This Sky (6 page)

    I feel my forehead crease in confusion. “A bridge loan?”

    “That’s a temporary type of loan. Like, if you’re not ready for permanent financing, it’s a way to get the money you need to hold you over until you’re cleared to move on to the next stage,” Julie explains assuredly, reminding me that both her mom and dad are in finance. “In your case, the bridge loan we’re looking for is a rebound guy. Really, it’s two for the price of one. Confidence and a sizzle all wrapped up into one perfect low-interest package.”

     Claudia obviously agrees
with this plan. She is saying that a rebound is “inspired” and muttering things about bad boys and chains and lots of black leather.

    “And whips,” Julie adds with a smirk.

    “Cleaning supplies!”

    I prop myself up on my elbows and shake my head. “Nuh-uh.”

    Claudia’s face falls. “To which part? Whips?”

    “Chains?”

    “Bleach?”

    I make a stop motion with my hands. “All of the above.”

   “Then what’s your type? Athletic? Cowboy?”

    “Gangster?”

    “How about a paint-smattered artist who loves Wes Anderson films and discussing French Romanticism?”

   
“No,” I say.

    Claudia thinks about this for a second. “Lumberjack?”

    “Is lumberjack even a type?” I snort through my nose.

     Julie takes the lead on this one. “Oh yeah, lumberjack is hot. Living off the land is very rugged and manly. All t
hat hard, honest work and sweat.” She closes her eyes and breathes out in satisfaction.

    We all look at Smith since it’s his turn to weigh in. He shakes his head, holds up his hands and says, “Don’t look at me. I’m still trying to figure out what Gemma did with the blow-up doll.”

     “I appreciate that your hearts are in the right place but a rebound is a terrible idea,” I tell Claudia and Julie firmly. “A guy is what got me into this situation to begin with. I don’t think the answer to my problems is to run out and find myself a new one.”

   
“Rebounds shouldn’t be broken down or analyzed. They just
are
.” Julie flaps her hands at me. “And you’re not running out to find someone to marry. You’re just having fun.”

    I look away. “Julie, I’m not ready to trust someone.”

    “We’re not talking about the future Mr. Right. We’re talking about man-eating. We’re talking sinking your teeth into someone’s flesh and taking him for all he’s worth. We’re talking about sex, Gemma. S-E-X,” she forms each letter slowly, quite literally spelling it out for me. “You don’t need trust for that. You just need a condom.”

   
Despite myself, I bark a surprised laugh. “Jules!”

    Her grin is unapologetic. “I’m telling you—one roll in the sheets with a hot guy who knows what he’s doing and you’ll forget all about that shitweasel and what he did to you.”

     I wince. Not from her use of the word
shitweasel,
but because I am having serious doubts that anyone or anything could make me forget Ren and my very public humiliation.

     Claudia drains her margarita glass and snaps her fingers. “That settles it. I think we should go out and start the search
tonight.”

    “Instead of thinking of this as the end,” Julie says, picking up a chocolate
candy and rolling it between her thumb and finger, “you need to think of this as the beginning.”

    “The beginning of what?” I murmur back.

    “Of something good.” Julie blinks at me. “The beginning of you.”

Landon

By the time my feet hit
the sand, the sun is starting to melt into the Pacific and the sky is softening into the warm glow of twilight.

     Setting the board down, I collapse to my knees and bend my arm behind my back to unzip my wetsuit. With my head bowed low over my chest and my eyes
tightly closed, I shake, shedding the saltwater from my hair like a dog after a bath.

    The suit makes a dull sucking sound as I roll it down past my waist and thighs. Finally able to breathe right, I smooth my hands over
the wet, sticky skin of my chest and crane my neck to the side forcing the water from my ears in a hard, jerky motion.

     On that last set,
I got rag-dolled by a right-hander. My jaw hurts from where I took a hit from the board and my body and my head are starting to pound like I’m coming off a three-day bender. There’s an angry knot buried beneath my shoulder blade and a cramp in my right thigh muscle.

    I fold over the brace on my knee and straighten out my leg, digging out a gritty channel in the sand with my heel. Jesus, my kneecap is red from where I whacked it. It looks and feels like I got popped on the joint with a fucking lacrosse stick.

    I figure work is going to suck balls if I’m limping around behind the bar all night, but I needed this. I needed to get out here on the water and cast off the shitty residue from the week.

 
  I bite back a groan as I shift the brace back into place and sink down to my elbows. Wet sand chafes and squishes from beneath my lower back. I look around the beach and suck in a long breath. To the north, a couple is walking along the shore, holding hands and dipping their bare toes in the backwash. To the south, I can see the silhouette of a surfer just this side of the pier. I’m pretty sure it’s Pat, one of the first of the local crowd to accept me when I was just a grommet. He must be pushing seventy now but he’s out here every day, rain or shine, surfing like his life depends on it. And for all I know, maybe it does.

     Up toward to the road, some skateboarders are dicking around on the stairs near the showers. I hear the h
ollow clack of their wooden boards against metal and a slew of faint curses carrying over the sound of the waves and I figure they’re trying to master the rail.

    There are
two girls a dozen feet away from me. They showed up about ten minutes ago with a pack of cigarettes and a long-necked amber bottle. Now, the orange tips of their cigarettes are flaring in the dying light. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch them passing the bottle between themselves, dissolving into giggles and snapping selfies with their phones.

   
I force my mind blank and focus my eyes out toward the water—on the individual waves lunging at the shoreline, crawling up the sand like cold, dark fingers. Crisp air fills my nostrils and lungs, calming me.

