The following day, after I surfed, I went to Rosalyn’s. When I propped my surfboard against the house, I glanced through the window and saw her performing a headstand. I smiled. I loved every single thing about her, including her perfect yoga postures. I knocked lightly on the door.
The aroma of frankincense greeted me when she answered. She looked first right, then left, then pulled me into her house, closing the drapes tightly to the outside world. “What are you doing here? And God Almighty, bring your board in.” I retrieved my surfboard and leaned it against the living room wall.
I moved to hug her. She felt stiff in my arms, and stood unmoving, like she was my surfboard instead of my lover. I stared into her big brown eyes. “Rosalyn, I know you think yesterday was a disaster, but I’m glad it happened.”
She jerked out of my grasp. “Glad? Are you crazy? That was the worst nightmare of my life!” She took two steps backward, and rubbed her hands against her yoga pants. “Things are never going to be the same. Your mom is probably going to hate me, and your dad’ll never let you anywhere near me.” Her eyes became wild as she held both my shoulders. “We have to come up with a story. We have to tell them that was the first time anything ever happened. We’ve got to convince them that I came over to borrow something, and somehow, one thing led to another and we … Oh I don’t know Jax. We’ve got to tell them a good story so they think nothing’s been going on.” Her eyes filled. “Then we’ve got to stop.”
“Stop? No way. We’ll come up with a story. But then you and I are going to sit down with my mom and dad and tell them—”
“We’re not telling them anything! You think this is a game?”
“Rosalyn, I love you.”
“Stop saying that! What we have is not love! It’s just … it’s just …”
“It’s love,” I said. The room became silent. Rosalyn and I stared at each other, and I could’ve sworn I heard her heart beat, smelled the earthy, musky scent of her sandalwood perfume, and felt the heat radiating off her body. The pupils of her eyes were large, like she was inviting me to become a part of her. I loved her so much that I would’ve done anything to be with her. “My parents will have to understand.”
“They won’t.” Her gaze dropped to the floor.
“Then we’ll move away.”
She lifted her head, and the sadness that filled her eyes broke my heart. “We can’t.” She shook her head. I wanted to soothe her, to make love to her, to do anything to make things better. But things wouldn’t get better. Things were about to get worse.
Rosalyn jumped at the sharp rap on the door. When she answered, there stood Tyler, his face streaked red with tears. Two uniformed police officers stood by his side. At first I thought that Tyler had gotten into some kind of trouble, but when I found out what really happened, I wished it were that simple.
The cops looked at me, their eyes sad. One of them cleared his throat then said, “There’s been an accident.”
Tyler’s face collapsed, his voice nearly unintelligible. “Mom and dad are …” and then, with a shaky voice, said the word I’ve never been able to forget. “Dead.”
Dead. The word reverberated in my skull. Dead.
“What? No.” The earth collapsed under my feet. “That can’t be … I just saw them. There’s gotta be a mistake.”
But there was no mistake. My mom, who was an amateur photographer, had had plans to head to the Star Of India in San Diego, a windjammer ship built in the 1800s. She had wanted to arrive early in the morning, just as the sun rose, and photograph the ship for her class. Mom and Dad had been driving through the fog in the Gas Lamp district when some junkie who’d just broken up with his coke-addled girlfriend got behind the wheel of his car. This druggie lost control of his car, smashing into my parents with a violence that ended all three lives. “It was quick. Nobody felt a thing,” one of the officers assured us.
Rosalyn, Tyler, and I clambered into Ol’ Betsy, and passed the drive downtown in silence.
The three of us stood in the coroner’s office as the white sheets were pulled away from each of our parents’ cold bodies.
I hope I never have to see another dead body for as long as I live. I will never get the vision of their lifeless bodies out of my head. The specter comes back to haunt me at the most unexpected moments. When they say “Nobody felt a thing,” I want to know how they knew that with all the blood. The coroner’s staff had done their best to clean it up. I’ll give them that much.
