October 30
Do you ever feel like I do, that you just want to go back to blank? No matter what, you can’t get all your mistakes off the canvas. I’ve got like six layers of white paint over my screw-ups; but, folks, it just ain’t the same.
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Aly’s heels clicked along the dock.
Cal looked up from the rope he was coiling and waved.
She hoisted the Stavro’s Pizza box that warmed her hand. This was a celebration. If Cal did nothing for her but roust her out of that job, he’d done her a favor.
The door banged against the cabin of Zeke’s Ambition as Fish stepped into his cockpit. “Aly! Pizza! Come to papa.”
Aly laughed. “Share with us?”
“Right. Did I mention you’re looking smoking hot tonight? So, why don’t you stop by later. We can, uh, discuss the Wall Street Journal.”
Aly halted mid-stride and narrowed her eyes at Fish. If she didn’t know him better she’d think he just hit on her. “Yeah and you’re just looking smoking. You can read the Wall Street Journal? Who knew? College must be paying off.” She steered things toward their usual sibling-like banter.
Fish gave her his lopsided grin. “Funny.”
Her gaze T-boned into Cal’s locked jaw.
She covered the distance between Fish’s slip and Cal’s. Something was going on here that she wasn’t picking up on.
Fish’s, “Later,” sounded behind her as she handed Cal the pizza and bent to scratch Van Gogh’s ears.
“Hey, fella, welcome your new partner.”
When she looked up, Cal’s face had relaxed. He popped the box open and inhaled. “Heaven.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for signing on. For pizza.”
The touch ricocheted along her nerve endings fizzing in every direction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Fish looking their way.
She eyed Cal. “What’s going on between you and Fish?”
“He’s pissed because I accidently got him fired from the convenience mart.”
“And?”
Cal shoved the hatch open. “The pizza is getting cold.”
Twenty minutes later, Aly pushed her glasses up on her nose and drew a skull and crossbones next to e-mail Dad about the charter business on her to-do list. She only seemed to be able to walk so far in life without making a lunge for her father. The little girl inside believed she just had to wake up his love for her.
She answered a comment on her blog, then scooted the laptop away on the tiny, built-in desk.
Van Gogh sniffed at her pizza crust, and she fed it to him.
Cal tossed a sketch pad onto the table. “You look studious in glasses.”
“Woke up too late this morning to put in my contacts.” She glanced at the drawing and marveled at how perfectly Cal captured the wrinkle in her brow as she concentrated.
Cal stood. “We need to go over the estimates I got today on repairing the bow.”
She stared at the portrait, wondering how Cal managed to communicate her mood on paper, even her conflicted feelings about her father. A thought floated up from her subconscious. “You need to paint.” Just like she needed to manage, make money, to be fulfilled.
He glanced around the cabin, his brows crinkling. “I’ve painted the entire boat topside, the hull.”
“On canvas.”
“The business has to come first.”
“No. Who you are comes first. What you do comes second. You are an artist. You do chartering. Promise me you’ll paint thirty minutes a day.”
He shook his head. “If I had any idea how bossy, you’d be….” He smiled. “You know I can’t paint just thirty minutes.”
“Exactly. If you get your emotions out on canvas, you’ll be oh-so-much easier to work with. Go.”
“You just want me out of your hair.”
“I need to think. Organize. Plan.”
“Okay already. I’ll be in my studio at Henna’s if you need me.” He bent over to tie his tennis shoe, and his sweatshirt rode up. His jeans slipped low on his hips. He hadn’t gained back the weight he lost in jail.
Aly saw more of the tattoo on his lower back than she’d ever seen—blue and green ink ornately scrolled what might be the top of a heart. The center appeared hollow. Wavy lines, one on each side of the central tattoo, bore similar scrolling. No doubt, Cal had designed the tattoo himself. She’d first noticed it when they were in high school and Cal was teaching her to surf.
“What’s your tattoo?” She said it like she hadn’t wanted to ask him twenty times before.
Cal straightened, turned toward her. He stared at her as though debating within himself. A smirk broke out on his face. His fingers went to the button on his jeans. “You want me to show you?”
“No!” Aly felt her face warm. “You could just tell me.”
Cal scooped his fifty-pound dog and hefted him through the companionway into the cockpit. “If I wanted you to know.” He shot her another grin and disappeared through the hatch.
She rubbed off the gooseflesh Cal had raised on her arms. If only she could get rid of the wanting he’d awakened in her body as easily. He hadn’t even touched her.
If innocence could be packaged and sold by the pound, she’d need a shopping cart full.
