This Sky

by Autumn Doughton

  “Not really.” She seems to be at a loss and I can’t blame her. “I can’t even think.”

  “Okay,” I say, shrugging. “Then don’t try.”

  Her eyes crinkle. A little tersely, she asks, “Don’t try to what?”

  “Don’t try to think about it,” I tell her, my voice gaining strength.

  “Easier said than done.” Her chin falls to her chest. “I don’t know why I thought it would be so easy to get away, but I did. I thought that if I left L.A. and started fresh, that part of my life could be over and done with. But now Ren is making everything an issue again and there are going to be stories. Next come the questions and the speculations. Soon, the celebrity analysts will start weighing in.” She closes her eyes and gives a groan of defeat.

  “So what?”

  “So what?”

  “Gemma—” I begin then stop short, glancing down to where my index finger is tracing a circle on the table. “One thing I learned when I surfed in competitions is that you can’t stop the haters from hating you.”

  She nibbles on her bottom lip and looks away. “Logically, I know that. Still, it makes me sick to my stomach to know people are talking about me. It’s like I’m coming apart at the seams, and there’s not a single thing I can do to stop it.”

  “I understand that. I do,” I emphasize. “But don’t go online. Don’t listen to it. Don’t get sucked into all that bullshit. Because that’s exactly what it is—bullshit.”

  She laughs shakily. “I don’t know if that’s possible.”

  “Gemma, You can’t stop the tide; but if you don’t stand in the water, it can’t pull you under.”

  “Is that like, if a tree falls in the forest when no one is around to hear it then did it actually fall?”

  I smile at her. “If a fool is gossiping about you and you don’t know about it…”

  “Maybe you’re right.” She bites her lip again and looks down at her hands which are folded over each other on the table between us. “Landon, you wouldn’t understand this but it’s a mortifying and surreal experience to have a bunch of strangers talking about you.”

  But I do understand. More than she knows.

  Just then our waitress stops by the table to refill our coffee cups. She’s got dark hair that’s going grey at the roots. The nametag she’s wearing says her name is Debra. “You’re food’s going to be out shortly,” she tells us.

  “No problem,” I say.

  Before she turns to leave, Debra places her fingers on the edge of the table and leans in like she’s going to tell me a secret. “I’ve got ask you a question. One of the guys on the grill is a big surfer. He wants to know if you’re Landon Young and I told him I’d find out.”

  Alarmed, my throat starts to close up. I feel myself go completely still. Across from me, Gemma’s face crumples in confusion. Fuck!

  “So, are you?” Debra asks, waiting with a small smile curving her mouth.

  My stomach clenches as all the blood in my body races to my head. I force myself to nod at least.

  Debra’s smile gets gargantuan. “Ah, he’ll be thrilled! He told me he was a big fan of yours.” Then she taps the table twice with her knuckles and saunters off.

  As soon as we’re alone, Gemma leans in and pierces me with a stiff look. “What was that all about?”

  I should have told her the truth weeks ago but I didn’t. I’ve been hedging my bets and dancing around this. And now, at the worst possible moment, I’ve been dragged out of my hiding place.

  “Landon?”

  I look at her. Obviously, I’ve thought of this moment a hundred times. I’ve thought about what she might do or say. But when I was piecing together the script, I didn’t imagine it going like this.

  I swallow and say, “Gemma, I want to show you something but I don’t want you to freak out on me.”

  Her eyes are still narrowed but a small laugh escapes from her lips. “You’re not going to tell me that you secretly love Nickelback, are you?”

  “Maybe?”

  Her brows go up. “For real?”

  “Not exactly.” I chuckle nervously and pull my phone from my pocket. Damn, I’m anxious about this. My coordination feels off. When I find what I’m looking for, I pass the phone across the table.

  Gemma glances down then back at me. She’s not smiling anymore. Her eyes are uncertain. “What is this?”

  Here we go. “It’s a Google search.”

