Still Waters (2 page)

Hartley

I smile in contentment as the ice cream
dissolves on my tongue. Outside, gigantic gray waves thunder towards the shore
and the wind is just about bending the trees sideways. It’s too cold for ice
cream, but I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, any weather is ice cream
weather. I look around the small shop. It’s almost empty, which isn’t
surprising considering it’s winter. Across the room, a woman sits with her
little boy in one of the booth seats that are in desperate need of repair. Other
than the two of them, I’m alone. I reach into my bag and pull out my phone,
checking it for messages for the hundredth time that day. There are 43 voice
messages and 64 texts. I delete them all.

Behind
me, I hear the door open and slam shut against the weather, and I turn to look.
A man stands by the door facing the woman and boy. He raises his hand to say
hello and then turns towards the counter. He’s tall; his head almost hits one
of the tacky seashell lights as he walks. He’s dressed in worn looking jeans
and just a white t-shirt, despite the biting cold. I quickly look back at my
ice cream sundae before he catches me staring. Even from a distance and even
without my glasses on, I can tell that this guy is ridiculously handsome. His
hair is almost black, and it’s wet and messed up like he’s just run his hands
through it. With his height and longish hair, wide brow and slightly fierce
expression he looks otherworldly, more like a Viking warrior or someone who
belongs on the cover of some romance fantasy novel than just a guy in an ice
cream shop. No one should be that good looking really. Not in real life. It’s
not fair to the rest of us. Although I have to admire the workmanship - he is
beautifully made.

He
walks up to where I’m sitting at the counter and rests his forearms on the bench
top. They’re so close to mine that if I leaned to the side just a little, we’d
touch. I steal a quick glance and see that his forearms are tanned dark by the
sun and thick with muscle. They’re so different from David’s arms that I can’t
help but stare at them for a moment. David works out five times a week and has
his arms and legs waxed by a beautician who visits the house. His personal
trainer carefully sculpts his muscles. They even have planning sessions about
it. As with everything he does, David has exacting standards and ridiculously
high expectations. He strives for an unattainable level of perfection in
everything in life, including his body and lately, mine.

The
arms next to me look rough and naturally strong. There’s a long scar running up
the side of the arm closest to me, and three of his knuckles have fresh scabs
on them. He looks like someone who does hard work, rather than work in the gym.
We sit together for a minute, side by side but not saying anything until he
leans over the counter as if he’s looking for something. He doesn’t acknowledge
I exist, and why would he. I don’t need a mirror to tell me what I look like.
The moisture and the wind have sent my long auburn curls haywire, and I didn’t
put any makeup on this morning. I look down and immediately regret throwing on
my dad’s college sweatshirt and my old pink yoga pants when I ran out the door.

There’s
a crashing sound coming from the back room and then the owner appears. He’s a
big guy, with a mustache that lies across his top lip and curls down each side
to his jaw. His face breaks into a grin when he sees the guy next to me.

“Crew!”
he cries, slapping one meaty hand on the counter top. “When did you get back?
Jacob! Jacob get out here. You’ll never guess who just walked in.”

The
guy next to me chuckles softly and reaches over to shake the man’s hand just as
another younger guy walks out of the back room. He lets out a whooping sort of
noise and runs at the counter. The guy next to me leans in and then they’re
hugging and slapping each other on the back.

“Good
to see you Jake,” the guy next to me says. His voice is deep with a kind of gravelly
roughness to it. I recognize it from the times I’ve stayed out too late or
drunk too much.

“Man,
it’s been a long time, you just get here?”

“I
just flew in this morning. I would have come straight away, but I needed to get
a surf in.”

The
other guy laughs. I look up at him quickly and see that he’s one of those All-American
guys, blonde hair, white teeth, and dimples.

“I’ll
just get my stuff,” he says and returns to the back room with the older guy.
The shop is silent again, and I begin to feel awkward sitting right next to
someone who’s obviously pretending I’m invisible. I want him to turn in my
direction so that I can see his face again, but he just drums his fingers on
the counter top and stares straight ahead. I decide to leave. I’m just sliding
off my stool when I feel a warm hand on my arm. I look up, startled, and suddenly
I’m staring into the most intense pair of eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re green,
but not your usual green. These are deep, river green, flecked with brown. I
look down at where his hand rests on my sleeve and then back up at him. His
mouth twitches at the corner and then lifts into a crooked smile that lights up
his whole beautiful face.

