17. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
James
“ W hat the fuck is she doing?” I mutter to myself as I stand in the shop watching Katherine take a surfboard off the rack outside and start marching down to the beach. She’s got a wetsuit on and her hair’s pulled back away from her face.
Looking at her it’s like there’s something different about her, she doesn’t seem like my Katherine.
But she’s not mine.
She doesn’t look like her but like new, refreshed; something has changed.
It is her birthday, maybe it’s that another year thing, or whatever. I’ve never liked birthdays. After Mum left everything was just weird and painful.
She would still send cards every year and it ended up being another stab in my chest. Reminding me how much things had changed. How it would never be the same because her card was coming in the mail and not being handed to me in the living room with her and Dad’s handwriting together.
Dad’s drinking didn’t make it any easier, every birthday he’d promise he’d stop, that he’d get help, that was his birthday promise to me. He’d say just you watch you won’t recognise me next year. He’d be sober for maybe three - four days and every year I’d think maybe, maybe this year, maybe I’d finally be enough for him to get better but before I could eat all the cake in the fridge we’d be back to the beginning again.
So to say I think birthdays are a bit overrated would be an understatement.
Katherine’s gone by the time my brain catches up with my eyes, I move closer to the window to see her standing by the waters edge. I know Ella said she’s been giving her a few lessons but I still feel this pit inside my stomach open up. And I know for a fact I don’t like the feeling because it means only one thing and I’m not happy feeling that about her.
I lean in the window frame as I watch her and I slip my hands into my short pockets. The small gift box sitting in my pocket starts to burn a hole in my hand reminding me, deep down I know what the pit feeling is for. That only makes me feel sick because I don’t want it to be true, I don’t want to feel anything at all, least of all this.
None of this would be happening if she wasn’t here, if she’d never turned up on that sunny day in August. The day has been stuck in my head since and nothing I’ve done has made any difference. I think somehow I knew she’d do this, that she’d fuck everything up the minute I laid eyes on her in this shop. Except I thought it’d be in a different way.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Ella asks, sneaking up behind me. Katherine’s in the water now paddling out and she looks like a natural now. The hand wrapped around the box in my pocket stills as if she’ll know it’s here.
Ella’s not stupid, in fact I think she’s one of the smartest people I know, but as far as I know, I’ve still got her convinced the only feelings I have towards Katherine are those of hate and I’m sure as shit Katherine hasn’t told her about the kiss.
“Just one of those days,” I tell her, taking one final look out the window before walking away. “You sure Katherine won’t kill herself out there?” I ask her as she stares out the window with a smile on her face.
“I think I’m a pretty good teacher, actually,” she says with a chuckle. “Are you okay?” Her playful tone completely gone and replaced with a tone she hasn’t used in years, not since I was a teen. It’s not a passing hope you’re good . It’s a tell me your deep dark secrets . Two months ago, I would have, but now I don’t even know my deep dark secrets well enough to tell her.
“Yeah, of course.” I smile at her from behind the counter busying myself with the paperwork sat at the till, an order form I completed hours ago.
But I know it’s not believable, I know I’m terrible at lying to her.
“You know you can talk to me if you need to.” She stills my jittering hands by placing hers on top of mine. I know I can. The nights I’ve spent talking to her about Dad or Mum, or just everything. The times she’s been the parent figure for me when no one else was are too many to count.
So instead, I come up with a very believable lie about my dad and some fight we’ve had because that’s easy to think about. What’s not easy is Katherine, she’s like a tsunami that just keeps knocking me over again and again and I don’t understand, maybe never will, maybe not till she’s gone.
“I’m so proud of you, sweetheart,” Ella gushes, pulling out of a hug with Katherine once she comes into the shop .
She’s changed now into a pair of denim shorts and a white ‘Ella’s surf shop’ vest top that just about hits the top of her shorts, she’s never looked more like a local before. I guess I hadn’t wanted to notice because all I wanted was her out of here, I still do, but her skin has tanned now and her face glows like someone who’s finally seeing the right amount of sun. Her wet hair hangs around her shoulders, the red in her hair lighter now, you’d almost miss her walking down the street if it wasn’t for the fact she was one the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.
Man, you’re losing it.
The box in my pocket bounces as I move.
“Thanks, Aunt Ella, but I wiped out like half the time,” she tells her with a laugh and it’s the first time I really see the fact that they are related. They looked so different when she first got here and now she seems to reflect all the safe things I see in Ella.
You’ve completely lost it.
