Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Kit
Tess’s dad stares me down. And although he’s smiling, there’s a hardness to his eyes. Like he knows exactly what I did.
“It’s not a concussion. Just a bump on the head. The EMT said she’ll be back to normal in a day or two. I’m really sorry, sir.” I bite down on the inside of my cheek. The iced latte in my right hand is sweating, so much so that condensation pools at my wrist and drips down my arm. In my left hand, a hot mocha has me sweating. “I didn’t know which kind of coffee she liked, so I got both.”
“Are you expecting the picture to talk back to you?”
“Jesus Christ!” I nearly throw both drinks. Still shaking, I place them on a nearby coffee table, then turn to find the girl from the reception desk standing behind me. Her curly hair is the color of midnight, and her equally dark, carefully sculpted eyebrows are raised. She crosses her arms, expression incredulous, while I work to get my pulse back to its normal rhythm. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” she says, sounding like she isn’t really. Her fingertip joins my gaze on her name tag. “Xiomara. But everyone calls me Mara.”
“Right. Mara.” I push the condensation-slicked hand through my hair. “Sorry, I was just?—”
“Apologizing to Ted for injuring his daughter? Yeah, I heard.” She retrieves one of the beverages from the coffee table and holds it out to me. “She drinks iced coffee. You’re welcome.”
I take the drink from her. “Thanks.”
She grabs the hot mocha and takes a sip, her bright pink lipstick leaving a print on the white lid. With a long, similarly magenta-colored fingernail, she points to the picture. “I was really little when they died, but my parents tell stories all the time. For what it’s worth, he would’ve thought Tess falling like that was fucking hilarious.”
I glance around, like said parents might jump out with wagging fingers at any moment. “Are you allowed to say fu— I mean, the F word?”
“I’m eighteen,” she deadpans.
“Right.” I’m horrible with kids’ ages. From ten to twenty-one, they all blur together at this point. “Sorry.”
Her shoulders bounce in a half-hearted shrug. “So, apology coffee?”
“Excellent guess. Do you think it’ll work?” The whipped cream is melting into the beige liquid. Even with the AC cranked high, a nasty thunderstorm overnight brought with it a wave of particularly thick heat. I can’t even see the pool deck for the dense layer of condensation coating the windows.
“It’s a start.”
Across the lobby, a middle-aged couple approaches the left registration desk. When one of the men offers his wallet to the woman behind it, I have to blink twice. For a second I think I’m seeing double. She looks that much like Mara. But upon further inspection, I realize this woman is older, with a few silver streaks in her dark hair that occasionally sparkle in the light. Mara’s mother, then.
My mind flickers to the man at the bar the other night. Alex, if I remember correctly. He and Mara don’t look alike, per se, but he’s there in her facial expressions. Even the surly ones.
“How long has your family known Tess?”
Another shrug. Teenagers. “Her whole life, I’m pretty sure. At least, I’ve known her for all of mine.” She purses her lips, and her gaze travels the length of me like she’s taking my measure. “You know, if you really want to make it up to her, you should take her to the aquarium.”
“The aquarium?” I snort. “What is this, a fourth-grade field trip?”
She rolls her eyes so hard her dark irises nearly disappear. “Just trust me, ’kay?”
With that, she spins on her heel and waltzes back to the desk, drink in hand. Guess it’s hers now. Her mother glances up from her conversation with the gentlemen. She spots her daughter and then follows the line of her path back to me. Her smile is warm and so contagious I can’t help but smile back.
Well, if these are the people who know Tess best, who am I not to listen? The aquarium it is. Of course, that’s only if I can get Tess to agree to hang out with me again after yesterday’s fiasco.
* * *
Tess is beautiful. I’ve thought it since I first saw her picture on Gary’s tiny phone screen, but today it hits me square in the chest. Her short blonde hair, which is tucked back with heart-shaped, tortoiseshell sunglasses, makes the warmth of her skin all the more apparent. Narrow face, body, and features. She looks like she was built for flight. But soft in every place that matters, including the edges of her eyes, which relax as she gazes up at the giant wall of glass before us.
It’s painful how much I want her. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt a desire like this, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it, only that it hurts in the way a new PR in the gym does. Like it’s breaking you down and growing you at the same time.
“Have you forgiven me for trying to kill you?”
Tess snickers under her breath but doesn’t look up at me. “Holding grudges isn’t really in my nature.” The shifting water in the tank casts reflections around the room which dance like waves of silver on Tess’s otherwise serene expression. “Besides, I think you suffered enough to balance it out.”
I let out a huff of laughter. “I’m still a little woozy, now that you mention it.” I glance down at her just in time to catch the hint of a smile. “But did you have fun?”
