He drops my arm like I’ve just burned him.
“Let it go.” His face is incredulous. Then, he does the strangest thing. He laughs. And I don’t mean a small laugh. I mean, a full-on belly laugh.
“Adam?” I say confused.
He looks at me. He’s laughing, but anger is still firmly fixed in his eyes. “Trust me, if I could have let it go, I would have fucking years ago.”
I don’t know what to say to that, but truthfully, I’m in the same position as him. I couldn’t let go either. I know, for him, it was for a different reason. He couldn’t let go of not knowing the truth, why I left him, whereas I couldn’t let go because I never could find a way to stop loving him. Our reasons may have differed, but ultimately, we were in the same position.
He rubs the laughter from his eyes and moves across the room. Picking his drink back up, he takes a long pull.
“Where have you been all this time?” He holds the glass to his chest.
“San Francisco.”
Shock flickers over his face. “I was in San Francisco three years ago. I thought I saw you.”
He was there? He saw me?
“But you were gone so quickly. I called my PI, but he couldn’t find any trace of you there. I thought I’d imagined it…you.”
“Your PI?”
Hard eyes lift to mine. “I looked for you, Evie, for a long time. I hired a PI, but he could never find you. It was like you’d dropped off the face of the earth. Did you change your name?”
His eyes go to the badge on my uniform that reads Evie.
“No, I didn’t change my name.”
“Your surname?”
“No. It stayed the same—Taylor. Evie Taylor.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Accusatory eyes flick up to mine. “So, why couldn’t my PI find you?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head, swallowing down.
Well, I can think of maybe one reason why he couldn’t find me, but I can’t share that with him.
He stares at me, before looking away. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he mutters to himself. “He even checked for Casey, and Casey would have had to register, at the very least, with a doctor.”
“He checked for Casey?” The words whoosh out of me, and my heart starts to pound.
“Of course he did. I was desperate to find you. I would have done anything back then to know where you were.”
His impassioned words are like a punch to the stomach.
Deep down I always thought he would try to look for me. But thinking and knowing are two very different things.
My eyes lower to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
“For what, Evie? For cheating on me, for leaving me, for the PI not being able to find you?”
“All of it.” I force my eyes back to him. “I should have handled it better. I didn’t, and I’m sorry.”
His eyes search my face, and then he turns away, staring out the window.
“Casey? Is she…?” He leaves the question opened ended, and I understand why. He doesn’t know that she’s fine. Healthy. Alive.
“She’s fine. Good. Better. She’s starting UCLA in the fall. She wants to be a nurse. That’s why we’re here.”
“So, she got better?” He turns slightly to look at me.
“Yes.”
“She was dying, Evie. And now she’s well. Is that why you left? To get some life-saving treatment for her?”
I press my lips together and shake my head.
“Then, why? It doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes sense.” His voice implores, begging to me.
I look away. “Casey was dying. We got her some treatment, and we were beyond lucky that the treatment saved her life. But that had nothing to do with why I left.”
He looks back out the window.
He doesn’t say anything for a long time. I’m wondering if I should just leave when he does speak again.
“Do you still draw?” he asks in a soft voice.
“No.” I look down at my hands, entwining my fingers together.
“Why not?”
How do I tell him that leaving him was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it broke me?
It broke everything inside of me, and I haven’t been able to draw since then. Every time I put the pencil to the paper, all I could see was his face, and I couldn’t bear the reminder of what I’d lost.
I don’t tell him. That’s the thing. I can’t ever tell him.
I let go of my hands and wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to hold in all the pain that’s threatening to spill out of me, and I just shake my head. “Do you still surf?” I ask him.
I look up to find he’s facing me, back against the window, eyes on me.
“Only on weekends.”
I guess things have changed so much for both of us. The dreams we had together never made it to fruition with us being apart.
We each became a slave to the choice I had to make.
My eyes rake over him as I remember the Adam I knew ten years ago and compare him to the Adam I see before me. The long hair is gone, replaced with cropped locks. The unshaven scruff on his face is still very much there though. At least some things haven’t changed.
“You cut your hair.”
“It has been ten years.”
“I know. I just…I remember a time when you said you’d never cut your hair.” A small smile touches my lips at the memory.
“Yeah, and I remember when you promised to love me till death do us part. Shit changes.”
My smile drops from my face. My cheeks sting like he’s just slapped me.
I deserved that. Doesn’t stop it from hurting like a bitch though.
I turn my cheek, forcing a blank expression onto my face. I don’t want him to see how injured I am by his words.
“How long was it going on for?” he asks me in a quiet voice.
I look back to him. “What?”
“With this other guy. How long were you seeing him behind my back?”
I can see how much it’s hurting him, thinking I cheated on him, and I hate hurting him. I don’t want him to think so very badly of me even though, in some ways, what I actually did was worse.
