Summer Sunsets (5 page)

Before she can react, I
reach out and slip my finger beneath her chin, forcing her to look
me in the eye. “That’s not the problem, and you know it. I’d rather
you called me than not. I just want to make sure that you’re doing
okay. It’s my prerogative as your best friend, and you know that,
too.”

“
I’ll be okay,” she says in
exasperation. “It just takes time.”

The power stays off, and
with that kind of storm raging around us, the only thing to do is
try to get some sleep. I think we’re both exhausted, so that won’t
be a problem, even with all the thunder and lightning around us,
not to mention rain that sounds like hail.

Although I know Skye will
argue, I send her into the bedroom to get some shut-eye while I
take the couch. She’s got two candles with her, and I have the
other two, not that they cut through much of the darkness. I’m not
sure there’s anything that will do that at this point. It’s better
than nothing, and even though I know the layout of the house, as I
peer down the hall toward the bedroom, I can’t see anything,
especially Skye. It’s like that half of the house has ceased to
exist. I don’t know if the door is open or closed, not that it
matters.

I stand and jerk the shirt
over my head before lying down with the thick, white comforter
nestled around my body. In a way, the sound of the storm rumbling
above is comforting. I have trouble sleeping when it’s too quiet.
It’s too much like I’m waiting for something bad to happen. I just
don’t know what it might be.

It doesn’t take long for me
to hear the siren call of blackness and let myself sink toward it,
and once I start falling, there’s no easy way to turn
back.

“
Devin? Wake up!” Someone
shouts my name and jerks at my arm, trying to pull me from the
blackness, and I quickly jerk into wakefulness, probably more
exhausted than before, if that’s even possible.

For a moment, the world is
just blackness, breath, and pain. Then I remember the dream—the
same dream as the other night, except this time it goes on. I’d
given Skye CPR repeatedly, but when the EMTs got there, they
pronounced her dead without even trying to save her. They said it
had been too long, that she was beyond saving. I went nuts as one
of them threw a sheet over her head. I actually hit him and
screamed she wasn’t dead. And I started calling her name as though
she could answer me.

Then Skye wakes
me.

I gasp for air, trying to
breathe enough to stop the pain in my chest. Again, my body and
face are glossed with sweat. All I can hear is the beat of my
heart, and I it to slow down, but it keeps racing. There’s nothing
I can do about it. Tears pool in my eyes and run down my face, and
I wish I could shake the power of the dream, but I can’t. It owns
me. It’s always owned me.

“
Devin? Geez, are you all
right?” She latches onto my arm and hovers nervously. She’s never
seen me after I’ve had that dream. I’ve always been able to hide it
until now. Now there’s no way to hide anything. I feel kind of
naked and stupid as I wipe my face, trying to clear the tears
running down my cheeks.

“
I’m fine,” I say in a gruff
voice. “Go back to bed.”

“
Like hell,” she says,
suddenly wrapping her arms around me.

A strangled gasp comes out,
and suddenly I’m crying again. Stupid. I’m lecturing her not to
worry about PTSD, and I can’t get over something that happened
years ago. Some days it’s like it just happened.

“
Shhh,” she whispers. “It’s
going to be okay. I promise.”

Closing my eyes, I wrap my
arm around her and hold her as tightly as I can, burying my face in
her hair. I don’t know how long we linger like that, slowly rocking
back and forth. Times like these, when pain seems to sucker-punch
me, it’s like everything stands still. Except the pain. That goes
on and on with its nasty rodent feet, continually clawing until all
I feel is that I’m on fire somehow and that my world is so broken
it can’t be fixed.

She waits until I’m calm
before slowly releasing me, and even though I try to look away, she
won’t let me. Her hand finds the trails left by the tears and wipes
them away, a concerned frown tugging at her lips. “What just
happened, Devin?”

“
Nothing,” I tell her.
“Don’t worry about it.”

“
You were screaming. I heard
you call my name.” She sits so close our shoulders lightly touch.
“I need you to talk to me.”

