Still Waters (9 page)

Hartley

Crew’s body takes up the length of the bed, and
he’s bent his arm under his head, so he’s using it as a pillow. He tells me
about Jessie slowly, quietly, sometimes closing his eyes when it becomes too
painful. We’re lying on our sides facing each other; our faces close so that I
can feel his breath on my lips when he talks. When he tells me about the
accident, his voice isn’t much more than a whisper. I don’t even notice I’m
crying until he reaches over and wipes a tear off my cheek.

“I’m
sorry,” I say, and it feels so ridiculously inadequate. He looks at me and
takes a deep breath.

“That’s
not the whole story. I have to tell you what happened after the accident.”

I
sit up slowly and crawl down the end of the bed to the blanket that I’ve left
folded there. I open it up and lay it over us, right above our heads, so that
it feels like we’re back in our cubby house.

“My
dad died instantly, but Jessie lived for two more months on life support. I sat
with her every day trying to get her to wake up. First I pleaded with her, and then
I bullied her, then I just prayed.”

He
reaches over and traces a finger over my palm, making wiggly lines as he talks.

“After
my dad died, my mom had a complete breakdown. She’d been getting worse leading
up to the accident and then when he died I think the stress of it kind of broke
something. She was never the same after that. I came home from visiting Jessie
in the hospital one day and found her in the bathtub. She’d slit her wrists
with a razor blade, but thankfully, not deep enough.”

“Oh
God, Crew,” I whisper and reach over to grab a handful of his t-shirt. I need
something to hold onto it while I hear the rest of it.

“I
moved into the O’Reilly’s house when mom was admitted to the Psychiatric
Hospital in Seattle. But I hated being there. Everything reminded me of her. I
insisted on sleeping in her room so I could smell her and be around her stuff.
It was like I was torturing myself on purpose, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want
to let her go.”

He
rolls me over so that we’re both lying on our backs and then tucks the end of
the blanket between the headboard and the wall so that we’re in a little tent.

“She
was gone when we hit that boulder,” he gasps. “I felt her leave. But we kept
hoping she’d wake up. Then after a couple of months I overheard her mom and dad
having this huge argument in the kitchen late at night. And they never argue.
He was yelling at her saying that Jessie wouldn’t want to live like that, and
she was crying. But it wasn’t normal crying, Hartley. It was wailing. She was
moaning and throwing things around the kitchen, and I couldn’t take it anymore.
There was so much pain in that house. I felt like they were looking at me,
blaming me for Jessie and wishing it was me instead of her. So I went to the
hospital in the middle of the night and convinced a nurse to let me into her
room. I stroked her hair and kissed her and told her how sorry I was. Then I left.
I didn’t come back until the first anniversary of the accident.”

“Was
Jake ok?”

I
reach between us and find his hand. He threads his fingers through mine and
holds on tightly.

“He
broke his shoulder and some ribs and smashed up his hand really bad. He’d been
trying to get between Jessie and the side of the car so he could protect her. His
hand got caught. He’s had twenty one reconstructive surgeries over the last
eight years. But it’s still busted.”

“You
were lucky,” I whisper, squeezing his hand. But next to me he shakes his head.

“I
wanted to die with Jessie. That would have been lucky. Living with the guilt
for the rest of my life, that’s no prize, Hartley. There were no winners.”

For
a second, I can’t quite understand what he’s saying. I roll onto my side so
that I can see his face better and prop myself up onto my elbow. He’s lying
back on my pillows, one arm under his head. In the shadows, he looks gaunt,
haunted, and very, very tired.

“Why
do you feel guilty?” I say, keeping my eyes trained on his face. He closes his
eyes and takes a deep breath. It shudders through him, all the way to his feet,
and my eyes fill with tears. His pain is so tangible I feel like I could reach
out and touch it.

“Jake
had a scholarship to play baseball. He had scouts from all over the country
after him. He had his pick of colleges, and he would have been great if he
hadn’t smashed every bone in his hand. And now he’s rolling ice creams.”

He
opens his eyes and looks up at me.

“And
Jessie died.”

“But
Crew,” I say as I reach down and rest my palm on his cheek. “None of what
happened was your fault. Your dad was drunk, and he pulled the wheel, you
couldn’t have predicted that.”

A
single tear pools in the corner of his eye and slowly slides down his cheek.

“I
should have put him in the back seat. Or called the cops. Or a taxi. I shouldn’t
have taken the cliff road. Jessie wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. I knew she didn’t
put one on and I forgot to remind her.”

He
rolls onto his side, facing me, and puts his hand on my hip, just under the hem
of my t-shirt. His palm is warm against my skin.

