Return to the Beach House (10 page)

“It’s actually less stressful than trailering it that far.”

“Why?”

“They’re not very good travelers. They stress out easily, and that lowers their immunity system, which makes them prone to respiratory infections. Once you get where you’re going, it can take days for them to regain their strength.”

“Can you imagine the first time they put a horse on a plane? I’ll bet there were some nervous people at the other end of that flight.”

“I don’t like thinking about one of my horses boxed up in the belly of a plane,” he admitted. “But if I ever get good enough to compete in Europe, I won’t have much choice.”

“
One
of your horses? How many do you have?”

“Right now I’m down to three. Only one gets shipped anywhere. The other two are too old for anything but a slow stroll along the trails around my house.”

Grace wished he hadn’t told her about owning three horses and buying another one and shipping it home in an airplane. Normal people didn’t have that kind of money. And she wanted him to be normal because she liked him.

“Do you need me to give directions?” she asked.

“I think I’ve got it. I’m pretty good at getting back from someplace.” He glanced at her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m fine. Why are you asking?”

“You’re not going to go all weird on me just because I have a couple of horses, are you?”

“Maybe,” she admitted. How did he know?

“Well, don’t.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “You still owe me a surfing lesson.”

Grace stared at him long and hard. “You busy Friday?”

“I thought we’d settled on Wednesday.”

Of course he’d think she was talking about surfing. “There’s a party on Friday. One of my friends is leaving to spend the summer in France.”

“All by herself? Not shipping any animals to keep her company?”

She laughed. “Do you want to go or don’t you?”

“Yes—I want to go.”

“Good—all the other guys I know have turned me down.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

She took off her boot and brought her foot up to tuck under her leg. “I’m going to give you the name of a rental shop in Santa Cruz that will fit you for a wet suit and a board. I’ll tell them you’re coming and that I’m going to be there at noon to pick you up. They’ll take good care of you.”

“I assume you want me to go there Wednesday morning?”

She nodded. “They usually show up around nine, but if the surf’s up, they may not be there until ten. If you have to wait, there’s a great coffee shop and bakery around the corner.”

“Are we going to Manresa?”

“Those aren’t novice waves. You want to start where you can learn the basics without fighting the water. Cowell’s is a great place to learn if it’s not too crowded. It’s to the right of the pier as you’re facing the ocean.”

“What pier?”

She laughed. “I guess that would help—the Santa Cruz pier.”

Chapter 8

Christopher considered himself in decent shape, but he couldn’t remember ever being as sore as he was when he woke up Thursday morning to the sound of the doorbell ringing. “Grams?” he called.

She didn’t answer.

He stumbled out of bed and grabbed a blanket to wrap around himself. The doorbell rang again before he was halfway down the hall.

“I’m coming,” he shouted, wondering who in the hell would be at their front door at this hour. . . . He glanced out the sliding-glass door and realized it was later than he’d thought.

“Hi,” Grace said when he peered outside. “Dude—you look awful.”

He opened the door wider. “Dude? No one says that anymore.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, this is California, and we’re not into caring what the rest of the world says or doesn’t say.” She came inside.

He brought the blanket closer. “I thought you were working this morning.”

“And I thought you had an appointment to look at a horse.”

“Been postponed until tomorrow. There was some emergency with one of the colts.”

“I realize this is none of my business, but you don’t seem all that excited about finding a new horse.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Aren’t there other places you could be looking?”

“I have appointments for all the horses my trainer felt I should see while I was here.”

“And that’s it?”

“Pretty much. Horses at the level I’m looking for are hard to find. Which is why I’m free today. . . .”

“The shipper can’t pick up our order today, so I’ve got the day off. I saw your truck outside and thought I’d come by and see if you wanted to hit the waves.”

He yawned as he ran his hand through his hair. “Sure. Just give me a couple of minutes.”

“In case I forgot to tell you, you did great yesterday,” she called after him.

“I felt like a total spaz.”

“Everyone does their first time out. It took three years before the guys around here stopped calling me Gidget.”

“I don’t have three years.”

“Then what do you care what someone calls you?”

He came back wearing his standard cutoffs and T-shirt, this one a faded lime green with a bird falling out of its nest screaming
TWEET
.

“Are we in a hurry or is it okay if I eat something first?”

She glanced at her watch. “We have an hour before the tide’s good at Cowell’s. And the fog should be burned off by then.”

“You want something?”

She followed him into the kitchen. “Like?”

He opened the refrigerator. His grandmother had picked up the basics, but little else. “Bacon and eggs?” He checked the cupboard. “Cereal? Toast?”

“Go for the protein. I don’t know why, but it helps with the cold.”

He fixed the bacon while she scrambled eggs and put a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster. They ate sitting at the counter. “When does your school start?” he asked.

“First of September.”

“Where are you going?”

“Cabrillo—it’s a community college. I’m going to get the basics out of the way and then, hopefully, transfer to either UC Santa Cruz or UC Los Angeles. I want to major in marine biology, and they have a couple of the best programs in the country. What about you?”

“Penn State.”

“Because?”

“They have a great equestrian program.”

“Something tells me that’s not the only reason.”

One of the things he liked best about Grace was her lack of guile, but it was also one of the things that drove him nuts. “My dad went there.”

“And?”

“What do you mean?”

“You need a major. Something you’re interested in. At least that’s what’s been pounded into me for the last four years.”