Rosalyn stood close to me and moaned, “I’m going to be sick.” She turned a ghastly shade of grey, and with her eyes glazing over, looked at me pleadingly. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
“She’s gonna faint!” Tyler said, sprinting to her side. Between the two of us, we caught Rosalyn before she hit the ground.
“Rosalyn,” I said in a loud whisper. “Rosalyn, wake up!” Her eyes fluttered, and when they opened, she looked at me, eyes wide with shock as if she were coming out of a bad dream.
“Let’s get her outside. Rosalyn, hold onto me.” We walked Rosalyn toward the exit, Tyler on her left, me on her right.
When we pushed through the heavy doors, the sunlight hit us with its intensity, and Rosalyn shielded her eyes, took a deep lungful of air and said, “I’m gonna throw up.” She bent over, while I supported her around the waist and Tyler held her hair back, and she puked on the cold, hard pavement outside the coroner’s office.
“You okay?” I said. I pushed her hair out of her face with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking. She burst into tears. “Tyler, run inside and get her a cold drink from the vending machine.”
While Tyler was gone, I put my arm around Rosalyn, and the two of us staggered over to the shade of a ficus tree. “You’re going to be okay.”
“No!” she said, pushing me away. “Things are never going to be the same.” She fell into a fresh wave of tears, bent over, trying to catch her breath. “This can’t be happening.”
Tyler, his face white, burst through the doors and sprinted toward us with the cold drink. “You okay?” he said to Rosalyn. Her body shook, and she hugged her arms tightly around herself. Tyler handed Rosalyn the soda. She mumbled a thank you.
Tears filled my eyes, my limbs shaky. A sour taste filled my mouth, and I wanted to scream. I ran up the stairs of the government office and made it to the front door. My fists pounded on the door, my head bent. “No! It’s not true. They’re not dead!”
Tyler followed at a fast clip, and when he reached me, he encircled me in his arms. “Jax, stop!”
“I’m going in there. They can’t be dead. That wasn’t them.” My heart raced so fast I thought I’d zonk out, thought I’d puke. I sagged against my brother, whimpering. “They can’t be dead.”
Tyler hugged me to him, patting my back, a sob caught in his throat. “I can’t believe it.” He turned his face, swallowing hard, his tears falling on my shirt.
Rosalyn appeared at our side. Her voice was low and shaky. “Here,” she said, handing me her orange soda.
I accepted it, and the three of us sank to the steps where we sat like three abandoned kids waiting for their parents to pick them up from school. My body felt numb, like this whole thing was happening to someone else. I glanced at Tyler. His hands trembled as he rocked slightly. Rosalyn’s shoulders shook with sobs, her eyes staring at the filthy pavement. I took a sip of soda, and it tasted like battery acid. None of us spoke. No words would ever make this day okay.
Rosalyn
I drove the boys home. I couldn’t get the image of Troy and Lydia’s cold, rigid bodies out of my head as I drove. In retrospect, we’re lucky we didn’t get in an accident ourselves. I was in shock. I shouldn’t have been driving.
“I’ll see you later,” I said as I dropped them off. No mention had been made as to what the future might hold.
A few days went by, days when Jax and I spoke on the phone in short, tear-filled conversations that ended in both of us trying to catch our breaths in between sobs.
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I meditated and prayed, trying to decide what to do with my future. I knew I had to cut things off with Jax. When I asked for guidance, I felt strongly that it would be best for me to leave the area, start fresh somewhere else. Somewhere that I wouldn’t screw up peoples lives. I’d asked around through the physical therapy community at school and found a lead for a job in Santa Cruz.
As I sat on my meditation pillow, my eyes drifted to the answering machine, its red light blinking days of missed calls. Some of the messages were from work, some from Carissa. “Where are you? Why haven’t you called?” she said. I called Carissa back. When I told her about the accident, she almost lost the ability to speak. Finally she said, “Are the boys okay?”
“Of course they’re not. They just lost their parents.”