He’d been teasing her about dropping his pants, but he wouldn’t have joked about it before she spent the night in his arms. Now, she trembled on a high wire. Being separated completely from Cal had felt more secure.
He’d always been safe, the one person she could count on to protect her. But then he’d broken her heart. Now she stood to lose their friendship, her dream—everything.
Cal, for reasons known only to him, toyed with her. It wasn’t like he wanted her beyond friendship and business partnership. He’d made that clear when he turned down her offer of sex. Her mind slipped back to the summer before last.
Cal had been devastated when Raine broke up with him, stoned or loaded for days—not a good time for Aly to realize she loved him. Not a good time to think she might be pregnant from a guy she’d caught naked with the assistant camp dietician the week before.
Aly had knocked on the outside garage door where Cal said she could find him. She told him it was an emergency—hers. She didn’t want him thinking this had to do with Raine. She did need Cal. He was her best friend.
No answer. She could see light coming from around the door. She twisted the knob, and the door gave way. Heavy metal music pulsated from a paint-splattered boom box. Cal sat on the foot of an open sofa bed, his back to her. He faced Raine’s portrait propped against a ten-speed bike.
She stepped around the boxes stacked on the grease-stained cement and looked at Cal. He stared blankly at the portrait. Was he high? He looked up at her when she stepped into his field of vision.
She turned the music down. “Raine told me about the other day. I’m sorry.”
His jaw clenched under the coarse, brown stubble. “What’s your emergency?”
She sank down beside him on the bare, fold-out mattress. “I—I think I’m pregnant.”
He looked at her, his expression losing some of the sullenness. “What are you going to do?” His voice was flat.
“I don’t know.” She lay back on the mattress, blowing all the air out of her lungs. “I did the math today.” A tear slipped out of the corner of her eye.
Cal looked down at her. Self-pity and compassion for her warred in his face. Cal dropped onto one elbow beside her. “I’m sorry, Al.” He brushed away the tear with the backs of his fingers. The tenderness he scraped from somewhere deep inside made her want to cry even more.
Cal gathered her to him with one arm and held her while she swallowed the tears in her throat.
She let out a ragged sigh.
“Hey, it’s not a contest. You didn’t have to come up with bigger issues than I’ve got.” Cal lay back, threading an arm around her shoulders.
She gave him a smile that was not a smile.
“Your love language is touch, did you ever realize that? That’s how you give and receive love. That’s why you—”
“Say it. That’s why I sleep with guys when I’ve been taught all my life, it’s wrong.” She squeezed her eyes shut, but tears leaked out the corners running across the bridge of her nose and into her hair.
Cal dropped his free arm over her, and she curled into him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Come on, don’t cry.”
“All I’ve ever wanted was for someone to hold me like you’re holding me now.”
“You haven’t had a dad since you were seven. Of course you’re going to go looking for what you missed.”
The truth of his words soaked into her spirit, and she cried. Silent sobs racked her body.
When she looked up at Cal, the overhead bulb caught tear trails running from the corners of his eyes like slug tracks—for Raine, she was sure. Somehow, that was okay. She had snuggled her nose against Cal’s scratchy neck where skin bunched under his chin. There was no place she would rather have been.
Aly stood and stretched, her fingertips touching the top of the cabin. But then she’d ruined it and offered him sex. Cal had turned her down, sweetly, but he’d turned her down. She’d never met a guy who would refuse sex if he was remotely attracted to the girl. And it hadn’t been a week later that Cal slept with Evie.
He’d kissed Aly to say thanks for listening to his plea for help with his business. Last night he’d thanked her with a hug—one that lasted too long. That was all. Cal had been raised a preacher’s kid. Starr had always been so tightly wound, Aly couldn’t imagine her loosening up enough to have the sex required to produce three children. Why would Cal even want someone like her?
No one would ever mistake her for a good girl like Raine or her sister or Missy. But Aly had begged God for forgiveness, said a thousand Hail Marys. After thirty-one months of abstinence, she felt better than she had in years, but she still couldn’t lift her chin from the shame. And she still starved for physical and emotional connection like she always had.
Dad had broken her heart. Cal had done the same. No way could she survive another one. She would set boundaries with Cal and stick to them.
Fish balanced a Chinet plate of fried fish, slaw and chips as he slid onto the picnic table bench across from Starr and Evie. “Gotta love a church fish fry.” He grinned at them, inhaling the scent of warm fish, grease, and French fries.
Evie leaned toward him giving him a better view of the daisy tattoo and her other attributes. “This is how I always pictured a family reunion.”
