He walked us down the steps, over the sand dunes, and down to the edge of the water. He kissed my forehead, and I could feel it past the burning numbness. It stilled me for a moment, but when he pulled his lips away I slapped him hard across the face. He closed his eye and he whispered, “Hold your breath.”
And then he walked us into the ice cold ocean.
I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. The cold took my breath away. It took my fight away. It took my pain away, just for a second. I was frozen, stiff in his arms, now up to my shoulders in the water and I wanted out. Out of his arms, out of the water, out of this world. I just wanted out.
I squirmed and thrashed, but he just held me tighter. I punched and splashed around and only managed to wedge myself closer to him. I remembered the first time we did this and my chest heaved with the weight of my pain. My salty tears mixed with the salty ocean water. And then I wasn’t fighting Sam anymore, I was clinging to him. I was relaxing into the frigid water, letting a new numbness take me over. We sank beneath the surface, but we kept our eyes open. My tangled red hair floated around us like a canopy. A ray of sunshine cut through the dark water, shining right on Sam’s face. His eyes, that familiar shade of moss green stayed locked with mine as he pulled us back up, our heads breaking the surface. His jaw and cheeks were red where I slapped him. His sweatshirt was loose at the neck where I’d grabbed and tugged and ripped. His lips were pressed into a firm line, but his eyes… his eye were full of sorrow.
I stilled, finally and looked at him long and hard. And I knew that it wasn’t him I blamed for everything in our past, it was me. And he knew it the second that I did because Sam was the love of my life. His was the heart that knew my own before we ever met.
He kissed my forehead again, and this time I let myself feel it. He tucked my head against his chest and let me cry the whole way back to the house. He ran his hand down my hair and whispered soothing words I couldn’t hear.
I clung to him as if he could save me, and deep down I knew he could. He never let me go, not once. He kept me tucked against him as he made a fire and wrapped us in blankets in front of it.
I still cried. I cried tears of sorrow and shame, tears of relief and comfort.
“Shh,” he would whisper, running his fingers through my hair. “Listen to my heartbeat, focus on that. It beats for you, only for you.”
I listened to his heartbeat, strong and steady. It soothed me like nothing ever has. I fell asleep against his chest as we sat by the fire and thawed. I don’t know how long I slept for but he held me the whole time. When I woke up, he picked me up and laid me on the couch.
We didn’t speak when he got up and made us soup, or as we ate. We didn’t speak as he carried me to the bathroom and drew me a bath.
He set me down on the edge of the tub and looked me in the eyes. I felt his touch on my soul. “Stop blaming yourself, Aubree. It’s not your fault. Nothing from before and nothing now.” He kissed my forehead. I let myself feel it. “Please call me if you need anything.”
I nodded. There were many times I needed him, but I never called.
That was a year ago.
***
“What’s got you looking all dreamy eyed?” Maddie grins, walking by me. I snap out of my stupor and look down at the chart in my hands that I’ve been half filling out since I ran into Sam.
“I’m not dreamy-eyed, shut up.” I finish scribbling down the information needed and stuff the chart back into the slot outside the patient's room.
The look on Maddie’s face begs to differ. She crosses her arms, leaning against the nurses’ station grinning at me. “Really? Because I could have sworn that was my brother you were talking to just now.”
“Yeah, so?” I reach into my pocket and pull out a bag of peach rings, shoving a few in my mouth so I won’t smile.
“So, I was thinking of having him over for dinner tomorrow night.” She goes on with that mischievous look. “You know since you aren’t pretending he doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I told you, I was never pretending he didn’t exist.” I roll my eyes. “He just wasn’t at the forefront of my mind for a while.”
“Whatever you sayyyy,” she says in a sing-song voice. “Either way, he’s coming over.”
“Does he know this?” I ask, amused.
“No,” she waves a hand. “But he does whatever baby sister asks, so don’t worry.”
I roll my eyes and give her a look before I turn to go to make my rounds. I have to walk away so I can giddy grin to myself without her giving me shit.
Chapter 6
Bree
Three Years Ago...
My alarm goes off for the tenth time and I snooze it again, rolling over and burying my head under my pillow. I have one more snooze to go before I’ll be late and I intend on sleeping until then. My phone buzzes with a text and my brow wrinkles in confusion. Who is texting me? I never get texts. Mainly because I have no one to text.
I sigh and roll over, my curiosity getting the best of me. It’s from Sam. I immediately smile when I read it.
Sam: If you’re here on time today, I’ll share my candy
Me: What do you care if I’m on time or not?
Me: Also, I have my own stash, so you’ll have to try harder than that
Sam: I just want to know if it’s possible for you to be on time for something
Me: Shut up
I stare at my phone grinning for ten minutes before I catch myself. I’m flirting. Why am I flirting? Why does Sam make it so easy and casual to flirt with him?
I’ve never met a stranger; I’m most definitely an extrovert. Talking to whoever I’m sitting next to in class is nothing new to me. I make a new friend in every class I have. But none of them are anything more than classmates. We don’t make plans to study together or exchange numbers. We definitely don’t flirt. But I was drawn to Sam the second I laid eyes on him.