“Oh Roz, this is terrible.” She paused. “I assume you never broke things off with Jax?”
I twirled the phone cord tightly around my finger. “No.” Then I steeled myself for the next piece of news. “In fact, things got kind of complicated with Jax.” I told her about what had happened with Lydia catching us together. Tears filled my eyes for the thousandth time that day. “I never … I never had the chance to tell her how sorry I was.”
“Oh sweetie, she’s in a better place, and—”
“She’s not! She’ll never forgive me. Troy will never forgive me.” I despised when people used platitudes like “She’s in a better place.”
“Rosalyn, listen to me. I know you’re not ready to hear this right now, but you know the Universe has our births and deaths predestined. Everything is as it should be. Maybe you could go to a psychic who specializes in contacting those who’ve passed over?”
“I don’t want to go to a psychic. This whole thing is my fault. If I hadn’t been screwing her son, maybe she would’ve been calmer on her trip. Maybe that other driver wouldn’t have been drawn to her negative energy.” I could feel Carissa nodding her head, concurring with my assessment. But it was bullshit. Just another stupid line I used to convince myself that sometimes things were okay when they weren’t. Bile filled my mouth. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
She inhaled so sharply that I thought all the air in the room had to have been sucked into her lungs. “No.”
“Yep. Best I can figure, I’m almost three months along.”
Carissa’s voice was incredulous. “Did you just say three months? Why’d you wait so long to tell me?”
I stammered out a reply. “I just found out myself. I haven’t been paying much attention. Sometimes I miss my period.” The room spun, and I clutched my stomach. “I didn’t think to get one of those at-home pregnancy tests until the other day. The pink lines came up so fast I thought it had to be wrong, so I did another, and sure enough …”
She didn’t say anything and when she finally spoke, her voice was low. “I thought you were on the pill.”
“Yeah, well, I thought I was too. But thing of it is, I’m not that great about taking them every day.” I clutched the phone so hard, the veins on my hand popped out. “They make me nauseated.”
“Oh no,” she said. “This is awful. Well you’ll have to hurry, but it’s not too late to have an abortion.”
“No!” The thought of killing this baby, after what I’d seen at the coroner’s office made me want to fall into a deep, dark hole and never emerge. “I can’t.”
“You should think about it. What about Jax?”
“I’m not telling him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s just a kid himself. And he’s been through a shock. And, oh my God, Carissa, I can’t ruin his life by saddling him with a baby.” I flung myself onto the sofa and curled my legs tightly to my chest. “If he finds out about this, he’ll want to be with me and the baby. He’ll want to … what? Support the three of us with a minimum wage job? It would never work. I screwed up bad this time.”
“I think you should consider an abortion,” she said softly.
My spine straightened. “This is Lydia and Troy’s grandchild.”
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I’ve got a lead on a job in Santa Cruz. My placement coordinator told me to call, and they’ll probably hire me.”
“And what about Jax?”
At the mention of his name, I saw his smiling face. “He’ll find a way without me.”
“Are you inviting him to Santa Cruz?”
“No! He can never know about the baby.”
“Seriously? Are you really planning on leaving him and his brother? You know I’m your friend, and I knew your affair with Jax wasn’t the best plan, but come on, you can’t leave them now.”
“I know the timing’s bad. But what am I supposed to do? Wait around until my belly’s huge? Jax will never let me leave. He’ll never leave me and the baby alone. Oh, my God, how am I ever going to tell this baby who its dad is?”
“Sounds like Jax cares. Maybe you two can work it out somehow.”
“No,” I said sadly. “I’ve messed up enough.” The weight of everything I’d done crushed down on me. “He deserves a chance at a real life with someone his own age. I’ll stay for a while, but then, I’m moving. And I’m not telling anyone where I went.”
“He’s going to find out.”
I had already done some thinking on this. “I’m changing my name. And don’t ask me the name, because I’m not telling anyone.”
