Just South of Paradise

by Grace Palmer

  “Which university?”

  “U of Portland,” she says.

  “Portland, Maine?” Drew smirks and wiggles his eyebrows. “You know, Willow Beach is only forty minutes away from the city. It makes a great commuter town.”

  “Portland, Oregon,” she corrects. “Not nearly as close but with access to delicious doughnuts.”

  Drew’s heart sinks. That’s the complete other side of the country. “I hear Oregon’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” he comments casually. “Portland University in Maine is a much better school. And then you could visit Willow Beach anytime you wanted.”

  “Yeah, that all sounds very fun—until the part where you leave to go hit home runs and take Gatorade showers and I’m kicking back around your hometown like an absolute stalker.”

  Drew sobers a little but tries not to show it. All this talk of the future … He has no clue what his future holds. He’s never had any dream except from baseball, and now that that is over, he has no idea what to do next. It’s been buzzing in the back of his head all night long—the lie, the desperation—like tinnitus he can’t shake no matter how hard he tries. He wonders what his dad would say. Or if he will ever get the chance to find out.

  It’s a strange thing, to just have your father go suddenly AWOL. He’d never thought that fatherhood was the kind of thing you can just check out of. People get divorced all the time, sure, but not many men in Drew’s experience just up and jet like the circus leaving town in the morning, with kids and friends and neighbors and guests of the inn left spiraling aimlessly in the wake of the departure. That’s exactly how Drew feels—like he’s spiraling aimlessly, just a little eddy in a creek somewhere with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  Ashley is looking at him right now with a curious glimmer in her eye. Does she know he lied? She couldn’t possibly know, and yet she has such a surety to her gaze that Drew thinks for a second he’s been found out. It’d be so good to come clean. To admit to someone that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Even if his dad was here, Drew would never be able to tell him that. But Ashley … Ashley would understand. Ashley would know what to say to make it right.

  Luckily, Alma bursts into their conversation before Drew has to figure out a reply.

  “Now, don’t you two look as fine as a frog hair split four ways!” the tall Texan coos. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you two were married already. You’ve got that sorta look about you.”

  She drapes an arm around each of them and leans in close. “But what the heck are you doin’ over on the sidelines here when I know exactly what those fancy feet of yours can do?” She kisses Drew’s cheek. “I’m talkin’ to Ashley, of course. Drew, darling, it would probably be safer for everyone if you took a load off for a little while. Not sure my insurance covers your kind of trouble. Then again, I couldn’t possibly split you up. So get on out there, the both of you.”

  She pats their shoulders and gallops off to torment her other patrons, leaving Ashley and Drew to both break down into laughter.

  “Come on, then,” Drew says, grateful for the distraction. He stands and offers Ashley his hand. “We’ve got to do as the lady says.”

  “Frankly, I’m afraid of what will happen if we don’t,” Ashley snickers. “She’s a real force of nature, that one.”

  They rejoin the line just as the next song is about to start. While they wait, Drew looks down at Ashley and smiles. He’s wondering if she’d let him kiss her again. That was as good as he’d felt in a long time. That felt so certain.

  She must be wondering the same thing, because she meets his gaze and mirrors his grin, eyes dipping down to his lips.

  Kiss her, then tell her the truth, he thinks to himself. The world has boiled itself down to those two, simple little actions. They’re the bridge from his old life to whatever his new life is going to look like. Do it, he cajoles himself. Do it now.

  Drew leans in …

  Suddenly, someone shoves between him and Ashley, sending Drew stumbling into the person on his right.

  It would be comical if it wasn’t so infuriating. There’s nothing like coming back to the town where you grew up to remember why you left in the first place.