I used to play this game with myself in high school before I started dating Ryan. I’m the kind of person that’s used to getting what I want. Not because I grew up in a wealthy family and I’m spoiled, I’m not talking about material things. But if I want someone to laugh, I make it happen. If I want someone to fawn over me, I charm them. And if I set my eyes on a guy and decide I want him, I get him. I’m a stubborn and determined little thing.
Now, I didn’t go around stealing girl’s boyfriends or anything crazy like that. But at the beginning of every school year, I would walk into each of my classes and pick out the cutest guy in the room. Throughout the year, I would decide if any of them had any redeeming qualities outside of their looks, and if so I would make them mine. It was a game of determination that thoroughly entertained me throughout the school year, especially because I wasn’t ever much interested in a relationship. But I like boys and I love to flirt. Sue me.
It’s how I got my freshman homecoming date, Jason Webb, my sophomore year fling with Cody Bryant, and my junior year boyfriend Hunter Wallace.
My friend Sydney liked to play my little game too. We had a competition about who could win the guy over the fastest. Our other friends teased us that we acted like men, but that just made me love our game even more.
Ryan had graduated two years before me. I met him the summer going into senior year after I dumped Hunter. He was at a party at my friend’s house. I can still remember the way he looked in that blue button down. He was sitting on the couch, one arm slung over the cushion beside him in a lazy arrogance. Someone must have just told a joke or done something stupid because the second I rounded the corner, his laugh was the first thing I heard. I arrived at the party with Sydney, and she seemed to think he was as gorgeous as I did. She made an approving noise so I elbowed her and called dibs, winking over my shoulder as I made my way to go sit beside him.
“Damn you!” She flipped me off. She ended up flirting with Ryan’s friend Don. They’re married now too, but for all the right reasons.
Thinking back now, I should’ve let her t
ake him. Then maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation, to begin with.
Now that I’ve been married for a year, I stopped playing the game. For a while, it was because I loved my husband and didn’t want to look at other men. And then it was out of respect for him as my husband after things got so bad. Mostly now it’s out of stubbornness not to treat our marriage the way he does. Ryan cheats and sleeps around to punish me, but I won’t justify bad behavior with bad behavior. Our marriage means nothing to him. It was an ultimatum, a means to an end. In his eyes, it doesn’t count for anything.
But on the first day of the semester when I walked into my human anatomy class, I took my usual seat. Back left, by the door. I knew myself well enough to know I need a seat I can inconspicuously slip into. I was running late, naturally, so I rushed in and sat down just as the professor took the podium.
The guy next to me smelled woodsy and delicious, like wet pine trees. He glanced over and smiled at me, and before I could think anything else I thought, I want you.
I had to catch myself; remind myself that I’m a married woman and I can’t be thinking like that. Not right now anyway. It’s going to be fix things or split with Ryan, but I can’t even talk to him to discuss it. He’s never home.
So I decided I could have Sam as a friend and asked him to tutor me. Or told him, I guess. As I said, I like getting what I want. And right now, I want sour straws so I roll my lazy butt out of bed and get ready for class.
I arrive on time and even have enough of a head start to get to my seat before Sam does. I shoot him a sly grin when he walks in and he laughs. I feel his laughter all the way in my bones. I ignore that, Sam and I are only friends. Friends.
Sam sits down next to me and pulls out a pack of blue sour straws. I grin and make grabby hands for them.
“I thought it wasn’t possible for you to be on time?” he asks, handing them over.
“I have many talents,” I say pulling out a sour straw and biting off the top. I point it at him as I chew, “And I never said it wasn’t possible.”
He leans over and bites off a piece of the sour straw I have pointed at him. “Watch where you’re pointing that thing,” he teases in a low voice.
I swallow hard, holding his gaze. Friends Sam, friends, I think, willing him to read my mind and stop flirting with me. Sure I’m flirting back but he started it. Also, I’m sure he has willpower.
I have none.
***
I start going to Sam’s house to study after every class we had together. I suddenly have something to look forward to on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We’ve developed a routine that, despite our initial reasons for getting together after class, involves little studying.
Every day, we leave campus and head to Sam’s house. Some days we hang around in the house and Sam makes me food. He’s a very good cook, although extremely modest about it. Most days we take a blanket and our books and neglect them out on the beach. At least we try to put up the pretense of studying.
The air is still warm even though it’s now October. I doubt it will start getting cold until late December; South Georgia stays hot and muggy almost year round. We take a blanket and a speaker out on the sand and lay listening to the waves and whatever music I choose. Sam never picks the music. He says I can have all the control, so I take it. I usually hate other people’s music anyway.
Today I’m yammering on about nothing in particular when I realize, more often than not, I’m talking and Sam just sits listening. He gives me his undivided attention while I yak about random and pointless things. Today’s topic was the ditzy barista at the campus bookstore who screwed up my order three times in a row.
I stop mid-rant about common sense and roll over onto my stomach to face him. He’s sitting with his legs outstretched and ankles crossed, leaning back on his hands. I prop my chin in my hand and stare at him, my eyes narrowed. “You don’t talk much, Sam.”
“That’s because I’m listening,” he tells me with a soft grin. “Observing.”
