by S. Love
We agree, for efficiency as well as unbelievable taste, to grab something here. The line’s outrageous, and I volunteer to stand in it while Kenya and Lauren go get us some drinks from Juicy’s farther down the boardwalk.
Armed with three salads wrapped and stacked in a paper bag, I meet Lauren and Kenya at the bench they’re sitting at waiting for me. Too hungry to talk, we eat in silence, and I’m so consumed with spearing the illusive wilted lettuce in the corner of my container that damn sure isn’t going to waste, it takes me longer to realize we’ve been joined by a fourth person.
The limp lettuce becomes recent history once I notice him. Growling, unsatisfied belly be damned.
His red and black wetsuit hangs around his hips, salt crystals drying in crusty white surges over the still damp stretchy synthetic. His stomach, chest, and feet are bare, and he’s holding a can of Monster Energy in his left hand. “Hi,” he says when our eyes meet.
Garrett’s simple greeting turns my full stomach to jellied mush. Yes, I’m that basic.
“Hi.” I clench my plastic fork, and it’s all I can do to contain my smile, stopping it from spreading. Sun-tanned girls soaking up the sun and the view had descended on Garrett as he’d walked out of the surf and onto the beach, and I didn’t get a single look in. He was whisked away soon after, to a tent filled with professionals, and we hadn’t done so much as look at each other.
“Party at Street’s place if you girls are up for it. I’m celebrating tonight.” Garrett crushes the empty can of energy drink in his hand, looking me up and down.
“Jordy Street?” Kenya enquires, a note of awe in her voice.
Garrett nods, then tosses the crushed can into the trash. “Yeah. You know the house? It’s right on the beach. About a fifteen-minute drive from here, but I can give you a ride.” He’s looking at me as he says that. Yes is ready to spill from my lips when my fleeting high nosedives into the ground and I remember I’m supposed to wait for Falcon’s call before I go anywhere. Because I’m meant to be here with him, even if this is the last arrangement I’m allowing him to manipulate me into.
Unless… I just ignore his call. The rest of tonight could be about me and Garrett, not a single Osborne in the vicinity. And I can ask him face to face, without any false pretenses, whether there’s anything left of what we had that’s worth salvaging. I’m ready to settle this without the childish games.
“What time?” I speak up, taking the decision out of Lauren and Kenya’s hands. I don’t know any Jordy Street, but who cares?
Garrett makes no effort to hide his surprise at my eager agreement. My unintentional mixed signals are obviously doing their job of bending him completely out of shape.
“Ah… now? I’ll peel out of this suit and see you at my car in ten minutes?”
Without Masie, I hope.
“Where are you parked?” Kenya asks.
I’m so far gone to my inner basic bitch I hadn’t even thought to ask the question. I clear the pulsing hearts from my eyes and paste on my game face.
It takes a little over the fifteen minutes Garrett said to drive to Jordy’s house, with the traffic from the South Beach Open congesting the roads. No, house isn’t the right word. It’s a one-story cottage built into the rocky embankment, right there on the quietest part of the beach. The front of the house faces the ocean, and the party’s already in full swing. Girls in bikinis dance with each other on the sand, chilled, stoner music spilling from inside the house. There are no neighbors, so the volume’s up to what sounds like maximum level. The house door and the windows are open, yellow light oozing over the sandy yard. Glowing, multi-colored neons slice through the black waves, surfboards pimped-out in LEDs braving the dark, cold waters.
We walk up to the sand-strewn porch, a mismatching of hand-woven rugs at the entrance to the door in place of actual foot mats. Both porch swings are occupied with guys animatedly rehashing the best heats and the upcoming events on the tour. My ears pick up the conversation that might as well be spoken in another language for all the surf jargon that’s being thrown around.
Shouldering through the cramped hallway, Lauren, Kenya and I stay close to Garrett, who stops to fist-bump every other person he passes.
In the kitchen, two kegs have been set up alongside stacks of Solo cups, liquor bottles and crates of beer spread over the counter surfaces and the hardwood floor.
