Chapter 6 Tanner
Tanner
Heaping his plate with pasta salad, Tanner dropped onto a chair beside Sam and Kash.
“So, no Lily, huh,” Sam mumbled around a mouthful. “Seemed to be going well at Christmas. What happened?”
“Subtle, dude. Very subtle.” Flicking a torn-off crust of bread, Kash managed to clip the top of Sam’s ear.
“Guys don’t do subtle.” Sam was unapologetic.
Kash frowned. “I do subtle.”
“Yeah, but you’re not most guys, babe. You’re a one-off.”
Tanner chuckled, chewed, and swallowed. “We had an argument when I didn’t propose over the holidays. She wanted a big high-profile wedding this summer. She was pissed it wasn’t going to happen.”
“And she dumped you? Just like that?” Sam’s fork hovered by his mouth.
“No.” Tanner flipped a pebble he’d picked up in one hand. “She slept with the backup goalie, then ditched us both for a quarterback.”
Kash choked on his food.
“Fuck.” Keeping his eyes on Tanner, Sam pounded his partner between the shoulder blades. “The lengths some people will go to for a summer wedding.”
Rubbing a hand over his chest, Tanner found only the leftover ache of bruised pride. “It’s not that I didn’t want to commit. But when it came down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to commit to her.”
“At least you recognized that she wasn’t the right person in time,” said Kash.
“And if you were the right person for her, she wouldn’t have fucked the goalie or the QB.” Sam’s contribution was brutal but undeniably accurate.
Both statements were true. There had been an overriding sense of release with the end of their relationship. Although the lies had hurt. They still fucking hurt. “I gave her everything she asked for. A bit of honesty in return would have been nice.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re going wrong, dude. Good relationships don’t work on a bartering system.” Uncharacteristically serious, Sam shoveled some more pasta into his mouth.
“Listen to you emerging from your blanket fort with some great advice,” teased Kash, ruffling his partner’s hair. “My boy’s all grown up.”
Tanner brushed aside a pang of envy at the casual gesture. “Well, it’s a good time for a fresh start anyway.” Above their heads, the ceiling fan droned, moving the humid air over his skin in pleasant relief. “I’ve been looking forward to coming home. There’s stuff I need to sort out.”
“And what’s Arlo’s opinion of the move?” Sam asked.
“Yeah, he wasn’t exactly on board. He was pushing for a contract extension in Boston but that wasn’t going to happen.” Tanner buried the cringe of embarrassment before Sam sniffed it out. He wasn’t ready to open that can of worms right now.
Taking another bite of his lunch, he found his attention wandering as Avery slipped into the clubhouse.
Like the eleven-year-old he’d first met sitting side by side in the school infirmary with matching nosebleeds (his from a fight, hers from a basketball), she was all legs, eyes and fiery hair.
Impossible to ignore. He’d been all too aware of her at Pine Springs High and it seemed nothing had changed.
She blended swiftly into her group of friends, laying her head against Leo Marsh’s shoulder when he curled an arm around her waist.
Sam followed his gaze. “How’re the two of you getting on?”
“Fine. It’s good. But we haven’t talked much yet.” He dragged his eyes away. “She seems the same. But different.”
Sam grinned. “We’re all the same but different.”
“And a lot more tired,” added Kash.
“Remember when you pounded Tyson Dax for calling her ‘Fanta Pants’?” Sam snickered.
“Funny—Avery mentioned him earlier,” Tanner said, pushing aside his empty plate.
An anonymous tip and a random locker search less than a week after they’d fought had found two ounces of weed beneath Tanner’s textbooks that he’d never seen before.
It wasn’t hard to join the dots since Tyson Dax supplied drugs to anyone who came asking, but with those in charge deaf to Tanner’s protestations of innocence, he’d ended up with an out-of-school suspension for one day and an in-school suspension for the rest of the week.
Even more serious, the incident went on his permanent record, confirming his place on Principal Harris’s shit list.
“I don’t regret smacking him one. He was asking for it,” he said. “That little fucker was poisonous.”
Griff and Savannah passed by on their way out of the door. “You’ve got fifteen minutes to change into swimwear and head to the lake for this afternoon’s challenge,” Savannah trilled.
“My mom says I shouldn’t swim straight after eating.” Tanner took a huge bite from an apple he’d pulled from his pocket.