   
Lulled by the sound of the waves returning to shore, my eyes drift shut and I fall in and out of a shallow half-sleep. Quiet thoughts splinter, leaving my body and floating lazily out over the inky black water like a low fog. I hear the throb of music. I feel the swirl of a night breeze over my cheek. I think about that journal—the one I’m keeping for class. Maybe I’ll write about the time Uncle Dean took me to see that Phish tribute band at the pier. We were in the back. Blue and red lights danced freely over our faces. His fingers moved through the air like he was playing guitar even though I was pretty sure he’d never picked up an instrument in his life. He looked down at me and mouthed,
Do you feel it?

    Yes
, I feel it.

    At some point,
the sounds around me change and I start to dream. First, it’s fuzzy but then I’m inside of it. It’s the same one I always have. I’m on my board on a seemingly flat ocean. My hands are out, my fingers drifting over the top of the water. I know something is wrong but I don’t know
what.
Suddenly, my brain shrieks a warning, but it’s too late. A stepladder set of gnarly waves is closing in on me and I’m not ready. When the first one hits, I’m tossed from my board. My arms shoot out, my legs move, but before I can reach the surface, another wave hits, this one bigger than the last. With a sick sort of realization, I look down and now I see a pair of strong hands wrapping around my ankle. Cold, thick fingers bite into my skin.

     I try to kick out, a burst of silvery bubbles gusting from my lips, but the fingers only tighten. I’m not going anywhere.

     Just as I’m about to give up and let myself be dragged into the darkness, I sense sound and movement above me. My eyelids flick open and I suck in a gulp of air, realizing that the dream is over and I can breathe.

   
Where am I? The beach?

   
I’m disoriented and at first, I can only see the edges of my dream and the              papery white stars that are patterning the steel sky. Then, things start to clear and my eyes zero in on an unfamiliar face peering down at me. “Can I help you?” I ask, startled, my heart still pounding in my ears.

     The girl blinks
and smiles coyly. “Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt but my friend and I saw you.” Her gaze darts over her shoulder and I realize that this is one of the girls I saw down the beach smoking and taking pictures.

    “Yeah?”
I sit up and push salt-stiffened hair from my forehead.

    She laughs self-consciously
, maybe a little flirty, and bends close enough that I can smell the cigarette smoke clinging to her skin. Okay, definitely trying for flirty. “We were wondering…” She throws in a sassy head tilt. “By any chance are you…?”

    Shit. Fuckity fuck.

    Now I’m awake. I hate being recognized. Hate it. It’s nothing but a running reminder of all the ways I screwed everything up and have failed. The good news is that surfers aren’t recognized the way pro-football players or musicians or actors are, so it’s not something I have to cope with every minute of the day. For obvious reasons, it happens more often at the beach.

    “I’m not anyone,
” I grunt, abruptly standing and spraying sand in all directions.

    She starts to turn away and looks back
, her face creased with disbelief. “You’re not Landon Young? Because you look like him and you—” she makes a dramatic gesture toward the water“—you surf like you know what you’re doing.”

  
“I said that I’m no one,” I answer, my voice increasing in volume. Maybe I should just have a sign made.
Nothing to see here. Move along.

     “I c
ould have sworn. I did see him once,” she hedges. “It was before he was arrested. Such a waste, right?”

   
“Right.”

    That’s me. A waste.

    With a shake of my head, I pick up my wetsuit and board and start walking away. Behind me, she’s still talking, but I don’t answer as I climb the beach ledge to where my car is parked. I check the waterproof watch on my left wrist. Damn, I dozed off and now I’m going to be late if I don’t hustle.

   
I’ve cut it too close to go home to clean up and change before work so the beach showers are going to have to do tonight. 

     After I secure my board to the roof rack, I grab a towel and a small black bag where I keep deodorant and soap and a little mouthwash for these occasions. I work my way down the steps that lead to a small open-air patio and a line of showerheads. I turn the lever on one of them and wait for the slow drip to turn into a steady trickle. The water smells like traces of salt and sulfur and feels slimy on my skin but at least it gets the sand off my body. I dunk my head under the cool stream and scrub my hands into my hair, substituting fingernails and some soapsuds for shampoo.

    I use my towel to dry off and provide a little privacy while I strip my shorts and get into my unofficial work uniform: dark jeans and a wrinkled but clean black shirt. Before I put the small black bag in my car, I pop two little Tylenol tablets and wash them down with the plasticky, lukewarm swish left in my water bottle.

     Aunt Zola’s, the restaurant where I bartend isn’t far from the beach access, so I decide I have just enough time left to stop off and grab a cheeseburger from one of the food carts parked along the main drag. This parti
cular cart does a burger right—Monterey Jack, spicy chili peppers, lots of crunchy lettuce and red onion.

     I’m chewing
my last bite as I park in the employee lot and stalk toward the side entrance of the building.

    I wipe hot mustard from my chin
and do a check of the people funneling toward the main door of Aunt Zola’s, showing their IDs to Corey and Alec, the bouncers on duty tonight. The crowd looks good for this early on a Friday. Tips should be decent.

    There’s a girl hanging back near the street. From this angle, I can’t make out much of her face—just a hint of chin, the tip of a nose and the soft arc of one cheekbone backlit by the red lights flaring overhead
, but I feel an odd tug.
She’s medium height with long brown hair that swings around her arms. Her shoulders are drawn in and her arms are wrapped around her middle like she’s holding herself together. She’s got a blue dress on that shows off her spindly legs and I guess that’s what’s hooked my interest.

    My heart beats a little faster as I greedily trace the outline of her body and study the pale skin between her shoulder blades. She lifts her head then and says something I
can’t make out. Before I know it’s happening, she’s sucked forward, enveloped into the throng of people in front of the bar.