? You haven’t figured this out by now?”
I threw up my hands. “Figured what out?”
“I shouldn’t tell you this, but…” He ran his hands over his face and groaned. “This is the only way I win fights with you.”
I snorted. “By taking your clothes off? Don’t flatter yourself, Jake. That would never work on me.”
He raised an eyebrow.
Oh shit.
I flipped back through our recent arguments. They’d all ended without clothes, without resolution. Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh, hell no. How long had he been doing this? He reached for the button on his jeans.
“Damn it, Jake!” I picked up a shirt from his floor and threw it at him. “Leave your pants on!”
He crossed his arms again, letting the shirt bounce off him and fall to the floor. “I’m not going to prom.”
I grabbed my backpack and sweater off the bed, then stomped toward the door. Jake acted all tough and obstinate, but I had him wrapped around my finger. In a battle of wills, mine always came out triumphant. Unless he got naked, apparently. Such a cheap move. And I fell for it every time?
But he didn’t chase after me. Or cave to my cold shoulder. Twenty-four hours and no word—a record for us. No. I wouldn’t be the one to reach out first. I would out-stubborn him. I had that unflappable Cuban determination that got my dad in this country even after he and his family got caught in the water and sent back. I could go days, weeks even.
Saturday afternoon, Tatum came over to my house to get ready for prom. She had a date who asked her all cute by decorating her car in the school parking lot. And I had an asshole of a boyfriend. She had just zipped up my little white dress when the doorbell rang. I answered, so she could do the cute walk-out-blushing thing for her date. I swung open the door. “Damn,” I breathed.
Jake’s dirty blonde hair was combed back, his hands behind his back, and he was wearing a tailored blue suit. “I know,” he said with a smirk. “I look incredible.”
I regained my composure and pissy attitude. With one hand on the door and the other on the frame, I inched it closer around me. “What are you doing here?”
“Did you really think I wouldn’t take you to prom?” he asked, like I was some kind of idiot.
“Uh, obviously, I thought that. You use your abs for evil. What else are you capable of?” I shifted to stand on one foot with my toes tapping the floor behind me. “And maybe someone else asked me.”
“Oh, really? Since yesterday?”
“I’m in high demand. But…” I tilted my head and flipped my hair in front of my left shoulder. “I’ll consider going with you if you grovel a little.”
He brought his hand in front of him. In it was a corsage made of white roses.
I raised an eyebrow.
“Hardball, huh?”
“Oh, babe, you can do better than that.”
Jake sighed. “Okay, this was going to be a surprise, but apparently, those are wasted on you.” He reached for a plastic card in his pocket. “I got us an ocean-view room. It’s technically a suite since I know how having a couch in your hotel room makes you feel fancy.”
“Okay, getting better.” I nodded.
“And I’ll do that thing you like with—” I covered his mouth with my hand.
“Shut up!” I laughed. “I’ll go to prom with you, just stop talking.” I pulled my hand from his face.
“What? You don’t want—” I kissed him this time.
I leaned back. “Please, shut up!”
* * *
Later that night, I woke naked with my face s
mashed against white hotel sheets. I turned my head to see Jake reclined beside me, watching highlights of the Trail Blazers losing on TV. My head hurt, my throat was dry, and my eyes were squinting against the warm light of the lamp beside him.
“Hey! Look who’s awake.” Jake smiled.
“Water,” I groaned in a hoarse whisper.
He chuckled and handed me a glass from the nightstand, clearly already prepared for this. How drunk was I?
That tumbler of water wasn’t close to enough, rolling over my parched throat without soaking in at all. It was then I realized how nauseous I was. “What time is it?”
“11:15.”
“What?” I snickered, rolling on my side to hold my angry gut. “Did we even go to prom?”
Jake laughed, the roaring kind from his belly. “You don’t remember?”
“I remember being there, but we must have left crazy early.”
“Do you remember why?”
I shook my head, my messy curls falling around my face. Even without a mirror, I knew I was not cute, nothing like the girl he picked up at the beginning of the night.
He laughed again and rolled to his side, propping his head in his hand. “Kayla Moss was crowned queen, which, for whatever reason, made you want to cheer, then jump off the stage into my arms and start macking on me.”
Oh, yeah! That memory was clear. “You don’t understand. I was thrilled to be relieved of the pressure of prom queen duties.” Whatever those were.
“Then you didn’t want to dance. You just kept making out with me.”
“In my defense, that was an undetermined but significant amount of tequila into the evening.” Significant for sure. I was feeling it now.
“Then you started saying filthy things in my ear, though not as quietly as I would have hoped.”
“Well, the music was loud.”
“When I said you were way too loud, you switched to Spanish.”
“What did you expect? You were in a blue suit!”
“Not for very long.”
“Sounds about right.”
“So, we’ve been here since 9:30.”
“We were at prom for only an hour?”
“Yep.” He smiled and took the empty glass from me. “Let me get you some more water.”
I grabbed his arm. “Sorry I dragged you to prom and got ugly drunk.”
“It’s okay.” He ran his hand down the back of my hair and kissed my forehead. “And you’re never ugly.”
8
FEBRUARY 2017
The alternating laughter and outbursts of Ooh! were so loud I could hear them from the street in front of Jake’s house. I swung open his front door to the stuffy odor of guy stink, beer, and pizza, enhanced by the old furnace cranking heat into the duplex. Jake, his roommates, Hunter, Sean, Christian, along with Hannah, the girl Christian was trying to sleep with, and Hunter’s girlfriend whose name was so unique I never remembered it surrounded the coffee table playing Scrawl, the crass child of Telephone and Pictionary.
“Hey!” a few of them echoed off each other when they saw me. “It’s Sawyer!”
