Hurricane Days (23 page)

“The sand is almost as white as Destin,” Adrienne told me. When she winked at me, my chest rippled inside.

Waves crashed as we strolled side by side looking out at the sea. It was every shade of green, sparkling in the light. We found a spot on the beach away from clumps of tourists and screaming children who smelled like sunscreen. Adrienne wore a sleek, black bikini, and I was covered from head to toe in a cotton wrap covering a one-piece, old lady bathing suit, topped off with a white hat and a gallon of sunblock. I looked like a giant tampon.

Next thing I knew, the balmy breeze seized my wrap and threatened to pull it off completely. I tried to gather it in, as it blew backward.

“Why do you always cover yourself up?” Adrienne asked.

“I don’t want to give the birds a free show.”

“It’s Florida, for God’s sake. You gotta show a little skin.”

“So I can get skin cancer?” But the clouds had already begun to gather. There wouldn’t be much sunlight for long. “I’m convinced. Florida is a weird, hostile environment,” I declared. Just then, drops of rain started to fall upon the sand while the sun was still shining. “Look at this! It’s not supposed to rain when the sun’s out! What is that?”

“It does that.”

“Isn’t there some law of nature that says that can’t happen?”

“Not here,” Adrienne laughed.

“It’s a bipolar state.”

“Haven’t you ever felt sad even when you’re happy—at the same time?”

I smiled faintly. “No comment.” I hated it when she got poetic, especially on days when I wanted to dislike her.

Our eyes locked. How weird it was to never talk about the only thing that was on my mind ever since our night together. I allowed myself quick glimpses of Adrienne’s curvy body and remembered what it felt like to touch her skin. Her bathing suit bottom had relaxed a little and was sliding down her hips just enough to make me forget to breathe.

“Hey, what’re you thinking about?” Adrienne came closer.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“It’s nothing important.” Thank goodness she didn’t have the mystical gift of mind reading.

Adrienne took my hands, and electricity shot through my body.
Just go away.
“Why don’t you give me a chance and tell me?”

I looked away, suddenly fascinated with washed-up seaweed. Adrienne held my chin and turned my face toward her. “I see you staring off all the time like you’re deep in thought or something. You think I don’t see?” Her lips turned upward in a smile. “Can’t you trust me with your deep, dark secrets?”

“How do you know they’re deep?”

“Everything about you is deep.”

“You think so?” I laughed to myself. If only she knew…my deepest thought lately was her bathing suit accidentally coming off.

“You never like to watch anything fun on TV,” she continued. “All you want is the news. And you’re always arguing about the economy with the guys on TV—who can’t hear you, by the way.”

“So you think I’m insane.”

“You said it, not me.” She kept smiling, leaning closer to me. It almost seemed as if she wanted to kiss me.

We started laughing as rain began to fall. Even more threatening clouds seemed to congregate directly above us.

“You think Lydia was right?” I asked.

“She’s crazy.”

“About the storm?”

“We’re fine.” That wasn’t an answer, so I knew we were in big trouble.

The rain fell harder, as she scooped up wet sand and threw it at me. I tried to hurl it back at her in retaliation, but all I managed to pick up were gray clumps that couldn’t hold together long enough to throw at anyone. In no other circumstances would I enjoy being outside in a rainstorm, with wet mushy sand working its way into every crevice of my feet, toes, hands and God knows where else.

When the weather cut the trip short, it reminded me of my original plan. Would I be able to find my inner braveness? As we traveled back, dark clouds followed us, casting a long shadow on the car. It looked like the end of the world was coming. Maybe it was. If I couldn’t find my gutsy side, I’d never be able to live with myself. I watched the intermittent windshield wipers swipe at the rain until it fell so hard that everything was a blur.

“Adrienne, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

I thought carefully before crafting my words. “What if you wanted to tell someone something, but you weren’t sure how to say it and really weren’t sure how they’d take it? What would you do?” Surely Adrienne would know by now what I was going to say.

She smiled. “You do like Boyd!”

“No!” I guess it wasn’t that obvious to her after all.