  The man who has so rudely cut in is familiar to Drew. Irritatingly familiar, in fact. His name is Rex Roberts—almost laughably villainous. They knew each other back in high school, but not in a friendly kind of way. “Rivals” was one word for it, but only in that stupid high school social hierarchy sense of the word. “Football players versus baseball players is the Montagues versus Capulets of Willow Beach High”—something Tasha always said. Drew mostly slept through his junior year English class, so he didn’t fully grasp the nuances of the Shakespeare reference, but he understood the gist of it, more or less. Rex got it, too, and it seems that he hasn’t stopped ‘getting it’ in the ten years since they graduated. He was a jerk in high school and Drew is not surprised to confirm he’s a jerk even now.

  “Hey, little lady,” Rex says to Ashley in a drunken drawl. “What’s your name?”

  Ashley’s expression sours but Drew taps the intruder on the shoulder before she has a chance to answer. “Rex, lovely to see you. Get out of the way.”

  “Well, well, well, look who it is! The god has come back to hang out with the mortals.” He burps, and even through the soft haze of the three or four beers that Drew has consumed, he can smell the stench hanging in the air.

  “Mhmm,” Drew says. “Would love to catch up with you, bud. Not now, though. I’m trying to have a dance with my friend here.” The tinnitus of all the things weighing on Drew’s heart seems to have grown louder, and now there’s this unwanted drama glaring him in the face.

  It brings him back nearly a decade to be staring daggers at Rex Roberts. It brings a thought to the forefront, too—maybe he never had a chance of escaping his hometown. To be back here and doing the same things he did when he was a cocky teenager—it’s sobering, in one way, and horrifying in another. He thought all along that he was a rocket ship headed for new and thus far uncharted territory. Fame, fortune, World Series rings. But to look Rex in the eye and feel the full weight of everything he never achieved is a blow that Drew wasn’t ready for. It hurts. It hurts a lot.

  “Move out of the way,” Drew warns.

  Rex curls his lip. “I don’t think I will.”

  “Move,” he booms, heat rising to his face. He grits his teeth.

  Rex’s expression darkens. “Or what? You’re just as much of a punk as you were in high school.”

  Drew grits his teeth. The tinnitus is so loud now. He sees the faces of people around them starting to notice the fight brewing. He sees Ashley watching with a frown. He hears his dad and his mom and his sisters and his teammates, and he hears Coach Wyburn and Graham Fincher kicking him to the curb, and the one thing he has to hold onto—the memory of that bat connecting with the pitch, the sight of it soaring into the cloudless sky, that momentary feeling of perfect and flawless weightlessness—that one thing starts to fade away into nothingness.

  He can’t ignore it anymore. He has to do something.

  Drew growls, roars wordlessly, then slams his fist into Rex’s nose.

  A lot of things happen at once. Rex reels back, then comes after Drew, fists flying.

  Ashley starts cursing at them.

  Alma hollers at them to stop from the other side of the bar.

  Drew blocks it all out, no longer caring about anything but cracking this meathead’s skull open. Rage burns in every cell of his being like magma. Ashley is screaming at him to stop, but what does it matter what Ashley thinks? She’ll leave soon to follow her dreams on the other side of the country. Drew’s dreams are dying. Might as well go down swinging.

  Rex socks Drew in the ear and Drew wheels back. He manages to duck the next punch and comes up with an uppercut into Rex’s jaw, sending him crashing into a table. Glasses careen to the floor, smashing into pools of liquid. Rex rights himself and charges. Drew tries to g
et out of the way but he’s not fast enough, and Rex tackles him into a wooden table, which splinters and breaks beneath their weight.

  “Stop this right now!” Alma screams.

  But they don’t stop. Not until two police officers burst into the bar and wrestle the two men away from each other.

  Only as the cuffs snap on Drew’s wrists does he realize what he has done.

  The police officer leads him outside, roughly shoving him into a cruiser. A crowd of people has gathered outside to rubberneck the evening’s drama, but all of their faces are a blur.

  All except for Ashley, who is standing at the front with her arms crossed, glaring at him with the white-hot intensity that only she can muster. When they lock eyes, Ashley shakes her head and walks away.

