Shark Out of Water (Grab Your Pole, #3) (2 page)

On a more personal level I want to give a wild round of applause to Adam Hull, Andy Ralston, Brian Bylbie, Cole Pasley, Cris Kemmerer, Dan Roy, Eric Thompson, Glen Meyer, Harvey Lobelson, Jerry Cooksey, John Christensen, Matt Jones, Mike Cooksey, Patrick Catanach, Richard Dungan, Tyler Roy, Wyatt Bylbie, and the myriad other men I’m acquainted with who have hearts of gold and slightly bent halos. Men who’ve chosen to share their friendship, themselves, and in many cases, their love and lives with me and/or some of the most important women in my life despite how difficult that is to do at times. And finally, a devout and deeply heartfelt standing ovation with all the bells, whistles, and confetti goes to my husband, Davey, because I honestly think he puts up with more bullshit than any man I know and he does it with far more grace than what I think is probably deserved.

And one more thing; a heads up for Autumn who’s already selflessly poured so much of herself into furthering the success of this series... This book is done now, which means I’m about to light a fire, bitch. Get ready to rock.
♥

Prologue

Masks ~ Brandon

Masks.

We all wear ‘em. Every one of us at some point in our lives will wear a mask for one fuckin’ reason or another. It’s a simple fact and I defy anyone to prove me wrong.

They’re everywhere, you just have to pay attention and look. The most recognized masks are worn as part of a costume; a necessary part of role playing or pretending to be someone or something you’re not while participating in the good old fashioned shenanigans of something like Halloween. They can be worn to protect the eyes of the fainthearted when the wearer has unsightly facial features or scars, which is twofold as the mask will protect that poor soul from looks of pity and unfortunately, the inevitable look of repulsion as well. They’re even used to physically keep a person safe and healthy; for instance, masks are worn in a number of sports as a means of preventing injury, and a doctor or a bee keeper will wear a mask to keep germs or bees from coming in contact with their face. Masks are also worn to protect a person’s true identity while they’re committing a crime, or, sometimes, when they’re being a super hero and saving lives. The decision to don a mask isn’t always an easy one, and, sometimes, keeping one on is even harder. Some of them are physically uncomfortable and breathing can even be difficult when wearing one.

Ultimately however, all masks, real or metaphorical, serve the same purpose. They protect the wearer by keeping something or someone from getting close enough to do damage, and/or from seeing something that the wearer wants kept hidden.

And although the metaphorical mask is probably the most common, the majority of people just don’t realize that’s what they’re seeing when they either refuse to take off their own to get a really good look at someone else, or when they come face to face with someone who’s learned to wear one like a fucking pro. So a question is posed and that is; what’re the chances that what you’re seeing on the surface isn’t just a mask that’s hiding something underneath it?

Well, like I said, we all wear ‘em, so…you do the math.

Time ~ Pete

A funny and fickle thing, time.

Like grains of sand through an hourglass, time can go by at a slow trickle, and it can pour forward with remarkable speed. You can be traipsing along in your life, everything going just fine and dandy, and you may even feel bored because nothing really noteworthy is happening at the moment, however, in less time than it takes for you to blink, the ground can fall right out from under your feet, leaving you struggling for purchase as you desperately try to claw and crawl your way back up to where you were before you lost your footing.

Awards and accolades are given for the fastest time in accomplishing something, but it’s often commendable and works to a person’s advantage when they slow down and take their time with a task as well. Many people try to manage their time, prioritizing and making lists to ensure they accomplish what is important to them with the time they have. However, some people just go with the flow, feeling it to be a futile endeavor to plan out every minute of their day, knowing that as with the drop of a dime, something could happen that would make changes to the plan necessary or erase it wholly. There are those who make snap decisions, and those who take their time in considering all aspects of a situation before deciding the best course of action, and, there are still those individuals who are adept at doing both at once.

We all value our time in some way and we frequently make statements like, “That’s a waste of my time,” but regardless of how a person uses it, we all lose track of time, as it is intangible and unable to be grasped, making it sometimes difficult for even the most organized and conscientious of people to mark, and, foolishly, we even knowingly waste it. But, time is a precious gift to be appreciated and savored as it cannot ever be retrieved once it passes. A great many wondrous and extraordinary things, however, take time to become reality and to be witnessed as the miracle they happen to be; like the Grand Canyon for instance, or the growth of a fetus into a life that can sustain itself outside of its mother. It takes time for emotional and physical wounds to heal—this I’m personally very familiar with—and it takes time to learn from mistakes, and most often, allowing yourself or another person the time required to do any of those things properly is usually for the best. Although, there are those instances when the passing of even a short amount of unchecked time can have catastrophic repercussions.

Yes, time is a fickle thing indeed, and no one aside from God knows exactly how much of it any of us has, which can leave us questioning our priorities and wondering whether we’re using our time on what’s truly most important…

Not Waving but Drowning

A poem by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he's dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always

(Still the dead one lay moaning)

I was much too far out all my life

And not waving but drowning.

Chapter one

Sunday thru Tuesday maybe? (I dunno. It’s kind of a blur.) Week one

I think I’m having a crisis but I’m not sure ~ Tristan

By definition, guilt is a noun, being the fact or state of having committed an offense, crime, violation, or wrong, especially against moral or penal law. It is also a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong etc., whether real or imagined. (Imagined…if only.)

And I am
drowning
in it.

Well, that and alcohol…

Actually that’s pretty fuckin’ ironic if you ask me. Alcohol is what caused all this bullshit in the first place and three days ago, I was wholly prepared to give it up entirely. In fact, I was honestly about to request that my girlfriend (girlfriend, ex-girlfriend…whatever.)(No, fuck that. She’s still my girlfriend.) and I both quit when she hit me and the words, “I want to…well, I think we should,
both
of us that is, quit drinking,” died on my tongue and with them, so did the truth.