“You said nothing happened that night.” Adrienne grinned. “But you wanted it to, didn’t you?”

I looked out the window. The wind brushed whitecaps across the water. “No.”

Adrienne didn’t believe me. “You’ve gotta tell him. You don’t have a chance if he never knows how you really feel.”

“What if he, and I’m not saying it’s him, really doesn’t think of me that way?” I’d never been so scared, teetering on the edge of a storm, wondering what the crash of thunder would feel like.

“So?”

“What if he’s really
offended
that I like him that way?” The whole discussion seemed ridiculous, but her homophobic comments were just too frightening for me to risk putting myself out there. If things went badly, I’d be stuck in a small room with her for the rest of the year. I had visions of Adrienne pointing me out to her party friends as the girl who put the moves on her and that ugly sneer she had when talking about the girl on our floor, the “freak” who kissed another girl. There was too much at stake. If Adrienne had really been too drunk, she might become hostile if she thought I had deeper feelings for her. The space we shared was too small for that kind of problem. She might be uncomfortable and think that I was going to stalk her when she took a shower or something. If things got so bad that I had to transfer, how would I explain it to my parents?

“Offended?” Adrienne looked peculiarly at me as the rain let up a little. “You really don’t give yourself enough credit. You’re really cute. And he seemed to be into you.”

“You think so?”

“Oh yeah.” Our eyes met for a moment, as she placed her hand over mine.

“The road!” I was distracted by another pocket of torrential rain up ahead. Wind seized the car and jerked it from side to side. I closed my eyes. “Just tell me when we’re on the other side of this.”

Chapter Forty-Four

The wind was relentless. It jerked the car around so much I started praying to myself. I muttered a few phrases under my breath.

“What is that? Voodoo?” Adrienne teased.

“Shut up. Haven’t you ever prayed before?”

“Yeah, once.” Her face became hard like stone. She stared at the road, expressionless. “I prayed something would happen to my dad, so Mom and I wouldn’t have to put up with his shit anymore.”

“You prayed for him to…”

“Die.” She glanced at me to see if I was shocked. “That’s right. You think I’m a bad person now?”

“Nooo.” I was careful in my response.

“He went through this time when he drank every day. He’d slap my mom around, and I knew it was a matter of time before he turned to me. But I wasn’t going to take it. I got a spare hammer from the garage and kept it in my bedroom, planning how I’d hit him with it if he ever came after me. But he never did. It got so bad, though, Mom had enough and she left. Not a word to him
or
me.”

I could tell from her face that her mom’s departure had hurt her deeply.

“So yeah,” she said. “I’ve prayed before.”

“I’m sorry. I never saw you as the praying type.” Then I remembered that she was living with her dad now. “How is he now?” I asked carefully.

“He doesn’t drink as much. When he gets bad, I lock my door.” She was so matter-of-fact. I wanted to say the right thing, but I couldn’t think of anything. I also realized how silly I must’ve seemed to her, freaking out over bugs and public restrooms when she had much more serious things to deal with.

Then a crack of thunder and flash of lightning seemed to bounce right off the hood of the car with one powerful strike.

“What the hell was
that?
” I leapt out of my seat. “We should’ve listened to Lydia! We knew a storm was coming, but no!
You
had to go to the beach!”

“Oh, will you get a grip?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like getting electrocuted today.” Lightning and the possibility of death were
not
silly things, I decided.

Everything blurred across the windshield as more buckets of rain descended, along with some hail. She strained to see the road as long as she could before pulling into the nearest convenience store, where we could wait out the storm.

Once inside, I watched the gray windows streaked with water and still more rain shooting down like bullets across the glass. Everything seemed so angry. Maybe God was punishing us. Shivering, we took cover in the back aisle behind the Ding Dongs and Twinkies.

“Do they have to blast the air conditioner like that?” I kept whining as I tried to wipe my arms dry.

“It’s Florida.” Adrienne put her arm around me. “Sorry about this,” she said.

“It’s okay,” I said, realizing I was being a baby. I had to get over myself. Mother Nature could be a bitch, and there was no changing her mind today.

