Full Share (Shore House Book 1) (8 page)

I lifted my head and faced him. I let my legs fall to his sides and sat up, straddling him. I could do this tonight. I could do Jack. I stared into his eyes and thought he was thinking the same thing, but the possibility of Mila sleeping in his bed tomorrow stopped me. I leaned over to climb off him, and he grabbed me and pulled me back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I smiled to hide everything I was thinking and moved next to him. “I think we should go back, too.”

“What happened?” Jack sat up next to me. His glare dove into me, opening me up and searching for the answers I’d never give him. “What changed in the last ten seconds?”

“Nothing. I swear. I just woke up.” I stood and found my flip-flops. “Let’s go back to the house.” My heart pounded against my bathing suit top. The throbbing crept up my neck and lodged in my throat. He was confusing me, and I hated him for it. “I need to go back.” Suddenly, the situation seemed urgent. He asked too many questions. He actually listened to the answers. He refused to let me hide and he was right here with me. I swallowed hard.

“Nora?” The moonlight shone on him. His beautiful chest was a stark contrast to the bewildered expression on his face.

“What? What do you want from me?”

“I want you.”

“Why? Because you can’t have me?”

“Is that what you think?” Jack stood and violently rolled the sheet into a ball. “You think you’re some acquisition?”

“Aren’t I? We’re at the beach. Isn’t everyone?”

“I don’t know.” He stood waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to share. “Yeah. I guess. But that’s not why I want you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“Whose fault is that?”

“Can we just go?” I pleaded with my eyes and the tone of my voice and the look of pure torture I knew was covering my face.

Jack stretched out his hand toward the dune, beckoning me to lead the way. He let out a frustrated sigh. “After you.”

I walked forward through the soft sand, taking deep breaths with every stride. By the time we reached our porch, I regretted every word that had come out of my mouth, including the initial acceptance of his offer to go to the beach. He was my roommate. I wasn’t going to have sex with him or anyone else in this house. I dropped my shells in the pile at the end of my bed with all the broken ones I’d found before.

I locked myself in the bathroom and tried to sort through my feelings. It wasn’t as easy as usual. They were layered on top of each other, and their uneven edges couldn’t be piled together perfectly. The people here were driving me crazy.

When I returned to our room, he was gone. I was alone again. I laid down on my bed and let my feet hang over the edge. I heard the outside shower and knew he was in it. He didn’t sing at the top of his lungs the way Rob would have. He was just there, and I knew it because he was Jack.

The water turned off. I waited for him to return. I wanted him near me. I shut my eyes and tried to fall asleep, but the thought of him wouldn’t allow any peace in my mind. Maybe he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he slept in another room during the week. Maybe he hated me.

The back door creaked, and my eyes shot open. Jack walked in wearing only a towel, and I stared at him like some lovesick puppy. I couldn’t look away.

Jack smiled and put me at ease. “What time is it?”

“A little after four,” I told him.

“I have to get up for work tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry I fell asleep on the beach. I was exhausted from adjusting insurance claims all day.” I exaggerated it, knowing my desk job was nothing compared to the physical exertion Jack had every day at work.

“How is that? Claims?”

“It’s okay.” He stopped smiling. He was sick of my vague answers. “You’ve got a nice life down here all summer.”

“It gets a little lonely.” Jack pulled on a pair of underwear and dropped his towel on the floor. He ran his hands through his hair and hung the towel on the hook at the end of his bed. The slats of pallet caught my eye. I was thankful not to be at sea level.

“Jack, thanks for the bed. I love it.”

Jack lifted my sheet and slid in my bed next to me. He rolled on his side, and I did the same. My back was to him. Every inch of me was touched by Jack. He was warm from the shower, but I didn’t mind. “Someday, you’ll tell me all the things you’re running from,” he said and rested his chin on my head. “But until then we can just be friends if that’s what you need.”

I wasn’t sure what I needed, but his words made me feel nothing but love for him. “Thanks.”

“To start,” he said and pulled me tighter against his body.

“Of course.”

That night, I fell asleep with Jack in my bed and I knew I’d want him there every night after it. I also knew he’d sleep in other girls’ beds, and that the touch of him meant something completely different to me than to him. I was his conquest. Unsettled land of the west. He was my warmth.

I could barely open my eyes to say good bye when Jack’s alarm sounded at six in the morning, and I fell back to sleep before he even left my bed. I dreamed we were driving cross country, and he kept introducing me to strangers as Mrs. Randall, or the missus.

A slight breeze flowed through the windows and skipped over my skin. Air had been forsaken us while we’d huddled on the floor. My phone rang. It was lying next to me on the windowsill with my car keys. The caller ID read
Therapy
, my code name for my mother. As in, I’d need therapy from having her as my mother. “Hello.”

“Hello, darling.” It was roaring ’20s actress accent time. “What are you doing? Where
are
you?
When
are you coming to see us at the shore?”

I waited for her to take a breath. Surely, she wore on herself as much as she did the rest of the world. “I don’t know, Mom. I’m at my shore house.”

“But your father and I miss you. He hasn’t been feeling well, you know. He could use a visit to cheer him up.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Colitis. We think. He hates to go to the doctor, so I’m left with WebMD and the years I spent at grad school to diagnose him.”

“Maybe he’s just exhausted.”

My mother’s chatter stopped. She knew what I meant, that maybe he was sick of her shit. Even if I couldn’t stand her, she knew me better than anyone.

“I’ll call him.”

“When?” She’d lost her theatrical tone.