“It
wasn’t your fault,” I whisper. But even as I say the words I know that he’s
heard them thousands of times before, and he hasn’t believed them yet.

“When
I left I knew I would never see Jessie again. But I still went. I couldn’t be
in Twin Heads anymore because everywhere I looked all I could see were memories
of her. I took some money from my dad’s safe and traveled around for a year. I
worked odd jobs and kept moving, always moving. Then I went down to Mexico and
eventually to Costa Rica to where my dad’s family are from.”

He
takes another deep breath then and lets it out slowly as if he’s not looking
forward to telling me the next part of the story.

“Hartley,
what you need to understand before this goes any further is that I was a really
bad guy for a few years after the accident.”

I
open my mouth to tell him that I don’t believe that could possibly be true, but
he puts a finger over my lips.

“I’m
not just saying it. I drank a lot. I slept with a lot of women and Hart,
understand me when I say that I didn’t treat them very well. I got into fights
and spent some time in jail in Central America for it. I lived hard for a few
months, then tried to straighten out and go to college like other kids my age,
then I’d get into trouble or drop out, and then I’d take off somewhere and live
hard again.”

He’s
talking with a hint of wariness in his voice. Like he’s half expecting me to be
angry, or jump up and demand that he gets out of my house and my life. Now
everything Eleanor was worried about is beginning to make sense. She must have
heard about the accident from her friends and family, even if she was away at
college at the time. And Twin Heads is a small town so there must have been rumors
going around about Crew, especially if he made enemies of some of the local
women on his visits home. The girl from the café at The Point pops into my head,
and I begin to understand why she gave us such terrible coffee.

“What
made you change?”

I
realize a little too late that I don’t actually know if he
has
changed. This could just be a ‘straightening out’ phase. Or
maybe I’m one of the women he’s about to treat badly.

“When
my dad died he left me some land in Costa Rica. He’d bought it back in the 80s
and was planning on building a tourist resort on it, but he was too much of a
drunk to do anything about it. Four years after Jessie died I went down there
and looked at it. She would have loved it. She was an amazing surfer. She loved
being in the ocean more than anything. Being down there, looking at the waves
and the forest, it made me want to do something positive for once. If Jess
could see me from wherever she was, then I wanted her to be proud of how I was
living my life. So I took my inheritance money and built the first Ondas Eco
Village in her memory.”

“Ondas,”
I murmur, tracing my fingertip over his eyebrows. “That means ‘waves’.”

He
nods. “You speak Spanish?”

I
smile, and he laughs a little.

“Of
course you do. Wait – how many languages do you speak?”

When
he sees the look on my face, the corner of his mouth lifts in a smile.

“Forget
I asked. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s
more than six and less than fifteen,” I say and lean over to place a soft kiss
on his lips. He pulls back, surprised, and then reaches over to thread his
fingers through my hair.

“You
know, you can be quite intimidating.”

He
kisses me softly back.

“So
I’ve been told. And are you intimidated Crew?”

I
say it playfully, but I’m shaking on the inside. This is something that’s
followed me around my whole life. And I’m sick of having to choose between
being a freak show and hiding who I am to make other people feel more
comfortable. He smiles at me and shakes his head.

“Don’t
ever dumb yourself down, kid.”

I
lean in and try to kiss him properly, but he takes his hand out of my hair and pulls
away.

“Hartley,
I need you to understand what I’m trying to tell you. Part of me is still that
guy. I’m not the kid I was before the accident. There’s a part of me that’s
dark. I’m pretty good at keeping it under control, but it’s always going to be there.
I’ve spent the last few years of my life being a selfish asshole, and that’s a
habit that I need to get out of. I want to be a good guy for you Hartley, and
I’m going to try really hard. But you need to know that I can’t make you any promises.”

I
should tell him that I need time to think about what he’s told me. I should
tell him that my life is complicated at the moment, and I need some space. I
should probably share some secrets of my own since there are things I’m holding
back from him, and he’s just laid himself bare. But for once in my life I just want
to listen to my heart instead of my brain. So I close my eyes again and touch
my lips to his.

Crew

Despite how tired I am, I wake up at 6 am just like
clockwork. When I open my eyes, I know immediately that I’m not in my bed, and
for a few sickening seconds I think I’ve gone back to my old ways. I
frantically search my brain for clues that will tell me where I am. Did I drink
last night? Did I have sex with someone? I reach under the blankets and sigh in
relief when my hand touches the waistband of my jeans. Next to me I hear a
small sigh and when I look over I see a pile of reddish-brown curls spread out
across the pillow. Hartley.

