Moment of Impact (3 page)

“I’m talking about Gus Jennings and you’re talking about food?”

Her face is serious when she looks at me. “You don’t eat much, Lily.”

Her scrutiny has my stomach burning with the excess acid that always seems to be there, but I’ve gotten used to. “I don’t want to gain weight. They cut you from the dance company if you have too much flab.”

“Is that why you’re always exercising?”

I roll my eyes. “What’s with the inquisition?”

Penny sighed. “Nothing. It’s your body. But I’m hungry. I’ve just spent the day getting dirty with three men who had nothing interesting to say except pass the rake.”

I make a face. “That’s it?”

She thought a second. “They may have said thank you once or twice.”

I eyed Penny. “You mean to tell me that Gus watches me on the beach every morning and he didn’t say anything about me at all after I left?”

She closed the refrigerator. “Watch yourself with him. He seems like a decent guy. But they all seem decent at first. I’m getting a burger. Want to come?”

* * *

Lily

It was my first day off in a week and I wanted to use it to work out. But after I’d showered and shaved my legs, the idea of being stuck in the house wasn’t all that appealing. I mean, I’m living at the freakin’ beach!

Jenna has disappeared in her room again with Bobby. Penny has her bathing suit on and is now lounging out in the back with a book. Heather…I can’t recall the last time I saw Heather, and suddenly that has me worried.

I change into my bathing suit and then wrap a light oriental patterned sarong around my waist, tying it so that my upper thigh is exposed as I walk. I skip down the stairs and hear the radio on outside. As I pass by Heather’s door, I knock.

Silence.

I knock again.

“Heather?”

“What?” I barely hear Heather’s voice over the music playing outside.

“Want to go for a swim?”

Silence.

Raising my knuckle to the white painted door, I knock again. “Heather?”

“I just want to sleep. I got in late.”

Letting out a slow breath, I take a step back from the door. I don’t remember Heather coming home. At least she’s alive.

It’s funny how I’d already gotten used to living with my roommates and knew their habits. More surprising to me is that I worry about them. Growing up an only child, I’d never had to think about anyone else but myself and my parents. As much as I love my parents, I mostly tried to hide from them. Or from the fact that they wanted to choreograph my every waking moment. They’d succeeded up until now. This was the first time in my life that I could be on my own without having my mother chattering in my ear about where I needed to be next.

Right now, I didn’t need to be anywhere. I grab the sandals I’d left by the back door, but I don’t put them on. I want to walk the beach. As I step out onto the back porch, I see Penny stretched out in a lawn chair on the sand below.

“You know the sun is going to give you wrinkles,” I say as I skip down the steps.

“Me and the sun have an understanding,” she says, calling out to me without opening her eyes or moving. “I put on my sunscreen. The sun won’t give me skin cancer.”

I chuckle. “I wouldn’t count on the sun holding up her end of the bargain.”

I can hear Penny chuckle as I sprint down to the water and dip my feet in the rushing surf. The breeze is stronger than it’s been in days, whipping my hair around my face and making it hard to see where I’m walking without holding my hair back. I quickly tie my hair into a loose knot in the back of my head and continue to walk down the beach. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the smell of salt air and the feel of the warm sand between my toes.

I don’t know why I’m lying to myself about where I’m going. I know. I knew the moment I put on the sarong. But I hadn’t been prepared for what I’d see.

I was focused on that little room where I’d always see the curtain rise as I danced by in the early morning when most everyone else on the island was still asleep that I hadn’t been paying attention to the noise on the beach. A woman screamed a few hundred yards down the beach. I turn my head just enough to see a man picking her up and carrying her into the surf.

My stomach drops because I realize I know the man. Well, I don’t know him really. I just recognize him. I stare long enough to convince myself that it’s really who I think it is. But it doesn’t make me feel any better. Poor Heather. Why did she follow a bum like Jerry Cannon to Nantucket when she knew he was a snake? Jerry ran into the surf until he was knee deep in the water and then tossed the girl in. Then he turned and ran up the beach.

That’s when I see Gus making his way out of the water with a paddleboard tucked under his arm. He’s headed straight out of the water. But then he sees the girl stumble in the surf. He heads in that direction and offers her his hand, which she takes. Jerry stands in the sand looking at the two of them. I hear a voice raised and Gus raise his hand as if he’s telling Jerry he’s keeping his hands off. Then Gus runs past him to his apartment on the beach.

I keep walking down the beach and watch as the girl walks across the sand past Jerry. He yells something at her and then flips her the finger. I can’t make out what she screams at him, but he follows her up a path to the main road leading to a bunch of cottages for rent.

When I turn my attention back to the beach, I realize Gus has disappeared. Squinting my eyes and shielding them from the sun with my fingers, I search the beach. Then the water. But Gus is gone.

# # #

Lily

I walk the same path I do each morning, and then make a right turn up to the place where I see Gus in the small lower level window of his apartment building. As I approach, I glance up to the porch above and see the sliding door is wide open. I can hear the sound of an old game show playing on the television. Looking around, I don’t see anyone. My heart is in my throat and I don’t know why. I’ve already met the guy, sort of. He’s harmless. I think. Well, he has to be harmless for Penny to work alongside him every day.

Lifting my hand to the door, I knock on the windowpane and then take a step back as if something will fly out at me when the door opens, which I know is ridiculous. I wipe my palms on the cotton sarong and listen, but I only hear the applause of the game show filtering outside from upstairs. My eyes follow the sound of the applause until the door in front of me bursts open.

I jump back a step and stare at Gus filling up the space in the doorway. He’s still wearing his wet bathing suit, but he’s wrapped a colorful towel around his neck.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

I open my mouth and push confidence up my throat. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Okay. How about you step outside?” I say.