I blow out a breath. “There wasn’t any other guy, Adam. I’m sorry I lied about that. I guess I just said that because…I don’t know.” I shake my head. “You wanted a valid reason, and I didn’t have one to give you, other than…getting married…it was just too much too soon. I panicked, and I ran. I’m sorry. You wanted the truth. That’s it.”
And I guess, in a way, the truth is in some of those words. It was a lot, us getting married so young. But I never regretted it, not for one second, and I would still be married to him now, if I could be. And I did panic when faced with the decision I had to make. And I did run. So, what I said…it’s the best of the truth that I can give to him.
He stares at me for a long moment, so long that I don’t know what to do.
Then, he blinks his eyes free, blows out a breath as he runs a hand through his hair and says, “Okay.”
Okay? That’s it?
He isn’t questioning why I lied about cheating, and he seems to have accepted my reasoning. It makes me wonder why he’s taken it so easily.
Then, I realize that maybe he’s just tired of it all. Maybe he just sees that it’s time to let go of the past.
And I guess it’s time for me to leave.
“Okay,” I say, pushing off the wall. Gathering myself together, I turn to the door.
I reach for the handle and pause to look back at him.
I just want one more look before I leave.
He’s staring at me, too, a mixture of confusing emotions on his face.
“Good-bye, Adam.”
He holds my eyes for a moment, then, looks away. “Good-bye, Evie.”
There’s a power in his words. He’s saying the good-bye he didn’t get to say ten years ago.
Taking a deep breath, I hold in the tears fighting to break free,
and I walk out and finally close the door on my past.
My alarm is going off with an annoying insistence. On a groan, I reach over and slam my hand on it, turning it off.
Time for work.
Ugh.
Summer has only just begun, and I’ve worked the last seven days straight as a favor for Grady. I can’t wait for tomorrow when I can sleep in.
I’m only doing the overtime because Grady is the best boss ever—a retired pro surfer, and the Shack is his life—and he asked me because we’re short-staffed at the moment. I’m also doing it because I need the money.
Paige, who works part-time in the shop with Base and me, has been on vacation. And Tad, who does the surf lessons with Grady, has been out sick with the flu. So, Grady has been pulling Base out of the shop to help with the surf lessons. So, I’ve been manning the shop alone. But Tad and Paige will be back tomorrow, so I’ll get the day off. Yay!
For tomorrow, I was thinking, once I drag my ass out of bed, that I might actually spend the day at the beach and lie out in the sun, read a book, swim, and maybe do some surfing.
I can’t remember the last time I just spent the day at the beach chilling and having fun. Aside from the hour I get there every day, sketching after work to kill the time I have to wait for my bus.
I can get some real sketching time in tomorrow as well. The beach is my favorite place to go to draw, especially on my spot on the rock. I love that view. I’ve gotten some great sketches done from up there. I can see right out over the ocean, and it gives me a great view of the pier as well as all the surfers—along with one particular hot guy in a beach house.
Adam.
I knew I had to draw him the moment I saw him standing up there on his balcony. I captured the image of him there in my mind and started drawing. What I didn’t expect was for him to be standing there every day, watching me.
But knowing his eyes were on my back while I drew the image I had pressed into my memory of him standing there, so tall and so handsome, made me not only want to draw him…it made me want to know him.
He looked so lonely.
The kind of loneliness where he could be surrounded in a roomful of people, and he’d still feel alone.
The kind of loneliness that comes from within, deeply embedded inside of him.
And I wanted to capture that and pull the loneliness out, bringing him to life on paper.
I can’t believe I gave him the drawing I’d done of him. It was so ballsy of me, and I’m not usually ballsy.
Actually, the whole thing was pretty ballsy of me, especially when I asked him if he’d changed his mind about asking me out.
God, I’m cringing from just thinking about it.
For all my bravado with Adam, I actually don’t really date.
It’s not because I don’t want to. I just don’t really have the time, and I haven’t met a guy who I really want to go out with.
I tend not to get dazzled by cute guys anymore. They’re in such abundance here, and I see them daily while working at the Shack.
That was up until yesterday when I was dazzled by the super tall and super hot guy who lives on the beach and watches me draw.
I literally couldn’t stop looking at him.
With a body like a god, he’s stupidly handsome. And when I say stupidly handsome, I mean, he’s the kind of handsome that would make a smart girl go stupid and also make that smart girl do stupid things.
I could imagine doing a lot of stupid things with Adam.
A guy like him could make a girl like me lose my damn mind.
He’s so intriguing, and his eyes are amazing. They are the most intense blue-green color that I have ever seen. They’re practically turquoise. His eyes are like an infinite pool of water, a place you could easily get lost in and never once get bored.
And a girl like me could easily get lost in a guy like him.
Aside from all his physical attributes, there is just something about him.
I’ve been finding myself thinking about him more and more since we spoke yesterday.
Throughout the last week, every day, when I went down to the beach, I wondered if he’d be there, watching. As the week went on, I started to feel a little sad when my hour was up, and I had to leave to catch my bus.
