Spring Tide

by K. Dicke

  Copyright © 2014 K. Dicke

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address

  Dirty Blonde Press, 18 West Monroe Street, New Bremen, OH 45869-8601

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edition ISBNs

  Trade Paperback 978-0-9904346-0-3

  E-book 978-0-9912564-4-0

  Cover design by Oceana Garceau

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  This edition was prepared for printing by The Editorial Department

  7650 E. Broadway, #308, Tucson, Arizona 85710

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  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  Untitled, For J

  Acknowledgements

  For Jim

  “I bind green with red within you. Now, look at him. He’s dead.” She cut her light, walked ten steps, and turned back, her voice low. “Dead.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  He closed the back door behind him. “She’s here. I feel her.”

  “Who’s here?”

  “The one who’s mine.”

  She canvassed the room and smiled. “I give up. Where is she?”

  “Not far.”

  “You go find her, sweetie.”

  “The waiting’s over. It’s finally over.”

  _______

  The Bakery was popular. Too popular. All the chrome and glass surfaces were marred with smudges, sprinkles, and frosting. It made me wince. I’d read that the smell of baked bread produced a feeling of well-being and believed it was true, based on the nose marks and fingerprints all over the display cases. I expected it from kids and enjoyed their enthusiasm. But the adults, particularly moms who were fighting the same battle at home, could be more considerate. Same with the door. There was a large brass handle, but everyone used their palms, elbows or knuckles to push it open. Armed with glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels, I got down to it. Music flowed from my brain and into my hands, my nails scraping at hardened crumbs.

  My back was to the entrance when the bells jingled behind me. There was no rush of warm, humid air as the door opened, only a long shadow across the floor to my left. Returning to the register, I spotted a grease smear dead center on the counter and it mocked me.

  “Hello, Kris. How are you?”

  His voice was hollow, provocative, making my spinal cord vibrate with each word. I turned around. Eyes like smoke swirling in a breeze, dark hair that fell perfectly into long layers, golden face, and height almost as impressive as his build. I tilted my head and lightly scratched my throat, giving away the fact that I couldn’t place him. If I’d seen him before, I’d have remembered. He wasn’t a regular, not from school or Austin, mid-twenties but not one of my older brother’s cronies …

  His sight fixed on me, his facial expressions mimicking mine. Four seconds passed and I felt incapable of breaking his gaze. He took a quick breath as I did, but then cracked a smile and looked behind me. I get it. A picture of me for Employee of the Month was hanging on the wall, Kris Edwards handwritten in the box at the top of the frame. It was a decent photo, bad lighting, half of my face darkened like I had a split personality.

  “My pride and joy and then some,” I said.

  “How are you?”

  “So far, so good. You?”

  “I’m well, thank you.”

  “What’s your pleasure?”

  With his hands clasped behind his back, he gave the cases a cursory review, glancing up at me with each section. “Two pineapple danish please, for here.”

  He watched me put the pastry on a plate and he then took it to a table. A blotch of white in my periphery caught my attention. The blemish on the counter was gone, a wadded up paper towel off to the side with three bills. I didn’t charge him?

  I tossed the towel into the trash and opened the register. “You didn’t have to do that, but thanks.”

  “You looked at it four times. It seemed it was bothering you. You like to keep everything bright and shiny?”

  “Sure do.”

  He rose, grinning, the second danish in his hand. “Have a beautiful day, Kris.”

  “Thanks, you too.”

  I followed his retreat through the parking lot to the intersection, an electric current freezing my body.

  “Kris … Kris?” My favorite customer, Sourdough-Two-Éclairs, stood directly in front of me. Her brown hair was pinned up that day but her cheeks and smile were rosy as always. “Sweetie?”

  “I think I was just transported to another dimension. There was this guy who came in and his voice was … I dunno, but I’m lovin’ him for using the door handle.” I turned the coins in my hand, his change.

  “He was a looker, huh?”

  “Tall, dark, and handsome.” I yanked on my sweatshirt. “Man, I’m cold.”

  “It’s chilly in here. Any soda bread today?”

  “Nope, sorry.”

  She took an éclair, put her sweater around her shoulders, and waited for me to slice her bread, while looking out the windows every three seconds like she was expecting someone.

  After chatting me up for a few minutes she left. I finished the last hour of my shift, glaring at the air vent above me.

  The drive home from The Bakery was short—ten minutes, tops. I parked in the far left corner of our condo complex’s lot so I could change in the car instead of in the air conditioning that half the time blew like winter throughout the building. I still felt hypothermic. Sliding down in the seat, I put on the bikini bottoms first, then the top, and took my flip flops from under the seat. I got out, threw my backpack over my shoulder, hit the car door with my hip, and then pushed it harder with both hands. Several steps into the sand, I checked to be sure it hadn’t popped open, as it was fond of doing. With my towel laid out, I fell flat on my back to thaw and wait for Derek.