“Hey,”
he says quietly, reaching out a finger to touch my lip. “You have chocolate around
your mouth.”

“Oh,”
I stammer and instinctively poke out my tongue to lick around my lips. Only his
finger is still hovering there, and I lick it by mistake. We both flinch at the
contact, and I know without looking that my face has flushed bright red.

“I’m
Crew,” he says and holds out his hand. I look at it for a second and then realize
he’s waiting for me to shake it. I clear my throat, trying to recover a shred
of dignity, and put my hand into his.

“I’m
Hartley,” I hear myself say. My voice is shaky and nervous even to my own ears.
I look up into his face, and suddenly I can see how tall he really is. The top
of my head doesn’t quite come up to his shoulder. He looks down at me and smiles
a little, and I wonder what he’s thinking. His skin is bronzed and a little weather-beaten
like he spends a lot of time outside. There are little creases at the corner of
his eyes that give his face character and a spray of dark stubble across his
jaw.

“Ah,
Hartley?” he says, interrupting my thoughts. “Do you think I could have my hand
back now?”

I
look down at my hand enclosed in his and realize that they’ve been hovering
like that in mid-air the whole time I’ve been staring at him. I snatch mine
back just as Jake comes out from behind the counter. He quickly takes in the
scene and rolls his eyes at Crew.

“Already,
man? You’ve been in town for what, five minutes?”

“You’ve
got it all wrong dude,” Crew laughs back.
 
He looks me over from the top of my out of control hair; down over my
bare face and past my sloppy clothes to the Ugg boots I’m wearing on my feet.

“See
you around kid,” he says lightly, and leaves.

Crew

I walk up the dunes carrying my board, my feet
sinking into the cold soft sand as I make my way up the incline and through the
sea grass. The wind is blowing down the beach so that sand whips up around me
as I walk, stinging my face like needles. The surf was probably too dangerous
to be out, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to walk in and look Jake in the
eye without clearing my head first. I make it to my beat up Jeep Wrangler just
as the wind picks up a notch and starts to howl. When I threw some clothes into
a bag yesterday, I didn’t think about the weather on the coast in the middle of
winter, and now I’m stuck here with a pile of jeans and old t-shirts. For a
moment, I let my mind drift back to the hot, thick air of the rainforest. It’s
crazy to think that I was dripping with sweat and looking forward to cooler
temperatures just 24 hours ago. I secure my board to the roof racks, and as I
tie down the last strap, I look over the roof to The Sea Shack on the opposite
side of the road. Shit. I’m not ready to go in there. My head throbs from jet
lag and too much whiskey on the plane, and I’m in a bad mood. I know that as
soon as I walk in those doors I’m going to have to pretend to be the guy they
think they know, but the truth is, that guy hasn’t been around in a long, long
time. I walk across the car park, reassuring myself that in 72 hours, I’ll be
back on another plane heading out across the sky as far away from this town as
I can get.

When
I open the door of The Sea Shack and shut it behind me, it’s as if someone has suddenly
turned the music off at a party. Everything is quiet. My footsteps sound too
loud as I walk across the worn wooden floorboards towards the front counter. I
see a girl I vaguely recognize from high school sitting with a boy covered in
ice cream and raise my hand to say hello. I can tell by the look in her eyes
that she wants to flirt with me a little, but I keep on walking. I can’t see
Jake or the old man anywhere, so I stand next to a girl eating ice cream out of
a milkshake glass and wait. She’s little, and she’s sitting on the stool with
her legs crossed like she’s five years old. I try not to look at her ass. I
stand next to her, a little too close, just to see if it makes her
uncomfortable. Her breath hitches when I place my arm down on the counter next
to hers, and she moves a little in her seat, trying to create some distance
between us. I steal a look at her and can’t help but smile when I see her hair.
It’s red and brown and a complete mess. The curls are all knotted up and
sticking out, and there’s part of a leaf stuck near her ear. I want to reach
over and pull it out. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she holds her hair
back from her face, bringing the spoon to her mouth. But when she looks at me,
I make sure my eyes are straight ahead. She doesn’t know it, but I’m reading
the ice cream flavors on the menu board backwards just to stop myself from
looking at her. I wait until she dips her spoon back into her ice cream before I
steal another look. She has pale skin and a few freckles on her nose. Her hands
are small, and she has chipped blue polish on her nails. I’m about to ask her
why she’s eating ice cream out of a milkshake glass on a day like this when
Jake’s dad walks into the shop. I rearrange my face into a smile and try to be
the guy that they’re expecting, the one with the great life who flies in and
out of town whenever he feels like it, the guy who really made something of
himself. Jake runs out a minute later. He looks the same as he did when he was
seventeen, and he’ll probably stay that way until he’s fifty. He has that clean-cut,
baby-faced thing going on that made all of the girls and their mothers fall in
love with him in high school. Jake and his dad head out back, and I know
they’re going to shut the shop early today so that we can do what we always do
when I arrive in town. I wish I could just tell them that it’s the last place
on earth I want to be.

