Hatteras Girl (Heart of Carolina Book #3) (16 page)
“Forget I said that.”
“It’s hard to do that.”
“How come?”
“Because I don’t see it as infatuation. I really like Davis, and he likes me.”
“Okay, fair enough. Forget all that. I shouldn’t have said it.” Buck’s eyes show he wants to get out of the hot water I’ve put him in.
I shift my gaze to my notebook. I feel like Ron, geared up for an argument. “Buck, I didn’t mean to bite your head off.” My words come out softly.
“You didn’t.” He smiles.
I rub my throbbing right temple, then reach into my purse for some Excedrin. I wonder if Shakespeare’s vet can figure out what is wrong with me. It’s certainly not weight loss; I’ve been eating plenty of junk food with Zane these days. None of Cassidy’s reduced sugar pie for me.
“So are you interested to know what I’m thinking or not?”
Three tablets should help. I take them with my Pepsi. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“I have two kayaks.”
“And?”
“How long has it been since you’ve gone kayaking on the Sound?”
“I don’t know. Years.” I try to recall. “In high school.”
“Well, then, it’s time.”
“Time?”
“To do it again.”
Buck’s enthusiasm makes me smile. “Okay. Why not?”
“Okay, then.” His eyes sparkle. “How does next Sunday afternoon sound?”
“All right, but it has to be after lunch at Sheerly’s.” Buck has known my family long enough to be familiar with our weekly get-togethers at Sheerly’s after the eleven o’clock church service.
“After your lunch, then. I wouldn’t want to go out on the water with a hungry woman, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“She’d expect me to catch her a fish for lunch, and that wouldn’t work for you because you hate fish.”
I laugh. Sometimes I think Buck knows me too well.
“Oh, and be sure to carry one of your fisherman hats.”
“Why?”
“So I can recognize you, of course.”
For Buck, I just might. My collection sits on a bookshelf in my bedroom. There are gray, beige, black, yellow, and many shades of green hats. Over the years, people have learned of my love of these hats with their special snaps and hooks and sometimes lures, and have given me some to add to my collection. Aunt Sheerly found a Greek fisherman’s hat at a yard sale and bought it for me, excited that now my stash of hats had an international flair. She, as well as my other relatives, think it’s funny that I hate fish but like the caps that anglers wear. “If you collect the hats, you can eat the fish,” my mother said one night when she served broiled flounder—
saengsunjun
. Her child psychology was a little sketchy back when I was a kid. I reached for the box of Frosted Flakes, clearly showing disrespect to all of our ancestors. My mother hit her chest with her fist a few times and muttered something about forgiveness. I didn’t care; I don’t eat fish, even for my ancestors.
When I leave the Grille, my belly is content from the burger and fries. I walk back to the office, taking the longer route past pink, green, and yellow beach houses, many with rental property signs. I look to see if Davis’s company rents any of them as trucks hauling Jet Skis and boats ease down the road. Pedestrians amble along the sidewalks and in and out of shops. I consider going into a candy shop to pick up some chocolate with the full amount of sugar in it for our staff, until I note the darkening sky. When the sun shields herself behind a cluster of gray clouds, I walk faster. I’m inside at my desk just before the first raindrops moisten the pavement.
Three days later, Selena slices and dices
my interview with the owner of Rent by the Sea. Muttering about the wordiness of the piece, she strikes out a paragraph I spent twenty minutes creating. I thought she wanted our readers to see these retailers as real people, with likes and dislikes, passions and hobbies. Yet today she tells me that no one will care that the owner likes to sky dive. The enthusiasm she showed after my interview with Davis has ventured far from her today, sailed out with the morning tide. I open the July issue of
Lighthouse Views
and read my pages about Rexy Properties, trying to remember some of the compliments she gave me then. Seeing Davis’s picture doesn’t boost my spirits as much as I need it to today.