“Maybe tomorrow on my way home.”

“You can’t call while you’re driving. Seriously, Nora. Has working auto claims taught you nothing?”

“Okay.” Hearing from her was worse than missing her. My mother should stay in a constant state of absence. It was our only hope. “I’ve got to go.”

“Pick a weekend to come down. You can bring someone with you. Maybe a boyfriend.”

“Good bye, Mom.” I hung up the phone and stared at the stains on the ceiling above me.

Two deep breaths . . .

She couldn’t bother me from another state. She didn’t have that much control over my emotions. I controlled them.

I wandered through the quiet house. The living room seemed twice as big without the dozen bodies that usually inhabited it. Shoes littered every corner of the room, and beach towels hung from the back of every chair. A bookcase with only two shelves sat below the living room window, filled with old books. It was like the free books bin at the library. I ran my finger over the spines, absorbing the titles and the colors of each until
The Commander’s Capture
stole my attention. Its author was Nora Hargrove.

“Unbelievable.”

I carried my selection back to my porch. By the third page I was asleep with the book lying next to me on the most wonderful bed a girl had ever slept in.

The beginning was great.

WHEN IT RAINS, THINGS SLOW DOWN

“Y
ou need to get your shit together,” Stone said, and thank God he wasn’t talking to me, because just the tone of his voice scared me a little.

“Whatever, Stone.” Heather slurred through his name. I could see her propping herself against the kitchen counter. Stone grunted and huffed away. Or maybe that was how he walked. He settled into the last open seat on the couch.

It was raining out, trapping us all together in our over-occupied cottage and robbing some of their civility. Stone and Heather weren’t made for small spaces. She tripped on her way through the living room.

“Keep drinking,” Stone said without moving an inch to help her.

I leaned down and extended a hand to her, which Heather sneered at and walked away.

“Man, she’s drunk early,” Mila said. Her voice was full of worry.

“Is that drunk?” It was a valid question. Could she have consumed enough alcohol by six thirty to make her incapable of speech or walking? I’d only seen her with one beer in her hand. She was on something; I just wasn’t sure what.

A few minutes with Heather made me crave solitude. I followed the sound of the rain hitting the porch windows to my bedroom where Tank was lying in my bed. He was so comfortable it appeared it was actually his and I just stored my things near it.

I climbed on next to him and laid down too, feet-to-head, head-to-feet. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m bored. I was going to smoke and wanted to see if you did, too.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I was in no rush. Time doesn’t seem to move when it’s raining. The world flies by in the bright sunshine, but when it rains, things slow down.” Tank rolled on his side and lit the bowl in his hand.

I reached over him and cranked the windows open a half inch. Without a word, he handed me the bowl. I loved this version of him. He was peaceful. The gentle kindness flowed from him and covered me on top of my quilt.

We passed the bowl back and forth until Tank rested it on the window sill by my pillow. I stared at the ceiling. It amazed me it wasn’t leaking. Not one drop entered the porch.

“Tell me something,” he said.

“What?”

“Anything.”

I believed he meant anything. The first thing that popped in my mind was Jack, so I skipped to the second thing. “I hate my job.” Until that moment, I hadn’t let myself grasp the depth of my disdain for it. It was as if Ricky and I’d been arrested for underage drinking and our claim rep jobs were the community service we were sentenced to complete. Not once had I considered it, or Sharon, a real part of my life. It just was. Like me.

“You should quit.” His words were definitive. It was obvious to him.

The rain drove harder, and I looked to Jack’s empty bed. I hadn’t seen him since he’d left for work. Wherever he was, I hoped he wasn’t on his bike.

“Where’s Jack?” I asked. My throat was dry and my voice sounded rough.

“Don’t know. What do you want to do?”

“Right now?” I couldn’t imagine doing a single thing besides lying in my bed.

“No. Instead of your job.”

“Oh.” I was too busy enduring my job to consider a new one. I was void of passion. I’d spent the years in college hiding from myself rather than finding myself.

“There must be something. Kids, animals, books, the outdoors . . . what do you love?”

His certainty made me nervous. My complete failure as a human being was bubbling to the surface. Rufus understood. Being alone was less terrifying than being with some of the people who you were supposed to love.

Lightning blinked through the room, and I braced myself for the thunder. I jumped from the initial clap and slowly exhaled as the rumble continued. The storm must have been directly above us. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Close your eyes. I’ll tell you something.” Tank turned in the bed, making it easier to hear him over the storm raging around us. He lifted his arm over my head, and I rested on his shoulder. Us lying together was the most natural thing in the world. “There are, like, seven billion people on Earth. Three hundred million of them just in the United States. And out of all them, in an old cottage in a beach town just one mile long, you and I met two weeks ago.”

I opened my eyes as Tank’s free arm waved across the air in front of our faces.

“Just two tiny humans, spinning on a sphere, circling the sun, aligned with eight other planets, and holding down our own as a galaxy in the universe. You weren’t living in Brazil. I wasn’t backpacking in Colorado. You hadn’t been sold into the child sex trade.” I shook that from my head. “I hadn’t been born to a crack head who never let me go outside.” The rain drummed, not caring if Tank was speaking. “We’re mere specks, and yet it all means so much.”

The idea that our interactions, regardless of how small, were a purposeful part of our existence, lodged in my mind. If Tank and I meeting meant something, the depth of my other connections was inexplicable. It left me with one thought—my mother was my mother for a reason. I was overwhelmed by it.

“That’s deep,” I said.

He leaned his head down to mine. “That’s life.”