With
Jake gone, the life has been sucked out of the room and it’s too quiet again.
The girl sitting next to me is humming softly to herself, and I try to guess
the tune. While she’s looking the other way, I quickly look down at her again.
She’s so close to me that I can feel the heat coming off her arm and I can smell
her hair. God, her hair is beautiful. I drum my fingers on the countertop to
stop myself from reaching my hands into it. When she looks back, I don’t move
my eyes away quick enough and she catches me. She’s got eyes that are more gold
than brown, like caramel or amber, and they’re looking right at me. My eyes
quickly flick over her face and I’m trying to think of something witty and sexy
to say, but I’ve got nothing. She’s got a smear of chocolate sauce on the edge
of her bottom lip, and before I know it, I’m reaching out and touching it. Her
lips are pink and soft and I know that if I kissed her right now, they’d taste
of sugar and all things good. She makes a noise and says something like “Oh,”
and her voice is surprisingly husky for someone who looks so delicate. My
finger is running along the edge of her lip, and then she reaches her tongue
out and licks the chocolate away. For the briefest of moments, her tongue
connects with my finger and we both jump. It’s like the time I stuck a knife
into a light socket when I was a kid. A surge of heat darts over my finger and
up my arm, and it doesn’t stop until I’m tingling all over. I want to laugh but
then I see that she’s bright red, so I quickly introduce myself to cover her
embarrassment. She puts her hand in mine and damn; I feel that electric bolt
again. After a moment, she raises her head and looks up at me. I can feel her
eyes traveling over every inch of my face. I want to do the same to hers, but
something stops me from meeting her eyes. The whole time she’s looking at me
her hand is sitting lightly in mine, and it’s taking all I have not to pull her
closer towards me.

Somewhere
in the distance, I hear Jake coming out of the back room and just the thought
of him snaps me back to reality in an instant. I look down at the girl, and I
can see the emotion in her eyes. She looks sad and sexy and a little bit
scared. What the fuck do I think I’m doing?
 
Instead of asking for her number I do what
comes easily to me.
 
I act like an
asshole and make her feel like the electricity between us is just something she
imagined. And then I do the other thing I do best. I walk away.

Hartley

Crew looks me over like I’m some kind of
pathetic groupie, and then he laughs. It’s not the same warm, deep sound I
heard earlier. This laugh could only be described as a snigger.

“See
you around kid,” he says, smirking a little.

I
don’t know who this guy thinks I am, but despite my rather unfortunate choice
of clothing this morning I am not some love-struck college kid. In fact, I
graduated from one of the top universities in the country when I was only 16,
and I haven’t looked back since. I’m about to say something I’ll probably
regret later when I look into his eyes briefly. I’m expecting to see smugness
or arrogance, but he actually looks a little ashamed. And sad. Really sad. I
lower my eyes back to the ground. Just like that, all of the fire in me is
gone. His friend slaps him on the back and winks at me before they turn to
leave. I watch Crew walk across the shop and slam the door behind him just as
the woman with the little boy starts laughing from behind her magazine. I throw
my bag over my shoulder and go.