  26

  Drew

  “You two are lucky, you know that?” Sheriff Smith growls at Drew and Rex from the other side of the bars. “Roberts, your dad has always been a good friend. And Baldwin, I remember you winning the state championships and bringing a little glory to this town back when you were in high school. So I’m not going to charge either of you with drunk and disorderly, like I probably should.”

  “Thank you,” Drew mutters. “It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re darned right it won’t!” Smith declares. “And to make sure of that, I’m going to leave you two in here to simmer down for a few hours and think about what a ruckus you caused.” He points at them. “Be nice.”

  Sheriff Smith leaves, and Drew groans and goes to sit on the bench opposite Rex. He lets his head fall back against the cold cement wall and closes his eyes.

  “This is all your fault,” Rex grumbles.

  Drew opens one eye, frowning at his cellmate. “How is this my fault? You made a move on my girl.”

  “You sucker punched me!”

  They glare at each other, and it reminds Drew of all the glares they shared across the cafeteria in high school. He wishes he could still feel superior to Rex. He wishes he could still feel superior to anyone.

  “Why’d you do it?” Drew asks. “You could see that we were together. Why would you interrupt us like that?”

  Rex sucks his teeth and lies on the bench sideways, resting a hand behind his head. “It was stupid,” he mutters, and all the bravado that was in his voice before has whispered away. “I got laid off at the lumberyard today and I obviously got a bit too drunk and felt like I had something to prove.”

  “Yikes,” Drew remarks. “That sucks, man.” He chuckles humorlessly. “I should tell you that’s no reason to go around starting fights, but after I got booted off my team I had a complete psychotic meltdown.”

  Rex lets his head fall to the side, staring at Drew. “Booted off the team? They cut you?”

  Drew nods.

  “Is that your dream dead in the water, then?”

  Drew nods.

  Rex exhales through his teeth. “I’m sorry, man. I always thought you were going to go really far. We all did.”

  “Thank you.”

  The men sit in silence, marinating in their newfound camaraderie. It doesn’t feel good to be a loser, but it feels good to have someone understand.

  After a couple hours, the door to the cell block opens and Sheriff Smith comes to stand in front of the bars.

  “Baldwin,” he barks. “You get one phone call.” He hauls open the cell and gestures for Drew to follow him.

  A phone call is great, but who the heck is he going to call? His dad is gone. His mom is a wreck. Tasha is pinwheeling chaotically just like he is.

  Melanie it is, then.

  When Melanie arrives to pick Drew up, he wouldn’t say that she looks angry, per se. Disappointed, maybe. Exasperated, definitely. She shakes her head slightly when she sees him.

  “Oh, Drew.”

  “Hey, sis.” He hops up from the bench and walks to the bars. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  She narrows her eyes at him as Sheriff Smith unlocks the cell. Her hair is a messy bun and she is wearing sweats, so he knows his call must have woken her up. He feels bad.

  “Frankly, I’m a little surprised this never happened sooner,” she says.

  “Ouch.”

  Sheriff Smith unlocks the cell and slides it open, gesturing for him to leave. Drew tips his imaginary hat to the sheriff and strolls out.

  “See you around,” Drew replies.

  Melanie and Drew head to the car in silence, though he is expecting that, once they start driving, he is in for a good haranguing.

  Except they start driving and Melanie doesn’t say a word. Drew waits for a couple of minutes, then realizes it’s up to him to pierce the quiet. “Are you giving me the silent treatment?” he asks.

  Melanie shakes her head and sighs. “I just don’t have the energy to give you a hard time.”

  “What’s got your goat?”

  Drew could use the distraction. Being locked up gave him nothing but time to think about the sour turn his life has taken, and to top it off, he may have ruined things with the most amazing girl he has ever met. Ashley’s furious expression as the police car drove away is burned into his brain. He can’t stop picturing the blaze behind those gray eyes.