A curt nod. “Of course.”
“Head injury notwithstanding?”
“Oh yeah, I’ve had worse.” She takes a sip of her coffee and licks a stray drop off her full bottom lip.
Suddenly the massive viewing space we’re in doesn’t feel so big after all. I clear my throat and face forward, focusing on two dolphins playing with neon-colored rings that remind me of hula hoops. “What was your worst?”
“Are you asking me about my trauma, Kit?” She waggles her finger. “ Tsk tsk. ” I clamp my mouth shut and she laughs. She’s entirely too pleased with herself. “Tore my ACL during cheerleading practice my senior year. That sucked badly. ”
I whistle quietly. “One of my buddies tore his at basic. Not pretty.”
“Thought you didn’t have any friends?”
Does she remember everything I say? Or in this case, everything I don’t. It’d be flattering if it weren’t so inconvenient. “I have friends. They all pretty much live in Loveless, though.”
“But none from your time in the military?”
I shake my head. “We were all part of a big friend group. A bunch of couples, you know. Their wives took my ex’s side in the divorce, and they chose not to rock the boat. We chat if the need arises, but not otherwise. We’re friendly. Not friends.”
She’s quiet for so long that I glance her way just to check she’s still there. As if I weren’t already aware of her in an unhealthy way. Every millimeter she shifts away from me, I feel its loss.
“So,” she says finally. “This divorce. What happened?”
I groan internally. Probably a little externally, too, based on her raised brows. I can’t help it though; I’m so tired of telling this story. “She cheated on me while I was deployed. A lot, actually. But I caught her once, when I came home early. And that was that.”
I have needs, she’d screamed. You’re always away. What was I supposed to do?
How about keep your fucking vows? I’d snarled it right in her face. I’m not proud of it, but in the moment the only thing I knew to do with all the hurt was to turn it into anger.
“How long ago was that?” Her voice is quiet but not full of pity like I’ve come to expect. There’s sadness there. The kind that comes from empathy. Like she knows how it feels to have her whole life imploded in an instant.
“Over four years now.” I cross my arms and settle into the railing along the wall. People stroll in and out of the room while the dolphins play on, completely unbothered. It’s soothing. Like life is on pause for a bit. I find I can breathe a little easier because of it. “I’d planned to re-up, but after that… I waited until my contract ended and got out. Found the job in Loveless and never looked back.”
She studies me carefully, like she might find the answer to some unspoken question if she looks close enough. “Have you seen anyone else? Since the divorce, I mean.”
I laugh, but it’s a tad self-deprecating. “Ironically, Zoey and I went on a few dates when I first moved to Loveless.”
“Zoey as in Gary’s Zoey?” When I nod, her mouth forms a perfect O. “She seems like she’d eat you alive.”
I give her a pointed look. “I think that’s my type.”
She drops my gaze to take another sip of her coffee.
“Anyway, she had feelings for Aaron, and things never really felt right between us anyway. We make better friends.” Speaking of, I owe her a phone call. She’s been blowing me up since word got out about where I am. Part of me just isn’t ready to share what’s happening here. Mostly because I don’t know what’s happening, or if anything ever will.
“So.” Tess drags the toe of her Birkenstock across the low-pile carpet, focusing on its path as she speaks. “What about those other ice creams you mentioned sampling?”
I snicker at the forgotten metaphor, and she glances up. If I were a betting man, I’d say she’s fishing. For what, I don’t know.
“Nothing more than a sample.” I press my lips together, considering my next words carefully. “After my marriage ended the way it did, I decided casual was the way I’d keep things. That way no one feels let down. No one gets hurt.”
The way I figure it, if you don’t try to be someone’s whole world, you can’t be disappointed when you find out you aren’t. A sad truth, but a necessary one.
The corners of her mouth dip. She’s wearing some kind of gloss that makes them so enticing, so full that I can’t bear to look away as she speaks. “You afraid of feeling tied down?”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.”
One of the dolphins does an impressive flip, head over tail, that has a nearby family cheering. Drawn by the enthusiasm, a few more clusters of people press into the room. What was once a foot of space between Tess and me becomes mere inches. I can smell the sunscreen on her skin. The sweetness that is so distinctly her. I draw in a deep breath and try to stow it away for safekeeping.
“That’s sad,” she whispers. “If more is what you want, then you should go for it.”
Much as I wish it were so, I know she’s not inviting me on her behalf. So I change the subject. “What about you? Any failed relationships you want to divulge?”
She sighs, letting her shoulders go limp. “First of all, I don’t believe in giving relationships a pass-or-fail rating. I consider them all a lesson learned, if nothing else. Same with your divorce. Hopefully you learned something, even if it was just what you don’t want in a future partner.
