Kate Christie (12 page)

“Your mother must be pretty proud of you now, with the rankings and everything.”

Jess shrugged. “I don’t actually know.”

“You aren’t close to her, are you?” I pressed, making my voice casual, pretending to watch people pass by beyond the coffee shop window.

“No. I’m not.” Her words were clipped. “My mom and I got in a fight my senior year. I moved out. I haven’t spoken to her since.”

6 Kate Christie

More pieces to the puzzle. “Must have been a pretty major fight.”

Her fists were clenched, her breathing quick, twin spots of color tingeing her cheekbones. As I watched, she unfurled her fists and took a deep breath. “It was.” When she looked at me, her eyes were almost black.

I reached out and touched her hand. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other over our warm beverages there in the coffee shop, emotions passing unspoken between us. I remembered again what she’d said about souls. Had we known each other in another life, another time?

But that was ridiculous, I thought, catching myself. I didn’t believe in that past lives stuff. This was the only life I knew.

“What kind of dog would you get?” I asked finally, looking out at the sidewalk and taking a sip of my cooling cappuccino.

“You know, hypothetically speaking.”

“Probably a mutt,” she said, voice calm again, “from the pound. They put so many animals to sleep every year, it seems crazy not to take one.”

We talked about dogs some more while we finished our drinks. Then we strolled back to the car, stopping at a couple of bookstores along the way. Neither shop we browsed through was strictly gay, but they both had decent LGBT sections. In the second store, Jess lingered in the art section while I thumbed through psychology books. Psych was my minor. I’d first started taking it because I thought it might help to understand the workings of the human mind if I was going to be a teacher. The more psych classes I took, though, the more I interested I got.

“Find any good twelve-step guides?” Jess asked, looking over my shoulder at the book I was leafing through.

I started. I hadn’t heard her approach. Trying not to blush, I showed her the cover—
The Psychology of Homosexuality
. “Not exactly.”

“Oh. Oops.” She smiled at me, seemingly not embarrassed in the least.

The sun was setting as we headed back to the car. The days were getting shorter. Soon we would have to set the clocks back.

Glancing over at Jess, I watched her walking beside me. Her eyes Beautiful Game 7

were light again, her brow unfurrowed, the corners of her mouth turned up as if she were going to smile at any moment. I had to know suddenly.

“So what’s your story, anyway, Maxwell? Are you, like, straight but not narrow or what?” I held my breath waiting for her answer.

Squinting a little, she shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think of it in terms of labels.”

In other words, a fence-sitter, as Mel liked to put it. I had nothing against fence-sitters. Holly was one. I just wished they’d be upfront about their uncertainty.

Then she said, looking at me with her shy look, “If you called me anything, you’d probably call me asexual. I haven’t dated in a while.”

“Define a while.”

“Well, the last person I dated was this guy Sean in high school, junior year. We were really good friends. He ran track and taught me how to lift when I was a freshman and he was a sophomore.”

I tried to ignore a pang of what felt like—but couldn’t be—

jealousy. “What happened?”

“We dated for a few months, nothing all that serious. My mom was so happy that I was finally dating someone, anyone, she didn’t make a big deal about him being black. Which is surprising for her,” she added, voice slightly bitter. “Then he left for college and that was pretty much it. He was a really good guy. Good to me, anyway.”

“Got it.” So while I was dating Cara, a female basketball player, Jess had been dating Sean, a male track star. Kind of funny. I wondered if they’d slept together. That, I wasn’t about to ask.

We took I-5 back toward La Jolla, both of us quiet, listening to the stereo. The sun was a ball of orange hovering over the ocean in the distance. At the exit before SDU, Jess glanced over at me.

“Want to hit Seal Beach?” she asked.

“Totally.”

Seal Beach was an enclosed cove where seals slept almost

Kate Christie

every night. No one knew when the tradition had started, but most nights there were a couple dozen seals sleeping piled together on the sand, ignoring the curious humans who came to observe them.