“I don’t know about this—”
“It’s the only way.” Leo jumped on my lap, his head bumping against my chin. “And in time, Jax will realize that what we did was just an unfortunate mistake.”
“And what are you going to tell your child?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead. I’ll think of something.”
“So, when are you moving?”
“I don’t know. In a few weeks or so.”
“Oh, honey, I wish I were there to give you a big hug right now. I can’t believe this whole thing. Lydia and Troy gone? And you with a kid? What a nightmare.” She hesitated. “Rosalyn, if you change your mind and stay with Jax, I’ll be the first to support you. He needs family now.”
I hung my head. “I’m not changing my mind. It’ll be better for him this way. And for the baby.”
We hung up the phone and I lit my bong. As the smoke swirled through the room I thought that leaving was the only right thing to do in this disastrous situation. I knew it was selfish of me. More selfishness piled on top of the unfair sexual advantage I’d taken of a hormonal teenager.
It was more than sex, you love him.
No!
But maybe this was a chance for me to make things right. Start fresh. I took another toke, and as the cannabis filled my lungs and the delicious high hit my head, I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing.
Then I set the bong aside, and that was the last time I smoked until well after I gave birth.
I was pregnant.
I was pregnant with Jax’s baby.
Jax
When Tyler, Rosalyn, and I visited the coroner’s office to identify my parents’ bodies, it was as though I was staring at strangers. My mind couldn’t process the fact that those two dead bodies had, just the day before, been my parents. Nausea roiled through my belly, and bile filled my throat, but it was as though the whole thing was happening to someone else.
Don’t ask me how we made it through that day with the government forms to sign and the silent ride home in Ol’ Betsy.
When I woke up in my twin bed the day after the accident, at first I felt disoriented. My chest felt tight, and I could barely catch my breath. Looking around the room, everything was exactly like it always was: my surfboards propped against the wall, our TV set on top of the wooden dresser Tyler and I shared, his guitar placed in its stand in one corner, my sleeping brother curled up in the fetal position in the bed next to mine. I must’ve made a sound because Tyler snapped into a sitting position, his eyes wild.
“Hey,” he said, his voice croaking.
Instead of the usual sounds of mom and dad in the kitchen having coffee and the aroma of eggs and pancakes cooking, there was silence. My legs were leaden when I swung them out of bed to trudge into the bathroom. When I came out, Tyler staggered down the short hallway into the living room, his hair a rat’s nest of tangles, his face ashen. When he saw the wild look in my eye as I raced into my parents’ bedroom, he followed at a fast clip.
Standing in their room, disbelief washed over me. My brain scrambled with thoughts, unable to hold on to one as my eyes flitted over my parents’ neatly made bed, their dresser with family photos lining the surface, including ones of Tyler and me as babies and smiling pictures of the four of us at the beach. There was even one of my mom, dad, and Rosalyn sitting on the sofa together, a picture I’d taken with a disposable camera shortly after Rosalyn moved to Point Loma.
A sob caught in my throat as I pulled their closet door open, the clothes they’d never wear again hanging in rows. I pulled one of my father’s button-down work shirts from a hanger and held it to my face, inhaling his scent in ragged breaths, Tyler at my side. “You okay?” he said, touching my arm. His eyes were red from crying, a deep worry-crease between them.
“It cant’ be. They’re … gone. They’re really … gone.” It wasn’t the cool thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. My legs gave out, and I sank to my knees, clutching the shirt and weeping. Tyler kneeled next to me and the two of us cried our eyes out like a couple of babies, right there in my parents’ closet.
Tyler’s sobs were especially heartbreaking; slow, sad, shuddering inhales followed by tears. He grabbed at one of our mom’s shirts, a purple halter top that some of the girls were wearing those days. “Mom loved this shirt.” He held it to his face and rocked back and forth.
We must’ve sat there in the closet crying for a good thirty minutes, a couple of pathetic orphans. Orphans. I did not like the sound of that word.
Peaks of Passion: Pleasure Point Series Book One Page 16