  Graduation had been six weeks earlier and high school was a distant memory, my summer to be spent at the shore, amen. Propped on my elbows, I looked past the field of rolling sand to the expanse of the horizon blurring in the heat. Corpus Christi beaches never made the top ten in the travel magazines but were good enough for me. My best friend, Sarah, complained the sand was too gritty and gray from oil spills and the water was too choppy and contaminated with seaweed, but I was more than content to be there. The beach, everything about it, kept me from stressing about my f
uture. There were a few things I wanted to do with my life, but I couldn’t act on any one of them. I had this stupid, irrational feeling that there was something I first had to do or find that would make my path clear to me. And if that idea wasn’t crazy enough, I truly believed that when I found it, whatever it was, I’d know it right away.

  Sarah dropped three towels onto her chair. “Why am I going out with Nick? I’ll rephrase. Why am I dating the king of morons?”

  King of morons. I chuckled. I preferred to think of Nick as Boy Wonder because I often wondered how anyone could be so dense. “Because he’s so, so pretty.”

  “He is pretty.” She arranged a stack of magazines and various sunscreens on a small table that was going to fall apart from corrosion any minute, rust seeping down the legs from under cloudy glass.

  She glanced left, inclined her head toward the water, and made the ew face. A pasty man in red trunks too small for his waist was ogling her from the waterline twenty yards away. As it was with this guy, anyone comparing me to Sarah concluded inequality. White-blond curls to her shoulders and big, chocolate brown eyes fringed with long lashes graced a stunning face, seconded only by her body. She had the wardrobe of a movie star. My daily uniform was cutoffs and vintage concert tees. At five foot four, I was a midget next to her, my string-bean body emphasized by straight, yellow hair that fell halfway down my back. Sarah was a goddess and I was a girl.

  The man continued his walk, rubbing his backside and prompting another ew face from Sarah.

  She settled into her lounge chair and folded one towel into a footrest and the other into a neck roll so her hair wouldn’t be touched by a drop of sweat. “Look at you. You’ve gotta quit one of your jobs. Are you dead tired?”

  “Not tired, frozen. It was twenty below at work. I’m amazed the air conditioner didn’t ice over and kill itself.” I sat up. “Hey, I drove by Nick’s looking for Derek and there was a surfboard leaned up against the house. What up?”

  “Oh, it’s his latest venture into idiocy. For the last week he’s been staking out some guy who surfs Laces. He talked to him yesterday and then ran right out to buy a board, calling me to come over and see it. What was I supposed to say? Radical?”

  “I’m thinkin’ gnarly or bitchin’. Laces? That can’t be right. It’s laced with rip currents. At the piers or around the jetties, yeah, but I’ve never seen anyone surfing at that break. It’s closed to swimmers half the year.”

  “I don’t know about any of that, but Nick getting hospitalized from wiping out would make his parents come. Then they’d see the state of their beach house and he and Derek would have to go back home to Austin for the rest of the summer. King of morons.” She wove her fingers above her eyes. “I talked to a few people from home this morning. Ruin your day now or later?”

  “I guess ruin it now but I don’t see how you can. It’s summer, your boy thinks he can surf, and look, we’re on a beach.”

  “Joshua’s been asking around about you.”

  My left shoulder lurched forward as my abs contracted. “Why? What’s he asking?”

  “Where you are, who you’re with.”

  Day ruined. Why was he asking about me then, two months later? Images of him ricocheted in my brain, bringing with them the whine of trampoline springs.

  “I tried to explain to Nick about him, but you know how he idolizes Joshua. Nick thinks you shouldn’t’ve—”

  I snapped my fingers. “Oh. Before I forget, I picked up a spare key from the condo office and put it in the frog pot thingy.”

  “You’re changing the subject. I think it’s a cookie jar, a sea turtle.”

  “Either way, it’s ugly.”

  “The whole place is ugly. I mean, it’s a Roman Catholic miracle that Mom and Daniel set me up with the condo for the summer and I’m truly, deeply ecstatic to be out of their house, but the couch has unholy gravity and the decor is nauseating. Teal and peach, uck. I taste vomit just thinking about it.”

  I smirked. “You know I don’t care about color schemes.”

  “You should.”

  Sarah’s parents’ one condition for the condo was that a friend stay with her, and I was the recipient of her generosity, living in a beachside time-share for free. My mom thought it was a good idea that I was on my own. She was adamant that I call her with any trouble, like car trouble or money trouble or the very laughable premise of boy trouble, not so funny with Joshua’s inquiry.

  I stood and put on my flip flops. “I’d better crack a window in my car. It’s gettin’ warm.”