Jess parked a few blocks off Prospect Street, the Rodeo Drive of La Jolla, which, in turn, was the Beverly Hills of San Diego. We walked a block down to the ocean, around a small white public beach house and down a flight of stone steps to a walkway that led out along the top of a concrete wall. The wall jutted out thirty or forty yards into the ocean, parallel to shore. The surf pounded against it, the spray dousing unwary passersby. We were careful not to get drenched as we watched the final moments of the sunset. Then we turned our backs to the horizon and watched as the seals began their nightly sojourn in the dying light of early evening.

“They’re so cute,” Jess said, watching as the seals flopped their way onto shore, dragging their plump bodies out of the water with difficulty.

Their fins were too small to be of any use. Not the most graceful of creatures out of water, just like I was a nightmare to behold in the water.

“They are cute,” I agreed, laughing as one dragged itself over the unmoving body of another.

“That would be you on the bottom,” Jess said, “not even concerned as your buddy climbs over you.”

I leaned against the iron rail. “You trying to say I’m fat? Or just lazy?”

“I wouldn’t say lazy, exactly,” she teased, leaning against the rail next to me, our arms nearly touching.

“What’re you trying to do, wreck my body image?” I held my hand across my heart, mock wounded.

“Puh-lease.” She rolled her eyes. “You know you think you’re hot.”The question was, did she? I turned back to the beach, watching as a couple of more seals crawled up on shore.

“Want to go down there?” I asked.

“Sure.”

We retraced our steps along the top of the wall and climbed Beautiful Game

down a steep sand bank onto the beach. There were other people down here, a family with two young children, a couple holding hands, three guys who looked our age. As we approached, they checked Jess out and even gave me a passing onceover. We ignored them and walked closer to the seals, stopping just behind a thin rope people weren’t supposed to go beyond.

Jess crouched down, looking intently at a couple of seals only a few feet away. They stared back, brown eyes wide and thoughtful, almost.

“Whenever I feel down, I come here and hang out with these guys,” she said, smiling at the nearest one. It wiggled its whiskers.

“Yeah?” I knelt beside her and took up a handful of sand, letting the grains slip through my open fingers.

“There’s something so peaceful about them. They’re so trusting,” she explained, still watching the same seal. “I mean, they come here every night, right up on shore, no matter how many people are on the beach waiting for them. They could be attacked so easily, killed by anyone at any time during the night.

People still kill seals for their fur, you know? But they come back every night and nothing happens to them. I don’t know. It’s just cool.”

I nodded. “It’s almost like they trust we won’t hurt them, so we don’t. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Spoken like a true psych major.”

“Minor,” I corrected her, slightly embarrassed.

Holly would have made fun of me for lapsing into psych language too. Decent of Jess to pick up the slack.

We stayed on the beach as the sky darkened and the wind picked up. When it got too cold, we climbed up the bank to the concrete stairway. As we neared the top, I glanced back for one more look at the ocean and noticed that the three guys had followed us.

“Hey!” one of them called, jogging up next to us.

Jess and I stopped, watching them. All three were tall and dressed like we were in shorts, sweatshirts and baseball caps.

“What’s up?” I asked. Jess, I noted, hung back behind me.

The same guy spoke again. He was clean-cut and good-

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looking, his eyes friendly. “We were just wondering if you wanted to grab a drink with us. We’re about to head up to Hard Rock on Prospect.”

I was always amazed when guys thought I was straight. For some reason, I thought they should just know. Often they did figure it out pretty quickly, more often than women, anyway.

“Hey, thanks,” I said, flashing my social smile, “but we took the whole day off. I really have to get back and hit the books.”

Jess still didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell she wasn’t smiling.

“Come on,” a second guy said, blond hair poking out from under his navy blue Adidas cap. “Just one drink. Then you can do your homework.”

Keeping my smile firmly in place, I shook my head. “Sorry.

Maybe some other time.”