I know Selena’s nervous about Shakespeare’s recent bout of poor health, but I wish she wouldn’t take it out on her staff. Meanwhile, Bert is still at the top of her list of favorites. A local furniture store came by to deliver a new desk for him. Selena claimed his previous one had a broken drawer and was older than time.
As Cassidy makes comments about his new desk, I look at my own. It came over on the
Santa María
, I think. Yet there is no mention of my getting a new place to work.
When Bert asks if know where his stapler is, I ignore him, pretending to be too occupied to reply. I sink my teeth into my bottom lip. What point am I trying to prove? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? But I’m not scorned. Davis still likes me; I know he does. I’m the Hatteras Girl. I light up a room.
Right now I would like to let Zane take a red pen and color on every inch of Bert’s new desk. That would certainly light up this room.
It’s a good thing I don’t speak my mind without realizing it, letting my emotions slip out like Aunt Sheerly does. I need this job.
At home, I toss clothes into the washer and then hear a car engine die. Through the window I see Minnie and Zane get out of the car. Zane is able to undo his car seat’s buckle too easily these days.
“Hi,” he calls out to me. He bounces up the thirteen steps to our duplex, stopping on the fourth and then the tenth to tell me, “I had fun at Ropey’s. We made stuff out of rope. Mine is the bestest. Can we have banana sandwiches for dinner?” His little nose is dotted with perspiration. “Did you know I’m going to kindergarten?”
“Really? That will be an adventure.” My own memories of kindergarten are sketchy. My teacher seemed old and focused on the arts, something even at that age I was not skilled at. We did a lot of finger painting and making puppets. One of my puppets’ head’s came off and landed in Jimmy Keno’s thermos of chicken soup. The teacher said it was my fault; I was sitting too close to Jimmy. I liked to be close because that way I had a better look at his soft, pudgy cheeks dotted with freckles.
“Mommy says she’ll buy me new shoes. My old light-up ones are too small. I wear these now ’cause it’s summer. See?” He lifts his left foot, clad in a black sandal, and balances on one leg. That pose ends when he teeters forward, and I rush down the steps to catch him.
“Careful, Zane.”
He recovers much quicker than I do, bouncing up the last steps. When he reaches the deck, he opens and closes the door with several loud bangs.
I wonder if any girl will think he’s cute and want to sit next to him.
Zane belches twice.
Minnie rushes past me and into the house. Soon I hear “When a Man Loves a Woman” coming from her CD player. I remember in ninth grade when she dated Jon Willowmount. After their breakup, she played Chicago’s “If You Leave Me Now” over and over and over again. Each time I went to her house and asked her mom if Minnie was home, I didn’t have to wait for the answer. If I heard “If You Leave Me Now” meandering down the staircase, I knew she was in her bedroom, no doubt making sad faces into her full-length mirror and singing along to her favorite part of the song: “ . . . please don’t go.”
At her bedroom door, I pause until the song ends and then gently knock.
“Come in,” she says. Standing by the dresser, she looks glassyeyed. I secure my arm around her waist. At five-feet-ten, I feel like a crane hovering over her short frame.
She sniffs and then lets a tear curve down her cheek. “I never wanted too much. A husband, a child, happiness . . .” She leaves my side and sits on her bed. “Or does that sound like I’ve wanted a lot?”
I think for a moment. Minus the child, this is what I, too, want. “No more than the rest of us.”
“I miss what I had.”
I nod and swallow the stone forming in my throat.
“I don’t believe there will be anyone else for me.”
“Well, there could be . . .”
Her eyes dig into mine. “Do you think there is only one man for one woman?”
“You mean that if you let one go, there won’t be another?”
She nods, a small figure on a large bed.
“I’m not sure.”
We are silent as she presses a button on her CD player, allowing the song to start once more. “I had a chance with Lawrence. That could be all I get. Ever.”
We let the line “when a man loves a woman” fill the room.
“I take long showers and hope that I can wash my pain away. Just one more minute and I can handle this day. Just one more minute.” She sits back on the bed. “Sometimes my shower therapy works, but on most days I end up crying out to God for one more day with Lawrence.”
