Beyond the Rising Tide (27 page)

I look up into his eyes. The teasing expression I expect to see isn’t there. Instead, his face is grave. I let go of his shirt, and he lowers it back down.

I’m wrong. It’s not him. And yet, it’s Kai’s face on the boy in my memory. Maybe I’m imposing it onto the faceless boy from last winter. It makes sense, seeing how Kai has rescued me too, just in a different way.

Or maybe I’m going crazy.

“Yes,” I admit, looking at the floor as a hot wave of embarrassment makes its way to my cheeks. “I thought …” I shake my head. “Sorry. Just forget that happened.”

He turns to face me. “What—”

“Please don’t ask. You’ll think I’ve lost it.”

He gazes at me for a long time, a million questions in his eyes that sometimes toy on the edge of his lips. But he keeps them in and finally draws me into his arms. For now, I brush aside the confusing memories and instead breathe in deeply this warm and alive boy, as though it will somehow make him a part of me, fuse us together into something unbreakable. And then I whisper the words that have been burning on my lips all day. “I love you, Kai.”

His arms tighten around me, and I feel his warm breath whispering in my ear. “I love you, Avery. Promise you’ll never forget that.”

I pull back to look into his eyes. They’re the eyes of someone who’s peered over a dark horizon and seen a tornado stirring. He’s talking as if he’s leaving tomorrow, and panic surges through me. I don’t understand why he can’t find a way to stay, especially now that I know how he feels about me. I open my mouth to voice my thoughts, but stop myself. Something tells me I need to be patient with him. I don’t know everything he’s been through, but he probably has a hard time trusting the permanence of anything. Whatever his circumstances are, I know we can work through them. With time, I can convince him to stay. For Isadora. For his sisters. For me.

I reach up and brush a piece of his white hair from his forehead, then whisper, “Some things last.” I don’t know how I know this, especially when I’ve seen my own parents separate. But I have to believe that it’s possible for love to last, for two people to stay together through thick and thin.

He leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes. For a few breaths, he says nothing, and then, “Can I take you somewhere tomorrow?”

I nod, and his smile widens, showcasing that adorable crease in his cheek. Instead of restraining myself like I have the last couple days, I rise to my toes and kiss it.

“I have some things to do in the morning,” he says, opening his eyes. “But I can pick you up at noon. Do you think you can get off work?”

I nod affirmatively, figuring that with enough groveling, Paige or Sophie will cover for me. “Just pick me up at the shop. Or I can meet you here.” It occurs to me that right now, my Cherokee is parked in the dry garage at home. “And by the way … can you give me a ride home tonight? Paige dropped me off.”

He presses his lips to my forehead. “Of course.”

I don’t feel the rain as we walk to Isadora’s truck, because all my nerve endings seem to have migrated to where his fingers are laced between mine. And when he drops me off, his kiss good-night is full of the promise of more to come, and I feel a binding thread strengthening between us. I only hope it will grow strong enough to make him stay.

stand in front of Ed’s Guitar World, clutching the handle of my case. The instrument inside is so much more than a guitar. It’s three months of hard work in Charles’s vineyard. Thirty-two hundred dollars. It’s my identity and self-worth. My sounding board and vent for things otherwise too hard or risky to express. But most of all, it’s my dreams. And this morning, I’m going to trade it all in for cash.

I try to tell myself that it’s not really a loss or a sacrifice since I can’t take my guitar with me anyway, but my feet still refuse to carry me through the sliding glass doors. I don’t want to let it go. Not yet. I still have a little more time, don’t I? I catch my reflection in the glass. I look like a regular teenage boy. I can almost imagine that I am. Maybe for just one day, I can pretend to be.

My fingers tighten around the case handle, and my feet turn and take me down the sidewalk, away from the store.

Today, I’m not dead. I’m just a kid with a dream. I have a heart that beats and pumps blood through my veins. Today, I’m just a seventeen-year-old boy trying to impress a seventeen-year-old girl. A girl I actually have a chance with. I’m a boy who has a tomorrow, and a day after tomorrow, and many days after that.

Just for one day, I’m going to pretend that I’ve earned this life that’s finally worth living.

I stop at the corner and lay my guitar case on the concrete, unlatching the lid and opening it. I take out my guitar and sling the strap over my shoulder, then tune the strings and start playing. It doesn’t take long for passersby to notice. They slow down, turning their heads to watch, then stop and come closer. When I start singing, a small crowd forms around me, heads nodding and feet tapping. Dollar bills and coins drop into my guitar case like rain in an empty well.

I play song after song, each followed by applause and whistles and enthusiastic compliments. I have the sensation of finding something that’s been lost for a long time, relief and rejoicing and remembering why it was so important to me in the first place. Before I died, music was one of the few things that made me feel alive. Not much has changed about that.

By late morning, my guitar case is littered with bills and coins. I take the money and drive Isadora’s truck to a department store where I buy some new shorts and a nice button-down shirt. Next, I go to the grocery store and pick up picnic supplies. And then, very discreetly, I leave what’s left of my cash in an envelope in the office of the shop owner whose window I broke, along with a note of apology. At noon, I drive to the chocolate shop and pick up the girl I love.