Garrett plucks one of the Solo cups from the top of the stack, filling it from the keg and handing it to me. “Beer good?”
“Uh-huh.” I take the warm cup, no interest in making a dent in the drink. After the fiasco at The Alley, alcohol no longer appeals to me.
“Hey, Kenny, Lauren!” Garrett hollers over my head. “You mind if I grab a minute with Lyla outside?”
“Sure.” Kenya spins a liquor bottle and scans the label. “We’ll be here.”
Outside makes a nice break from the pumping music shaking the house, and Garrett and I wander along the sand.
Suppressing a shiver, I wrap my arms around myself, awkwardly holding my cup, trying to not spill too much of the contents. I ditched my T-shirt in my backpack hours earlier, and I could do with that T-shirt now.
Disappointment swims in my belly as we head away from the bonfire and not toward it. “Where are we going?”
I glance at the sea under the starless sky, the distant hollering from the drunk and non-drunk surfers who are gambling with their lives, riding in on the wind and waves. I tuck a strand of wild hair behind my ear and take a tiny sip of beer.
“Right here.” Garrett points his Solo cup toward an abandoned lifeguard tower bathed in its own shadow.
We reach the old steps, and Garrett climbs them first. Inside the blue-faded ramshackle tower, the floors are splintered, dull light leaking through the dangerous slits.
Garrett stays on the skinny balcony instead of dragging me into the dingy depths, and we sit on the eroding planks of wood. I cross my legs under me. Garrett tucks one long leg to his chest, his other leg dangling through the railing with the missing slats. His arm hangs over his knee, and he swirls the beer inside his cup.
Sitting this close to him, with no one nearby to interrupt, the chilly wind now feels exhilarating. A coolant on my skin as my heart stretches and responds to my ex like nothing between us has changed. Like those months apart haven’t already passed us by.
“How much longer do you plan on working for the Osbornes?” Garrett’s smile’s stringent with sourness. “Gotta say, Ly. I didn’t see that one coming. And I’ve tried talking to you so many times, but you’re always brushing me off.” He cocks his head, casting those heady gray eyes onto me.
I lean my back against the tower’s frame, standing the beer between my thighs. “It’s just for the summer. I told you that.”
“Seriously, though? There’s nothing else going besides bleaching Oz’s skivvies? They’re loving this, Lyla. Those damn assholes act like they own you now. As if you’re their fucking property.”
I snap to attention. “You broke up with me, Garret. What do you expect me to sit here and say to you?”
“Why Flacon? He’s not your type, and I’m pretty sure you aren’t his.”
“Ouch.” I flinch. “Insulting much?”
“That wasn’t an insult.” Garrett drinks his beer, and both our gazes stray to the ocean, the LED surfboards weaving neon patterns through the churning water. The numbers have increased, more reckless surfers braving the cold. “Are you sleeping with him?”
“Are you sleeping with that Masie girl?” I fire back in the same accusatory tone he used.
Garrett shifts his attention to whatever’s more interesting than me in the distance. “I spoke with a couple sponsors today.”
“Really bad diversion, but okay?”
“I can’t say much until it’s all confirmed, but I might be leaving to finish out the rest of the qualifiers. If I land a top ten position, I’m looking at the pro tour next year.”
The small bit of alcohol I d
rank roils in my stomach as I jerk my head to look at him. “You’re leaving?”
Garrett’s expression remains serenely calm considering the catastrophic damage he’s creating. “The offers have come pretty late, but I’m surfing the best I have in a long time. It’s now or never. I don’t want to be some old as dirt, sun-wrinkled dude tagging along on a wild card to every event.”
I have no idea what to say that. Digesting the news is like swallowing a brick. There’s no chance my esophagus will have it.
“There’s some promotional work before I do anything, but if the offer’s as lucrative as it sounds off paper, I guess I’ll be outta Cape Pearl within days, maybe weeks. The next qualifier’s in ten days, if I can make it on time.” Garrett locks his gaze on me, something behind the look in his eyes that makes me wither inside.
Until the penny finally drops.