She’s
still wearing her glasses, so I lean over and gently take them off. Her nose
twitches a bit, but she doesn’t wake up. God, she’s beautiful. Her cheeks are
flushed from sleep, and there’s a light spray of freckles across her nose. If
this was another time, and I was still that guy, I would wake her up by kissing
them one by one. Instead, I clench my hand into a fist to stop myself from
touching her. She parts her lips and takes a deep breath in and out of her
mouth. Her lips are pink and perfect. Different from Jessie’s. As soon as her
name enters my mind an unexpected mix of adrenaline and relief rushes through
my body. It’s been a long time since I could think of Jessie so easily and
without feeling like someone was ripping my guts out. I decide to push a little
further, to see if I can. I conjure up an image of her and hold it there,
hovering in my mind. She’s 15. She’s walking next to me down to the beach with
a surfboard under one arm. Her hair is tied back into a ponytail, and she’s
tanned. It must be summer. She’s wearing a wetsuit, but it’s open and hanging
off her hips so that I can see her black bikini top underneath. She has a mole
on her shoulder and a scar on her belly from when she got her appendix out when
she was nine. Her belly button is pierced, but she hasn’t told her parents yet,
so we have to keep it a secret. She’s looking up at me as we walk. I think I’m
telling her something. She’s laughing. She had the best laugh in the world. I
go deeper, dredging up memories of her from the corners of my mind that I’ve
kept locked safely away, until now. Jessie was born to be in the ocean. She was
a tomboy, determined, stubborn, and tougher than most boys. When we were kids,
long before we fell in love, she used to beat me up if I let her win at
anything. She would rather surf or hike than get her nails done. She hated
carrots. She wanted to be a sports physician. She made this happy little
humming sound when I kissed her. The first time we made love she cried
afterwards, and when I panicked, she laughed and said her tears were because she
was so happy. She was full of life and laughter and just on the cusp of new
beginnings. She was fiercely protective of the people she loved. Especially of me.

Next
to me Hartley yawns and rolls onto her side but stays asleep. The bottom of her
t-shirt has ridden up so that I can see the smooth white skin of her hips and
stomach. Sometime in the night she must have turned the fire off, and the room
is cold. I pull the blanket up over her, and she sighs in contentment. She’s so
different from Jessie. She’s pale and petite. Delicate. I could wrap my whole
hand around her arm. And even if she won’t admit it, she’s crazy-messy. Jessie
was a total nightmare when it came to everything being in its place. If she was
mad at you, you would know about it. She told me everything she was thinking or
feeling, whether I wanted to hear about it or not. Hartley has secrets, and I suspect
there are a lot of them. I don’t know if she’ll ever trust me enough to share
them.

“Morning,”
she mumbles and props herself up onto her elbow. She doesn’t look surprised to
see me, like she was expecting I would stay the night all along.

“I
don’t remember falling asleep,” I say and lean down to kiss her quickly on the
mouth. Her lips turn up in a smile under my kiss.

“Well,
I remember when you fell asleep,” she laughs as she sits up and wraps the
blanket tightly around her shoulders. “I was in the middle of kissing you.”

“Uh,
I don’t think so,” I mutter, but as I’m saying it, I’m trying to remember the
moment when we said goodnight to each other and went to sleep. But I can’t.

“At
first I was a little offended,” she teases, “but then you looked so sweet and
angelic, I couldn’t stay mad for long.”

“Oh
God,” I stammer and realize that she’s right. The last thing I remember is her
lips lightly touching mine.

“Don’t
look so horrified, Crew. You needed to sleep. And,” she winks, “you can make it
up to me later.”

And
I intend to.

“So
breakfast then unpacking?”

I
walk over to the fire and hit the button. It sparks to life, and warm air
starts to seep out into the room.

“I
was hoping you’d forgotten about that.”

Her
face is full of dread. Now I
really
want
to know what’s in all of those boxes in the kitchen.

“Sorry,
I never forget anything. Especially not something as exciting as seeing what’s
in all of that stuff you’ve got piled up out there.”

She
flops back on the bed and pulls the blanket over her face.

“What
are you trying to hide anyway?”

“You’ll
see,” she groans. “We may as well get started.”

While
I assemble a little tepee of kindling and newspaper inside the ancient
woodstove in the kitchen, Hartley pulls out some bacon and eggs from her refrigerator
and tries to locate a frying pan. The storm has moved on but it’s bitterly cold,
and the wind is rattling the windowpanes. It’s too cold to go out.

“Is
it ok if I take a shower?” I ask her when I see that she’s got breakfast under
control. She looks up from the egg she’s cracking into the pan and winces a
bit.

“Well,
the thing is, the shower doesn’t exactly work.”

