Beyond the Break

by Heather Buchta

  I pause. “I did. Seventh-grade winter camp. February. So did you.”

  “Well, you’ve been dating Jake for three months now, and . . .”

  “And?”

  “A lot can happen in three months.”

  I ask her, “Haven’t you guys been dating longer than us?”

  Kelly’s eyes dart to Dave before she says, “We were courting.”

  “Were?” I echo. I’ve asked Kelly how things are with Dave, and she always says, “Blessed.” “Did you break up?”

  Dave shakes his head. “We took a step back.” I look at Kelly but she busies herself drawing squiggles in the condensation of her water glass. “We realized we needed to back up to stay on track with God. That’s why we’re just friends now.”

  “That sounds like a breakup.”

  Kelly sighs, like I’m changing the subject on purpose. “I’m just saddened that you signed a True Love Waits contract—”

  “Pledge—” I correct.

  “Same difference, and you’re not even considering it.”

  “It says to wait to have sex. I haven’t broken it.”

  They eye each other. Kelly speaks first. “I heard from Niles that Jake says he’s not against sex outside of marriage.”

  I don’t know what to say because Jake never answered about Hannah, which was an answer.

  She leans down, her chin close to my soup. It steams in front of her eyes. She whispers, “He’s not a virgin.”

  This part I know, and it makes me uncomfortable. But I won’t tell them that. “So?”

  “So he can’t be your husband,” Kelly says. “We talked about it in seventh grade.” I’m mortified that we’re about to rehash a seventh-grade conversation about boys in front of Dave. “You said you weren’t going to date any guy, and then God was going to give you a boyfriend right after college, and that guy was going to be your future husband, and you would know because he wouldn’t have dated anyone before you either. And then you would kiss for the first time at the altar when you got married.”

  I remember all of this, and she’s right. I said every word of it. “For God’s sake, Kelly, I was TWELVE!”

  She gasps. “For God’s sake?” she repeats.

  “Sorry. Look, things change. My mind changes.”

  “I read the essay you wrote.”

  I close my eyes, trying to shut out the memory of those papers—the copies upon copies—plastered all over the school. Students laughing.

  “Think of all the people who know now about where you stand on the issue.”

  “Not all of it was the truth,” I say, thinking of the humiliating stuff Cecilia added. “And I didn’t choose to let them all know.”

  “Still. Maybe God let everyone know as a gift for you. Think of how bad you’re going to ruin your witness.”

  “You guys, I haven’t even kissed Jake.”

  Kelly coughs into her water as she’s taking a sip. “What?”

  “Really?” Dave says, incredulous, like I’ve told him that I have a pet platypus.

  “Really.” I take a huge bite of my grilled cheese, even though I’ve totally lost my appetite. I swam two miles, and my body needs it. I wash it down with a few spoonfuls of soup and then look at my wrist as if I own an invisible watch. “I gotta go.” The chair clatters into the person’s chair behind me as I get up, and I apologize. Kelly and Dave look at each other with “I told you so” eyes. I drop ten bucks on the table. “Please don’t get change.”

  I walk out of the gate and slap my board onto the concrete, startling the leashed dog next to me. “Sorry, boy,” I say and pat his soft Labrador head. He licks my palm, and I hear Kelly’s faint, “Lovette, wait,” but I’m off toward the pier without looking back.

  When I roll up, I stop in front of the statue of Tim Kelly. I touch him—the bronze is warm across my palm—and it calms me. I look out at the waves. The Pacific Ocean here isn’t aqua like postcards of tropical surf spots. It’s dark gray-green usually, camouflaging seaweed and coffee-colored boardshorts, but it’s home. I pull out my phone to text Jake: Meet at H pier?

  He texts back a thumbs-up.

  When I turn around, there he is, in the middle of the bike traffic and pedestrians and skateboards and dogs. Like in a movie, he’s stock-still as everything around him crisscrosses in chaotic patterns. It makes him look taller, sturdier somehow. My smile’s big and goofy, and I don’t care if all the tourists in Hermosa see. I leave my skateboard and charge at him. He lifts me and spins me around, burying his face in my neck. Everything in me wants to kiss him and I wonder if he feels the same and I’m embarrassed, but there it is.