  “Oh my God,” she says slowly, finally getting it. She looks between the phone screen and my face like she’s making sure that she’s not seeing things. After a minute, she releases a low whistle. “There are a lot of links here, Landon.”

  “I know,” I croak.

  Her mouth bunches up. She won’t meet my eyes. “So—what does this mean? You’re like, what?”

  I take an unsteady breath and I tell her the truth, carefully watching her face get increasingly pale. I tell her that I used to be a professional surfer. I tell her that I have fan pages and press and all of the same things she hates about her ex. I finish with, “Gemma, I know this is bad timing. I swear I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

  “Oh, thanks for that,” she says weakly. When she blinks, tears of betrayal glisten in her eyes, threatening to spill over her cheeks. Seeing them feels like taking a knife blade right in my fucking heart.

  I lower my head. “I know how it seems.”

  “Do you?” she asks. “Because, to me, it seems like a lie.”

  A fresh burst of panic flares inside of me. “It wasn’t a lie,” I whisper.

  Gemma makes a small sound. “It feels like one.”

  She’s right and I know it. I was too much of a chickenshit to be honest with her from the start and now she’s going to walk away.

  My brain starts gurgling. I wade through the excuses and lame apologies desperately searching for something real to grab on to. “I… I told you I surfed competitively.”

  She’s taken aback by my explanation. Her eyes go wide and she almost laughs. “And that’s your justification?”

  “It’s not a justification. It’s the truth.” I drop my head. Fuck, I’m not getting any of this right.

  “The truth? Sure, you told me you surfed competitively, but talk about burying the lead!” She holds the phone up to show me a photo of myself smiling and holding a huge trophy over my head. It’s from the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach three years ago. “You said you were fourteen. I was imagining a bunch of scrawny adolescent boys, a megaphone on the beach, and awards made out of bottle caps. Not this.”

  By ‘this’ she means the five hundred thousand Google hits that blew up my phone a few minutes ago.

  “I’m sorry,” I pant, a toxic feeling swelling inside of me.

  And I am sorry. I’m sorry Gemma found out like this. I’m sorry that I’m not who the world wants me to be. I’m sorry I’m a failure. I’m sorry that her ex-boyfriend made that video. I’m sorry that Abby is dealing drugs again. I’m sorry about this whole messed-up situation.

  I say it again. “I’m sorry.”

  Gemma is looking straight at me. Her jaw is tense.

  My hands go up in surrender. “I know I should have told you.”

  “Yeah, you should have.” Two little red spots appear on her cheeks. “And Claudia and Smith… how could they have kept this from me? God, how did no one tell me? I’ve been working with you for weeks and no one has said a thing.”

  “That’s because I’ve asked people to leave this part of my life alone. And for the most part, they respect the request.”

  “But why?” she asks, flinging the question across the table like an accusation.

  “Because…” I struggle to find the right words. “I didn’t want you to know Landon Young.”

  The color in her cheeks deepens. She shakes her head, not understanding. “You mean you?”

  “No,” I say, rubbing my fingers through my hair. “I didn’t want you to know that guy.” With my right hand, I gesture toward t
he phone. “Because I knew you’d end up disappointed.”

  Gemma

  When people describe a car accident, they always tell you they had no idea what was happening until it was too late.

  I know it’s probably unfair to compare this day to a car accident, but that’s the closest thing I can think of.

  Grinding metal. Squealing tires. The violent crunch of glass shattering.

  The photographer. Ren’s video. Now, Landon is sitting here trying to explain why he lied to me.

  He lied to me.

  Everything is moving through me at once. I’m spinning and spinning and spinning. Streaks of hurt and disgust are shooting up my spine. My heart is thrashing in my body like a trapped and dying animal. Electric blood swarms hot and frantic in my veins.