“Observing what, me?” I tease. “What have you observed about me, Sam?”
“I have observed…” He smiles, closing his eyes. The sun dances across the planes of his face. He has broad cheekbones and expressive lips. In the light, his dark hair is the color of milk chocolate. He opens his eyes again and stares out at the waves as he lists things off.
“You run on caffeine and candy, I think you would actually go through withdrawals if you went too long without either.” He grins, letting his eyes wander from the waves back to my face. “You talk faster than you can think, and you have an opinion about everything and zero filter on when to express such opinions. But at the same time, you are extremely attentive to others. You read body language and emotions better than anyone I’ve ever met. Like that girl in class today, you could tell she was uncomfortable answering the question so you answered for her. Most people would think that’s rude, but I could see you watching her. I could see how relieved she was to not have to speak in front of the class.”
I feel like he’s peeling off a layer of me with each word he speaks. I feel bare realizing how much he pays attention to all of the little things about me. Some of them I’ve never even noticed about myself. The song on the speaker turns to “Honey It’s Alright” by Gregory Alan Isakov. He nods to it, his voice softening when he says the last one. “You only listen to sad music.”
“And why is that, Sam?” I hold his gaze, a heaviness settling over us.
“You like things that make you ache. You want to know there are other people out there that feel what you feel. You want to hear someone else’s sadness in a song.” He doesn’t let me look away as he continues, his soft green eyes holding me in place. “You want to feel it match your pain in perfect rhythm and be able to listen to it on repeat. You need to feel, you need to feel deeply. And the deepest thing you can feel other than love...is sorrow.”
It’s a naked feeling when someone looks into your soul so unexpectedly and sees things no one else ever has. Sam sees what I’ve been dying for Ryan or my mother, or even Carter to see for years. But as unfamiliar and uncomfortable as it is, for some reason I want him to see more. To know me more.
“Tell me something that’s always bothered you,” Sam says quietly. “Something you like to hide.”
I roll back over onto my back and close my eyes, letting the sun warm my face and eyelids. I feel Sam stretch out beside me, his face inches from mine. I think for a second about all the resentment I feel. I try to pinpoint where it originated. There’s no one place or person, but my mother is definitely someone that I should love and want to be around and spend time with. But I don’t. I love her because she’s my mother. But I also can’t stand her. I can’t stand the way she treats everyone close to her.
“When I was in high school, there was this one day my mother had to take her car into the shop. She needed me to follow her there and drive her home afterward. When she got in my car, I had this awful song playing that I used to listen to constantly. It was, “American Dream” by Lucinda Williams. It’s this morbid and depressing song and goes on and on about how ‘everything is wrong’.
“But I identified with it, I felt the lyrics and the helplessness like it was my own. Everything felt wrong and broken and I didn’t know why or how to fix it. For as far back as I can remember I have felt so out of place everywhere. It was like I didn’t fit in anywhere and everything I did and said was wrong in everyone’s eyes. I remember feeling this melancholy loneliness in everything I did, family functions, and school, just everything.”
I glance over at Sam out of the corner of my eye. He’s listening intently, his eyes are closed and there’s a crease between his eyebrows like he’s concentrating really hard, trying to picture me there. It makes me smile despite the sad memory.
“So anyway, my mom gets in the car and hears some of the lyrics and she immediately says, ‘Turn this trash off. Don’t listen to this horrible music.’ But I said no, and I turned the volume up. I
don’t really know why, usually I just appeased her to keep from getting chewed out, but I wanted her to hear it for some reason. I just wanted her to understand what I felt all the time.”
“She slammed her finger into the CD eject button so hard she broke it and even went one step further as to throw the CD out the window.” I laugh humorlessly remembering her reaction. “I didn’t want her to like the song. I didn’t even want her to relate to it the way I did. I just wanted her to ask why. Why are you listening to this? Why do you relate to this sadness?” I shake my head sadly. “But she couldn’t see past herself for long enough to care about anyone else.”
“Your mother sounds a lot like my mother,” Sam says quietly. He doesn’t elaborate, so I don’t ask him to. We’re quiet for a while, listening to the waves as they crash on the shore and the soft hum of my sad music playing in the background.
I wonder if Sam came from a family like mine; One with too much money and too high expectations. I wonder if he felt as small as I did growing up in that world. Every move I made was scrutinized by my mother and her friends. My father was nothing more than this tall, quiet figure that gave the final word on all of my mother’s demands. My older brother, who lived with a foot in their world and a toe in the real world, reprimanding me passively for my behavior when I got old enough to rebel... But rebelling in my house was something as simple as wearing jeans when I was expected to wear a dress; or preferring to go to concerts than galas, or hanging out with people who weren’t the children of my mother’s friends. After a while I did more and more to get a reaction, to piss them off the way I was pissed off at them for not being a real family.
That’s how I ended up with Ryan.
“I’ve always been an outsider in my own home. I swear sometimes my parents look at me like there’s something wrong with me,” I say quietly, turning my head to face him. His arm brushes mine as he reaches over to rest his hand over mine. It’s soft and warm, and that simple gesture says more than words ever could.
A Sea of Lies Page 4