  Sarah’s car and mine looked like us; her Mercedes coupe with its glossy white paint versus my dragon, an old Fiat wagon sporting a flat, mossy color. Both were efficient and reliable, but mine had suicide doors—and everyone loves suicide doors. But it didn’t have air conditioning. Hence the nickname. It breathed fire.

  I rolled down the window, snatched my sunglasses from the dash, fought with the door, and returned to my towel. Sunlight reflecting off the movement of the water mesmerized me, a million sparkling diamonds gleaming in formation from left to right. The sound of the waves, its simple rhythm, created white noise, washing away the stray thoughts of Joshua murmuring in my mind, the squeal of the trampoline that was still ringing in my ears.

  “Quit daydreaming, Edwards.” Derek ran a hand over his short, dark brown hair, his pale blue eyes seeming even lighter against his newly acquired tan. “You got a song stuck in your head again?”

  “Always.” I tapped the imaginary watch on my wrist. “Why so late?”

  “I had to take my car to the shop … again. Barely made it to my interview at Gulf Shores Savings.” He ground his heel into the sand. “They’ll probably take someone who’s already in college. Their loss.”

  “I’d hire you. You’re an overachiever, detail oriented, and you think you’re smarter than everyone. Who wouldn’t hire you?”

  “That’s right.”

  I pulled on my running shorts. “I know you want something more exciting than waiter on your résumé, but try to break away from your many aspirations and enjoy the summer.”

  “That’s your problem. You can’t see the bigger picture. That you turned down the summer internship at the lab is totally beyond me. You rejected Stanford. Then there’s Rice … it’s like you’re oblivious to your potential.”

  “Be here or spend my summer doing analysis of veterinary urine samples—hmm, tough one. And you gonna comment on that and Rice every week or just lookin’ to finish out the month?”

  He grinned. “I almost talked you into taking that job.”

  He had. But in the end I couldn’t escape the feeling that Corpus was where I needed to be to figure out my life.

  He nodded toward the shoreline. “You ready or what?”

  “See you in a bit,” I said to Sarah.

  She gave a two-finger wave but didn’t look up, too engrossed in her fashion rag.

  We took off to the packed sand at the water’s edge. Running with Derek was like being in a car with Derek. He was always gauging which lane was moving most quickly, was always looking around the next corner. I often questioned how much he missed along the way because he was so focused on getting to the destination.

  We were about a mile and a half down the beach, sandpipers in the shallows scattering to get out of our way, when I pointed to the clouds above the ocean. Silk smooth and backlit by the sun, they were moving rapidly on a windless day. It was like time-lapse photography, our steps prolonged in relation to the skies. The interruption of his thoughts wasn’t appreciated and resulted in a light shove to my arm, followed by a tickle to my waist. I retaliated with a head slap and the remaining run was fraught with pushing each other while plodding around piles of seaweed. Fifty feet from the condo building, he picked up speed.

  “It’s not … a competition,” I gasped.

  “Everything’s … a competition.”

  Red faced and panting like Irish Setters, we stopped short of Sarah, who was still lounging in h
er chair. The crinkling of dried grass in the dunes by our building’s garage made me look right. Small frame, brown hair, plaid shirt—it was him.

  “Sarah, don’t look behind you.” I knelt by her chair. “I think Aaron’s over there.”

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh Lord! Are you kidding me? We’re how many miles from Austin?”

  Derek started toward the dunes. “Two-twenty, but stalkers don’t care about geographic distance.”

  Aaron was a classmate and didn’t participate in sports, illegal by Texas high school standards. He kept to himself, was indifferent to everything and everyone. In three years, I’d never heard him laugh and had never seen him afraid or angry despite the persecution he endured on a daily basis. I felt bad for him but his attitude had made it impossible for me to reach out. He’d been watching Sarah from a distance since sophomore year, a fixture in the shadows of her life, a testament to her beauty.

  Derek sauntered back from the garage entrance. “Edwards, get your eyes checked. No one’s there. You’re probably hallucinating from heat stroke from trying to keep up with the master.” His shoulder swooped down and came up under my stomach. “I got this. You’re goin’ in.”

  My body was off the ground, his arm cinching my legs as he walked into the water.

  I hit his back twice. “You’d better not.”

  He fell forward and we were under. The initial shock of the coolness against my skin abated, blood vessels receding into flesh, and I swam away to splash him.

  It was a typical afternoon. Derek and I played Frisbee, our beach sport of choice; after all, we’d been throwing hard, plastic objects at each other since we were ten. Sarah perused her “reading material” or played with her phone. At two I went into our building, stopped in our hallway, and frowned at the crumpled mess on the floor that was our neighbor, Sylvia. Mid-twenties and attractive, she proved alcoholism didn’t discriminate by age, sex, or looks. I took the key ring from her index finger and opened her door.