  “I didn’t want you to be disappointed,” Landon says. And there’s something in his voice—something strained and raw—that cleaves through my skin and pierces the fog of anger engulfing my head. With that one sentence, I come to a jarring and sudden stop.

  I’m in a waffle place. That’s where I am.

  I can hear the sizzle of an open griddle over the trickle of conversation and the sound of my heart beating. In front of me is a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, the way I like it. On the wall above the register, the tail of a cat-shaped clock is swinging back and forth, tracking the time.

  And across from me, Landon is waiting. His hands are raised. His eyes are crinkled. He looks like a prisoner about to hear his sentence.

  “God, why would I be disappointed?” I scrape out, my throat aching with the effort.

  Shaking, Landon reaches over the table and picks up his phone. His eyebrows collapse inward as he searches for something. After a terrible moment, he hands the phone back to me.

  I read the article slowly and as I digest the words, I start to understand. At least I think I do.

  Drugs. Assault. Rehab.

  More jagged puzzle pieces fall into place. Damaged goods. I glance up and stare at him, and it’s like I’m seeing his face for the very first time.

  “You were this beautiful, brilliant girl and for once it felt like I had something worth holding.” He lowers his head and looks at his hands before continuing. “I know it was wrong. I see that now. But I didn’t want you to know about my past. I figured that if you knew the truth, you’d never give me a chance.”

  I can’t even nod. I’m thinking of the night he told me about his mother. You’re too good to understand, he’d said. Was he right?

  “I got into fights, Gemma. A lot of them. And I did drugs. A lot of them,” he says seriously. “And the last time I surfed in a competition, I attacked a fan because he heckled me for eating it on a wave. He told me I was a joke and I proved his point by hitting him so hard that he spit blood and teeth. Then, I kicked him in the ribs for good measure.”

  “Oh,” I say weakly.

  “Less than a week after that, I was passed out in the backseat of a friend’s car while he tried breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s house. I happened to be high as a kite that day, and when the cops showed up, I got into a fight with one of them. And just like that—” His hand makes a whumping sound on the table. “Career over. The press went crazy. All of my sponsors pulled away from me and I ended up in court mandated rehab.”

  I take a trembling breath and blow it out slowly. “Okay.”

  He shoots me a wary look from beneath his heavy eyelashes. “Okay?”

  “Well, not okay,” I amend. “I’m still thinking.”

  Landon shakes his head, relief washing over his features. “Thinking is better than hating me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I say quickly.

  “But you’re mad?”

  “I’m not sure what I am,” I tell him honestly, sinking back against the booth. “It’s a lot to take in. While I’m stewing, is there anything else I should know about? Warrants? Terrorist affiliations?”

  That almost makes him smile. “Yeah, there is actually.”

  And he tells me the rest of it—stuff that’s hard to hear. He tells me about crushing up painkillers and snorting them up his nose. He tells me about getting blitzed out of his mind and waking up not knowing where he was or even what day it was. He tells me about partying and passing out in his car.

  “How old were you?” I ask him.

  Landon doesn’t miss a beat. “Sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?” I don’t bother to hide my shock.

  He nods. “I’d done other stuff before that, but sixteen is when it got serious. My uncle died and I was hurting and the drugs were around the house.”

  I was watching reruns of Friends and learning how to play the ukulele for a part in a school play when I was sixteen. I am in so over my head that I can barely get out the question. “Because your mom was a dealer?”

  He nods solemnly. “Abby is an alcoholic, a drug dealer, a criminal, a gambler—you name the problem and she’s probably got it.”

  “Abby?”

  “She didn’t like us to call her Mom. She thought it looked bad for her boyfriends.”

  That kills me a little. I remember what he told me before about some of the guys hurting him and I can’t help but imagine Landon as a little boy. Shit. On impulse, I reach out across the table and lay my hand on top of his. It’s trembling. “God.”

  Landon looks down and blinks. Very slowly, he rolls his hand over so that our palms are touching. He takes a shaky breath and relaxes his shoulders.