“What?
Why?”

“It’s
never worked. I don’t mind; it’s a good excuse to use the bath. I love that
thing.”

I
look at her and raise my eyebrows. The Property Manager I’m paying to take care
of this place is getting a phone call this morning.

“Your
landlord is useless.”

She
laughs and shrugs her shoulders.

“I
guess you’ll have to take a bath in my nice pink claw-foot tub. Ooooh, I’ll run
you a special bubble bath! I’ve got these amazing French bath salts and this
lavender bubble bath that smells so nice..”

She
stops talking when she sees my face.

“What?
Come on. Men always say they don’t like bubble baths, but it’s a total lie.
You’re going to
love
it.”

The
fire in the woodstove is heating up the house, and soon we’re warm enough to
take off our jumpers. Hartley puts the bacon and eggs onto the plates, and I
attempt to make her a cup of tea. She laughs when I forget to use the strainer
and the leaves pour into the cup with the water. I see that she’s made some
attempt at clearing up the papers and books since I was last here, and there’s
even a straggly looking plant in a vase.

“Yum,”
she sighs when she’s swallowed her last mouthful. “Thanks for the tea.”

I
take the plates to the kitchen and am starting to rinse them under the tap when
I feel her come up behind me and wrap her arms around my waist.

“Thanks
for telling me about Jessie,” she murmurs into my back. “I don’t want you to
feel like you can’t talk about her with me. I’m here to listen, whenever you
want to talk.”

My
hand freezes where I’m scrubbing egg off the plate, and I turn the tap off. I
want to tell her that I’m already feeling things for her that I’m not sure I
ever felt with Jessie. But it feels like a betrayal to even think it and for
the first time since last night at The Sea Shack, the darkness starts to come
back.

“Bubble
bath time!” she cheers behind me, saving me from answering her and chasing away
the blackness with the lightness in her voice. “Give me ten minutes. And
don’t
peek.”

She
skips off down the hallway and shuts the bathroom door. I can hear the water
running, and a minute later steam starts to leak out from under the door. While
I wait, I do the dishes and try to create some order out of the papers and
plastic bags full of kitchen utensils that she’s got all over her kitchen
island. It seems crazy that someone who does such a methodical job for a living
could live in such a mess at home.

“It’s
ready!” she calls and when I look down the hallway she’s leaning around the
doorway with pink cheeks and hair that reminds me of an orange clown wig I once
wore to a Halloween party. I try to hide my smile, but she catches me and
immediately lifts her hands up to her hair to try to smooth it down.

“It’s
the steam!”

She
narrows her eyes at me, pretending to be cross, and when I reach her, I can’t
stop myself from placing my hands on either side of her face and kissing her.

“I
love your hair,” I say against her mouth.

“I
don’t. It’s wild and messy. And it has a mind of its own.”

“Then
it suits its owner perfectly,” I smile.

She
scowls and pushes me into the bathroom.

“Do
you like it?” she says excitedly, looking up into my face. She’s put candles
along the windowsill and her iPod sits on the chair in the corner, playing
music softly. The room smells sweet and floral. It smells like my Grandma Nell.
There is indeed a claw foot bath, and it’s definitely pink. It’s overflowing
with bubbles, and I can already tell that it was never intended for men who are
six foot two. I turn around and smile sweetly at her, and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re
going to thank me later, Crew. Trust me. This is going to be the most relaxing
bath of your life.”

She
stands by the door expectantly and after a few seconds I shrug and pull my
t-shirt up over my head. When I meet her eyes again, she’s even pinker. She
puts her hands over her face and groans.

“Sorry!
I promise I wasn’t going to just stand there the whole time. Umm, ok, well,
I’ll just be in the bedroom. No, the living room. Well, I’ll see you later.”

I
laugh at her as she shuts the door quickly behind her.

“Call
me if you need anything!” she yells from the hallway.

I
wait for a few seconds then climb into the bath. As I thought, it’s far too
small. But the heat feels good, and I can already feel the ache easing in my
bad leg.

“I
know you’re still out there,” I call out and then burst out laughing when I
hear her gasp.

“I
just wanted to make sure you liked it.”

“I
love it. You can hop in too if you like.”

She
doesn’t say anything, and for a second I think she’s actually considering it.

“Relax,
kid. I was just joking. But you can come in and talk to me if you like. And
don’t worry, the bubbles cover everything.”

I
look over at the door and will it to open. She’s quiet, but I know she’s still
standing there. I can feel her thinking all the way from here.

The
floorboards in the hall creak a little as if she’s turning to leave, and my
heart sinks. But then I hear a noise. And the doorknob turns.