The
weather has gotten worse in the time I was at The Sea Shack, and now it’s
raining too. I spare a thought for the heated seats in my brand new Porsche
Macan before reaching into my bag for my jacket with a sigh. I reluctantly left
my car in the garage when I skipped town because I knew that David would have
every patrol car between Canada and Mexico looking out for it within 24 hours
of me being gone. That little decision has left me with no transport in a place
that rains for four months of the year and is volatile and moody for the rest
of it. On the other side of the car park, I can see Crew and the guy from the ice
cream shop talking inside an old black Jeep with a surfboard on the roof. The blonde
guy is nodding and then he reaches out and puts a hand on Crew’s shoulder. He
leans his head back on the headrest for a second and then suddenly slams his
fist down on the steering wheel. Even though I’m watching from far away, it
still makes me jump. I don’t want him to see me looking at him, so I pull the
hood of my jacket over my head and turn towards home.

Home.
My house in Jefferson is a 1920s bungalow built right on the lake. I’ve spent
the last two years remodeling it, and it’s just about perfect. I did most of
the work myself, much to the annoyance of my mother. And David. Everything I do
lately seems to annoy David.

I
walk up the narrow path to the small weatherboard cottage that I’ve rented for
the next few months. It’s about as far away as you can get from the type of
house you’d expect a Preston to live in, and that’s just fine by me. The pale
green paint is peeling in places and the garden is overgrown. It’s like no
house I’ve ever lived in but strangely, it already feels like home. I knew the
second I saw it that it was where I wanted to start my new life. I open the
front door and step inside, immediately stripping off my wet jacket, sweatshirt
and pants. I pull a long cardigan off the coat hook and wrap it around me,
lifting my hair quickly into a messy bun. I look down at my feet and sigh. Not
only are my feet completely numb, but now my Ugg boots are ruined. I kick them
off and pad over the wooden floor and down the hall. The house is warm and
there are noises coming from the kitchen, and that can only mean one thing.

“Oh
my God! You’re saturated!” screams Eleanor from behind the kitchen island.
She’s cooking something that smells like warmth and comfort.

“Yeah
I know,” I say, sitting down on one of the stools. “It’s raining outside.”

“Ha
ha ha,” she says as she chops a carrot into miniature cubes. “You could get
sick.”

I
roll my eyes at her, and she laughs. We both know that a cold is a virus contracted
through contact, not bad weather.

“So
where were you anyway?” she says. “I hope you don’t mind me letting myself in.”

I
shake my head and gratefully accept the cup of hot tea that she passes me.

“I
was at The Sea Shack. I wanted an ice cream. A bit of a ‘cheer up’ kind of
thing.”

“Oh,”
she says, suddenly serious. “You’ll be ok here Hart. You’ll love this town once
you settle in.”

I
look at the top of her blonde head as she looks down and continues to chop the
vegetables. She’s such a sweet, beautiful person. But she really has no idea
what I’m going through. Eleanor and I have been inseparable since we met at a
gifted children’s summer camp when we were six. We shared a house all through
university, chaperoned by an ever-present woman named Barbara who was paid very
well by my parents for the inconvenience. And although we still talk every day,
we’ve led very different lives since we graduated at 16. For Eleanor, university
was all about acquiring knowledge and challenging her brain. For me, it was
just a stepping stone to a bigger life. After college, I went straight into the
lab at my dad’s company while Eleanor backpacked around Europe for a year with
her sister. Now she’s a second-grade teacher, and she says she couldn’t be
happier.

“This
needs an hour on low,” she says as she scoops the last of the vegetables into
the pot. “I’ll see you later.”

“You’re
going?” I say, standing up. “You don’t have to; we could watch a movie or
something.”

She
looks at me and smiles. “You’ll be
fine
Hart. You’re just not used to having any time to yourself. That big brain of
yours deserves a holiday. This will be really good for you.”

She
gathers her things and waves goodbye. I spend the next few hours pacing through
my house, going from room to room and back again as I try to figure out what
I’m going to do about the water samples from Bridal Falls. I walk into the
kitchen and open the refrigerator. A small plastic container sits on the bottom
shelf, carefully hidden behind two enormous jars of pickles. I pull it out with
a sigh and open the lid. Two small sample tubes with Preston Ind. stickers
stuck to the side are sitting there innocently. To anyone else they wouldn’t
look like anything much, but I know that those few ounces of water have the
power to tear my family apart. I spend the rest of the night lying on my back,
staring at the ceiling as my mind searches for a way for me to fix this mess
without hurting anyone. Sometime around 5 am I fall into a fitful sleep, having
finally come to the realization that it can’t be done.