“But no, not much to report on that front. I get antsy if I stay still too long. It’s hard to maintain anything steady. I think my longest relationship lasted about a year. Her name was Samantha. She wanted to settle down, and I wanted to keep running. So we ended things.”
Panic clamps down on my gut. I’m re-running the kiss we shared all those months ago for the millionth time, but now through a different lens. Did I misread her signals? Push for something she didn’t really want?
“Go ahead and ask whatever question you’re chewing on over there.”
“So…bisexual?” I say hopefully.
She shrugs. “I’ve never felt the need to label it. I love who I love.” She points to the show being put on. “I could probably date a dolphin if it were respectful and liked the same things as me.”
“Ah, so that’s what you were doing in the ocean yesterday. Looking for a date.”
Her laughter cuts the tie binding my nerves so tightly. The blood returns to my organs in a rush that leaves my head spinning. The crowd slowly begins to dissipate, but we don’t move apart. If anything, we’re closer than ever.
“To be clear, I wasn’t asking because it bothers me or anything. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t barking up the wrong tree.”
“Oh, you definitely are,” she says, expression suddenly morose. “For reasons that have nothing to do with my sexuality.”
I kick the toe of her Birkenstock, and she kicks me right back.
I like this openness between us. And I’d like to keep it going for as long as I can, so I stoke the flame, hoping it’ll burn.
“How was that? Growing up in a small town and all.”
“Not great. But not as bad as it is for some.” She takes another sip, this time hitting bottom. A harsh gurgle of liquid sucked through ice interrupts the hushed conversations around us. A few heads snap in our direction. Tess releases the straw on her coffee, does that frown/shrug thing one must when they know they messed up, and mutters, “Sorry.”
The passersby return to their own pods of discussion, the interruption already forgotten. Tess’s wide gaze meets mine, and she mouths, Can we get out of here?
I nod. She tosses her empty coffee cup into a nearby trash can and reaches for my hand. “Come on, I’ll show you my favorite part.”
She does it so naturally that I almost feel stupid for forgetting to breathe. I’m not entirely convinced she didn’t knock her head so hard she’s forgotten why she’s mad at me. It barely took any convincing to coax her to join me today. I’d question it further, but I’m so desperate for it to last that I don’t want to rock the boat. If she’s happy with me for now, then I want to exist in this moment for as long as she’ll let me.
She pulls me into a space that’s long and narrow, with glass walls curving into a ceiling that creates more of a tunnel than a room. All around us, fish weave in and out of artificial coral reefs. Up ahead, a shadow moves eerily across the gray carpet. When I glance up, I’m met with the belly of a shark.
“Holy shit.”
“Right?” Her grin is infectious. All straight white teeth and almost-dimples. She releases my hand to step closer to the glass. “My parents brought me here every summer growing up. The sharks were always my favorite.”
Thank you, Mara. “Of course they were.” Beautiful yet untouchable. That’s Tess all right.
It’s brighter here. I can see the column of her throat working as she gazes up at the sharks passing overhead, their movements reflected in her glossy eyes. “To answer your question, I’m sure people in town blamed the whole dating-women thing on the trauma I went through or some shit like that. Anything but it just being who I am. Luckily I got very good at blocking them out early on, when I couldn’t escape the questions about my parents dying. I often felt more like some juicy tabloid feature in the local newspaper instead of a real, grieving person.”
Anger ripples through me, but with nowhere to send it, I trap it in closed fists that I shove into my pockets. I want so badly to fix it for Tess, even if it’s something that can never truly be repaired. The only thing I can do is be here now. Listen, if she’ll let me.
“It was a car accident, right? With your parents.”
“Yeah.” Her gaze tracks a smaller shark that sails down the arch of the tunnel and levels out with us. There are spots along the top of it, barely visible until you really focus, which Tess does, narrowing her eyes on the creature. “I’d just turned seventeen. Drunk driver crossed the middle line. They were killed instantly.”
“And the driver?” I ask.
Her eyes drift closed. “Died en route to the hospital.”
My God, the magnitude of her grief. I can feel it from here, rolling off her in waves. And yet she gets up each day. Makes jokes. Smiles her big, sunshine grin. You’d never know how much she’s endured just by looking at her. And I realize in that moment how lonely it must be, burying your own feelings to make sure no one else ever knows they’re there.
I realize it because, in a way, I’ve been doing it for years.
“Is that what you meant by running?”
Her eyelids flutter open. When she glances my way, her irises gleam with unshed tears. “Do you want the honest-to-God, pathetic truth?”