“
I said it was nothing.” My
tone is sharp, and I know she doesn’t deserve it, but I can’t talk
about this, can’t talk about what it feels like. Sometimes I wonder
if I’m always going to have this nightmare, or maybe that if we do
end up together, that will finally drive it away. Who knows? Unable
to look her in the eye, I force myself to my feet and pace the
room, trying to calm down and get a grip. The last thing she needs
is to see me like this.

“
If that was nothing, I’d
hate to see something,” she says, following me. We both stand in
front of the window. Although there are small hints of a storm
that’s finally passed—scattered rain and gusts of wind—the night
has eased to a relative quiet. I feel her set her hand on my
shoulder, each finger a separate unit of heat on my
flesh.

“
It doesn’t matter,” I
whisper.

“
Of course it does. I’m the
reason for it, after all.” Her forlorn voice cuts through me, and I
stagger backwards slightly before I turn to her.

“
Nothing is your fault,” I
say, setting one hand on each of her shoulders.

“
Wrong. That was the dream,
the nightmare about me, wasn’t it?” she closes her eyes and
exhales, her body seeming to shrink as the air leaves her. “I was
so selfish.”

“
You had help—and lots of
it, just in case you’d forgotten. And I was being an
ass.”

She reaches to my face and
strokes my cheek. “You weren’t an ass, Devin. You didn’t have all
the facts, so how could you have known what was happening? That
wasn’t fair to you.”

Taking a deep breath, I set
my hand atop hers and look into the depths of her eyes, searching
for anything that will moor me to a universe far removed from the
world where she died. That world hurts too much.

The world seems to stop
until she’s the only thing I can see. I find myself slowly lowering
my head as though gravity is gently tugging me toward her. Her lips
are parted as she takes quick shallow breaths, and I keep expecting
her to move, to run, but she doesn’t. A moment later, our lips
gently brush together as I kiss her for the first time. I feel as
clumsy as a seventeen-year-old, the same seventeen-year-old who
should have given her a first kiss. There were so many firsts we
should have shared; if we had, maybe none of the past would have
haunted us like this.

For a moment, we linger
there in perfection, then I slowly back away, afraid to linger too
long so I make her second-guess everything we have. Even as I lean
back, I see her eyes are still closed, her lips softly parted as
though waiting for me, and she’s lost in a place I hope is half as
happy as that she brings me to. I smile softly and stroke her
cheek, waiting for her eyes to resurface. At the feel of my
fingers, her eyelids flutter and open. In that instant, all the
ease and bliss abruptly vanishes. It’s like she senses the return
of all the things I’ve wanted to erase but have had no power to,
and her lips clench shut. She winces as though in pain.

“
Skye?”

She pulls away from me
then, flying out the front door. I race after and find her on the
porch, staring at the endless roll and return of the waves, the
smell of rain yet clinging to the newly washed world.

“
I’m sorry,” I whisper,
standing at the threshold. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“
Why? Why did you?” Her
voice is thick, and it sounds like she’s crying, which is probably
what made her rush out of the room in the first place.

I look down at the wood
beneath my bare feet. The planks are cold and damp, but that’s
nothing compared to the sudden chill between us. “I didn’t mean to
upset you. Skye, it’s just hard, having that dream and worrying
about you. It’s no secret I love you. It’s never been a
secret.”

She wipes her hand across
her face. “And yet somehow I was the last to know. Go
figure.”

“
I won’t do that again,” I
promise, trying not to think about what this means for the future I
so desperately want. “Just please come inside. I don’t want this to
spoil the time we’ve planned together.” I start to reach out and
touch her shoulder, but I can sense it’s the wrong thing to do,
that it won’t bring either of us comfort no matter how desperately
I want it to.

She slowly turns and looks
at me. “I kind of thought you had a girlfriend.”

“
What do you mean?” I rake
my fingers through my hair, trying to get the unruly strands to
cooperate and lie back down.

