The knock at the door came a half-hour after my food arrived. It was like a blurry echo. Had it really happened? I took another swig of Corona Extra and kept my eyes on A League of Their Own, the only light I could endure in the living room. The closed curtains blocked the brightness of the summer day. Hopefully if someone was there, they would just go away.
The doorbell rang.
I pried myself out of my nest of pillows on the couch, wrapping my dad’s loose flannel around my bare midriff. My half-full bottle accompanied me to the door. Through the sheer curtains, I saw his familiar silhouette.
“Hey, babe,” I said after cracking open the door. Even squinting, I couldn’t see Jake clearly. “God, it’s so bright.” Why did it have to be sunny today? It was overcast and dreary every other day. Could the weather not cooperate for once in this shit town? “Come inside.” I ushered him in and tipped my beer to my lips as I made my way back to the couch.
“I’ve been texting you all morning. Where’s your phone?”
Geez, Jake wasn’t usually such a girl.
“Uh…” I did a cursory search of the room and ruffled my matted ponytail, “I think it died. Beer?”
Jake closed the door behind him. He eyed the living room, taking in the empty bottles and partially eaten order of fish and chips. “No, it’s two in the afternoon. Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m pacing myself. I’ll be hammered in six hours if you want to stick around.” I tilted my beer toward him, half-singing, “You’ll get lucky once I break out the tequila.”
“Sawyer, what’s wrong with you?”
“You’re mad that you’re going to get to have sex?”
“I’m not having sex with you when you’re like this.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow and dropped my flannel to the ground, standing before him in just my black bra and matching cheeky lace panties.
“What’s the matter with you?”
After I swallowed the rest of my beer, I slammed the bottle on the coffee table. “It’s July 17,” I declared as I popped open another beer.
“So?”
I dropped to the couch and kicked my heels on the table, crossing one over the other. “Have I ever told you how my dad died?”
He sat next to me and rested his elbow on the back of the couch. “Car accident, right?”
“Rock slide on Highway 199. He swerved around it, but the roads were slick because it was raining. The car rolled down the bank toward the river until it hit a tree. Landed upside down. Dad was pinned in his seat, his gut sliced open by his seatbelt. He just kept saying, ‘Todo va estar bien, mi niña. Todo va estar bien,’ as he bled to death. I hung upside down in my booster seat watching him die as he told me everything would be okay. Over and over: everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be fucking okay.”
“Sawyer.” Jake rubbed a lock of my hair between his fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the car?”
I just shook my head as I took another sip, the neck of the bottle between my middle and ring finger.
“It was today?”
I nodded. “Ten years ago.”
“Then why isn’t your mom here?”
I sat up and swiped the bottle from the table. “Do you know how long she waited to get remarried?” Before Jake could answer, I stood and added, “Eleven months.” I circled the room as I guzzled the beer, the sting of the bubbles dulled by the drinks that came before it. “She couldn’t even wait a full year.”
“You had a stepdad?”
“Have.”
“Where is he?”
“Prison. Oh, excuse me, Dad is in prison,” I said with feigned endearment. “They started the adoption paperwork the week after he proposed. Changed my name and everything. Sawyer Emilia Lindley.”
“De la Cruz isn’t your last name?”
I shook my head as I drank the last inch.
“We went out to dinner when the adoption was finalized. Some bullshit about celebrating, I don’t know. My mom had a shift afterward, so Jeff tucked me in that night, insisted on it, like I was incapable of getting under blankets by myself. I mean, really? I was almost eight. He brought his laptop. I thought maybe I’d get to watch a show before bed. Sometimes Mom would let me do that. But Jeff pulled up this video of a man and a girl my age.”
I gazed down at the bottle, regretting its emptiness. “I couldn’t understand what they were doing, but I knew I didn’t want to watch. Jeff said, ‘This is what we get to do now. This is what daddies and daughters do. Isn’t it beautiful?’ Then he prayed with me,” I cackled. “After, he pushed this kiss on my lips the way he kissed my mom and said, ‘Our secret, baby girl.’”
“God, I’m so sorry.” He stood and brushed his hand down my arm. “He’s in jail now, right? He can’t hurt you any—”
“Bullshit,” I screamed and threw the bottle at the wall. It shattered, the remaining liquid splattering sticky drops on the matte-yellow paint.
“What?”
“If you’re going to be an ass, you should just leave!” I pointed at the door and yelled, “Go! I didn’t invite you over. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“No, I’m not leaving you like this. And where the hell is your mom?”
“In Portland with her sister. She’s been leaving me home alone every July 17 since I was eleven.”
“Why?”
“So I can get drunk and she can pretend it doesn’t happen.” I reached for another beer on the coffee table.
Jake clutched my wrist. “I can’t pretend it’s not happening.”
“Sure you can.” I struggled to try to get free, but his hand grasped me tighter.
“Let go of the bottle.”
“I told you to fuck off!”
“Let go, babe,” he said softly as his body eased closer to mine.
“Please.” I choked on tears that ambushed me. “I don’t want you here.”
He pulled me into him and whispered, “I don’t care.” His fingers slid down my wrist to the beer in my fist, forcing me to release it into his hand. I huddled into his chest and sobbed. “I’m here,” he breathed, “I’m here.” And somehow, that was enough.
I woke up under a thin blanket on the couch. A clear glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen stood on the table in front of me. All the beer bottles and trash were gone, and the curtains were open to let in the bearable evening sun. I sat halfway up and swallowed four pills to quiet the pounding in my head. All the broken glass and beer had been cleaned up from my tantrum.
There was a warm hand on my calf. “How are you feeling?” Jake’s eyes were soft like milk chocolate, his expression expectant and anxious as he searched my face.
I wiped a tear from my cheek. “Jake, I can’t…” I shook my head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t think about it.”
“You stayed?”
“Well, yeah. I had never seen A League of Their Own before. Tom Hanks was phenomenal.” He smirked, and I laughed even though it stabbed pain through forehead. “Can I ask you something?”
I nodded.
“Where was your dad buried?”
“Uh, he wasn’t. He was cremated. We scattered his ashes in the water at Harris Beach.”
He glanced up and around to think, then nodded. “Okay, that’ll work.”
At the late red sunset, we walked down to the beach, following the fallen tree my dad and I used to read against. Barefoot, I led Jake by the hand to the water where we said goodbye to my father. I took off my sweatshirt, then my jean shorts, throwing both in the sand. Then I slipped my fingers under Jake’s shirt and pulled it over his head.
He followed me until I was hip-deep in the water, until the surf was too loud for me to hear anything on the shore. I dove under a shimmering wave as it crashed in front of me. The icy water rolled through my long hair and down my spine, arching the small of my back and bending my knees. I came up for air, watching the purple sky burn fuchsia at the horizon. Jake’s shaking hand slid over my waist. Poor guy had no fat to keep him warm. I had never seen him put more than his feet in the ocean.
He combed his fingers through his hair and said, “Beat you to the next wave.” He took off into the water in front of me and dove into a cresting wave, shaking his hair out like a dog when he resurfaced. I swam out to meet him, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling my body close to his. Cold skin to skin, we shivered and laughed through chattering teeth as the waves rocked us and occasionally tumbled us to the sand.
Wrapped together in a towel on the shore, we watched the violet sky darken to black and the stars appear one by one. “This will be July 17 from now on,” Jake whispered against my cheek.
“Every year?”
“Every year.”