“That’s why Masie isn’t here.” He’s leaving his baggage here, jetting off with nothing heavier than his surfboards.
His silent stare speaks for itself, but he answers me anyway. “It’s all about the surf now.”
I pick up my beer, downing mouthfuls to rehydrate my crisp throat. The night’s taken a turn down a dark and unmapped road, and I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t acknowledge his big news puncturing a gaping hole through my enthusiasm. Big news for Garrett, devastating for me.
“Is this goodbye?” And even as I ask it, everything in me screams that’s what this is, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought me out here, breaking me in gently but no less painfully.
Garrett turns to me. The salt-tinged wind claws at the wetness in the corners of my eyes, and my chest aches from holding in the tears. I thought I was getting him back, and now he’s leaving.
I really am an all-round loser. I’ve even lost my dignity in the embarrassing process.
“When I leave, it’d be nice to know you’re still here waiting for me, and not pissing away time with Con or Ozzie. I’ll be halfway around the world most of the year, yeah, but there’s the phone and Facetime.” Garrett looks at the ocean, then back at me. I’m not sure which way to read the sigh that pours out him. “Talking with the sponsor today made me realize the surf won’t be nearly as fucking gnarly if I have to go out there and ride waves without you. It’s not like when we would break up, get mad, then get back together. The permanency if I sign this deal gives me a gross feeling. I won’t leave so they can have you.”
I try to push my hopes back into their reinforced box, but I’m unsuccessful, and they soar free. “Are you saying you want to go out again?”
“I’m saying I booked us a room at the Golden Sands. This Friday.” His hand explores my thigh, molding my flesh in his persistent palm. “Stay the night with me. Just me and you, Lyla.”
His roving fingers distract me from the question, and I close my eyes, giving myself up to him when he moves my drink from between my legs and leans over me. For one vulnerable but intoxicating moment, our breaths collide, and I taste the beer on his lips as he presses them to mine, the memory of every kiss before this one slipping off his tongue and feeding me new life. I want to leave the beach and drive to the hotel now. My body’s fired up to show Garrett just how much I love him. How I never really stopped.
The button on my jean shorts pops, the peeling zipper defogging my inebriated brain. “Garrett, not here,” I mumble into the kiss, my own hand lowering down my stomach to remove his fingers from where they graze the thread lining on my bikini bottoms.
“No one can see us,” he mumbles back. And then he deepens the kiss, pushing his body into mine as he pushes his hand between my thighs, his groan in sync with his fingers that slide easily over my center. The searing heat down there spreads all the way up my neck to my face, and the nervous laughter that trickles from my mouth to Garrett’s is charged with my embarrassment.
I’m panting now, but no way am I climaxing in this dilapidated lifeguard tower, not knowing if anyone’s standing as witness.
I grab Garrett’s hand and pull out of the kiss. It’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do, but if he’s gone to the trouble of renting us a hotel room, rushing to the touchdown this early just seems like a perfect waste of a romantic night. And the sweet gesture’s nothing like Garrett’s ever done for me before.
“I want to,” I reassure him when rising frustration darkens his eyes to sexy storm clouds. “But we can wait a little longer. We’ve already waited this long. Isn’t that why you got us the room? To make it special?”
“Yeah.” Garrett shakes his head as though clearing cobwebs, his frustration lifting. “Yeah. Of course that’s why. Guess I got carried away. I haven’t been able to touch you for so long, and your bodyguard beat me off with a fucking stick last time.”
I raise my hand, stroking his cheek with my fingers. “You won’t have to wait much longer.”
Catching my hand in his, he bends his head and kisses my fingertips. “I better get you back to the party, before Kenya and Lauren come looking for you.”
“Yeah…” I hate to leave the seclusion of being so disconnected from the rest of the party, but I came with two other people who I’m not about to ditch. And I’ve gone this long without Garrett, another five days won’t be my breaking point.
