by Lark O'Neal
“Do I?” He grins, and picks up the dark bottle of ginger beer, squat and round. “I guess I am. I didn’t think I’d get this chance again.” A slight shrug of one shoulder. “When I’m on the mountain, I’m home.”
“I’ve seen you on TV a couple of times.”
His grin is both shy and pleased. “What? I’ve done a couple of interviews, but I wouldn’t have thought they’d show up here.”
It’s my turn to smile slightly. I poke my fork into a plump ravioli. Little bits of fried sage cling to it, and I pluck a leaf off with my tongue. “They don’t. I started following the snowboard and Olympic sites.” Also, I set a Google alert, but that would be weirdly stalker-ish to admit.
“Ah.” He leans back for a minute, hand loose in his lap. A bloom of understanding lightens his expression. “I see.”
“I liked the one with your coach—Alice?—maybe in Lake Tahoe or someplace?”
“Yeah, Alice. It was Utah.” He takes a big bite of his burger, the kind only guys can get away with. After a minute, he says, “Why that one?”
“I guess I liked the way she made you more serious. Like she kind of doesn’t seem to take any crap.”
“Yes, that’s for sure. I’ve known her a long time. She was one of the best women in the sport.”
“What happened?”
“Injuries. She got to the point that she just couldn’t compete anymore.”
“Is that common?”
He snorts, and the side of his mouth tilts up again. “Yeah. It’s not exactly safe.”
“That’s disconcerting.”
“Disconcerting.” He pauses to touch my hand. “I love how you use the language. But you must have realized that.”
“I guess, partly.” I also know it surprises him, which is a symbol of the class divide between us, something he doesn’t see but I see way too clearly.
But I also think of his already broken hip and ribs, the places he has scars and troubles. How many more has he collected over the years? “How are you holding up?”
“Not too bad, actually.” The hamburger is gone, as if he inhaled it. “That’s why I’m doing a lot of cross training, though, keep everything in balance. Weights, swimming. Takes a lot of time.”
“I bet.” I pluck a leaf of lettuce from the bowl.
“What’s your news, Jess?” he asks. “You tried to Skype me?”
It startles me. For a second, I have no idea what he’s talking about.
Then I remember that this is a big day for another reason, but it’s not one he’ll particularly like—that I landed another role in a romantic movie with Kaleb. “Later,” I say with a wave of my hand, and nibble a bit of cress. “What do you think your chances are of making the team?”
He raises his eyebrows quickly, then digs into his plate of ravioli, and I have the sense that he’s hiding something when he raises his eyes again and says, “It’s close. I got through the first round of qualifying at a pretty high level, but—” He lifts a shoulder.
“But?”
His Adam’s apple moves and he holds his fork still for a minute. “But I’m right on the line—it could go either way.”
“That’s good, though, right? You have a shot.”
He meets my eyes, the marble green-blue just like New Zealand colors. “I have a shot,” he says clearly.
I let my gaze touch his shoulders and chest, admiring. “I can tell you’ve been training hard.”
“You like it?” His mouth tips sideways, that goatee framing it elegantly.
“Yes.”
“And this?” He strokes the goatee lightly with his long, elegant fingers.
How could I have forgotten how he affects me? How he has affected me from the very first moment we met, the day a car wrecked into the restaurant where I worked and he helped me try to rescue people? “I do like it,” I say, and smile gently. I think about adding, it wasn’t because of your looks that we had trouble, but I don’t. Let’s just let sleeping dogs lie, as Henry is fond of saying. Enjoy today.
“I brought you something,” he says, and pulls out a book he passes over the top of the ravioli.
It’s an old paperback, with a price tag of 1.75. It’s seen better days and I brush my fingers over the soft pages, the bent and wrinkled cover, the corners that just bend in slightly. Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury. “Should I know this book?” I ask. The author’s name is familiar, but I’m not sure why. It looks like fantasy or science fiction, something I don’t read much.