  “Just life,” Melanie says. “Life is so weird.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Melanie misses the turn she needed to take to get to the inn, and Drew nearly points it out when he realizes she did it on purpose. Mel is heading for the beach.

  “I don’t get it,” Melanie continues. “You think your life is going one way, and then everything changes. Then you get used to your life going in this new direction, and everything changes again.”

  “It wouldn’t be fun if it was predictable.”

  Melanie shoots her brother a quizzical look. “Are you having fun, Drew?”

  “Fair point,” Drew says with a bitter laugh. “All my life I had a purpose. I was going to be great at my sport and make Dad proud. Now I’ve failed, and he’s gone.”

  “And with Mom being so stressed out,” Melanie adds. “You getting kicked right off your chosen career ladder should have been the most dramatic thing to happen to the family in years. Dad kind of showed you up there.”

  Drew shakes his head, smiling bemusedly. “No kidding.” He pokes his sister in the arm. “What’s changed in your life, then? I presume you’re not brooding because of my drama.”

  Melanie takes a deep breath and frowns, staring out the front window. “I thought I would have my own family by now,” she says finally. “I thought Derek and I would have a family. But now so much time has passed … Do you think you ever reach a point where it’s too late to go back?”

  Drew isn’t sure what she means, but he gets the feeling he isn’t meant to. “I think it all depends,” he says.

  “On what?”

  “On everything.”

  They get to the beach, park, and roll the windows down. The sound of the waves crashing on the shore wafts in and wraps everything up in cotton. Drew closes his eyes and rests his head against the car seat. He’s done so much thinking tonight. He needs a break from it. Just a minute, or two, or five, where his thoughts lie down and say nothing.

  He glances over a few minutes later and sees that Mel has fallen asleep in the driver’s seat. She’s fighting her own demons, he can tell. She’s always been so private, though, so inwardly turned. Even if he was able to help, he doesn’t know if she’d let him.

  “Hey, Mel,” he whispers.

  “Eh?”

  “Thanks for picking me up.”

  She blinks exhaustedly, then smiles. “Yeah. No problem, Drew.”

  “Go ahead and go home, okay? I’m gonna walk back.”

  “You sure?” She frowns.

  “Yeah,” he confirms with a nod. “One hundred percent.”

  “Okay,” she says as he unbuckles and hops out of the car. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

  “Get some rest, sis.” Drew stands and watches as she backs out and pulls onto the road before disap
pearing around the bend in the road. He turns to look the opposite direction. He’s as tired as Mel was, but he can’t go home just yet. He’s got something to check on, first.

  The upstairs light is on when Drew rounds the corner to stand in front of the rental cottage. Casting his eyes around the ground, he finds a couple pebbles. One sits in his hand with the right amount of weight. He takes aim and fires.

  Plink. It hits the glass. Twenty-seven years of baseball coming to bear in such a tiny, inconsequential moment. It would be funny if it weren’t so heartbreaking.

  He throws a few more—plink, plink—until he sees motion. A face comes up into the window, sees him, frowns. He points towards the front porch. The frown deepens. The face disappears.

  There’s a weird chill to the night. Drew shivers as he waits.

  A moment later, the front door opens silently. Ashley steps out. She’s wearing ragged pajama shorts and a tank top, and when she sees him, she crosses her arms across her chest, shivering.

  He starts to go towards her—until she holds out a hand. “That’s close enough,” she says when he has one foot on the bottom stair. “What do you want?”

  Drew swallows. “That’s a fair question. To apologize, first off, I suppose. I let my emotions get the best of me.”

  “Great. Thanks for that. Good night.” She starts to turn away, back inside.

  “Wait!”

  She freezes. He can see her scowl in her posture. But she doesn’t leave, not yet. Maybe everything isn’t lost after all.

  “What do you want?” Ashley whispers again. There’s a different tone to the question this time, and Drew is smart enough now to realize that she isn’t asking what he wants right here and now. She’s asking what he wants—with her, with life, with the future.