  “Landon,” I manage and he raises his head and blinks at me. I can see his eyes are blurred.

  “Gemma, what they did doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Like hell it doesn’t matter.”

  His nod is almost imperceptible. “For a long time I was angry with the world. I got involved with a lot of stuff I should have left alone. And it only got worse when I made the pro tour,” he says, the shame and pain evident in his voice. “I snagged my first big win four days after I turned eighteen and I went from food stamps to being a millionaire. And like you’d probably expect from a strung out kid with money for the first time, I wasted it all. There’s nothing left.”

  “So, you work at a bar,” I say softly. “Isn’t that hard for you?”

  His eyes come back to mine. He lifts an eyebrow. “I’m not an alcoholic. But have you ever seen me with a drink?”

  I shake my head. He’s right, I’ve never seen him with anything stronger than coffee.

  “Claudia was the one who helped me.” He stops, swallows, and starts again, his voice strained. “Actually, help isn’t even the right word. She saved me. She cried and she screamed and she begged me to pull it together. And I realized that if I couldn’t do it for my sister then I’d never be a guy who deserved anything good ever again. So, I flushed all of the drugs down the toilet. I cut off all of my friends who used, which felt like every person I’d ever known.”

  “And you went to rehab?”

  He nods, his thumb rubbing the backside of my hand. “Yep. And after that I did group meetings for a long time. The whole, ‘Hi, my name is Landon and I’m addicted to opiates’ thing.”

  My stomach seizes up. How could I have missed all of this before? How could I have been so close to him and so far away at the same time?

  “I know I wasn’t up front with you when I should have been,” he continues. “And you don’t have to believe me now, but I want you to know I’ve been clean for almost two years.”

  “I believe you.”

  He squeezes my hand once then pulls away. “I don’t do drugs anymore. I don’t drink. Gemma, until I met you, I hadn’t even taken a chance on anything besides a wave in two years. I haven’t wanted to risk anything or anyone that I could… lose.”

  I try to swallow back the lump in my throat, but I can’t quite manage it. “Is that really what you think? That you’re going to lose me?”

  His expression is bleak. “I don’t know. Are you even mine to lose?”

  I take a visible breath.

&nb
sp; “I’ve spent two years living on a strict diet of sleep, surf, school and work,” he continues. It’s obviously hard for him, but he’s not shying away from it anymore. “I’m clean, but you should know that it’s still inside of me.”

  “What is?” I ask.

  He shrugs and shakes his head. Strands of coppery brown hair fall in front of his eyes. “The urge to escape.”

  “Oblivion?” I ask, genuinely curious.

  “Yeah, actually.”

  “So that’s why you like surfing so much,” I conclude.

  Landon lifts his head and stares into me for a moment like he’s searching for something. “Or maybe that’s why I like you so much, Gemma.”

  These words almost knock the wind out of me. I know my face flushes pink and my eyes fill with tears. “Landon…”

  “Gemma, I’m not proud of who I am or what I’ve done.”

  After a short silence, I twine my fingers around my coffee cup and blow on the dark liquid. Keeping my eyes down, I say, “Maybe you should be.”

  “How so?”

  “Because you’ve been through so much and you’re still here. You’re a fighter.”

  And when I finally lift my head and look into his face, I see that his eyes are as full as mine.

  Landon

  “So you’re not angry with me anymore?” I ask her after our food arrives.

  The past five minutes have been some of the tensest of my life, but now that we’ve talked, some of the apprehension packed tight in my gut is starting to fade out.

  Gemma considers me for a moment. “I was stunned, but now that I’ve had time to think, I’m not angry. In a way, I understand. But I still wish you would have told me sooner.”

  “I know and I really am sorry for that,” I tell her. “I’ll happily do penance.”

  “Penance?” Gemma asks before she shovels a bite of waffle into her mouth.

  I shake my head. “Groveling, servitude—whatever you want from me.”