“Not necessarily. It’s just one of my favorites and I found it in a used bookstore in Wanaka when we were there. I thought you’d enjoy it.”
“Thank you.” I clasp it in my hands and pull it to my chest. “I’ll look forward to hearing what you love about it.”
He gives me that half-smile, both endearing and slightly shy. “Me, too. No rush, of course.” He picks up a round, seedy roll. “What have you been reading?”
“A lot, actually.” The ripple of excitement over Torches goes through me, knowing I will play Jules. My stomach leaps. “Have you read Torches?”
His frown is quizzical. “Sounds kind of familiar.”
“It’s a big teen book right now. I loved it. Very sad, but very beautiful.”
“Romance?” One eyebrow slides up disdainfully.
“Yes.” I make my mouth mockingly disapproving. “Remember, books don’t have to save the world to be good.”
It echoes our conversation from the first meal we shared, in Manitou on the banks of the creek, when I was feeling breathless with his attention. I still am, in a way. With finger and thumb, I pluck a thin slice of radish out of the salad and put it in my mouth, remembering.
“That’s a pensive expression,” he says quietly, and reaches for my hand. I let him take it. “Are you upset with me for surprising you?”
“No!” I shake my head for emphasis. “It’s just…kind of awkward now, isn’t it? I don’t know how to act.”
“How do you want to act?”
“I don’t know.” I turn my hand a little, curl my little finger around his thumb. It gives me something to look at. “I was thinking about the day we had breakfast in Manitou and how excited I was.”
“I was, too.” He strokes my finger with the pad of his thumb. “It was good, Jess. So good.”
“It was.” I meet his eyes. “But it went bad, really fast, and that still scares me.”
His eyes go opaque, but not before I see the sharp, sudden pain in them, a pain that stabs me through the gut. This is what else I forgot—there is something broken and hungry in him, something that is so delicate that it breaks my heart a little every time, like the cry of a lost five year old boy. I grip his hand before he can take it away. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to stay upbeat here.”
He tugs it out of my grasp gently. “It’s okay. I get it. I have to earn your respect. That’s what I’m trying to do. I just wanted to see you.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” I say impulsively, and realize it’s true. Trying to lighten the mood, I say, “When do you have to go back?”
With a quirk of his lips, he says, “Plane leaves at ten pm. I’ll need to be to the airport by 8:30 or so.”
“Wow.”
He nods.
“Well, then. I guess we should get you some sunshine and fresh air. Do you want to go over to the beach?”
His smile tilts sideways. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”
“Can you surf?”
He rolls his eyes and spreads his hands. “Dude.”
I laugh. “Okay. I guess you probably can.”
* * *
But it turns out there’s no surf up here, at least not today. The bay is barely ruffling, great for swimming and paddling and kayaking, not so great for surfing. “Probably better,” Tyler says as we wander down the beach, carrying our shoes. People are flying kites in the uncertain winds and children are dancing toward the water and building sand castles. “I’m supposed to be resting. My coach is pissed off t
hat I made the trip.”
“Why?”
He shrugs slightly. “The next set of trials will make or break my bid.”
Inclining my head, I look up at him. “So it was kind of crazy that you made this trip?”
He laughs slightly. “Yeah, it was, actually.”
It’s hard not to be wildly flattered. “But you couldn’t bear not to see me, so you flew, what? Twenty-four hours one way to spend ten hours in New Zealand?”
“Twenty-nine, actually. Twenty-nine back.” He gives me a wry smile. “Technically, I’m only actually gone for about 24.”
“Mind bending.”
“Right?”
I give him a quizzical little frown. “And you had to do that right now, because…?”
For a long moment, he is silent. Beside us, the water swishes over the beach, quiet and sibilant, then slides back into itself. A gull hops along, poking his beak into the soft wet sand left behind. In the distance, across the bay, are the mountains. “I saw the commercials, Jess. With you and Kaleb.”