The third guy spoke up then, his eyes on Jess. “I thought you looked familiar. You play tennis, right? I’m Dave Seaver, Julie’s brother,” he added when she stared at him blankly.

“Oh, Dave.” The ice in her eyes thawed a bit. “How’re you doing?”

“Great. Julie tells me you’re not doing too bad yourself. This is Jess Maxwell, guys,” he added. “She’s ranked number one in Division II singles. Pretty awesome.”

His friends made impressed noises. There were introductions all around. I shook hands with the guys and thought they seemed cool. The first one, Chet, and I chatted about how we’d spent the day. They’d gone roller-blading along Mission Bay before heading in to La Jolla for dinner. We all agreed that Sundays were divinely intended for play.

“We should really get going,” Jess said as a short lull fell over the conversation.

I looked at her, surprised, and remembered suddenly that everyone on campus thought she was something of a bitch.
Just
chill
, I thought, flashing her a quizzical look.

She ignored the look. “It was good seeing you again, Dave.

I’ll tell Julie you said hi.”

The guys waved and headed toward Prospect Street while Jess and I walked in silence back to where we’d left the car.

Beautiful Game 1

Before she could start the engine, I put my hand over hers.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” She hesitated, looking at my hand covering hers.

Her shoulders relaxed slightly. “I guess it just made me nervous when they came up behind us.”

I laughed a little, trying to get her to relax. “I don’t think they had any clue how it would seem to us. Typical guys.”

“I know. They don’t get it. If three girls came up to them in the middle of a dark street, they’d be psyched.”

“Seriously. Thanks for suggesting this,” I added, purposely changing the subject. “I never think to come down here. The seals are so cute.”

It worked. Her head lifted a little. “Aren’t they?”

She started the engine and guided the car inland, back toward campus. I watched the houses speed past, window shades still open to the early evening. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of people living along the coastline of Southern California. Oregon was much more sparsely populated. There, you could go for a walk on a beach and not run into anyone.

But here, there were people everywhere, houses built nearly one on top of another in the hills overlooking the ocean. So many people, so much money, so much ceaseless sunshine. Life didn’t seem real here sometimes.

Soon Jess was pulling up behind my Tercel. Downstairs, through the front window of her house, I could see a woman playing a baby grand piano, her back to us.

“That’s Claire,” Jess said, following my gaze. “She’s a music professor at SDU. She likes to practice on Sunday evenings.”

I nodded and looked over at Jess. “So.”

“So.” She paused. “Want to come up? Claire made zucchini bread yesterday.”

“That’d be cool. I’m starting to get hungry again.”

“Me, too!”

We laughed at our in-season bottomless pit stomachs as we took our bikes from the rack. I removed the front wheel from mine and locked everything in my car trunk. Then Jess shouldered her bike and led the way inside.

Soon we were settled on the living room couch munching

2 Kate Christie

zucchini bread, the room warm with lamplight. Jess had opened the front window so that we could hear the sounds of Claire’s music floating up.

“She’s really good,” I said, pausing in my hunger to appreciate the classical music. I closed my eyes, intent on the music. “That’s Haydn, I think. I love Haydn.”

When I opened my eyes, Jess was watching me.

She looked away. “That’s right. You said you used to play piano, right?”

“Until I was fifteen. I was pretty good,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Why’d you stop?”

I shrugged. “I thought I had to pick between soccer and music.

I didn’t have enough time for all the practices and performances and lessons and games. Something had to give.”

“You might have been able to do both. It just would have taken some serious scheduling.”

“That’s what my parents said. I’m not sure they ever forgave me for picking soccer over music.”

“But they have to be proud of you,” she said, echoing what I had said about her mother earlier. “You’re here on a soccer scholarship. You’re a wonderful player.”

I rubbed my neck, self-conscious at her praise. “I’m good, or I wouldn’t be here. But my mom at least would have been happier if I had stuck with music and gone to school closer to home, like my brother. I think my dad is proud of me, though he did grow up in eastern Oregon, so he’s more of a baseball-football guy.