The wind blew so hard against the glass windows and doors, it sounded as if they might burst. I jumped with each new startling sound. Even the worst thunderstorm back home never sounded like this. More people rushed in from outside, trying to take cover near the ice machine or behind the counter. We stayed in the back, the farthest away from the glass.

“They should’ve put tape on the windows,” Adrienne said.

The water level began to rise until it was above the ankles of people running on the other side of the glass. I slid down the Twinkie-stuffed shelves, grabbing my knees.

“You okay?” Adrienne asked, crouching down beside me.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Twinkies will save us.” There it was again—the sarcasm that tried to mask my fear.

She touched my face. Her fingers ran down my cheek so slowly, I felt it as a caress. “You had some mascara,” she muttered. “It was running.” It really didn’t make sense, but I didn’t care. “So you like Boyd?”

“What?” I’d forgotten our previous conversation.

“Boyd, you know. You were telling me how you feel.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m kind of distracted with the end of the world out there.” But she really seemed to want to know. “It’s not exactly him,” I managed. “I think you know who it is.”

The next crash of thunder hit and the lights went out. People in the store stayed pretty quiet, mesmerized by the view outside.

“No, I don’t,” Adrienne said quietly. “You never talk about anyone.”

I was in that place where I had to decide if it was better to hide behind the Twinkies in fear or face the lightning. “It’s
you
,” I said finally in a big exhale, not looking at her. In the next moment I felt her arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer. When I looked at her, she was staring at the ice cream in the freezer straight ahead. It seemed she couldn’t look at me, either. “Well?” I was going to push the issue; I shouldn’t have to go it alone anymore. “It’s been so weird, the way we’ve never really talked about that night, you know?”

“It seemed like a dream,” she said, still not looking at me.

My head went numb. A dream is something that isn’t real, something you can wake from that has nothing to do with reality. Was that really what she wanted? To see it as something unreal? Of course. Everything she’d done since that night proved it.

Dream
. I analyzed the word in my mind. It was funny. You go through life hearing a million words that don’t mean anything. And suddenly one word takes on the greatest meaning of all.
How exactly did she mean it?

I sat back on my heels and tried to breathe. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t want to feel this way. But to me, it was more than a dream. It was real.”

“It was real to me too.”

I was confused. “You don’t regret it? You seemed like you wished we hadn’t…you said you drank too much.”

She finally looked at me. “I had to say something. I thought you’d freak out.” Then I saw a look I couldn’t read in her shiny, brown eyes. It may have been fear. She pulled me closer and we held each other a long time in the back aisle as the rain poured.

The counter clerk saw us and said, “It’s going to be all right, ladies. You’re not going to die or anything.”

We pulled apart and realized that the storm had let up. Of course he thought we were doing a final embrace because of the weather.
Hysterical women
.

She stood up to check the windows. I watched her with a mixture of relief and elation, not to mention the ever-present fear. What did this mean? What would happen now?

The ride back was unusually quiet. Obviously, we both had a lot of thinking to do. I had trouble hearing my own thoughts with the heavy metal tapes that she kept putting in, one after another. I looked out the window at the passing tropical scenery, so oddly calm after the storm. A purple sky was spreading overhead as the afternoon lingered on. Alice Cooper screamed about a woman he’d better not touch, someone he wanted to get closer to but couldn’t or shouldn’t.
How apropos.
I tried not to listen, but the music was mimicking every thought I had.

Then I realized…there was still the issue of Sean. Was I nothing more than a fling, or the dreaded experiment in college that so many girls later admit to? I remembered how Adrienne had told me that while she was in college, she just wanted to have some fun. What if I was her fun? I sat perfectly still and said nothing for most of the ride home.

When we returned to the dorm, students were crowded into the lobby, watching the weather on TV. Lydia was the first to confront us.

“I warned you two about the weather!” she exclaimed. “Why would you go out in this?”

“It was fine this morning,” I explained. “We thought we’d be back before it hit.” Lydia believed me. I think Adrienne was impressed that her do-gooder roommate could be such a cool liar.