Something twists inside of me, but I’m not sure what to say. “Um, you knew we did them.”
He nods, slowly. Weaves his fingers through mine. I wait.
But I also think about the commercials, the chemistry that is so vivid on screen. It’s the thing that’s been getting both of us so many auditions—and now the movie. “The dolphins, right?”
“Yeah.”
I look toward the Abel Tasman Park, a line of hills on the other side of the Bay, and that day fills me up, as it always does, sacred and wild. “That scene wasn’t scripted. It just happened. We were kayaking, and then, suddenly, there was this whole, huge pod of dolphins surrounding us.” The memory still catches in my throat. “It was so magical, Tyler. One of the most amazing things that’s ever happened to me.”
“I could see that.” His thumb moves on my fingers, his eyes unreadable. “You didn’t talk about it when it happened.”
“I know.” I duck my head, use my toe to draw a small line across the sand between us. “It was hard to talk about.”
Silence drops between us, thick and pulsing.
“What part was hard to talk about, Jess?” he asks quietly. “The dolphins, or what you were feeling about Kaleb?”
A tangle of emotions fills my chest, wonder and guilt and love and hope and possibility and the tension of having such strong feelings for both of them. I shake my hair out of my face and lift my eyes to meet his. Honesty is all I have. If I’m honest, then each of them can choose. If I’m not, then we all lose. That was what my dad told me.
“Both,” I admit. “The dolphins, and the water, and the day, and being so successful at something I had no idea I would be good at.”
“And Kaleb.”
“Yes. And Kaleb.” His name on my lips gives me a strange pressure in my chest, brings a whisper of his hair, the sound of his laughter, his voice in my ear.
He swallows. “Are you in love with him, Jess?”
I close my eyes. “Yes,” I say. “No.” I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“And me?”
“Same answer.” Irritation plucks my nerves and I yank my hand out of his grip. “Do we have to do this right now? Why do you think I wanted to take a break from all this drama?” My heart is pounding and I’m going to be very mad at myself if I get tears in my eyes, but I feel mad-frustrated. “I care about you both. A lot.”
He swallows, tries to take my hand, but I tug it away and start walking, afraid both that tears will well up in my eyes and that I might say the wrong thing.
To his credit, he doesn’t push. I stomp along as well as I can in bare feet in the sand, the wind blowing clean and bright from the water and sending my hair into a flag, and he just strolls beside me, long legs covering the distance in half the time I do.
Finally I stop and face him. “You are the one who screwed everything up. You. Not me. I was so there with you. I was falling so far in love with you Tyler, even though I told myself I should be careful. But there’s just something about you that’s wild and strange and different and I couldn’t help it—I wanted to touch it.” I shake my head. “Those days in your house? That healed something in me. It made me want things.” The tears are there now, unstoppable, and I have to stop and blink. “And then you slammed it all with a hammer. But first, you humiliated me. Twice.”
He bows his head. “I know.” The wind tosses the long extra-shiny locks around, over his brow, touching his sharp cheekbones. “I wish I could take it all back. I wish there were a thousand ways to say I’m sorry, like Eskimo words for snow.”
I can’t help it—it makes my mouth half-turn up. He catches it and smiles in return. “I’m an ass sometimes, Jess, but I swear to God, I’ve never wanted to show somebody that I can change like I do right now. I’m working really hard.”
“I know.”
“Can you give me some time to prove to you that I’m different?”
I incline my head. “What does that even mean, give you time? I’m not giving you time. I’m giving myself time. I don’t want to have big drama in my life right now, okay? I don’t want to have big ‘relationship’ discussions.”
A shine of humor starts to twinkle in his beautiful aquamarine eyes. “I’m starting to feel like I’m the girl and you’re the guy.”
“Good.” Tossing my head, I say, “Let’s just enjoy this day, all right? No drama.”
He laughs and offers his hand in a high five. “Dude.”