I see his lips lift just a fraction as if he wants to smile, but he pulls himself together and the almost smile is gone.

“Why are you here?”

“You don’t like to beat around the bush, do you?”

“I like getting to the point. I don’t like to waste time.”

“I want you to teach me how to paddleboard,” I blurt out. Honestly, I hadn’t thought beyond saying hello when he answered the door.

As I stand there with my feet digging into the sand coated patio with concrete that was cracked and uneven, I realize I had no plan, no idea what I was going to do when Gus opened the door. For the first time in my life I didn’t do something that had been pre-organized by my mother, a teacher or my boss.

Gus lowers her gaze to my feet and then his eyes slowly move up, stopping just for a fraction of a second longer on my breasts before he finally makes eye contact with me again. He didn’t touch me. He never even extended his hand as if he wanted to. But suddenly my body feels warm and tingly as if his fingers had been the very thing to make that slow journey across my body.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I asked nicely.”

His lips lift to a slow smile then. It amazes me that I never noticed how incredibly sexy this man was. But I’d only seen him from afar and yesterday I’d only seen him for a few moments outside the restaurant. Standing mere feet from him now, I can feel the energy inside him as if it’s about to burst free and touch me. Stroke me.

My breath hitches in my throat as he looks at me.

“Are you smoking again, Gus?”

A woman upstairs is now bending over the upstairs porch railing to look at me.

“No, Mrs. B.”

“I thought I smelled cigarettes.” The middle-aged woman with bad hair and a pot belly bigger than my grandfather’s purses her lips at me as her eyes slice into a tiny slit. “That goes for your lady friend, too.”

“It wasn’t me. I don’t smoke,” I say.

“Just so long as there’s no smoking in my unit.”

The sound of the woman hitting the boards above me trailed to the house and then stopped. A few seconds later, the sliding door shut with a hard bang and then locked.

“Your landlord?” I ask.

“My pain in the ass, but yes, she owns the place, such as it is.” His lips lift on one side. “So are you just going to stand there or are you going to come in?”

Gus steps away from the door so I can walk inside. My nose is immediately assaulted with what smells like disinfectant. I walk into the middle of the room and look around.

“Sorry about the smell,” he says, shrugging. “Seems the only think Mrs. Beachman thinks she smells is cigarettes. Vomit and whatever food that merged with that sofa is off her radar. By the way, I wouldn’t sit there.”

He goes over to the corner where a little round table with two Windsor chairs sits in front of the opening to a tiny kitchenette. One of the chairs has broken spokes on that back. He drags the chair that isn’t broken over to the living area and brushes it off with his hand.

“Why don’t you sit here? This is clean.”

I look around. The entire kitchen and living area are as big as my bedroom at home. There is another door that leads to what I presume is either a bathroom or a bedroom. I’m not sure which because the door is closed. A small television sits in front of the window. It’s probably older than I am.

“I usually put a blanket on the sofa, but I haven’t done laundry yet.”

He doesn’t sit and suddenly that makes me nervous to be doing so myself.

“Your place is…”

“A piece of shit,” he says laughing. I’m amazed he’s not mortified by it. I know I would be. But he seems to take it in stride.

I chuckle as quietly as I can. I don’t want to offend him. But I have a feeling that a man like Gus Jennings doesn’t offend easily.

“Then why are you here?” I ask.

“My parole officer is Mrs. Beachman’s cousin. He cut me the deal.”

My mouth drops open. “Your parole…”

“Officer. Yes. Mrs. Beachman usually rents this place out weekly, but she agreed to rent it to me for the summer as a favor to Edmond.”

“Your parole officer.”

He chuckles. “I take it you’ve never met someone on parole?”

I close my mouth and try to act like I’m not the sheltered princess I’ve been for the past twenty years. But that’s ridiculous. Gus Jennings probably pegged me a mile down the beach. I feel more exposed sitting here with him looking at me than I’d felt when I’d first caught him staring at me on my way to work.

“You watch me.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s all you’re going to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

I open my mouth and then close it, thinking for a minute. “Why?”

“You’re a smart girl. Harvard, right?”

I nod and wonder just how much Penny has told him about me. I wonder if he’d been the one to ask like I had.

“Then you know why.”

“You like looking at me.”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not the only man who likes looking at you, Lily.”

I smile. “So you do know my name.”

“Penny called you Lily.”

Heat sears my cheeks. “You’re slick.”

“Yeah? It’s called streetwise.” He pulls a single cigarette out of a half-full pack on the table and then picks up the lighter that has been sitting next to it. He flicks the lighter until there is a flame. But he doesn’t light the cigarette. “A smart girl like Harvard wouldn’t come to my door.”

I sit up straight in the chair, but with the motion, I get a whiff of disinfectant floating on the breeze coming through the window along with the butane from the lighter that he’s just let die out.

“Want to take a walk?” I ask.

He chuckles low. “Not particularly.”

“You enjoy being a prick, don’t you?”

“You’re in my house. Some people would throw you out on your ass for that kind of talk.”

“But you’re not going to.”

He lifts his chin. “You’re so sure of that?”

“You watch me every morning. You like watching me. Why?”

Gus just stands there by the kitchen staring at me for a long moment. I keep my gaze directed on him. I want to know more than I want to take my next breath.

“Is that why you’re really here?”

“I want to know.”

“I already told you.”

“No, you didn’t. You said I know why. You said I’m smart. You also told me not to be stupid, which I’m not.”

“Then why are you still here?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

His expression softened just enough for me to see something human. He wants me to believe he is an asshole. Up until now he’s done a damn good job of proving that.

This one moment changes everything.