Spring Tide
Authors: K. Dicke
Copyright © 2014 K. Dicke
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. For information address
Dirty Blonde Press, 18 West Monroe Street, New Bremen, OH 45869-8601
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Edition ISBNs
Trade Paperback 978-0-9904346-0-3
E-book 978-0-9912564-4-0
Cover design by Oceana Garceau
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
This edition was prepared for printing by The Editorial Department
7650 E. Broadway, #308, Tucson, Arizona 85710
CONTENTS
For Jim
“I bind green with red within you. Now, look at him. He’s dead.” She cut her light, walked ten steps, and turned back, her voice low. “Dead.”
CHAPTER ONE
He closed the back door behind him. “She’s here. I feel her.”
“Who’s here?”
“The one who’s mine.”
She canvassed the room and smiled. “I give up. Where is she?”
“Not far.”
“You go find her, sweetie.”
“The waiting’s over. It’s finally over.”
_______
T
he Bakery was popular. Too popular. All the chrome and glass surfaces were marred with smudges, sprinkles, and frosting. It made me wince. I’d read that the smell of baked bread produced a feeling of well-being and believed it was true, based on the nose marks and fingerprints all over the display cases. I expected it from kids and enjoyed their enthusiasm. But the adults, particularly moms who were fighting the same battle at home, could be more considerate. Same with the door. There was a large brass handle, but everyone used their palms, elbows or knuckles to push it open. Armed with glass cleaner and a roll of paper towels, I got down to it. Music flowed from my brain and into my hands, my nails scraping at hardened crumbs.
My back was to the entrance when the bells jingled behind me. There was no rush of warm, humid air as the door opened, only a long shadow across the floor to my left. Returning to the register, I spotted a grease smear dead center on the counter and it mocked me.
“Hello, Kris. How are you?”
His voice was hollow, provocative, making my spinal cord vibrate with each word. I turned around. Eyes like smoke swirling in a breeze, dark hair that fell perfectly into long layers, golden face, and height almost as impressive as his build. I tilted my head and lightly scratched my throat, giving away the fact that I couldn’t place him. If I’d seen him before, I’d have remembered. He wasn’t a regular, not from school or Austin, mid-twenties but not one of my older brother’s cronies …
His sight fixed on me, his facial expressions mimicking mine. Four seconds passed and I felt incapable of breaking his gaze. He took a quick breath as I did, but then cracked a smile and looked behind me.
I get it.
A picture of me for Employee of the Month was hanging on the wall,
Kris Edwards
handwritten in the box at the top of the frame. It was a decent photo, bad lighting, half of my face darkened like I had a split personality.
“My pride and joy and then some,” I said.
“How are you?”
“So far, so good. You?”
“I’m well, thank you.”
“What’s your pleasure?”
With his hands clasped behind his back, he gave the cases a cursory review, glancing up at me with each section. “Two pineapple danish please, for here.”
He watched me put the pastry on a plate and he then took it to a table. A blotch of white in my periphery caught my attention. The blemish on the counter was gone, a wadded up paper towel off to the side with three bills.
I didn’t charge him?
I tossed the towel into the trash and opened the register. “You didn’t have to do that, but thanks.”
“You looked at it four times. It seemed it was bothering you. You like to keep everything bright and shiny?”
“Sure do.”
He rose, grinning, the second danish in his hand. “Have a beautiful day, Kris.”
“Thanks, you too.”
I followed his retreat through the parking lot to the intersection, an electric current freezing my body.
“Kris … Kris?” My favorite customer, Sourdough-Two-Éclairs, stood directly in front of me. Her brown hair was pinned up that day but her cheeks and smile were rosy as always. “Sweetie?”
“I think I was just transported to another dimension. There was this guy who came in and his voice was … I dunno, but I’m lovin’ him for using the door handle.” I turned the coins in my hand, his change.
“He was a looker, huh?”
“Tall, dark, and handsome.” I yanked on my sweatshirt. “Man, I’m cold.”
“It’s chilly in here. Any soda bread today?”
“Nope, sorry.”
She took an éclair, put her sweater around her shoulders, and waited for me to slice her bread, while looking out the windows every three seconds like she was expecting someone.
After chatting me up for a few minutes she left. I finished the last hour of my shift, glaring at the air vent above me.
The drive home from The Bakery was short—ten minutes, tops. I parked in the far left corner of our condo complex’s lot so I could change in the car instead of in the air conditioning that half the time blew like winter throughout the building. I still felt hypothermic. Sliding down in the seat, I put on the bikini bottoms first, then the top, and took my flip flops from under the seat. I got out, threw my backpack over my shoulder, hit the car door with my hip, and then pushed it harder with both hands. Several steps into the sand, I checked to be sure it hadn’t popped open, as it was fond of doing. With my towel laid out, I fell flat on my back to thaw and wait for Derek.
Graduation had been six weeks earlier and high school was a distant memory, my summer to be spent at the shore, amen. Propped on my elbows, I looked past the field of rolling sand to the expanse of the horizon blurring in the heat. Corpus Christi beaches never made the top ten in the travel magazines but were good enough for me. My best friend, Sarah, complained the sand was too gritty and gray from oil spills and the water was too choppy and contaminated with seaweed, but I was more than content to be there. The beach, everything about it, kept me from stressing about my future. There were a few things I wanted to do with my life, but I couldn’t act on any one of them. I had this stupid, irrational feeling that there was something I first had to do or find that would make my path clear to me. And if that idea wasn’t crazy enough, I truly believed that when I found it, whatever
it
was, I’d know it right away.
Sarah dropped three towels onto her chair. “Why am I going out with Nick? I’ll rephrase. Why am I dating the king of morons?”
King of morons
. I chuckled. I preferred to think of Nick as Boy Wonder because I often wondered how anyone could be so dense. “Because he’s so, so pretty.”
“He is pretty.” She arranged a stack of magazines and various sunscreens on a small table that was going to fall apart from corrosion any minute, rust seeping down the legs from under cloudy glass.
She glanced left, inclined her head toward the water, and made the
ew
face. A pasty man in red trunks too small for his waist was ogling her from the waterline twenty yards away. As it was with this guy, anyone comparing me to Sarah concluded inequality. White-blond curls to her shoulders and big, chocolate brown eyes fringed with long lashes graced a stunning face, seconded only by her body. She had the wardrobe of a movie star. My daily uniform was cutoffs and vintage concert tees. At five foot four, I was a midget next to her, my string-bean body emphasized by straight, yellow hair that fell halfway down my back. Sarah was a goddess and I was a girl.
The man continued his walk, rubbing his backside and prompting another
ew
face from Sarah.
She settled into her lounge chair and folded one towel into a footrest and the other into a neck roll so her hair wouldn’t be touched by a drop of sweat. “Look at you. You’ve gotta quit one of your jobs. Are you dead tired?”
“Not tired, frozen. It was twenty below at work. I’m amazed the air conditioner didn’t ice over and kill itself.” I sat up. “Hey, I drove by Nick’s looking for Derek and there was a surfboard leaned up against the house. What up?”