Spring Tide (20 page)

“You’re holding me spellbound.” The words came out and I wasn’t sure where they’d come from, but they were accurate.

“Spellbound?”

“I feel like I’m caught in a trap when I see you or hear your voice, when you kiss me. It’s wrong.”

He came up the steps. “I don’t understand.”

“I think you do.”

He grasped the edge of the patio table. “I can feel the indecision in you. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You can feel it? How’s—”

“You know we’re supposed to be together! We have connection! I hear the music in your head!” He inhaled sharply through his nose and put his fist to his mouth.

“What did you say?”

He looked away.

“Did you say you hear the music in my head?” I stammered the question two more times.

“I hear the music that streams from your mind into my mind like a radio that only you can turn off. Why? Because we have connection, because we’re supposed to be together.”

I instantly went from blank-faced shock to wide-eyed fright and my feet turned to concrete. I thought of a song, one he would know, and he mouthed the lyrics. I used a different song to the same result.
He’s tapped my subconscious.
Dense silence created an invisible wall between us. His eyes fixed on me and mine on a dent in the chair leg.

“You have to go.” I backed against the door, my heart set to explode. “Now.”

“My eyes glow because of how I am, how I’m made, and that’s the only way I can explain it. I shouldn’t be saying anything about this to you.” He sat down in a chair, his eyes burning with blue light. “I don’t make you see it. You see it because of who you are.”

“I see it because it’s a warning.”

“You’re wrong. You’re asking me to go because of my eyes, the eyes you’ve seen all summer?”

“It’s not just your eyes. It’s everything. I can’t want you, question you, and fear you all at the same time. It’s too much for me to try to hold together at once. Please—”

“Fear me?” His face contorted. “I would never hurt you. I love you.”

“J, I can’t keep ignoring the things I’ve seen or felt or heard when I’m with you.” Tears dripped down my cheeks.

He got up so fast it made me jump. “Why are you crying?”

“Because you’re gonna whisper to me like you did before, do something really bad to me.”

He didn’t move for a minute. “Maybe this is for the best.” The shimmer in his eyes dimmed, his heart shattering through his gaze. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’ll always be waiting for you.”

I watched him walk away.

What have I done?
Grief tore at my soul, overcoming the thought that he was false. I was relieved he’d gone. I wanted to go after him. He would hurt me, but I hated that I’d hurt him first.

I made stir fry to take my mind off of him and everything he’d said. Camped out on the couch, I watched TV but wasn’t aware of the program or what the characters were saying. In my hand was the photo I’d taken out of the trash. My smiling face shined from the glossy paper, making my thoughts more muddled than before. I threw out the stir fry, checked the locks, and crept into bed, the polka dots on the sheets taking me home.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He tossed the phone onto his bed.

“There’s a message for you from …” She stood outside his room. “Why are you packing? You just got back.”

“She doesn’t want to see me. I’m leaving.” He dropped a can of wax into his bag.

“You can’t go. You—”

“She. Does. Not. Want. Me. She was very clear.”

“She’s confused. Look at it from her point of view. She can see it in you and she’s spent all summer trying to figure out how you work into her world. And the connection event is strange and very powerful but we know to expect it, have an understanding of its purpose. But imagine how confounding it was for her to have glimpsed your soul, your truest feelings for her and carry that aspect around with her.” She raised her hand to his shoulder. “Yes, she should be aware by now, but she’s not. You can’t leave.”

“I have to.” He picked up the duffle.

“No. She’ll get there and you’ll be here for her and everything will be as it should. Maybe if she has some time to herself …” She blocked the door. “Where are you going?”

“Portugal.”

“The other side of the Atlantic! The indication, the dream, Devon’s presence. You have to stay and protect her. She’s yours.”

“I talked to Ari. He’s coming tomorrow—”

“Ari isn’t you.”

“I taught him to scan—”

“He doesn’t have your address book of signatures.”

“He’ll call me if he thinks he’s picked up on any darks and I’ll come back. She doesn’t know Ari. He can watch her. You and Donovan are here.”

“Surfing isn’t going to change anything.”

He threw the duffle to the floor, fire cresting in his eyes. “Surfing’s the only thing that’s gonna keep me from doing something I’ll regret!”

“Jason, calm down. Use your amity—”

“I’ll be back in a week.” With the bag over his shoulder, he pushed past her.

_______

I
pulled the phone away from my head, my ear sweaty from Sarah’s babble. She’d been talking about sororities nonstop for thirty minutes. Glancing out the patio door, I watched the last few tourists broil under the September sun. Within a month the beach would be a different place, a quieter place until December or January when snowbirds came.

“Is the job any better?” she said. “Kris?”

“It blows chunks. I swear, Jermaine’s accent gets more irritating every day. He’s so arrogant.”
I wanna be Jeff, orbit his planet. Nothing bothers him.
“I shouldn’t complain. Jermaine’s teaching me some really cool stuff and if I’ve been good he lets me work with the pastry chef.”

“You okay? You sound blah.”

I put on my cheery voice. “Not blah, I’m too busy to be lonely.”

“So do you see or talk to Jericho at all or—”

“No. Dude, if you walked into the beach house right now, you wouldn’t recognize it. In three weeks, Mrs. Black’s had the kitchen retiled, the walls have been repainted, and new furniture came last weekend to replace the horror of Nick’s abuse. I’m no decorator, but it looks really good and the couch is aces.”

“She’s like that. Don’t be surprised if she suddenly insists they need skylights everywhere. Sounds like she’s making you earn your rent.”