Starr’s mouth quirked in a rueful smile. “Only with people you like.” She glanced at Fish. “Hi, stranger. How’re your folks?”
I have no idea. I got their last e-mail six weeks ago. “Fine. Everybody’s fine.” He should have answered them last month. His chest ached when he thought of his family—even after all this time. But they were the ones who left him. They deserved his silence.
Starr glanced at Evie. “Sean’s parents, two sisters, and brother started an orphanage in Peru seven years ago.” Starr focused back on him. “I was just telling Evie, now that she’s got her GED, she should pick up some college classes.”
Relief that Starr switched gears from his family to Evie swam through him. He swallowed a mouthful of snapper. “Go to school, Evangeline, better yourself.”
Evie narrowed her eyes. “What, I’m not good enough for you if I don’t go to stinkin’ college? Well, in street smarts, I’m a freaking genius.”
A wistful expression settled on Starr’s face. “If somebody had cared whether I went to college, maybe I would have gone.”
He’d never thought about what it must have been like to have Henna and Leaf as mother and father. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who felt parentally shortchanged.
“I’ve got ambition,” Evie said. “I want a nice car, My Chemical Romance cranked, wind blowing through my hair, nails done at the salon.”
He had ambition, too, to prove he didn’t need Mom and Dad, to make it in politics. He’d coasted through college on the seven-year plan and figured he’d eventually get around to law school and prepping for a run at the Florida senate. Cal’s nearly deep-sixing the dream had catapulted him into full-on pursuit.
Still, the legal aid idea niggled at him. Ever since Missy mentioned it, he kept envisioning himself in the role—and liking it. Another New Smyrnan, Sue Ellen Henderson had parlayed a her law degree into work for Habitat for Humanity. Yeah, the suggestion warranted exploration. As did Missy and the hurt he’d seen under her anger. He just hadn’t figured out how to approach her.
Missy plopped down on the bench next to him, tossed a hey at the group, and faced Starr. “Could you give me a ride to the library? I’ve got study group in half an hour.”
Fish leaned into Missy’s orange blossom shampoo scent. “I’m headed out. I’ll give you a lift.” He dropped his napkin onto his plate and stood.
Starr shot him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Fish. Say hello to your family for me.”
Way to put a fist in his gut. “Right.”
Missy’s over-sized shoulder bag thumped against her jean-clad hip as she walked beside him. “I saw you wince when Mom mentioned your family. You really need to go see them. Time to get over your mondo issues. Forgive them.”
“When did you switch your major from education to family therapy?”
“Since when do you have a clue what I’m majoring in?”
He looked at her. “I read your Facebook page.”
“Stalker.”
“I think you’re the stalker, finagling a ride from me. Back to your old ways.”
Missy sputtered. “I so did not stalk you. Ever. Forget it. I’m walking.” She veered away from his truck.
He caught her elbow and pulled her back, nose to nose. “I was kidding. Don’t get pissed. I hate it when you’re mad at me. You’re such a shrew.” He backed her up against the truck. “I still haven’t figured out what made you so mad when I asked you out.” He leaned in close to her face. “I vote we kiss and make up.” He saw the freckle dust on her cheeks, her full lips coated in something sparkly he was more than ready to taste. But the pain staring from her eyes before she dropped her gaze doused all desire to tease her.
He straightened and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”
Missy stood still, her face clouded with indecision.
“Please. We need to talk.”
She shot him a wary glance and climbed in.
His gaze snagged on the way her long-sleeved navy T-shirt hugged her curves as he shut the door, and he shot his glance away, kicked some mud from the running board.
He rounded the truck and slid into the driver’s seat. “It seems like you’ve been mad ever since the night I saw you at the marina. What gives?” He cranked the engine and pulled away from the curb.
“I’m fine. We’re fine. No worries.”
“I may not have hung out with you a lot lately, but I remember that bottom lip stuck out. It usually meant Cal had teased you.”
Missy glanced at him. “Hey, thanks for the ride. I really didn’t want to walk.”
“Don’t change the subject. What did I do? Tell me. I’m serious.”
Missy clamped her arms across her waist. “I don’t want to tell you. It’s humiliating. I’ll get over it. Things will work out.”
“We’ve been friends our whole lives, and you’re important to me.” He rolled to a stop at the light at US 1. “Spit it out.”
Missy stared out the passenger window. Her eyes crawled back to his, and she tore them away. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ll sit at this light for a week if it takes that long for me to tell you what you want to know.”
“I will.”
The light turned green. A horn blasted behind them. He bit back a grin. He should thank her for a great idea.
She wilted against the seat. “You win.”