  “How’d you find me?” I left Martha’s in such a flurry that I never texted him where exactly to meet.

  He holds his phone up. “FriendFinder app.”

  He laces my fingers with his and beams when he feels the fierce way I grip his hand. I’ve missed him this past week. This past hour. He looks at the ocean.

  “It’s too washed out today,” I say.

  “For surfing.” He walks me back to my board and picks it up with his free hand. “Come on. I only have fifteen minutes on the meter.”

  He wiggles my phone out of my back pocket, and I jump, which makes him laugh. “Careful. Your phone’s touching your butt. Better tell it to stop.” He hands me my phone. “You’ve suddenly caught this one-day cold—maybe you should tell Billy’s Buns you can’t make it to work tonight.”

  Curiosity wins over my desire to be honest. “Okay. Where are we going?”

  He grins. “Do you trust me?”

  I text Kim. Can’t make it.

  Before I lie, she writes back: Got you covered. Have fun

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Are you taking me to the base?”

  We’ve been on the 405 South for fifteen minutes now, drowning ourselves in Discover Weekly music on Spotify.

  “To my home? To meet my dad? I’m not sadistic.”

  I turn up the heater. It’s a cool day, and my sports bra is wet from either skateboarding or getting the third degree from Pope Kelly and Officer Dave. “I haven’t met your family. I don’t even know where you live in Manhattan.”

  He taps the steering wheel. “My aunt’s home. She’ll be awake when we get back if you want to meet her.”

  “I’d like that. A lot.” I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder.

  “Where’d you go this morning?”

  I tell him about Alix, open-water swimming, and skating. I hesitate to bring up the rest, but I do. “I met Kelly and Dave for lunch.”

  “TFTI.”

  “I would’ve invited you! She actually made sure you weren’t coming, so I thought it was going to be a girls’ thing. Then I got there, and there was Dave. And it was pretty much an intervention to break us up.”

  “Huh,” he says. He looks down at me leaning on his shoulder, and kisses the top of my head. “Looks like it worked.”

  I laugh. “I can’t figure her out. Something’s off.”

  “You’re just noticing this?” he jokes.

  “No. Like more than normal. I can’t explain it. I know her. And . . .” I don’t finish my thought because I’ll sound mean.

  “I’d say you could’ve texted me sooner and I would’ve rescued you, but you don’t seem like a girl who needs rescuing.”

  “I will next year when you move away.”

  There. I said it. He looks at me, his eyes rich with concern. I bite my lip, and he sighs. “I hate it too. You have no idea.” He rubs his forehead, uncreasing his wrinkles. “But I don’t hate today.” He smiles at me with resolve. “I’m not letting it ruin what we have right now.”

  I reach my right arm across his stomach, and it tightens at my touch. He presses his lips against the top of my head again. “Careful,” he murmurs. “I’ve gotta get you the
re safely.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see. Your curfew’s eleven, right?”

  “It’s a sliding scale since my brother’s home. But yes.”

  “You might need to text for an extension.”

  He merges from the 405 to the 5 South, and after a while there are only freeway sounds and car music, vehicles blurring past on the north side. Tired from the long day, I’m starting to nod off when Jake says, “Boobs.”

  I open my eyes. “What?”

  “We’re passing the boobs.”

  He points at the San Onofre power towers, two massive nuclear-reactor power-plant domes. I slap him playfully, but it’s true. They do look like two huge, armored boobs pointing to the sky.

  “Sorry, should I have said ‘bosoms’? The nipples glow red at night.” I slap him again, and he adds, “What? They guide me home. God speaks in different ways.”

  I laugh but say, “Do you believe that?”

  “That God made bosoms? Yes. Some of them fantastic.” He looks pointedly at me, and I blush.