“It’s fine. The only thing that’s really given me a problem is a sealant they use. Gives me really bad headaches.”

“Talked to Derek?”

“No, but I’ve left him nine thousand messages. Hey, gotta run. Oh, and tell your boy I found the nineteen alarm clocks he hid around the house to go off every hour of the night and I’ll be up to kick his ass soon.”

I put the phone down and picked up the photo of Jericho and me that was lying on the nightstand. I chucked it back into the trash can where it belonged and headed out. I walked back in, picked up the photo, and shoved it into my backpack. It took so much concentration to block out the feeling of him.

He’ll take me back. He’ll hurt me. He said he’d wait for me. He loves me. Stay away from him. He said this might be for the best. What does that mean? The song played every night in the darkness of my bedroom for three weeks and during the day whenever my mind wasn’t occupied. I was sure I was going insane.

_______

I went through the back door at Crazy Jim’s and waved at my old boss. “Hey, Freddy.”

“What’re you doin’ here? Oh I see.” He gave me a shit-eating grin. “You can have your job back but you’re gonna have to ask real nice and then promise to keep your groove under control.”

“Can’t do it.” I inclined my head to the door.

He turned off the burner and followed me outside.

He sat on the step and scratched at a dried stain on his apron.

“What do you do when a crush goes bad, when you realize that you’ve been playing with fire and it’s only a question of time before you get incinerated?” I asked.

“More.”

“Ummm … what do you do when your mind and heart don’t agree? When logic tells you to walk away but your heart tells you to go back. Am I making sense?”

“Got it. Once I had two women, Brenda and Ashley. Quit gigglin’ if you want my help. Brenda was fine, fine, fine, with a tight little booty and Ashley was a big girl with a booty that said wah-bam! Now, my brain,” he pointed between his legs, “told me Brenda was the one, but my soul knew it was Ashley. Ashley was so much more because she and I could spend a weekend together and do nothing more than talk about the right way to make potato salad. You dig?”

Potato salad? There’s lots of great ways to make potato salad. Asking Freddy for advice, mistake noted.
Jericho was both Brenda and Ashley, Freddy’s story pitting one brain against the other with no alignment to my issue whatsoever.

“Read between the booties. Listen to your soul. Don’t think with your hormones, don’t think with your head, just listen to your soul. All right, I gotta get back to the new guy. He’s been trying to fill your shoes and might get there in three or four sizes.” He put his hand on my arm. “You’re makin’ life harder than it needs to be.”

Another long week came and went, and then another and then four more.

It was my turn to handpick the catch of the day. Jeff was saddled with a run to the farmer’s market, a place he found utterly orgasmic. I stood in the lot at the docks and scraped my bottom lip with my fingernail.
It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Donovan’s boats were moored in the docks adjacent to the fish market. The last week or so, Jericho’s truck had been parked there, as it was that morning. And there he was, coming up the gangway with a few other guys. Our eyes met for less than a second and our connection hummed.
He’d never hurt me. Yes he will.
I sped up with my head down, forcing myself to deny him and fray the thick twine that held us together.
You can’t have me
.
You can’t have me.

Much of my free time was spent knitting or playing guitar. I recoiled from the delight I received from two sticks and a bundle of yarn, but regained my sense of cool by rockin’ out. Doing either activity I was stoned by how fast my hands were working, how liquid my fingers were on the strings—it truly did, as Jericho would say, make me wonder. It was like my skill had advanced three-fold and was one of few things that gave me some happiness. I thought about Derek too much. I missed surfing.

I hung out with Jeff a couple of times, did some yoga with him. Although he was a fruitcake with nuts, he made me smile with his observations of the most common things like the utility and stunning advancement of technology that was a spatula or that his truest, deepest wish was to discover every wonder of Canada. Julia came over one evening and I made her lamb, our conversation revolving around my job, her upcoming travel and nothing of Jericho.

_______

My acoustic was helping me loosen up after a particularly nasty day with Jermaine, my attention somewhere between the song and Saturn.

“Hello, lovely Kris.” He entered and sat at the other end of the sofa, his voice hypnotic. “You play very well.”

The dryer signal went off. My back was against the living room wall. My knees gave out and I slid to the floor.
What was I doing?
I got up, flattened the wrinkles out of my shirt, refastened the top button of my shorts, crossed the room and took the photo from my birthday out of my backpack and put it in the garbage disposal, turning off the a/c en route.

_______

Late Friday night it stormed. The palms battered the siding, the windows rattled, and the sea threatened its holdings, its thrash audible from the back of the house. Thunder was gunshots and lightning made a static view of rain in diagonals. In bed, the noise put me to sleep, but hours later the wind woke me. The clouds had blown inland and moonlight coated the parted drapes in gold.
Go to the ocean.
My shadow fell through yellow beams onto damp sand and I went to the water. I was alone in the dark, frightened, waves smashing against my calves.
Am I awake or asleep?
The breeze tossed my hair and I saw it. It went for miles into the ocean, so far I couldn’t see its end. The colors were so brilliant, so beautiful that I was struck with wonder and fear. It flowed with the water’s surface but its shape and direction were steadfast, making a sparkling pathway of light, blues and greens predominant. It was the same amazing light that I’d seen the morning after I’d slept on the beach with Jericho. It pulled at my soul, wanting me to step forward. Then as quickly as it came it vanished. What I’d seen was a hallucination, but I couldn’t reject the melody he’d given me that was playing in my ears. The longer I stood waiting for it to reappear the harder the wind blew, until it pushed me to go back.