I wish I could send her back to when she was a little girl under the Baileys’ pergola, her eyes shiny with idealism.
“Do you know what Mrs. Appleton said to me today?”
“What?”
“At least he’s safe in heaven.” She spits out the phrase.
I’ve learned that statements like that do not help when one only wishes her loved one was here beside her.
“Sometimes I dream that Rudlow is here. Holding me. Comforting me.”
Rudlow is her dad; she calls him by his first name these days. I remember the day she swore she would never refer to him as Dad again, she was so mad at him for leaving her and Irvy.
“You know, Lawrence and me, we had nine years. That’s a long time to be happy.”
By the time the song ends, she’s decided that she’s going to dye her hair Golden Radiance in hopes that she’ll feel either golden or radiant.
“Maybe you’ll feel like both of them,” I offer.
Her face is splotchy, but there is a tiny smile. “Anything is worth a try.”
Buck does own two sea kayaks
and they are here, by the edge of the Sound in Buxton, just a few hundred yards from The Rose Lattice, the place where Sheerly and her group make music on Saturday nights. Buck tells me he purchased one of the kayaks off eBay from a dentist in Myrtle Beach, and the other he received as a high school graduation gift. He asks if I want the blue or red one. The blue one has a polished look and is somehow more inviting, so I choose it.
He buckles a bright green life vest around me. Then he puts on a matching one. “Now, you’ve done this before, right?”
“Years ago.” I hope he can’t sense my nervousness. It’s not the water I’m afraid of; I just don’t want to make a fool of myself in front of him, or in front of anyone. I’ve seen too many
America’s Funniest Home Videos
in which a woman gets into a canoe and immediately topples into the river.
“You’ll remember.” He secures his Hurricanes cap on his head. “You need a hat? I know you have lots of those fisherman ones.”
“I collect them,” I say. “So they just sit.”
“Hats that sit.” He grins. “Do you have hats that you wear?”
“Sometimes.”
Playfully, he says, “Ah, I bet you’re afraid they’ll mess up your hair.”
I had a friend in high school who owned a two-seater kayak and we’d paddle in it on summer afternoons. I always felt it was a lot of work, although it did strengthen my arm muscles. “Will I be sore tomorrow?” I ask Buck as I put on a pair of sunglasses.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“If you actually paddle today. If I have to tote you the whole way, then my arms will be sore and yours will be fine.”
“Tote me? You think I’m going to act like a baby?”
Buck laughs as we make our way down the embankment to the edge of the water. I brace myself to get into the kayak I’ve chosen. Swallowing hard, I nod to show that I’m ready. He holds the back of the kayak until I’m seated, my legs positioned in front of me, my feet resting on the foot pegs. I have a sinking feeling that there is no way this long, skinny contraption will hold me. I wait while Buck pushes his kayak out onto the water and climbs in.
I watch as he quickly paddles with one swift stroke on the right and then another on the left. He repeats the actions, gently heading away from me. I hurry to catch up by following his method, and with one movement splash myself when the paddle slaps against the water. Laughing, I wipe drops from my face and sunglasses.
Buck smiles at me but doesn’t tease. As we paddle away from the shore, me carefully following Buck, I note how peaceful the water is. There are a few ripples, but Buck did choose a good afternoon to venture out into the Sound—the wind is calm and the tide is still out.
We paddle in silence until Buck says, “Just think, you could write a book, and I could illustrate it.”
I edge closer to his boat. “What kind of book?”
“Funny things tourists say, maybe. I see you straining your ears to listen to them in the Grille.”
I laugh. “Cheap entertainment, what can I say?”
“Do you want to write a book? A novel?”
“You sound like Ron.”
“Isn’t that every author’s dream?”
“To write a novel?” I dip my paddle into the glistening green water. I remember Lona saying there are days she’s sure she can’t write another line. I don’t need that kind of pressure in my life. “No, thanks.”