What I got out was, “I want to…well, I think we should,
b
—” and that was when she slapped me across the face and with real hate in her eyes, she began railing at me for breaking up with her.

You might wonder why I didn’t correct Camie’s misunderstanding right then and there, but I’ll tell you something; when she slapped me, I was fucking
pissed
. But I also knew I deserved it. I was already agonizing over how I was to amend for the unspeakable atrocity of the night before, but when she made the erroneous assumption that I was breaking up with her and started to scream about what a bastard I was for doing it on her birthday and for not having sex with me? Well, I shut down. Fuck, it was like she plunged a serrated dagger straight into my heart and twisted the hilt. I saw it in her eyes. She honestly
believed
that was what I was doing. Not only that, but the simple fact that she believed I even
would
do that after all that happened last night and over the last week made me wanna strangle her and then throw her down on the wet grass, finishing what’d started last night, which would only prove to her what a monster I really am. I’ll admit I had to exert a lot of control to not retaliate during any part of her outburst and emotionally, that feat cost me.

Then, like the proverbial ton of bricks, it hit me.

She didn’t remember shit about last night and all this anger she’s entitled to was being misdirected to say the least, but it also meant she didn’t know the truth of what
really
happened. So…I let her believe the lie. Because honestly, the truth is worse and when you get right down to it, I’m a fucking coward.

Even though I was broken and still reeling from what she believed to be the truth, I couldn’t bring myself to go through it again and hurt her that way, so I made my decision, spineless as it is, and ran away. Ran as in turned my back to her and walked away without a word or a look back. Then I went home, threw a bunch of my shit in the bus and got the fuck out of Dodge. My intention was to leave town entirely…go to my grandparents’ for a while, figure shit out or maybe stay until I could look at myself in the mirror again, which meant I would have to enroll in school up there and possibly look into cemeteries, because I just have a feeling being able to look at my ignoble reflection is gonna take some time. But barely part way up the coast, that dagger in my chest forced me to stop my flight. I had to stop thinking. If I could stop doing that, I could stop the pain. It’s over and done with and there’s no going back.

At least that’s what I told myself.

The only way I’ve ever known how to stop thinking, though, is to demolish myself with alcohol, so I got a campsite on the South Carlsbad State Beach, but before I even parked and with my bare hands, I ripped my stereo straight out of the dash when the radio station it was on decided it was a good idea to follow up Five For Fighting’s “Superman” with Limp Bizkit’s cover of “Behind Blue Eyes,” and then once the engine was shut off, I proceeded to ransack the cupboards of the bus. Everything we didn’t drink at the desert over Thanksgiving was still in there, and believe me, we packed heavy for that trip. Jeff might’ve forgotten his toothpaste, but vodka and rum he did not, so, what was left would be enough to do a fairly decent job of despoiling the dark thoughts swirling around in my head for a couple of days at least. I grabbed a bottle of Malibu, unscrewed the cap, and then wielding the bottle like a wrecking ball, I poured its contents down my throat. Thus began my boozy self-demolition. The problem was those swirling dark thoughts were replaced by a malignancy.

I was lying there,
almost
in a completely comatose bliss, contemplating what it felt like to drown. It’s not easy. Especially without water. Then I had the bright idea that, hey! There’s water close by…a whole fuckin’ ocean of it! I don’t know how the fuck I managed it, but I made it from the campsite above, down the rickety and creaking wood steps to the beach, and beyond that, to the second most beautiful thing in the world. It never even occurred to me that what I was about to do was, in fact, suicide. I just knew what I’d been doing wasn’t working; the pain was still there and trying to drown myself without water was a fuckin’ waste of time.

I was
so
close.

So close to being able to experience the utter freedom that being in water gives me. I don’t know how he found me or even how he got me out of the water, that would’ve in all honesty for the first time in my life not given me freedom at all, but a watery grave instead. And later when I sobered up enough to realize what he’d done for me, I was able to thank him, however, at the time, having him stop my progress down the Green Mile wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Two

Tuesday, Week One

Friends no more ~ Jeff

“I can’t fuckin’
believe
that guy! I swear to God, I’m gonna kill him…” I’m pissed about what he did to Camie, but I’m more pissed about him not even having the guts to tell me about it in person. I feel betrayed.

Instead of being reassured in her moment of pain and weakness though, Camie ended up consoling me. Sort of.

“You know what, Jeff? I appreciate the thought and all, but don’t go out of your way on my account. I’m over it,” she said with not a trace of a tear in her eyes.

“You’re
over
it?! It or him?” Katy asked her with her eyes wide. I’m just as surprised. No way is Camie over Tristan. Shit,
I’m
probably not gonna get over Tristan.

“Both actually,” she answered so nonchalantly that I started to believe maybe she was over him and everything he put her through—on her birthday no less. Fucking asshole.

“You can’t be serious. How is that possible?”

“Kate, I’ve been crying about him for two and a half days and I’m done. Pete stopped by Sunday afternoon and ended up having to stay the night because Tristan took off and never came back even after Pete sent him countless texts and tried calling. So I figure if he doesn’t care enough to even let us know we needed to get someone to stay with us for the last night my parents were gone, why should I waste any more time feeling like crap about him, you know?”

“But you love him…and he loves you,” Katy said and clearly, her new doubt about both of those things was written in her expression.

“Yeah, well, that’s where he had us all fooled, isn’t it? And as far as me loving
him
? Well, I’ve been thinking about that…yes, I did. But really, I need to just get over the fact that he didn’t love me, be grateful that I
didn’t
have sex with him, and move on. I just hope it’s as easy for me to do as it was for him…I mean, he literally just turned around and without a single word or any emotion at all, he walked away.”