Chapter 20
Back inside the party, I hide my grin like a blissful idiot as Garrett kisses me on the cheek, and then heads outside into the surf with the rest of the beach bums. He’s just told me he could be leaving, and I’ll hardly ever have the opportunity to see him. But when I’m with him, I can’t help but be happy. Tonight, I don’t care. I’ll worry about it all tomorrow.
“Where’s the bathroom in here?” I ask Kenya. I’ve been holding it for what feels like centuries, and my bladder’s ready to burst.
She shrugs as she unscrews the cap from a bottle of Malibu, curling the fingers on her other hand for Lauren’s cup. “Lyla, you in? I’m making cocktails.”
Observing the array of liquor bottles in the lineup, I confirm I won’t be sampling one of those cocktails, and I go find the bathroom myself.
Pushing through the crowd of nameless faces, I break into the hallway. Painted seashells and pictures of Jordy Street grinning broadly next to other surfers hang in frames along the white and eggshell walls. I haven’t spoken to the man himself at all tonight, but Garrett filled me in on who Jordy is while we were in the car driving over here. An injured pro surfer rehabbing a broken collarbone while the championship tour goes on without him. His roots are here on the east coast, but he lives all over the world, and this eclectic house he built on the beach will only be occupied while he gets himself fit enough to surf again competitively.
Above me, two surfboards are suspended from the ceiling. They’ve been turned into ceiling lights, and it’s pretty cool. The whole house is cool, and nothing matches. It all sort of looks like the furnishings were thrown together from thrift stores around the globe, while Jordy focuses on his real home: the ocean.
Trying upstairs first, I pass by a couple pressed up against the banister. Her on his knee as they laugh at a video playing on his phone. I locate the bathroom to the left of the upstairs landing, and I do my business and wash up.
A crash from the hallway at the end of the landing turns me as I’m walking to the staircase, and I go check it out in case someone’s had too much to drink and found themselves in an unfortunate situation.
I approach the open doorway where the kafuffle sounded like it came from. The lights are off inside, and I push the door open slowly, peeking into the shadows, prepared to run for my life if it’s nothing more than two horny people getting frisky, albeit clumsily.
As soon as light spills into the room from the hallway, spreading across the walls and hardwood floor, it’s obvious something isn’t right, and I grope around on the plasterboard, searching for a light switch.
Two figures materialize from black silhouettes under the ceiling lights. Ozzie’s hands cuff the slender biceps of the woman he’s re
straining. Her head snaps in my direction, straight chestnut hair slashing her collarbone.
“Get lost, Lyla.”
My eyes stray from the beautiful girl to Ozzie. The whites of his eyes are pink from three nine-hour days in the salty ocean, and dark strands of hair tumble into his eyes. Eyes that don’t look at all happy to see me here.
Nothing new there, then.
“You’re hurting her,” I say, pulling my attention back to his vise grip on the woman’s arms. She looks older than Ozzie, but she’s a lot smaller in height and build, and even if she was built like Sasquatch, his hands still shouldn’t be on her.
“Call the cops,” she demands in a slur, trying to struggle out of Ozzie’s hands. “Tell them my daughter’s been kidnapped—”
Ozzie lets her go and springs forward, covering her mouth with the palm of one hand and backing her against the closet. Her body connects with the doors on a dull thud, the fitted mirrors shaking.
“Don’t even think about it,” Ozzie warns me. “If you’re going to be helpful at all, call Topher and tell him to get my dad here now. Otherwise, get the fuck out.”
The pieces come together as commands are thrown at me from all sides, and I see the same characteristics in this wild, restrained woman as I do in Mariah. There isn’t time to do the math on how old she might be, and whether Ray’s committed something worse than getting a woman that isn’t his wife pregnant. I do what Ozzie says and slip into the hallway to call Topher, because if I go back into that room without all the information, there’s no guaranteeing I won’t wrestle Ozzie down to the ground myself.
Topher needs only ten percent of the story before he tells me he’s on his way. With the warped notion he’ll arrive quicker if I wait for him outside, I take myself out to the back of the house, traipsing backward and forward along the sand-blown road. My hopes rise with every sweeping beam of headlights that glows in the distance, eventually burning out along with my optimism.