Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (24 page)

“I’m so sorry, Jack.” I thought he was going to cry. My head throbbed. Jack had to be in pain, too. Greater than I could comprehend. I’d only known Tank a few weeks. “Jack?”

He inhaled and exhaled. He peered at the ceiling and regrouped. When he faced me again, he asked, “Are you staying here?”

“No. I’m leaving.”

Mila pulled her towel off the line out back.

“Text me when you get home.”

I wasn’t sure I was going home. I didn’t know where I should be.

I did know.
I should be with Tank.
He should’ve been here talking too fast for me to keep up with him and preparing the kayaks for us to take them out later just before dawn. I’d be smiling just because he was near me.

“Nora.”

“What?”

“Text me.”

I nodded, and he picked up his bag and walked out the back door of our porch.

Jack talked to the others. No one could function without some direction, and he was the one they’d always depended on. He sent them home. Back to their families, and told them he was going to Tank’s mom’s. That he’d call when he knew something.

The engine of Rob’s BMW was the only one recognizable. He revved it as he pulled onto Route 1. The rest were just a series of car doors being shut and engine rumbles, and then there was silence. The house was dim; the world was a flat beige. Air entered my body and pushed my chest out. I stood in the middle of the room and recognized I was a microscopic being in the middle of a shack off Route 1 in Dewey, Delaware. I was twirling around the sun in a universe that was miniscule in comparison to so many others, and I was devastated. If such a small being could feel this, how did the world go on?

I ran my hand across the kitchen counter but didn’t turn on the lights. I let my fingers linger over the old boom box on the counter Tank would play the local radio station from and sing at the top of his lungs while he flipped pancakes. I stared back at the doorway he’d flown through and forced my eyes shut to hold back the tears.

When the others were there, when I wasn’t alone, I didn’t believe it, but now that I was by myself I knew he was gone. I couldn’t feel the excitement anymore. I didn’t hear the lightness of his words. I couldn’t remember what his laughter sounded like.

I ran to the bedroom Tank had shared with Stone. His Thomas the Tank beach towel hung over the closet door. It had been left there to dry from his shower the weekend before. I pulled it off the door and held it to my face. I hugged it and tried to squeeze him from it, but it was only a towel, mere cotton. I laid down and curled my knees to my chest.

I didn’t sob. There wasn’t enough left of me to muster a sob. I cried with my eyes closed. I tried to hide from the reality of a world without him. It was absolutely impossible that he’d died. Except everyone had left. They’d packed their cars and one by one they’d gone home because he was no longer with us.

The depth of my sorrow hurt me physically. It tore through me. I’d felt empty for so long. I’d sealed off my interior so efficiently that no emotions could leak through, but now I was flooded with despair as if someone poured it down my throat. I was choking on it.

I wanted him to take me with him, out to the sea, and swim with me again. We could bring the kayaks. He could yell at me and punch the side of the house; I didn’t care.
Why didn’t he tell me he was leaving?
He had to have known. Tank knew everything. He listened and he thought. He was at one with the world. I was alone.

A touch startled me. I opened my eyes to Jack kneeling beside me. “Nora,” he said, but I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t stop crying. I gripped the towel harder between my fingers and closed my eyes again.

Jack laid down with me and let me cry until even sorrow abandoned me. I stayed on my side and stared past Jack to the outside. The hip-hop music our neighbors loved poured through the open windows and surrounded us. I didn’t care about it. I didn’t care about any of it. I started to cry again.

“Shh,” he said and played with my hair.

It wasn’t fair. I sat up and faced Jack. He was so good. How would he stay on this earth without Tank? How would any of us? Why would we even want to?

Jack sat up and faced me. He was some lost version of himself, no longer the same person without his best friend somewhere in the world. I searched his eyes for hurt or anger, but all I saw were questions.

He looked from my eyes to my mouth and back up again. “Were you in love with him, Nora?” My tears flowed again at his question, and I couldn’t face them. I closed my eyes and lowered my head again. “It’s okay. Tell me if you were.”

I shook my head. “It’s so much worse.” Jack held my face in his hands, not letting me look away. “I was inspired by him.” My head dropped to his shoulder, and Jack held me while I cried.

He pulled me on top of him and laid us back down. I held on to Jack, terrified he might disappear, too. He stayed with me until the house filled with darkness and my mind finally stopped thinking.

“Why did you come back?” I asked, tracing the seam of his T-shirt with my finger.

“He wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

“How did you know I was alone?”

“Because you’re always alone. Except when you were with him.”

I would have burst into tears, but there were none left.

Without a word, I shut my eyes.

DON’T BREAK ME

“S
afeOne. This is Sharon.”

My eyes rolled so far back in my head I might have been permanently disabled. “Sharon. It’s Nora.”

“Why are you not here? Your shift starts in ten minutes.”

“Sorry I didn’t call sooner. One of my roommates died yesterday, and I’m not going to be able to make it in.”

She was chewing something. It didn’t sound like gum. My face scrunched up in disgust. “That’s terrible. Who was it?”

“His name was Ta—Thomas Kragler.” I assumed she was searching the internet as I spoke, because Sharon wasn’t the type to believe a word her employees said. Perhaps a life spent in claims had dulled her to the possibility of honesty among humans. I didn’t care what she looked up.

“When did he die?”