He mashed down the gas pedal and jerked through the intersection. He glanced at her.
“You’re right. I should have talked this out with you years ago.” She faced him. “I didn’t want you to know how immature I really am. I’ve always wanted you to see me as close to your age. That was the problem.” She raked a curl toward her pony tail and it sprung back to where it had been dangling beside her ear. She looked down at her hands. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Whatever it is, I’ll be relieved to know.” He hung a left on First Street. “I really do hate it when you’re pissed—like the time Cal and I played keep-away with your diary. You were in middle school and didn’t speak to me for a week.” He pulled into the New Smyrna Beach Public Library lot, arced into a parking space, and killed the engine.
Missy took a deep breath. “It was the day of my fifteenth birthday party, and I thought I was all that—finally mature enough that you’d look at me as a… woman.” She looked down at the bag she clutched to her chest, cheeks pinking.
Her voice cracked through the mud of his memory, but he couldn’t quite remember the day she was talking about. How much the revelation was costing her and how her words felt like tiny Macy’s-wrapped gifts he desperately wanted—skidded together in his head.
“You and Cal stopped by for your surf boards. I caught you alone by the garage and told you I wanted a kiss for my birthday. You looked me over, and I held my breath. But you called me jailbait and said I’d get my kiss for my eighteenth birthday.” Missy stared out the passenger window, and he strained to hear the words she pushed out with stops and starts.
The day was coming into focus, but still filmy as though he viewed it through a thin curtain. He wasn’t sure if he was seeing the past or the picture Missy painted for him. If she’d wanted him to kiss her when she was fifteen, why wouldn’t she go out with him now?
“So, I waited three birthdays. And… nothing. My eighteenth birthday came and went. The next time I ran into you was three weeks later. You had no clue when my birthday was, much less that you’d promised me a kiss.” She unsnapped her seatbelt.
“July Fifth.” He pulled the date out of nowhere, surprised he had it filed somewhere on his hard drive.
Her lush brows lifted as though he’d surprised her, too. Then they fell, as if his knowing her birthday didn’t matter now. “So, I slammed the Sean book shut.”
He faced her, the depth of her wound—one he inflicted—twisting in his gut. No wonder she couldn’t let it go. “I’m sorry, Mis. I was an idiot. I would never intentionally hurt you. I was thoughtless.”
She looked out the passenger window. “It’s okay.” Her fingers grasped the door handle. “I’ll see you—”
He couldn’t let her get out of the truck until they resolved this thing. He reached across the seat and turned her chin toward him. “It’s not okay. Forgive me. Please. I had no idea.”
Missy’s eyes met his and held. Her forehead puckered. He saw the battle going on inside her, glimpsed how deeply he’d wounded her.
He’d never wanted to fix anything so badly in his life.
She nodded, a tiny jerk of her head. Yes, she forgave him.
Thank God. He lifted a palm to her cheek and leaned toward her to brush his lips across hers, a thank you for a recovered friendship, a fresh start.
Missy shook her head and dislodged his hand, cutting off the kiss before it happened. “I know it’s stupid—my having a crush on you, like, my whole life. But you can relax now. It’s over. No payment of kisses necessary. And I won’t treat you pissy anymore.” She smiled, patted his face as though he were her toddler nephew, and climbed out of the truck. “Thanks for the lift.”
He covered his jaw where she’d touched him. The caress cracked the barrier to the past her words had not. As he watched her walk through the front doors of the library, his mind skipped back to her fifteenth birthday. He’d been trying not to notice how pretty Missy had become for months, maybe even since she’d turned fourteen. A nineteen-year-old noticing a fourteen-year-old was plain creepy.
When Missy asked for a kiss, he’d been shocked by the power of his reaction. And sickened. It had taken every fiber of his self-control not to kiss her.
He’d avoided her after that and taught himself to look through her and not at her. Evidently, he’d been successful—till that night on the dock.
One thing he knew for certain. It would take a lot more work than he’d anticipated, but he’d give her that kiss.
Cal lay on his stomach examining the bow repair. They hadn’t pulled the boat out of the water for the repairs, so he didn’t have the opportunity to repaint Aly’s figurehead. He considered painting from the dinghy or the dock, but the bounce of the Escape would distort his rendering. He sighed. The figurehead had been a whim. It shouldn’t matter so much that Aly had never seen it.
Last week he’d stayed at Henna’s till one a.m. three nights painting Aly in her glasses. It was like some switch inside him turned on, and he couldn’t slow it down. He had to rebuild trust with her, make the wariness in her eyes disappear. That would take time. But there was no reason he couldn’t rebuild trust and make out with her at the same time. He pushed himself to a squat and glanced down the pier.