I slap his hand. “Let’s find a place to sit down. You can soak up some sun.”
“Now there’s a great idea.”
We find a fairly lonely stretch of sand. I open my bag and take out a folded picnic cloth, checked red and white, which I spread over the ground, and I pull out a straw hat Katie made me buy when the weather started getting warm. There are two bottles of water and some bikkies, which I’ll share in a little while. Settling on the cloth, I pat the spot beside me. “Do you have sunscreen?” I ask, bottle in my hand.
“Never even crossed my mind.” He strips off his shirt in one smooth motion, and I’m zapped again. His torso is cut, shoulders and chest and abs, all defined in long, hard muscles. His waist is impossibly narrow, his jeans low on his hips. He sees my stare and with a wicked little grin, he reaches up and runs his palm over his torso. “Training. You should see my legs.”
“We’re on a beach.”
He drops down beside me, just a hair too close. The sun-heated concentration of his scent slams me—pine and spice and grass—and just that one thing makes me feel soft and aroused. “Lucky for you, I didn’t bring any trunks.”
Primly, I say, “As if I would faint dead away at the sight.”
Laughing, he takes the bottle from me and squirts sunscreen into his palms, rubs it over his arms, his chest, his belly. “Do my back?”
“Yes.” Brushing sand from my legs, I pour the cream into my hands and touch his back, which is hard and solid. Resisting the temptation to run my fingers over the handwriting tattoos on his ribs and across the scar on his lower back, I briskly run the lotion in and sit back in my place, pulling my skirt down over my crotch as I cross my legs.
For awhile, we just look out at the water, the sun glittering, sky such a deep blue it looks like you could take bites of it. Something stills and settles in me.
“This is great,” Tyler says. “I’ve never been here in the summertime.”
“I love it here.”
“It suits you as much as training suits me.”
I look at him. “Yeah?”
“You don’t look so hungry.” He touches the curve of my cheek.
“Did I look hungry before?” I’m not sure how I feel about that. “Not very attractive.”
“You’re always beautiful, Jess,” he says quietly. “It was more like that kind of wary look a fox has. Cautious.”
I’m still not sure how I feel about this, but I nod. “I guess I get it.” With a short, humorless laugh, I add, “I ac
tually was hungry all the time.”
“That would explain it.” He falls backward, and tugs my hand. “Lie down with me. Let’s just soak this in for awhile.”
I resist for a minute, but then he tugs my hand again and says, “I will not do anything to compromise our agreement, madam. I swear it.”
Laughing, I tumble back, and that’s just what we do for a long, long while. Lie in the sun, listening to the wind and the gulls and the water. Drifting in time and space, happy.
For now.
Chapter FOUR
With the breeze and the water, it’s not really that hot, and I drift in the pocket of quiet for a long time, dozing. I hear the sound of kids shouting at each other and the odd big truck rumbling by on the road. The loud, close squawk of a bird jerks me awake and I sit straight up, hand to my ear, thinking the gull was about to peck me. And he’s not far off, giving me the beady eye that is supposed to make me cough up food or something.
Next to me, Tyler is fast asleep, his legs sprawled, his arms completely limp, one hand on his chest. He’s all but snoring, and it’s a relief to have him disconnect, so I can have a minute to recompose myself. As I have many times before, I look at his long torso, tracing the tattooed words and poems all over his ribs and sides—the marks of pain of a man who didn’t get what he needed from his parents anymore than I did.
“Are you staring at me, madam?” he says without opening his eyes.
“Why, yes, I was, sir. I’m afraid it was impossible not to.”
He smiles, still without opening his eyes. “Penny.”
I half-grin and stretch my legs out in front of me. So tan this year. My mother would be freaking out about melanoma, but my dad just says, ‘You’ve got good black Irish skin, girl. You’ll be fine.’
“You will be disappointed to know I was not thinking of undressing you further.”
“I’m disappointed.”
“It’s kind of a dark thought.”