“It’s all part of my cunning plan.” Savannah bopped him playfully on the nose. “I’m hoping you get taken out by cramp so I can use your body as a stepping stone to get to the finish line.”
“That’s cold, cuz.”
“Brutal,” Sam agreed.
“Is it wrong that I’m a little turned on right now?” asked Griff as he dragged Savannah toward the door with a grin.
Tanner, Sam, and Kash took less than five minutes to change clothes and were among the first to make it to the lake.
The crowd gradually grew until everyone was gathered on the narrow strip of sand.
With the sun beating down on his neck and a dribble of sweat running from the back of his hairline down between his shoulder blades, Tanner itched to get into the water.
Avery drifted closer to his side. She wore a dark blue bikini and her feet were bare, lavender nail polish on her toes, and all his senses went into overdrive like he’d taken a shot of adrenaline straight into a vein.
Pulling back her hair into a russet ponytail which bared the soft column of her neck, she fixed it with a band from her wrist. A scrapbook of images from school playing in his memory, Tanner’s fingers flexed by his sides.
While Johnnie and Mia ran through the rules of the paddleboard race, Bel planted her feet in the sand beside him, hands on her hips. “What did you say you were doing in the UK this last month?”
Tanner fought a smile and lost. “Swimming and surfing.”
She jabbed a vicious finger at his stomach. “You and I are going to fall out soon.”
Drew swooped in to steer Bel away. “Luckily, it’s just a bit of fun, huh, babe? No need for physical violence. Not yet, anyway.”
As it turned out, she shouldn’t have worried because Tanner had never tried a tandem paddleboard before and it was far from easy.
Getting the coordination right at the same time as mastering the steering was tough.
His competitive spirit strained against its leash for the first five minutes but then melted away entirely against the backdrop of crystal-clear water, an azure sky, and Avery Delgado’s laughter.
A smile that could light up downtown Pine Springs broke when she surfaced from her third dunking and Tanner couldn’t hold back a matching one in response.
Her teeth glistened white around that plush bottom lip, her body slick and shiny as she clambered back onto the board.
Ahead of them, Sam toppled with a shout and a splash, while Kash fought valiantly to keep his balance, failed, and plunged into the lake with a bitten off “Son of a—!” and a fresh peal of laughter bent Avery double.
It was impossible to tell what was tears and what was lake water.
The tiny gold hoop in Avery’s nose glinted in the sunshine while the radiance on her face cracked Tanner’s chest wide open in a way he hadn’t realized was possible.
The years disappeared and he was twelve again, wanting to keep talking to the girl with the matching bloody nose.
He was seventeen and aching to kiss her.
He was twenty-two and still wearing Avery’s hairband around his wrist to bring him good luck.
The free fall through time ended with a lurch as reality hit him. He still wanted Avery Delgado.
He always had.
And Tanner wasn’t sure what to do about it.
They finally paddled into the shallows in third place as Savannah and Griff celebrated a competent win.
Sam and Kash, the runners-up, embraced with a whoop, tumbling into the lake still in each other’s arms, and Avery dropped to her knees on their board, her chest rising and falling with a strained shudder.
“My arms are crying,” she gasped, sucking in air. “That was so tough!”
Her navy bikini was threaded through with a narrow white stripe, the bottoms high-waisted, the fabric some kind of crinkled affair.
Tanner, itching to know what it felt like, kept his hands to himself.
He turned sideways on the wide paddleboard and carefully sat down, kicking water at Sam when he waded within reach.
Avery lifted her face to the sun as each new pair racing to the finish line caused their board to bobble.
Her wet ponytail, terracotta dark, lay slick between her shoulder blades.
Tanner studied her while her eyes were closed.
Like a highlight reel of greatest goals, she was fascinating and absorbing at the same time.
Her ears, the corner of her mouth, her elbows.
He didn’t think he’d ever noticed anyone’s elbows before, but it seemed that no part of Avery was beyond his interest after all this time.
He cursed himself afterward for being so focused on her elbows.
A series of larger, choppy waves signaled the messy arrival of Leo and Gemma alongside them.
Leo rocked precariously from side to side but Gemma, as solid as a newborn foal on a travelator, was even less steady.
Fighting a losing battle with gravity, she tumbled backward, her paddle cutting through the air in a desperate bid for balance.
Even as Tanner moved to intercept, the sharp edge of the blade caught Avery with a tooth-juddering blow on the side of her head.
And she dropped like a stone into the water.