Aly walked toward him in jeans and a sweatshirt, finally done with the bank. They’d be together all day every day. Today’s agenda: get close to Aly.
Two boats down Fish greeted a customer in a hat covered in fishing lures. “Hey, Aly, how about a ride on a real boat today? One with customers.”
Aly planted her fists on her hips. “What’s with you? You’re not usually mean.”
“True. I was really nice last night.”
“You wish.” This coming onto her act was getting old. Aly crossed the Escape’s gangplank. Her gaze smacked into Cal. “What?”
Cal pressed his lips into a thin line. “Nothing.”
Aly nailed him to the deck with a look. “Tell me.”
“Fish can’t wait to get his hands on you.”
Aly sat on the cabin. “It’s all talk. I don’t know why he’s acting so weird.”
“He’s trying to piss me off.”
“Then, don’t get mad.”
“Obviously, too late.”
“Do you see me hanging out with Fish? I don’t care if he’s proposing marriage and eight kids, I’m not going out with him. I’m not going out with anybody. Ever.”
“Ever?” The absurdity of Aly’s statement made him laugh. “That would be a waste.”
Fish jogged over to the Escape. “I have something for you.” He handed Aly a rolled up Wall Street Journal. “I read it. Stop by after work and we’ll talk.” He shot her a grin.
“I’m done with men.”
“What? Not me. I never did anything to you.”
“Especially you.”
“You’re killing me. Read the article about health care reform.” Fish jogged back to his boat, revved the engine, and yelled to his guests to cast off the mooring lines.
Aly tossed the newspaper through the open hatch and slumped, her elbows propped on her knees on the edge of the cabin. “You still see me as Aly-the-slut who will go out with anybody who asks.” Tears sheened her eyes when she looked up at him. “I haven’t slept with anyone since Gar and the pregnancy scare.” She rubbed her eyes with the balls of her hands. “Even you are disgusted with me.”
Van Gogh licked her face. Aly pulled away from his tongue and petted his head absentmindedly.
Cal squatted down in front of her. “Aly, I don’t ever want to hear you call yourself a slut. Yeah, you had sex with your boyfriends, five or six spread over a lot of years. Most people wouldn’t think it was a big deal. You’ve never disgusted me. Sure, I hated those guys for using you. I hurt when they hurt you. I cared about you. I didn’t blame you.”
“They didn’t mean anything to me. You meant everything. You were my friend.” She stared at the dock.
Cal lifted her chin with his palm. “I’m still your friend.”
“I feel so dirty deep inside. I begged God to forgive me, but I don’t think it took.”
“God’s forgiveness is easy.” Cal gave a dry laugh and glanced at Fish’s empty slip. “It’s people who don’t forgive.”
“Easy? How can you say that? Didn’t you feel guilty about… Evie?”
Shame forced his gaze away from hers. He didn’t want to answer, but Aly needed to hear. “Every… time.” He barely forced the words out.
Two giant tears rolled down her cheeks. “I want…. Help me, Cal.”
He wiped them off with his thumbs. “I’ve got a thousand Bible verses crammed in my head like songs you never forget. One of them says that if you admit what you did was wrong, you’re forgiven, clean.”
“You believe that?”
“How can I afford not to?”
Aly sucked in a strangled breath. Tears streamed down her face. She slid off the cabin into his chest.
He reached a hand behind him on the deck to keep from losing his balance.
Aly knelt on the deck in the circle of his arm, sobs racking her body.
Van Gogh hovered around them, licking at Aly’s elbow, hair, the back of her hand.
She sat back on her heels and dug in her pocket.
Morning breeze cooled the space between them. His sweatshirt felt damp against his skin. He watched Aly blow her nose, warm him with a hopeful smile through bloodshot eyes. She’d never looked more beautiful.
Van Gogh nosed his head under her chin until she pushed him away and laughed. “I feel sort of like the tears washed away my mistakes.”
Cal boosted himself onto the cabin and shook the sleep out of his legs. “That’s what forgiveness feels like.”
Aly scooted onto the cabin beside him and slid her hand into his. “Thanks.”
He’d never measured up to Raine’s spiritual ruler, but for Aly, he was enough—even in his dubious spiritual state of mind. He touched his lips to Aly’s, a benediction on what had transpired. “I still… care.”
When he opened his eyes, Evie stood on the dock glaring at them.
Aly mumbled something about having work to do. Her face blanched beneath the tear tracks, and she tugged her hand out of his.