On a grassy cliff overlooking the ocean, Avery sits across from me on one of Isadora’s colorful woven blankets. She’s wearing capris and a sleeveless blouse, and her freckled shoulders are making it really hard to appreciate the spectacular view. A warm breeze stirs her hair and the grass around us, and the sun hits her just right, making her edges incandescent. I can’t believe she’s really here with me, glancing at me between bites of her lunch with a little smile that says she’s thinking as much about our kiss the night before as I am. Of all the things I thought might happen by stealing Charles’s ring, this was the least expected.

She picks up a strawberry and bites it in half, studying the open flesh while chewing the other half. She looks so content, and I think how I’ve never seen her truly happy until today. The tense lines in her face are all smoothed out, and without the worry and pain in her eyes, she looks almost childlike. Innocent and carefree. She’s never looked more beautiful.

I want her to always look this way. I know that’s not possible, but this is how I want to remember her.

For now, I banish all thoughts of what tomorrow will bring, and allow myself to imagine a future with her. A lifetime of days just like today, at the end of which I’ll have a million mental snapshots of her hair stirring in the ocean breeze, of her freckled cheeks turning pink, of her blue eyes rising to meet mine, of her soft lips parting to say my name. I see her hair pinned up and adorned with white flowers and a veil. I see her greeting me with a smile in the doorway of our little home. I see her in the ocean, laughing while teaching our kids to surf.

A flood of pain and joy and longing rises up inside me, and if I don’t open the floodgates now, I just might drown all over again. So I pick up my guitar, and set the deluge free.

Avery watches in quiet appreciation as I strum a progression of chords in a swaying rhythm, like a boat rocking gently in undulating waves. It comes easy, like the song was already written and I’m merely reading the tablature. The words come effortlessly too, as though they’ve been floating around in my mind for months, and now I’m plucking them out of the air and dropping them into their rightful place in the melody.

“In this borrowed heaven, in this sliver of time … A lifetime unfolds where I’m hers and she’s mine.”

The way her blue eyes light up at my lyrics makes my lungs swell, making it kind of hard to get the next lines out.

“The sky is raining stars, four seasons intertwine…. She makes the tides reverse and the drums beat out of time.”

She closes her eyes as though she doesn’t want her vision getting in the way of the music. It seems to draw her in, and her body slowly leans toward me until she’s so close I can see the individual eyelashes shadowing her cheeks.

“I’m lost in her embrace, tangled in gold hair…. Breathing in white petals, blissfully ensnared.”

In all my attempts to escape the misery of my childhood by imagining a brighter future, I never imagined this. Never imagined her. How it feels to love her. How it makes me wish I were a better person. How it makes me want to find all the dark things inside of me and wrench them out and burn them. I almost feel unworthy of her love and vitality and beauty. I never could have imagined it, because it’s a beauty that can’t be seen with the eye.

“She’s a black swan in the sea, an unexpected good charm…. My heart was buried alive, but it rises in her arms.”

As the last chord resonates in the salty air, Avery gazes at me quietly with a look I can’t quite discern. Every time I think I can define it, it changes to something else. Awe, reverence, and admiration all cross her face before her lips curve into a warm smile. She tilts her head and squints at me, then asks softly, “Where did you come from?”

I don’t know how to answer, so I just give a breathy laugh.

She scoots closer until her knees are touching mine, and then she shakes her head. “I’m serious.” She sighs, and I feel her sweet breath on my face. It makes me want to kiss her, but she’s studying me so intensely that I figure it’s probably not the right moment. “Where did you come from?” she repeats.

I set my guitar on the blanket so there’s nothing between us. “Michigan, remember?”

“I’ve never met anyone like you.” Her hand comes to my shirt collar, and she clutches it between her fingers. Now I really want to kiss her. But she keeps talking. “Four days ago, my life was something different. And then you come along, and now …” Her blue eyes slowly well up and she gets this worried look on her face as though someone just gave her bad news.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, brushing her cheek with the back of my finger.

“Nothing. I’m just … dangerously happy.” Her hand comes to rest on my knee, sending a shot of heat up my leg and into my abdomen. Her other hand is still on my collar, and she tugs me closer until her lips find mine. Her kiss is so soft and exquisite that for a moment the cliff and the ocean and the sky fall away, because there’s only her.

She leans back and looks at me, the fear gone from her face. “So what do I need to do to get more answers from you today?”

I clear my throat, still reeling a bit from her kiss. “Nothing. You have a VIP pass now.”

She raises one corner of her mouth and a skeptical eyebrow.

I’ll probably never have an obituary, or a eulogy, or even a gravestone. Nothing to leave behind to tell people about my short and pathetic life. But I want to leave some of myself behind. I want someone to know and remember me, not only for who I was as a kid, but for who I’ve become. “I’m an open book, Avery Ambrose. I want you to know everything about me.”