4. Elora
4
ELORA
43.0760° N, 107.2903° W
L ying on my back in bed, I watch a long beam of light from the morning sun that breaks in through a crack in the curtain as it slowly travels across the blank space of the ceiling. When I first woke up, the light was on the wall and the box still sitting on top of the dresser, like the contents inside wanted the warmth of the sun and drew it inside the room.
When I roll to my side, my eyes land on the water and bottle of ibuprofen sitting on my nightstand—a gift I found inside a plastic bag hanging on the door handle of my room when I came upstairs last night after finishing my shift at the bar. Even if I didn’t see him place them there, I knew they were from Roman. The guy who got his food to go and left me sitting alone at The Coast after telling me that he didn’t know why he was here in town. The same guy who didn’t acknowledge me when he walked into the bar last night, and the one who tossed one man like he weighed nothing, then punched the one who punched me, looking like he could have killed him when he eyed the red mark on my cheekbone.
Giving up on going back to sleep or trying to figure out Roman, who is a conundrum all his own, I toss back the blanket covering me and sit up. I have today off, which I’m going to need. With an unexpected wave of nice weather, the weekend will be busier than normal, so I likely won’t get much of a break between housekeeping and my job at the bar for a few days.
Walking to the bathroom, I flip on the light and go to the sink, leaning over it to get a better look at the side of my face. There’s a tender bruise and slight welt, but it’s not as bad as it could have been if I hadn’t put ice on it when Roman demanded.
I’ll never admit it, but he was right. Getting between two grown men who were fighting was stupid, and it’s a mistake I will never make again.
After going through my morning routine, I get dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a sweater and glance at the box on my dresser. I’m not ready to take some of my mom’s ashes with me and let a small piece of her go yet. Maybe in a few days.
I leave my room and head toward the beach that is a short walk from the hotel. Even with the sun out, the cold breeze that comes off the water has me questioning the shorts, but as I look at the people lining the beach, I know I’m the only one who feels that way. There are men and women in bathing suits, kids playing in the freezing pools of water that never seem to dry up, and dogs running up and down the sand.
Cutting my way across the beach, I head for Haystack Rock. The landmark shoots out of the water and sand, seeming out of place and alone, like it got cast out by the hills and mountains that stretch along the coast.
The first time I saw it in person, I got tears in my eyes. The photos Mom and I looked at online hadn’t done it justice.
As I’m passing a couple and a photographer taking their photo, I notice a familiar figure jogging in my direction. With the sun shining down on Roman, his dark-brown hair almost seems to glow with a hint of red, and without his shirt, I realize that the black tattoos I noticed on both his hands travel up his wrists and forearms and end near his collarbones. If I ever needed the visual representation of the classic bad boy moms warn their daughters to stay away from, I now have it.
When he’s about ten feet away, he slows to a walk while removing the earbuds from his ears. Shoving them in the pocket of his athletic shorts, he closes the distance between us while his eyes wander over my face.
“It doesn’t look too bad today.” He nods toward my cheek, his eyes locked on the spot that feels tender when my hair lightly brushes against it.
“If you’re waiting for me to tell you that it’s because of the ice, it will never happen.” His smile in response is small, but my heart stupidly picks up speed at the sight of it. I shift on my feet, then tell him quietly, “Thank you for the ibuprofen. If you tell me what it cost, I’ll give you the money back.”
“It was only a couple of bucks,” he mutters, tucking one hand into the pocket of his shorts, his other hand clenching the T-shirt he’s holding. I don’t know if it’s because he knows I know he’s the one who left them for me or because I offered to pay him back, but either way, he suddenly looks uncomfortable.
“Well…” I glance in the direction I was headed. “I’m going to check out the tide pools around Haystack Rock since I haven’t had a chance to really explore them when the tide’s been out. Have a?—”
“Do you want some company?” He cuts me off, and I rub my lips together.
I should tell him no, but when I look into his eyes, I know I can’t. He’s just as lost as I am, maybe more so, and that makes me feel connected to him in some twisted way. Like we’re two ships lost in the neverending ocean and somehow came across each other.
“Sure,” I say quietly.
Dragging my eyes off his, I focus on my feet while he falls into step with me while putting on his T-shirt.