  “I mean the God part.” My arm’s draped across his stomach like a seat belt, and his body’s warm. My head’s on his shoulder, and it all makes me feel like I can be completely honest. “Not just that Jesus was a good teacher—most nonbelievers believe that. I know you come to youth group, but lots of kids go. Arnie comes every week and he’s a total atheist, but he has the hots for Carrie.”

  “I get that.”

  “Hey! Be serious. Jesus means everything to me. And you mean, well, a lot. More than I ever expected a guy would. And I’m afraid that—”

  I feel his chest inflate and his body tense. He lowers the volume of the music. “You think because I don’t wear a ‘Jesus Saves’ T-shirt that I don’t believe?”

  “Hey! No, don’t be like that.” I straighten, turn my whole body to face him. “It’s important to me because you’re important to me. You seem kind of angry at Him sometimes. I honestly don’t know what you think of Him. You could be an atheist for all I know.”

  “Eh, Carrie’s not my type.” It’s a faint attempt at a joke, but he still looks bothered. “Look, if you’re asking, then yes, I believe in Jesus. I know what He did. I don’t think—like nonbelievers—that He was just a nice teacher running around telling nice people to go be nicer.” Even in the darkening twilight, I notice his knuckles whiten against the steering wheel. “I know He claimed to do some pretty serious stuff—like changing people’s eternal destinies—and if that was all a lie, and He knew it, then He wouldn’t be a nice teacher. He’d be the greatest dick in all of history.”

  I gasp inadvertently. “I’ve never heard someone refer to Jesus like that.”

  “Well, I don’t believe that He was lying, so I’m not really calling Him that. Just saying. I get that we live in a fallen world.” He waves a hand at the freeway outside our car windows. “I get that bad things happen and that God has to allow free will because the only value of love is in the choice. I get that.” He’s amped, and it’s a side of him I don’t normally see. Usually people would say this with joy, but he sounds mad. His eyes are fixed on the windshield in front of him. “I get that the only way to show us He loves us is by giving us the choice to love Him back. And sometimes we’re the victim of someone else’s choice. I don’t blame God for any of that. I get my dad’s best friend getting burned to death. Hate it, but I get it. My dad knew what he was getting into. War has consequences.”

  He pauses, and I swallow, but I knew what I was asking. What did I think I was gonna get from him, a simple “Jesus is awesome!” fist bump?

  “What I don’t get is that my real father died out there, and God couldn’t just let him be. No, He resurrected some other guy in my dad’s skin—a head case and an alcoholic—and brought that guy back to me here in the States, and now I have to take care of him. With one grenade, God made me an orphan and a parent.” He flicks on his right blinker with force and switches lanes. “Somewhere deep inside me, I know God’s still good and I don’t get the whole picture, and maybe that’s the beauty of it. I know enough to believe He’s real, and that this place isn’t our final home. But I don’t feel like lifting my arms up because God’s good and gives me shelter, education, and lattes every morning. He doesn’t need praise for that. And I’d rather spend my time praying for Him to protect future little six-year-olds riding their bikes near bombs, instead of asking Him to find me a parking spot or help me on a test. So you won’t find me talking to Him about the little things. You’re not gonna find me talking to Him about us.”

  “You consider us one of ‘the little things’?”

  He lets out a exasperated groan. “Are you even hearing me? Fine, let’s talk about that, then. No, I don’t care if we have sex.”

  “That’s not what I’m—”

  “That’s exactly what you’re asking. Do I love God enough to wait? There’s other things that keep me up at night. Being closer to you doesn’t.” It should be a compliment, but his tone’s frustrated and it makes me swallow. “Do I think God’s for it outside of marriage? There’s nothing in the Bible that says ‘Go for it.’” He lowers his voice. “But I just don’t care enough to run from it either. Not with you.”

