Still Waters (5 page)

“Hartley,”
he says, turning his head to the side to look at me. “I want to use my second
question now.”

I
smile at that, grateful for the change in atmosphere between us. He stands back
upright and pulls my hand so that we’re facing each other.

“Let’s
have it,” I say. “What will it be? Ex-boyfriends, family secrets, most
embarrassing moment?”
 
He shakes his
head.

“Do
you remember the rules?”

“Remember
them?” I say, “I invented them.”

The
corner of his mouth lifts slightly as if he's about to smile, and I find myself
willing it to happen. Go on, Crew, I think to myself. Just smile. But he thinks
better of it, and his face is serious again.

“Your
answer has to be the absolute truth,” he says. “I mean it.”

I
nod slowly and wait for him to speak. He looks out over my head to the ocean and
then back down into my eyes.

“Hartley,”
he says quietly. “Tell me honestly. Did you feel it, when I kissed you?”

I
know exactly what he means, but I don't speak for a second because I'm trying
to gather my thoughts. Usually, they’re pretty obedient; if I want to recall
something that happened ten years ago or find a piece of useless information I
learned about in college I know exactly where in my brain to find it. But in
this moment I can't think of anything at all, other than, “Yes.”

So
that’s what I say.

He
looks into my eyes for a moment as if he's trying to see if I'm telling the
truth. Whatever he sees there seems to satisfy him because he smiles. It's not
his mega-watt heart-breaking smile. This one is quieter and tinged with
sadness. He nods a couple of times and kisses me once on the forehead.

Crew

As soon as my lips leave her mouth I wish I
hadn’t kissed her. I was stupid for not running in the other direction as soon
as I saw that first curl escape from her ponytail and blow about in the wind.
Even back down on the beach I knew that if I took just one step towards her I
would end up kissing her. I hate myself for doing it anyway.

“Should
we head back down?” she says, her eyes glinting with excitement and new
possibilities. I really am an asshole.

We
walk down the steps to the sand and continue side by side for a while, not
talking. She picks up a long piece of driftwood and drags it in the sand behind
her, making wiggly lines.

“Are
you in town for long? Or is that a personal question?” she laughs, and I realize
that it’s what she does when she’s nervous.

“You
can have that one for free,” I say quietly. “Three or four days. A week at the
most. I’m heading down to South America for a few months to supervise a
project.”

She’s
looking the other away so that I can’t see the expression on her face, but I’m
guessing she’s probably angry. And rightly so. She waits for me to explain
further, but I give her nothing.

“So,
do you do this often?” she says suddenly, stopping in her tracks so that I have
to stop too. When I don’t say anything she says, “Pick up girls who are new in
town, take them up to the observation deck, tell them to ‘close their eyes’?”

“No!”

“Then
what was that?”

“I’m
sorry,” I say quietly. “I should have told you before I kissed you that I’m
leaving soon. I just, I.. I need to know what it would feel like to kiss you. Look,
there’s some stuff about me and my past, it’s complicated….”

She
narrows her eyes and runs the back of her hand across her mouth as if she’s
trying to wipe away the feeling of my lips on hers. Her cheeks are blotchy and
pink from the wind, and she’s shivering a little. I wish I had a jacket to put
over her shoulders. Instead, I just stand back and watch her wrap her arms
around her middle to try to keep warm.

“Everyone
has a past, Crew,” she says bitterly. “Even me.” She yanks her hair into a
ponytail and looks out to sea. “You asked me if I felt it, and I told you that I
did. That means you felt it too.”

I follow her gaze out to the ocean. The waves
are still twice their usual size, and the storm has thrown piles of seaweed and
driftwood onto the sand. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me down to this
beach with a metal detector. Once I found a diamond ring buried deep in the
sand. He promised I could keep it so I could give it to a girl on Valentines
Day. But then he sold it.

Hartley
looks like she’s ready to leave. I know I should let her go, but I feel so bad
about leaving it like this that I move next to her and reach out to hold her hand.
She stiffens a bit but doesn’t shrug me off.

“I
felt it,” I say. “But I also travel 11 months of the year. And we don’t know
anything about each other, thanks to your personal question rule.”