My hands get sweaty thinking about it. Thinking about the fact I’m feeling all these things. Thinking about the god damn gift in my pocket. I make the quick decision while they're both distracted to put it in the back room where she normally puts her bag, so she’ll find it, but also so I don’t have to give it to her.
I didn’t mean to buy the necklace. I just saw it in one of the gift shops in town and I walked past it at first not thinking too much of it but then I found myself being pulled back to the shop the next day too, and the next until I just brought the fucking thing. It had sat in the box on my dresser for a week, laughing at me every time my eyes caught it. Mocking me, because only a true idiot would buy her a birthday gift, especially if that idiot knew she hated him.
“Now are you sure you want to work?” I hear Ella’s voice cutting through my own thoughts, I walk out the back room and bring a box of t-shirts as I do to not look too suspicious .
“Yeah, of course, you know me and birthdays,” she tells Ella, the smile on her face not even the slightest bit believable. I don’t know why but people like Katherine, all rainbows, sunshine and floral prints, give off the vibe they love birthdays. A whole day about them.
Maybe she’s more like me than I thought.
Ella hands me the keys to lock up. “Try not to kill her on her birthday,” she tells me as Katherine walks past us into the back room trying everything in her power to not make eye contact with me at all.
“I guess if it’s her birthday, I’ll try my best,” I joke as she walks out of the shop, her steps only a little hesitant before disappearing from the store completely.
All of a sudden it feels like all the air in the room has gone, leaving behind my hot breaths anticipating Katherine’s re-entrance into the room. The shop’s empty and I’d never wished for the opposite.
“Do you know who left this?” Her quiet voice, piercing through me like a knife, brings me back into the room.
I turn in her direction, she’s not even looking at me just down at the little box in her hands, like she’s hypnotised by it.
“What is it?” I ask as casually as humanly possible, my sweating palms and hoarse voice giving me away if she was paying more attention to me.
“A necklace,” she says as if she’s looking at a puzzle. I didn’t want her to know I got it for her which just sounds even weirder when I think about it more but lets face it she wouldn’t want it if I did tell her I got it and I just want her to have it. I don’t know why.
“That was very helpful, Katherine, how am I supposed to know.” Reverting back to being a dick is the easiest thing I can do, it’s easy and simple and it works. It lets my brain remember the truth about everything, it reminds me why I’m like this, why my life fell apart and why this girl is not my friend .
“Well someone left it in the back room, are you just letting anyone back there now?” Her snarly tone seeps into her words, her sunshine and rainbows falling for only a minute to let me see her and we finally seem to be reverting back to the easy hate we had for each other.
It seems odd that that’s the safe space, the easy path, to just hate each other but god I’m happy for it. The awkward air that’s been hanging over the two of us since the kiss has been suffocating.
“Obviously not,” I say, taking it out of her hands examining it as if I hadn’t been doing the same thing for a week. “What is it anyway?”
“A whale, you giant idiot,” she tells me snatching it out of my hands, without thinking my fingers brush hers and she looks me dead in the eyes and it’s enough to set my whole body on fire, my veins completely igniting inside me, I’m not sure I’m even breathing.
We both seem to need to take a deep breath when I finally pull away from her and I’m so out of breath I feel like I’ve been on the water for hours. I want to tell her it’s actually a humpback whale, her favourite, but I hold myself back from it knowing the questions I’ll get after.
I could hear it all too well in my head already. How would you know? As if she hasn’t been talking about going on a whale watching tour since she got here, but I guess maybe I wasn’t meant to notice that, I wasn’t meant to remember all the conversations we’ve had or all the other conversations I’ve overheard her having. But my brain seems to store it all away in a little Katherine sized box in a corner. I’ve tried emptying it out, recycling the files, but still when I go to bed and close my eyes it’s all here, being replayed right in front of me.
A haunting thought comes to mind as she stands there smiling down at her hands, examining the little silver pendant more. She looks up and she smiles at me, the first one I’m sure I’ve ever gotten, maybe the only one I’ll ever get, and I melt. Seeing her like this, real. This is something else, not her trying to be anyone, or trying to be what she thinks other people want. Just her. Right in front of me, wet hair and denim shorts.
Look what she’s done to me.
The thought doesn’t go anywhere as a sharp pain in my chest takes over, maybe not painful but noticeable. I’m not sure I mind what I’m feeling as much as I don’t recognise it. But the thought persists, even when she’s put the necklace on and stopped looking at me, and when we’ve fallen into our regular routine of work.
I’m sure in all those moments, I will do anything in my power just to get her to smile at me like that again.