“Economics.”

“One of my best friends is an economics major, and you’re about as much like him as a frog is like an alligator.” She picked up their plates and took them to the sink. “What’s the real reason?”

“My dad and my grandfather both graduated with economics degrees.” Christopher wondered if it sounded as lame to her as it did to him.

“And you’re following in their footsteps. Have you ever thought to ask them if they’re happy economists or if there’s something else they’d rather be doing?”

“That would be pretty hard to do. They’re both dead.”

Surprising them both, she glared at him. “That was just mean,” she said. “You let me go there knowing I would make an ass out of myself by asking.”

Christopher hadn’t told a lot of people about his father and grandfather, but there were some he’d purposely wanted to embarrass as punishment for their blatant, insistent curiosity. He’d never had anyone have the nerve to react to his rudeness the way Grace had.

“You’re right. It was mean. I’m sorry.”

She put the plates in the dishwasher. “I’m sorry too. I know what it’s like being where you are and how sometimes you just want to scream at everyone to leave you alone. What is it with people who think it’s okay to poke and prod for every private detail of someone else’s life?”

“I’m going to take a chance here, but how do you know what it’s like? Is your dad dead too?”

She shrugged. “To know something like that I’d have to know who my dad was.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“If you consider death an abandonment, then to have been purposely abandoned by someone who’s still alive would be like a train that runs on the same track, don’t you think?”

Christopher frowned. “I’m confused.”

“Andrew and Cheryl adopted me. I was taken away from my biological mother when one of the neighbors turned her in for leaving me alone while she went on the road with her boyfriend.”

“How long were you by yourself?”

“When I was little, it would be for a day, but then as I got older, it turned into weekends. By the time I was seven, it could be an entire week. The last time was twelve days. That’s when the neighbor stepped in.”

“How old were you then?”

“I was eight when they took me away. The first time she left me—that I remember—was the day of my fourth birthday. Breakfast was a Hostess cupcake with four candles. She made a big deal out of leaving to get my present. When it was bedtime and she still hadn’t come back, I figured it must be a really special present. I waited outside her bedroom door for her to get up the next morning to surprise me, but she’d forgotten. She was sorry and said she’d make it up to me, but she never did.

“After a while, I started picking up the clues when she was about to take off. Most of the time she’d buy one of those enormous jars of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a half gallon of milk, and a big box of cereal. No matter how long she was going to be gone, she’d leave a twenty-dollar bill stuck to the refrigerator with magnets. As I got older she got more creative and sometimes there’d be four five-dollar bills perfectly lined up so that Lincoln was facing the same direction. One day, for Valentine’s Day, she left twenty one-dollar bills arranged in a heart shape.

“I think she was relieved when Child Welfare took me. She knew she never should have had me, and to her credit, she never had another child. At least none that I know of.”

“Was she into drugs?” Christopher asked.

Grace shook her head. “I never saw her high. She was just one of those people who wasn’t meant to be tied down. They write romantic songs about men who are wanderers. Women they crucify.”

“She should have given you up for adoption when you were born.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought about that too. But if she had, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Andrew and Cheryl wouldn’t be my parents, Rebecca and Bobby wouldn’t be my sister and brother. And I wouldn’t have the friends I have.” She shot him a quick smile. “And I wouldn’t have met you.”

“I’m no prize,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“It’s a long, boring story. I’ll save it for another time. Right now, there’s some waves that we need to catch—
dude
.” He raised his hand for a high-five.

“Awesome,” she said, hitting his hand with enough force to make a slapping sound. “Next lesson—what are ankle-snappers?”

“Small waves.”

“Bumps?”

“Small waves that you can still surf.” Christopher grabbed his keys and wallet and the towel he’d left on the back of the chair.

“Mahalo?”

“It means ‘thank you.’ “ Christopher stopped at the front door and turned to Grace, looking into her eyes. “Mahalo, Grace.”

“What for?”

“Everything.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t done—”

He came forward and gave her a kiss, quick, but in no way misdirected.

Grace leaned back and stared at him. “What was that for?”

“Because I felt like it. Actually, I’ve felt like it since I saw you unloading your surfboard from the back of your dad’s van.”

Seconds passed before she came up on her toes and kissed him back. Her kiss was longer and executed with the assurance that it was welcome. “Mahalo to you too, Christopher.”

“What for?”

“Listening. But most of all, not judging. I know my mother wasn’t perfect, but in her own way she loved me. It took a long time for me to realize that sometimes that’s all we get. And it’s okay.”

No, it wasn’t. She deserved so much more. His mother and grandmother hadn’t deserved what happened to them either, nor had he. Nor had the kid he’d seen in a wheelchair at the beach the day he’d gone bike riding who’d been staring at the water with a longing Christopher couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Give me a minute,” he said and headed down the hall toward his bedroom. When he came back, he’d changed into jeans and boots and had his saddle over his arm.

“Change of plans,” he said. “We’re going riding.”

“Why?”

“Because I like the way you look on a horse.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “No—I really want to know why.”

“If you’re going to be working at the stable, I think you should know as much as you can about horses. And I want to be the one who teaches you.”

“Okay, but this isn’t part of the original deal. I pay my own way from now on.”

“Then forget it.” He shifted the saddle higher on his arm.

“Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“Me? It’s you who’s being stubborn.”

“Give me one good reason you should pay my way.”

“Because it’s how I was raised.”