She
smiles a little at that and looks across to meet my eyes.

“I’m
going home.”

She
takes her hand out of mine and looks up towards the dunes.

“Look,
I’m sorry that I kissed you –“

“Are
you?”

She
glares at me like she can see right through my bullshit. I look away because
I’m pretty sure that if she sees my face she’s going to see my every thought
written there for her to read. We stay like that for a few long seconds. Me
looking out at the surfers riding the waves, and her looking down at where her
foot is kicking at the sand.

“Can
we just start again?” I sigh, looking back at her and holding out my hand for
her to shake.

“Didn’t
we do that already?”
 
She keeps her hands
by her sides. “I don’t like being made a fool of, Crew. I think we’re done,
don’t you?”

She
turns away and starts walking up the beach towards the dunes. I should let her
go. She’s given me the perfect out. But instead I jog after her like some
lovesick teenager. I’m fully aware that I’m messing with her, and I should just
leave her alone. Fuck it.

 
“I’ll walk you.”

“There’s
no need. I live just over the dunes.”

“Everyone
in town lives just over the dunes. Let me walk you home.”

She
stops walking and looks up at me, her hand shielding her face from the loose
sand that’s picking up in the wind.

“What
do you want, Crew?”

There’s
a panicked note to her voice as if she’s fighting to keep her emotions under
control. For the first time, I notice that there are dark smudges under her
eyes like she hasn’t slept well for a long time.

“I’m
begging you, please, just leave me alone.”

And
just like that, I realize I don’t want to leave her alone. I’m not one of those
men who have an overinflated opinion of themselves. I know exactly what kind of
guy I am, and I know how far I can go when it comes to relationships. Which if
you look at my track record over the past few years, isn’t very damn far. But
there’s something about this girl that makes me want to at least get to know
her beyond a kiss on the beach.

“I’m
not going to play games with you, kid,” I say reaching out to touch her hand. I
say it more as a vow to myself than to reassure her. She looks skeptical like
she really doesn’t want to further complicate her already complicated life.

 
“Can we just be friends?” she says, moving her
hand away from mine.

She
knows as well as I do that the two of us can never just be friends. But I smile
anyway.

“Sure.”

Hartley

“Can
we just be friends?” I say, pulling my hand away from his. This time last week
I was analyzing data and supervising my interns. I knew that at 12.45pm I’d
walk down to the sushi shop on the corner for lunch, and at 5.30pm I’d be
driving my new car home to my house on the lake. I had my fridge stocked with
all of my favorite things and hours of episodes ready to watch on Netflix after
David went home. David. So settled and dependable, always arriving ten minutes
early and never forgetting a name.
 
He
never once missed an anniversary or a birthday. He even remembered the date of
my parent’s wedding anniversary and sent flowers to my mother. My parents loved
him. Maybe even more than I did. I knew that in a couple of years David would
propose with an enormous gaudy diamond that I’d hate, but pretend to love. And
even though for over a year now there has been a cold, nagging feeling in my
chest whenever I think about my future, I would say yes, and my mother would
commence a year of frantic wedding preparations. I never could see beyond the
wedding, though. It wasn’t hard to picture exactly how
that
would look.

I
don’t know how everything could get so completely messed up in just a matter of
days. I used to have everything figured out, and now I have absolutely no idea
what tomorrow will bring.

“You
ok there kid?” Crew says, his voice bringing me back to the present with a
bang. “You looked kind of lost for a second.”

“Oh,
yeah,” I say, trying to brush off the tight whirring sensation I can feel
building in my chest. “I was just thinking about home. I didn’t leave there on
such good terms. I wish I could have done things differently I guess.”

He
looks down at me and nods silently.

“Regrets
huh? I know a bit about that.”

“Doesn’t
everybody?” I say quietly as we begin to walk up and over the dunes.

“Some
more than others,” he says, his voice no more than a whisper.

We
reach the other side of the dunes, and I walk back to the post where I left my
shoes. They’re still sitting there as if they’re bored and ready to be taken
home. I’m happy to oblige.

“I
live just around the corner, ” I say, pointing towards the small street to the
right of us.