I hold out my hand, palm up, the way she did for me on the boat yesterday. She takes it. Inhales sharply when I thread our fingers together and squeeze tightly. I offer what I hope is a reassuring smile. “That’s my favorite kind of truth.”
Her snort is harsh, like it hurts to laugh in this moment. Then a somber pain sobers her expression. “When it comes to my parents… my mom’s childhood home, the town where they lived, hell, even their annual vacation… I can’t seem to let go. Can’t move on. Not because it’s what I want, necessarily, but because I’m afraid I’d be failing them somehow by doing so. In that way, my life remains completely stagnant. But for my choices? My relationships? The burden of another thing that could be lost is just too much to bear.”
I graze my teeth across my bottom lip, turning her words over in my mind. “And so you run.”
She swallows, gaze drifting to the tank overhead. “And so I run.”
There is so much longing in that simple statement. What it is that she longs for, I can only guess. I can’t fix her past. Can’t even predict that the future will be better. But I can see her, right now, for exactly who she is—happy facade completely set aside. And my God, she’s still so beautiful. More so because she’s honest.
I bring our joined hands to her cheek, gently swiping a stray tear from her skin. When she smiles up at me limply, my heartbeat stutters.
“May I offer you some advice?”
Her green eyes glisten in the watery light as she nods.
“I know what it is to be afraid of letting down your parents. But I find it hard to believe yours would ever be disappointed to see you living your life on your own terms.” I take a small step toward her, bringing us closer. “So it’s okay to let go. It’s okay to run, if that’s what you want. But if standing still would make you happy,” I say, my voice raw in my throat, “then just stand still.”
Her body is so perfectly poised, so lovingly crafted that I’d believe she was made of glass if someone suggested it. I take another step. We’re so close now that our chests are brushing, but she doesn’t move. I thread my other hand into her loose curls, gingerly brushing the place where she hit her head.
“Does it still hurt?”
Her tongue slips over her bottom lip. “Not so much now.”
“Good.” Then I lean in and capture that shiny lip between my teeth. The sigh that spills from her lungs urges me onward, and I’m nothing if not a gentleman, so I oblige. Our mouths fuse together, unspent hunger and months of desire all rolling into a kiss so deep I could drown in it. And I do. I lose all sense of time, of space, of the crowds around us and the sharks swimming above. There is only Tess.
Tess and her sighs. Tess and her soft, warm skin. Tess and her sugar-and-sunshine scent. I could get drunk off her. It’s likely I already have, because I don’t hear the staff member trying to get our attention until Tess pulls away. Her lips are swollen because of me. Cheeks flushed, limbs loose, smile lazy. I did all of that.
“Do you mind? This is a family establishment,” the woman in a Gulf Coast Aquarium polo chides.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Tess replies, her accent a little stronger now that she’s gotten in trouble. “Won’t happen again.”
We get a look in return that feels a hell of a lot like I’m watching you. Then the woman turns back to the trash she’d been emptying, and Tess’s knees buckle beneath her.
She swats my chest, but she’s laughing. When her hand drops, one of her straps slips from her narrow shoulder, and she pushes it back into place. I’d recognize the buttery yellow sundress anywhere. It’s the same one she had on last July. If I close my eyes, I can feel the fabric piling against my hands as I pushed it higher, reaching for her hips. Her ass. Anything and everything I could touch. Whatever would bring me closer to her.
I’d like to feel it again.
“What are you thinking about?” She asks it in a way that implies she already knows.
I clear my throat and glance pointedly down at the ridge forming in my khakis, then back at Tess. “You look amazing in that dress.”
It’s hard to tell in the haze cast by the water overhead, but I think she blushes.
“Even if it isn’t blue?”
I click my tongue and sigh dramatically. “I suppose.”
“Ah, well. Don’t be too kind.” She flips a hand through the air like she’s wiping away my compliment. A few gold bracelets dangle from her wrist, and when she moves, they clink together, making music.
“Don’t worry, it’s not in my nature.”
She rolls her eyes and bites down on the inside of her cheek. The smile she’s fighting so hard is winning, whether she likes it or not.
“Would you like to go someplace else?” I ask, nodding toward a sign beside the exit on the opposite side of the long room. “Maybe the turtle enclosure?”
Her hands smooth down the front of her dress just to gather two fistfuls near her hips. She shakes her head, gaze round and thoughtful, and not in an entirely positive way. “What are we doing, Kit?”
I recognize that she’s overthinking. Spiraling. The fever dream of our kiss has worn off, and she’s moved to analyze mode, which didn’t work out well for us last time. So I do the only thing I can. I grab her hand and start walking.