Now, Adam has asked me out, and I really want to go out with him even though I won’t actually have time to date him, especially when school starts back up. In my last year of high school, I’ll still be working evenings and weekends at the Shack on top of the schoolwork I’ll have to do, so that won’t leave any time to date.
But Adam has got me wanting things I shouldn’t, like doing hot naked things with him.
Oh my God! I can’t believe I just thought that!
I cover my face with my hands, a blush creeping over my body at the thought.
It’s all just so crazy! Adam watching me from his balcony, while I pretended not to know, and was secretly drawing his picture.
Then, his friend Max told me that Adam was going to ask me out. Honestly, when he said that, I nearly burst out laughing. I thought I’d skipped back to kindergarten. I didn’t really take Max that seriously—until Adam showed up on the beach and started talking to me.
He didn’t seem shy, like I had expected. In fact, he wasn’t shy at all. He was the total opposite. If anything, he was overly confident but not in that annoying cocky way that some guys could be.
And I just felt strangely comfortable around him, talking to him. It was like I’d known him for a long time already, which was crazy. I felt like I could say anything to him, and it wouldn’t matter.
And I did.
“I’ll let you know.”
I almost laugh out loud at myself.
Listen to me, being evasive. I was dying to say yes.
Honestly, I would have gone out with him then and there if I hadn’t had to get home to look after Casey while Dad went out.
Dad goes out one night a week to play darts with his friend Terry. Aside from that, he doesn’t go out, so I didn’t want to let him down.
But I’m thinking, when I go to the beach later today after I finish work, I might just accept Adam’s invitation to go out. It might not turn into anything anyway, but it’s a date with a hot guy, and I haven’t had one of those in…well, never.
Dragging my tired butt out of bed, I head to the bathroom.
The house is quiet. Casey and Dad must still be sleeping.
Showered, teeth brushed, hair tied into a ponytail, and dressed in my work uniform, I’m ready to go half an hour later.
I head out into our tiny kitchen, which overlooks our tiny living room.
Dad’s in there with Casey.
She’s watching cartoons while eating breakfast. Typical seven-year-old. You wouldn’t know, aside from her short hair, that she only finished having radiotherapy six months ago. She only lost hair in a patch on the part of her brain they were treating. But she said she looked stupid with long hair and a bald patch, so she had me take her to the hair salon to cut it all off.
Casey had an ependymoma, grade II, brain tumor. And she’s the bravest kid I have the privilege to know and love.
The tumor was discovered ten months ago, only two years after we’d lost Mom.
Out shopping for my birthday presents, my parents had gotten into a car accident while I was in school and Casey was in preschool. A truck driver had a heart attack behind the wheel, lost control, and careened through the midsection, straight into my parents’ car.
Mom was killed instantly. Dad survived, barely.
Casey and I had to go into foster care while Dad recovered in the hospital, as we had no other family to take care of us. Our grandparents on both sides had died before we were born.
Dad had taken some pretty severe trauma to the head, which affected his short-term memory, and he lost use of his right arm.
He can never work again.
My dad had been an accountant. We’d had a great life. We weren’t rich, but we weren??
?t poor either.
When Dad had to quit work, it was tough. Fortunately, his old job covered his medical bills. But we still had a mortgage to pay, and the compensation he’d received from the accident wasn’t going to last forever.
Then, Casey got sick, and things got worse, substantially worse.
Casey had been having headaches. Our doctor checked her over, and had referred her to see an ophthalmologist. Before she even went to the appointment, she collapsed at school. They rushed her to the hospital, and that was when they discovered the tumor on her brain.
She had surgery where they removed as much of the tumor as they could. Then, she began radiotherapy four weeks later. What was left of the tumor after surgery shrank to nothing with the radiation therapy. The cancer was gone, and the doctor said her physical signs were well. So, she was going to be fine.
But we were left with big medical bills. After Dad had left his job, he didn’t take out private healthcare. And surgery and radiation therapy didn’t come cheap. So, we had to sell the house and downsize to a three-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on Carbon Canyon Road. The money from the sale of our old house and the compensation that Dad received from the car accident paid off Casey’s hospital bills.
Dad’s disability checks as well as the money I bring in from working at Grady’s are what keeps us afloat. But it’s not enough. I work as much as I can at Grady’s, taking on extra shifts when they come up, like what I’ve been doing this week. But I will have to go to part-time hours once school starts back up, and when I graduate, I’ll work for Grady full-time until I can find something that pays more.
I would quit school now and work full-time, but Dad won’t let me. It kills him that I go out to work now. He wants me to be a normal teenager, enjoying summers at the beach with friends. But I told him that’s just not the way it’s supposed to be for me at the moment. So, he’s given up fighting me on it.
I get a Pop-Tart and warm it in the toaster.
Grabbing my bag, I check to make sure my sketchpad and pen are in there.
I go into the living room.
“I’m going to work.” I lean over and kiss Dad on the top of his head.
“You got a hug for me, Case?”