“I’m not sure. We found out about it last night.” The words sounded ridiculous leaving my mouth. How could I not know when exactly? There was a moment when people stopped being alive. When the truck hit them. When the water filled their lungs. When the blood poured out. But with Tank, I wasn’t even sure what had happened, and no one seemed to know exactly when he’d left.

“Well, I’m sorry for your loss. Was he a relative?”

I now assumed she was searching the manager’s toolbox to see if I was entitled to any time off. I fell back on my bed. She exhausted me, or maybe I was exhausted and she forced me to realize it because she was interacting with me.

“I can approve you for a half day off for the funeral.”

A half day. I was going to need a year or two. “Well, then you’ll just have to dock me or fire me, because I’m not coming back in for a few days.”

“I’m not sure who you think you are.” Sharon sounded truly confused. I’d never spoken to her with anything but respect before.

“Funny. I feel surer of it than I have in five years. I think that means something, don’t you, Sharon?”

“I have to call HR. I’ll get back to you.”

“Great. Thanks.” I hung up the phone and didn’t care if I ever heard from her again. I texted Ricky that my roommate had died and I wasn’t coming to work. He’d worry about me and he’d care that Tank had died. Ricky still felt everything. I was just starting to feel something when Tank had gone. Now I couldn’t feel anything but pain.

I could say Mila’s house was exactly as I’d imagined it, but the reality of her home was beyond my ability to dream. It was enormous, perched upon a pristine grassy lawn, and surrounded by other outstanding residences.

I rang the doorbell. My eyes followed the ornate iron knocker up the dark wood to the top of the door. I judged it against myself. It was at least ten feet tall, and there was a matching one next to it.

Mila swung it open without an ounce of exertion. It might as well have been the screen door on my porch bedroom. “Nora!” Her face lit up, and I was beckoned into Mila’s world of light. She’d make this better. For all of us.

I followed her into the kitchen. The house was an endless stream of interesting walls doused in cool colors such as pale gray or white with a touch of rose quartz. Colors that reflected more light than I thought reached the earth. Walls of glass doors with windows above them drenched the room in daytime. It was the perfect mix of style and warmth. It was Mila.

The kitchen was surrounded by a counter top and six stools on the sides that bordered the great room. A table and six chairs sat off to the side, next to the first row of glass doors, and looked out onto the back terrace. An island in the middle of the kitchen sat three more.

“Just you and your dad live here?”

Mila stopped pouring water in our blue crystal glasses and considered the enormous room. My eyes rose to the exposed beams arched above us and the curved window at the end of the ceiling. They were all a bright white. “It’s one of the big reasons I didn’t go to the beach for the whole summer with Jack. I couldn’t leave my dad here alone.”

I nodded. I’d left mine alone with my mother. “Your house is beautiful.” I took a sip of the perfectly crisp water. “It reminds me of you.”

“It reminds me of my mother,” she said, and I searched for a new subject to talk about.

“Thanks for letting me stay here for the funeral.”

Mila stopped drinking and stared at me. How could I have not upset her about her mother, but stumbled with gratitude? Her story was as fucked up as my own, but Mila had somehow survived. “I should be thanking you. You’re the only one who makes sense out of this group. Well, you and Jack, but now it’s just you.”

I shook my head. I was stunned. “What?”

“Nora, Tank loved you because you understood him, and somehow you could speak his language and still talk to the rest of us. You’re good at it.”

“I’m terrible at it. I never communicate with anyone.”

“Well, then you’re good at us. You’re exactly what this group needs, and I’m thankful you’re here with me.”

We carried our glasses past the first laundry room and the library. We climbed the central staircase and walked by three other bedrooms before we arrived at Mila’s suite. It was her in architectural form. The light poured into the room from her balcony. The walls were the same muted hue of a winter breeze, but her bedding exploded with color. It was Marrakesh, and the pillows piled high on it made me want to run from fifteen feet away and dive into it. Double doors opened to her closet, where beautiful things were housed. Over the door hung a purple dress with ruffles at the hem waiting to attend a ball that wasn’t on the day’s agenda. A special hanger peeked out with scarves of all different patterns and textures. The room was rich with color.

“I know there’s going to be a lot of people you know. Don’t feel like you have to take care of me. I’ll be fine.”
Fine.
The word even stung in my own mind. I might never be fine again.

Mila stopped searching her room for the black wedges she was looking for. “You stand by me. The whole day tomorrow.”

“I feel strange even being here. You guys all knew each other for years. I barely knew him two months.”

“Listen, Tank thought every person comes into our lives for a reason. That no interaction is insignificant. He was right. You’re supposed to be here as much as the rest of us.”

I let my gaze fall to the floor where Mila’s weekend bag sat. It was still packed, not an item removed since she’d returned after hearing of Tank’s death.

“Let’s go,” she said, and I forced my feet to move forward.

I drove, and Mila took me the long way to the bar where we were meeting everyone. We passed the Bethesda Chevy Chase High School they’d all attended. The home of the B-CC Barons, where you could try out for every team from football to bocce. The house Tank grew up in was quaint and on the corner of a busy street. It could probably fit inside Mila’s bedroom. There was a candle lit in the window and soft light coming from the side of the modest two-story. Finally, she led me to Rob’s house, which was almost as impressive as her own.