When
the sand ends, we cross the small dirt parking area where a couple of rusty
station wagons have been parked while their owners surf. Some kids have left
their bikes thrown in a pile while they play down on the beach.

“Did
you grow up here?” I ask, and then remember the personal question rule. He
looks at me sideways, probably deciding whether to call me on it and then nods.

“I
was born here, and I stayed until right around the end of high school. I come
back when I can to see Jake. Other than that, there isn’t much tying me to this
place.”

We
step up onto the pavement and start walking down a small residential street
leading away from the beach.

“Was
it nice growing up here?”

He
doesn’t answer for a second, so I look over at him to see if he heard me. His
hands are shoved into his pockets, and he’s looking down the street at nothing.

“That
one definitely counts,” he says, turning to me and smiling a little, and I can
see that whatever he was thinking of has passed.

“Ok,”
I say, “I’ll trade in my second personal question. What was your childhood
like?”

His
eyes dart over to me, and he sets his mouth in a frown.

“You
changed it.”

I
shrug. “It still counts.”

We
walk for a few more steps and then he sighs, rubbing the back of his neck with
one hand.

“It
was like most childhoods, I guess. Some great parts, some horrible parts, some
really horrible parts. It was worse than some kids get and better than others.”

I
think about my own childhood and try to remember any horrible parts. All I can
picture are birthdays at Disneyland and summer trips on Dad’s boat and
Christmases that were way over the top. Sure, it wasn’t great being singled out
as the brainiac all the way through school, that didn’t win me any friends. And
knowing I was smarter than my teachers wasn’t exactly fun either. But I can’t
think of a single part of my childhood that I would describe as horrible. I
don’t even want to think about what ‘really horrible’ means. I’m trying to work
out the right thing to say when he surprises me by clearing his throat and
talking again.

“My
mom was so beautiful. She’s Swedish – white-blonde hair and golden skin. All of
my friends in high school used to tease me about it. She was prettier than all
of their girlfriends. I used to hate it when I caught them checking her out.”

He
smiles at the memory and then reaches down to pick up a little white shell,
passing it to me without a word.

“She
was a photographer, but she used to be a model when she was younger. She had
this great voice. Kind of smoky sounding, even though she’d rather die than
smoke a cigarette. Your voice reminds me of hers a bit,” he says easily, and
then looks the opposite way.

We’ve
reached the small white fence in front of my house, so I slow down to a stop
and look up into his face.

“What
was your dad like?”

His
face changes immediately. It’s like a heaviness has come over him. Even his
eyes look darker.

“He
was an asshole.”
 

Wow.
When you hit a nerve with this guy, you really hit it. I nod and bite my lip
while I try to think of something appropriate to say in response.

“Well,
relationships with families can be difficult.”

It’s
the best I can come up with. He looks past me to the house behind me, and his
eyes widen in surprise.

“You
live here?” he says like he can’t believe it.

“Yes,”
I say slowly, narrowing my eyes. “Why? What’s wrong with it?”

Crew
walks around me and opens the gate. I stand back and watch as he walks up the
path and runs his hand over the weatherboards near the door. The ones that have
lost the most of their paint.

“This
needs some work,” he says, more to himself than to me. I’m not sure I like the
way he’s strolled in like he owns the place. Why is he taking it upon himself
to point out everything that’s wrong with my house?

“I
know,” I say, through gritted teeth as I following him in through the gate.
“I’d invite you in, but it looks like you’ve already done that.”

He
looks up from where he’s inspecting the rotten timber on one of the window
frames and winces when he sees my face.

“Sorry,”
he says, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s kind of a bad habit.”

“What
is?” I say crossly, “walking up to random houses and looking them over like
they’re sick puppies?”

He
laughs a bit at that and looks back to the house.

“No,
taking an inventory of repairs. I make sure I do that whenever I visit a
property I own, and you’re right, I should have asked first.”

Oh
God.

“Crew,”
I say, looking up at the house I’ve just signed a six-month lease for. “When
you say ‘property you own’….”

“That’s
right kid,” he grins down at me. “You’re looking at your new landlord.”