  He said he believed in Jesus. But then he said he didn’t get Jesus. He said he wouldn’t have sex with me. But then he also said that he wouldn’t care if we did. And as confusing as that should be, it somehow makes sense when I think of what he just said about his dad.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Sorry I made that about us. I can’t imagine what it’s like not to recognize your own dad. Really. I know it took a lot to share that.” He doesn’t respond—which I understand—so I turn to face the passenger window, lean my head against my headrest, and look out. I stay frozen that way, and he turns the volume up and drowns the tension with music. It’s almost night, and it’s a new moon so it’s especially dark. I focus on the ocean to my right. I can just make out the crashing waves on the side of the highway. Something blue lights up but then dissipates. “What the—” I say.

  Our car slows as we exit. I turn to him, expecting his face still to be tight, but he’s watching me, his cheek dimpling as I gape.

  “What was that?” I say.

  “Red tide.”

  “But it’s December,” I argue.

  “I know, right?”

  I remember reading about this strange occurrence. It’s some dinoflagellate that makes the ocean light up like a glow stick. When the waves crash, the microbes get agitated and give off a flash of blue light—some sort of chemical reaction inside cells.

  He turns down a small road. “December’s been warmer than usual, so the blooms multiplied, and then this storm pushed it all up and, voilà, red tide.” He parks, unhooks his charger, and leans over me to hide his phone in the glove compartment. I feel his body heat, and I want to touch him, but I don’t. The music stops playing and in the new silence, we can hear the muted surf through our closed windows.

  “Are you okay?” I venture.

  He puts a hand up to my cheek, then drops it and squeezes my hand instead. “Yeah, I mean . . . it’s— There’s a lot. I know the answers you want me to say, and I’m”—he looks out my window at the dark sky and then back at me—“I’m not you.”

  I nod. I keep thinking about what he shared about his dad. About us. About God. He clearly struggles with God, but that actually makes his faith more real. A sense of peace washes over me, soaks me until I’m drenched in it.

  He hands me his sweatshirt from the back seat, then pecks me on the cheek and jumps out of the car. The smell of dead fish makes my eyes water.

  I follow him down a dirt trail. I know we’re near La Jolla Shores, but this little cove’s tucked away from waves and people. It looks like a glassy lake. At the shoreline, small waves crash, creating an eerie neon-blue glow.

  A guy at the shore waves
at us, and he’s standing next to one of the largest stand-up paddleboards I’ve ever seen. Jake introduces him as “Bill,” and I shake his hand—a thirtysomething guy with a shaved head and a peeling nose. He hands the paddle to Jake and says, “An hour?”

  Jake nods, and Bill walks away.

  “How do you know him?” I say as we lift the board together with a grunt and set it in the shallow water.

  “I don’t.” He responds to my quizzical look with, “What else am I gonna spend my hard-earned credit-union paycheck on?”

  * * *

  Even if Jake falls off the face of the planet and I go on a thousand dates in the future, I don’t know what could top this. I’m sitting with my legs crisscrossed on an SUP board the size of a table. It cuts through the night water like glass, and the fluorescent blue lights up the perimeter of the board. My back’s touching Jake’s legs. He stands directly behind me, a parted stance, and strokes the water with his paddle. Every time the paddle touches the water, an outline of bright blue ignites and melts away.

  “It’s like we’re in a cartoon,” I whisper. The blues are so bright, they look like they belong in an animated film. I could watch this all night: the gliding of the board lighting up the water. It’s like our LED surfboards, except the opposite. Our boards were blue and the ocean was dark. This time, the board’s dark, but the ocean around us lights up with its touch, the electric blue of the night sky in unicorn posters.

  “Unreal, isn’t it?” Jake whispers back. The board rocks from the rolling tide, but it’s mostly calm. A line from a worship song comes into my head: If the oceans sing Your praises, so will I. I reach back and wrap my arms around his calves, leaning my head back on his legs.

  “It’s perfect.”

  He did this. He planned this. He spent his paycheck on it. He made sure it happened on a new moon, because the luminescence would be the best if it contrasted the darkness instead of moonlight. We’re far enough out that the cove and shore are shadowed outlines in the night. I dance my fingers against his calf. His leg tightens, but it’s probably to balance.