“
Kimmie Whatsherface.” She
hedges through the doorway, and I follow.

I shake my head. “Kimmie is
just an acquaintance. We’ve never gone out and never will, trust me
on that one.” I close the door behind us.

“
Does she know this?” Skye
steps to the couch and sinks down.

“
I’m sure she’ll figure it
out eventually.”

I sit on the opposite end,
wondering how to get past my cosmic blunder. Usually, I’m much
better at keeping my feelings under wraps, but having that dream
makes me vulnerable in a way nothing else can. I hate
it.

“
So can we call a truce?” I
ask. “Just go back to how things were before I…did
that?”

She sighs and stares ahead
distantly. “Yeah. Sure. But I’m going to have to get some shut-eye.
I’m pretty worn out.”

I nod. “Me,
too.”

She rises slowly and
shuffles towards the bedroom. “’Night.”

“’
Night.”

I watch her go, hoping
she’ll be sleeping better than I will. I’ll probably spend the time
going back over things and mentally kicking myself for not having
better control. Yet, I think, lying on the couch, I know I felt her
respond to my kiss. It was only when she started thinking again she
freaked out. I wish I knew the right way with Skye. All the pieces
are there, but I can’t seem to find a way to put everything
together as though it had never been broken—as though
we
had never been
broken.

I walk to the window and
look out at the night, where everything is now calm. There’s no
sign of the storms that ripped through here, which is kind of how
Skye is. Everything seems fine on the surface, but even now, even
after all these years, I see the scars no one else does. I wish I
knew what to do.

Chapter Five

For the next couple of
days, things seem to fall back into the same rhythm, as though I
had never kissed Skye. We never speak about it, even though I want
to. I guess part of me is afraid of what will happen because of it.
I’ve thought about it so many times, trying to analyze what she
might have been thinking or feeling at that moment, and surely if
she had had no feelings, she would have protested. But she hadn’t,
and that’s what I don’t get. Maybe I’m not supposed to. Anyway,
since we never talk about it, nothing is pushed, and nothing
changes, which could be good or bad, I guess.

We spend the days lounging
on the beach or fishing off the pier, and it’s a welcome respite
for both of us, considering the stress of graduating we’ve both
just had. From time to time, I see glimmers of the old Skye hidden
beneath this one, and I wonder if perhaps the two of us just stayed
here would she return. Could that happen?

I guess I’ll never know
because no matter how much we’d both like to stay here and enjoy
summer, we’ll do have to get moving in a few days, though neither
of us is talking about it. It’s almost like we don’t want to ruin
what is right in front of us with worries about the future and what
we’re going to do in the “real” world.

We have a few days yet, and
right now Skye and I stand on the pier where I try to teach her to
fish. I’m no expert by any measure, but I do know enough not to get
my line tangled. That’s trademark Skye.

“
How did you do this?” I
ask, madly trying to detangle the line.

“
I wish I knew. I just cast
it out like you said.”

Although the beach is
pretty much deserted, to the left of us, we hear a couple of
teenage girls giggling as they push each other. One is blonde and
bubbly, the other dark-headed and more subdued. At that moment, I
think they really shouldn’t do that, not on the pier, anyway. As if
they can read my mind, they push harder, the blonde literally
shoving the brunette toward the edge. Her body seems to stop at the
railing, but the force of it sends her reeling over. She
screams.

In that instant, I watch
her body fly through the air, smacking her head on one of the
support beams before she sinks into the water. The thudding sound
reverberates, and I doubt she’s even conscious. I drop the pole and
yell at Skye. “Call 911. Now!”

Jerking off my shirt and
shoes, I jump into the water near where the girl has sunk. The cold
rushes up to meet me, and at first, I can’t find her. I have to bob
back to the surface to get a breath. I scan the area. She hasn’t
come up. I dive deep again, searching. Just when I’m almost out of
breath, I see her long, dark hair flowing in the water around her.
Her still body tells me I was right. She’s unconscious and
breathing water.