“How long have you been here?” he asks, and I glance up at him and find his gaze focused up the beach toward Haystack Rock.
“Five months.”
“And you’re still living at the hotel?”
“I never planned on sticking around, so there wasn’t a reason for me to find a permanent place in town,” I tell him as I bend to pick up a seashell sticking halfway out of the sand. The seashell is chipped along one side, but still somehow perfect.
“Are you still planning to leave?”
“Yes.” I tuck the shell in the pocket of my sweater as we continue walking. “My next stop is the Redwood Forest, and after that, the Golden Gate Bridge. Then Vegas and the Grand Canyon. I’ll probably stop for a while after that and find a job somewhere for a few months to make some money before I move on again.”
“Are you running from something?”
“No,” I tell him quietly, but it feels a lot like I’m lying. I tip my head back to look up at him, and he dips his chin to meet my gaze. “My mom passed away a little over six months ago.” Surprise and empathy filter through his eyes. “Before she passed away, we were going to visit all the places on her bucket list. We only made it to one, so I plan on leaving a little bit of her everywhere we never made it to.”
“Jesus, Elora,” he whispers.
Ignoring the tightness in the back of my throat, I pull my eyes off his. “So I’ve been here in Oregon, waiting for the funeral home to send me her ashes.” I let out a breath and wrap my arms around my middle. “They got here yesterday.”
“You’re leaving soon, then?”
I nod. “Monday.”
“And you’re traveling alone? Where are your friends? Your family?”
“No one understood. They all thought I was crazy when I told them my plan, and…”
“And?”
“My mom’s family was absolutely against me doing what I’m doing.” I slow as we reach the edge of the tide pools and smile at the two young kids guarding the area to make sure no one picks up any of the sea creatures that call the small pools of water home when the ocean calls the tide back out to sea.
“What about you? How long are you staying here?”
“I’m not sure.” He tips his head back to look up at the rock wall in front of us. It reminds me of him, beautiful but dangerous with all its jagged edges. His chest expands on a deep breath as he drags his fingers through his thick hair.
“Are you going back to New York?”
“I should.” He looks down at me. “When you’re done, are you going back to Wyoming?”
“I don’t know.” Wandering away from him, I walk to a pool of water surrounded by black rock and squat to get a closer look at a brightly colored starfish clinging to the edge.
The truth is, I don’t even know if I’m welcome in my hometown anymore. Not with my broken engagement and all my family drama. My mom owned a huge plot of land she bought with my dad from my grandparents when they got married. My father has been out of the picture for years, so when she decided to stop her treatments, she asked her siblings if they wanted to buy it from her. None of them did, so she signed the deed for the property over to me.
With all her medical bills, taxes, and the other bills that piled up, I put the land up for sale so bill collectors and the state wouldn’t be able to just take it out from under me. It’s the only choice I’ve made that I think my mom would have been disappointed about. I know my aunt and uncle hate me for that decision, but my hands were tied.
They’re still tied, tethered to the land my mom grew up on. Tied to the memory of her waxing on about how she wanted my kids to someday run through the fields of wildflowers just like I had, and she did before me. A dream that is only nostalgic because the dream was hers.
It’s still for sale now. No one seems to want a house and land in Wyoming, not even the people who are mad I’m not keeping it. I don’t blame them; I don’t know if I’d keep it, even if I had the choice, if I’m being honest.
“Have you ever heard the story of the Star Thrower?” Roman asks, dragging me from my thoughts as he squats next to me.
“No.” I blink at him in surprise. He hasn’t been one to tell me much of anything, much less a story, and I find myself hanging on his every word as he starts to speak.
“One day, an old man who used to write by the sea went out for a walk on the beach after a storm and saw thousands of sea stars washed up on the shore overnight. Down the beach, he saw a kid, and when he got closer, he realized the boy was tossing the sea stars back into the ocean one at a time, over and over. The old man asked him what he was doing, and he told him, ‘I’m throwing them back into the ocean before the sun gets too hot and they die.’ The old man told him, ‘There are thousands of sea stars. You’re never going to make a difference.’ The boy picked up one more star and threw it into the water, then looked at the old man, telling him, ‘I made a difference to that one.’”
“Are you the old man or the kid in that story?” I ask him quietly, and he moves his gaze to mine.
“The old man.”