“She’s got the dirtiest mind here,” Hunter said as he scooted down the couch. “Move over.”
I stripped off my zip up. “It’s boiling in here.”
“Yeah, but it’s getting you to take your clothes off,” Christian said as he tipped his beer to me.
“Oh, sweetie, we could be in hell and it wouldn’t be hot enough for Hannah to take her clothes off for you.”
Everyone but Christian laughed as Jake stood and wrapped his arm around my waist. I took a sip of the beer in his hand before pressing my chest into his. “Can we go to your room for a sec?”
There were a few shouts of “Ow, ow!” and “Get it, Jake!” as we climbed the stairs to his room. He closed the door behind us, and I started digging through his closet.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re running away together.” After pulling a rolling suitcase from the farthest corner of his closet, I dropped it on the bed and then opened his dresser drawer.
“Like for the weekend?”
“No, like for forever.”
“What?”
“How do you feel about LA?”
“Umm…”
“Or Miami? You’ll like it there. The gulf water is warm. And their sand is white. It’s crazy. Though, you’re not going to need all these Henleys—”
“I don’t want to go anywhere I won’t need my Henleys.”
“Fine!” I plopped a pile of long sleeves into his suitcase. “Colorado then.”
Jake grabbed my arm and turned me to face him. “Sawyer, you have three months left of school.”
“I’ll get my GED.”
“No. You’re not going to be a high school dropout with a 4.2 GPA.”
I cleared out his sock and underwear drawer, then shoved the contents in the bag. “I’ll enroll in Miami.”
“Colorado.”
“Sorry, right.”
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
I didn’t stop packing his clothes when I said, “Jeff’s getting released early.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, but he’s coming home tomorrow. I’m sure as hell not going to be there when he does.”
“He was only in jail what, nine years? That’s not very long for raping you.”
“That’s not what he went to jail for.”
“What? Why did—”
“Forget it.” I snapped. “Do you need these?” I held up a second pair of boxing gloves.
“Yeah.”
I threw them in the suitcase.
“Don’t you have nationals in a few weeks?”
“Three weeks. I don’t care.”
Jake opened the pants drawer of his dresser. “What about OSU? Will it mess up your acceptance or your scholarships if you switch schools in the middle of your last semester?”
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
“Sawyer,” he said as he took me by the shoulders and turned me to him. “I can’t just let you throw away everything you worked for.”
“Fine. I’ll go by myself.” Clutching his shirt in my fists, I kissed him hard and deep before pushing him away. “I love you. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Sawyer!” His fingers wrapped around my hand and yanked me back. “You’re not leaving me. Have you tried talking to your mom?”
“She doesn’t believe me. She’s never believed me.”
“What?”
“I have to go.”
“Move in with me.” The words just spilled out of his mouth, but I knew he meant them.
I stared at his eyes a long time. They were warm but serious. “I can’t afford rent. And I’m on my mom’s cell plan and car insurance. She’s not going to pay for all that if I move in with you.” Jake and I held each other’s gaze, silently realizing this would be the case in Colorado or Miami or Los Angeles—anywhere but home. I was trapped.
“Then just stay here every night. Sneak out or something.” His rough hands ran up and down my arms. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
I rested my forehead against his and closed my eyes, doing everything in my power to believe him.
9
APRIL 2017
A river ran down the street. Jake’s motorcycle was hardly visible through the horizontal April shower. What a stupid purchase. How many times had I told him it rained here all the fucking time? Whatever. Just a few more months and we’d be out of here. Not that it rained less in Corvallis.
The puddles soaked through the canvas of my Converse until my socks were soggy. I didn’t even bother with the hood of my Bruins pullover on my way to his door. My hair was still wet from my shower. And what the hell? Maybe the rain would wash off what the shower couldn’t.
I forgot to knock. I just stood half in the rain and half under the dripping roof, the fat drops rolling off the edge onto my cold scalp, and stared at the blue door, the indent
s carved in it, the mud stains, the rust-spotted handle. Jake and I had an argument Friday, hadn’t we? What was it about? It had to have been bad. I skipped his fight last night, and I never missed a fight.
I jumped backward when the door swung open. “Sawyer, what’s up?” It was Hunter. “Jake’s upstairs. Hang on. Jake!” he shouted. “Your girlfriend’s here!” He brushed past me, ducking into the rain.
Jake’s bare feet tread gingerly down the stairs. He never moved quite right after a fight. His hand leaned against the doorframe as he took in the sight of me, continuing the silent treatment we had persisted in the last forty-eight hours. Messy hair fell over his battered face, only half of it combed back into place. His eye was purple and swollen, a wide but shallow cut in the bruise. I scanned his bare chest. His collarbone was inflamed, red from icing it probably. Grey sweatpants hugged his hips, hiding where his muscles tapered to a “V.”
What was I thinking? How was I supposed to tell him this? This was a mistake. I turned around to the cement steps and headed toward my car.
“Wait!” His fingers gripped my arm, pressing the cold fabric into my tender skin. Air squeezed into my lungs to relieve the pain of his touch. “I miss you. Come inside.” Jake took my hand and led me up the stairs to his room. “How long did you stand in the rain? You’re dripping.” His warm fingers crept under my sweatshirt. I swallowed hard as he pulled it over my head. He unbuttoned my jeans and slid them down to my ankles before digging through his dresser. I stepped out of my pants and shoes, then stood frozen in my bra and underwear, hugging myself.
“Here,” he said as he pulled a grey thermal from his drawer. “Put this—” His eyes scanned my body, spotting the finger marks on my upper arm and the round bruise above my breast. That one was from an elbow, I thought. Jake took my arm in one hand and turned me around to find swelling under my shoulder blade. Another elbow. I remembered that. “What happened to you?”