Chapter 7 - Gabriel
SEVEN
GAbrIEL
TEN YEARS EARLIER
Saltwater Springs has to be the most boring town in existence.
No, really. Not even our pastel coloured cottage-style homes, or our small coastal town charm can make up for it.
We rarely see new people move here, and the only excitement we actually get is during the summer when the tourists flood in to take over our beach.
This year it’s especially boring because my friends are more focused on hooking up with said tourists rather than catching waves. Not me though. I plan to go pro-level next year, so I can’t waste my time on temporary summer flings.
The beach is perfect today. Deserted because most of the town, and especially the tourists, don’t wake up before the sun is fully out, and it’s only just beginning to peak over the horizon.
I almost have the place all to myself.
Almost.
The only other person here is her.
Zalea Evans.
We used to be friends growing up, best friends actually. So close that we’d made a pact to marry each other if we couldn’t find someone to settle down with by the time she turned thirty. But all of that changed three years ago when Zalea got her first high school boyfriend.
Paul McIntosh.
I hated the guy, and I still do. He was controlling, always playing with her emotions and getting into her head. Apparently, he went through her diary one day and found an entry she’d written about our pact.
Whatever was written in there was enough for him to become paranoid about our friendship, and it didn’t take long for Zalea to cut me off entirely. Now, three years later, they’re not together anymore, but there’s no going back to the friendship she and I had shared. Not after a betrayal like that.
She looks in my direction as she begins stretching and I look away immediately, running straight into the ocean with my board tucked under my arm. No way am I going to let her catch me staring.
I spend the next two hours surfing, Zalea doing the same not too far away, but far enough where we don’t have to interact with each other.
I stop when someone calls her name from the beach, breaking my concentration.
She bails on a wave and paddles her way to shore where her younger brother, Zale, waits.
He looks worried, speaking frantically as she rushes over, and within seconds she rips her strap from her ankle and tosses her board down on the sand before sprinting alongside him in the direction of their house.
I sit on my board, watching them go, knowing in my gut that something is profoundly wrong.
I paddle to the shore and run my board over to my house, which sits along the beach, before running back for Zalea’s board and jogging the familiar route to her home.
When I get there, the front door is flung wide open and inside I can hear Zalea screaming and crying. That’s all it takes for me to run, tossing her board on her front lawn, not bothering to remove my shoes.
She’s sitting on her kitchen floor, back pressed against the cupboards, sobbing as she cradles Sprinkles—her dog. Sprinkles is awake and alert but I notice blood trickling from his neck. Zale stands in front of her, anxiously running a hand through his hair.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, causing both of them to jump.
“I don’t know,” she cries out a moment later, her face red and wet.
“Another dog attacked him while we were on a walk, and he’s really hurt,” Zale says, voice shaking. “The vet in town is closed today, and I don’t know what to do.”
I look at Sprinkles again, knowing he definitely needs to see a vet as quickly as possible.
“I’ll go grab my car and we’ll take him to the animal hospital the next town over,” I say, looking at Zale. “Get your sister some clothes and a towel to wrap Sprinkles in.”
Zale rushes up the stairs, and with one last look at Zalea, I sprint back to my house.
In no more than five minutes, I’m parked outside Zalea’s house in my range rover.
Zale jumps into the back seat and Zalea, wearing a loose maxi dress over her bikini, chooses the passenger seat next to me, holding the bundled up Sprinkles in her arms as her lip continues to quiver and tears streak down her face uncontrollably.
I step on the gas, going well over the speed limit as we drive towards the neighbouring town, but about ten minutes into the drive, her teeth begin to chatter.
One look her way and I realize her hair is still wet from the ocean and sticking to her bare arms as she buries her face into Sprinkles’ fur.
I turn on her seat warmer without her noticing, but when I look in my rear view mirror I notice Zale has been watching very carefully. I return my eyes to the road and refuse to look at either one of them until we reach the animal hospital.
“Sprinkles is going to be okay,” Zalea’s quiet voice says from behind me. “They gave him some type of shot, and are stitching up his injury right now.”
I take in her appearance as I turn away from the vending machine that just ate my last two dollars.
Her eyes are red rimmed and swollen from all the crying, her cheeks are tear-stained, and her hair is a mess.
I notice she’s still shivering, goosebumps running up her arms because of the AC they’re blasting in here.
“Good,” I say awkwardly. “I’m glad.”
She nods, looking like she’s trying to grasp at words. “Thanks for bringing us here,” she says, voice shaking again. “I don’t know what I would have done if—“
She can’t finish the sentence, her lip trembling again as she tries to hide it with her fingers. But her glossy eyes are the giveaway.
“He just means so much to me,” she whispers.
“I know,” I say, watching her.
We had found Sprinkles together five years ago, abandoned at the edge town.
He was a tiny scruffy thing back then, and Zalea fell in love at first sight.
I tried to warn her he could have flees, or ticks, or worse—rabies.
He was in pretty bad shape and we couldn’t figure out his breed.
I still don’t completely know what kind of dog he is.
But Zalea never cared about that. She proclaimed the whole bike ride back to the house—one arm wrapped around my waist as she sat behind me, and the other arm holding Sprinkles close—that he was her soul-dog.
And who was I to fight her on that?
“Anyway,” she sniffles as she wipes at her eyes before more tears can fall, “my parents are on their way here to pay the bill and take us home. So, you don’t have to wait around for us.”
I want to tell her that I’m not leaving, that I want to stay and make sure that Sprinkles really is okay. That she’s okay. But I don’t. I start walking away, but when I notice her shiver once more, I stop and pull my hoodie over my head and hold it out to her.
She stares at it like it might bite her. “You’re cold. Take it,” I say.
She opens her mouth to argue but I push it into her arms. “You can throw it out when you’re done with it. I don’t need it back.”
I feel like a dick when I see the hurt flash across her face, but I’d be digging myself a bigger hole if I took the sweater back after she wore it. It would only serve as a reminder of her, the best friend that I lost…the best friend that I’d loved.
“Thank you,” she says quieter now, holding up the sweater with a small smile. “For the sweater and for bringing us here.”
I hold her gaze for a moment longer, memorizing the radiant green of them before I give a quick nod and walk out of the hospital and straight to my car.
But I don’t drive home. I stay until her parents arrive.
I stay until they leave the hospital, Zalea wearing my sweater while holding a bandaged Sprinkles close to her chest as they walk to their car.
I stay until they’re long gone, wondering how she managed to embed herself so deeply into my heart that three years apart has changed nothing about how it races around her.
I decide I’m done with this friends-to-strangers business and I drive straight for her house without a second thought.
It’s already dark out by the time I arrive.
I park a few houses down and work my way around the rose bushes that line her house.
When I round the corner, I spot a light on in her bedroom, and I bend down to pick up a pebble before tossing it at her window, hearing it tap the glass before it drops back to the ground.
Seconds later, Zalea pops her head out the window, still wearing my sweater.
“Gabriel?” She sounds shocked and confused as she stares down at me.
“Is our pact still on?” I whisper-shout.
“What?”
“Our marriage pact.” A small smile curls on my lips. “Are we still getting married when you’re thirty if we’re both single?”
She stares down at me for a long while, and then suddenly she smiles, her eyes sparkling joyfully. “Yeah,” she says softly. “It’s still on.”
I grin at her, but when the light next to her’s turns on and her mother peers out at me, I know it’s time to go.
“See you in the water, Red.”
“See you,” she says, her giggle music to my ears.