“I’m going out,” she said to Hale over her
shoulder. She was already racing up the steps to change. She ripped
her shirt over her head before she even slammed the door shut in
her bedroom. Her clothes fell like stones to the floor as she
hurried to find a clean bathing suit. When she came back down the
stairs a couple minutes later, Hale was still standing in the same
spot she’d left him in. She could tell he wasn’t done with their
conversation, but she didn’t pause long enough for him to bring it
up again.
“Surfing?”
Kyra flashed a smile as she darted around
him and jogged toward the back of the house. Hale ambled behind
her. “Yep,” she called.
She shoved the screen door open and let it
slam behind her. Her favorite board was freshly waxed and waiting
for her. Without another thought but getting to the water, she
grabbed it and hurried down the back steps.
“Have fun.”
Kyra flipped her hair over her shoulder and
looked back. Hale stood inside the screen door, which made his
features darker as he brooded. “Always,” she said, smiling back at
him.
When she turned back to the water, her smile
fell away. She walked through the garden and out the gate. Her mind
eased at the quick flash of heat when she stepped onto the sand,
and the pounding of the waves overpowered the ringing in her ears.
Her heartbeat slowed as she took another deep breath. Something
that had coiled tightly inside of her released. And that was even
before her body slid into the water.
She waded farther out until the surf started
getting choppy. Her board slipped beneath her like a rough,
calloused hand skimming down her body. It was a hardness she
welcomed in its familiarity. She filled her lungs with air and
pressed down just as a slight wave built above her. Then she was
under, and it was miraculous.
The power surged around her. She opened her
eyes and blinked, seeing the point of the board in front of her and
the press of the water around her, cocooning and holding her. It
felt safe as houses under the ocean as the waves crashed above her.
Her body was still on her board as it found its way back to the
surface, and when they emerged, Kyra slung her hair back and shook
the water from her face.
This was love, she thought. This was the
safest kind of love possible.
She could die out here, she knew. The ocean
could take her under and not bring her back up. It was a wicked
woman, a beautiful kiss of death. Kyra paddled behind the break of
the surf and sat up, bobbing along with the now peaceful waves.
Even with its great capacity to kill, the ocean could be the
biggest sigh of relief. And Kyra liked that: the wavering, blurring
line between calm and storm.
The swell was down today. It wouldn’t be fun
surfing, but Kyra didn’t need that right now. She just needed to
sit out here and feel infinite. She needed to feel like the ocean
was taking out the darkness and clearing away the bad things
pressing in around her, loosening the coils that wrapped around so
tightly inside of her.
Kyra stayed out there for a while, sitting
or riding waves whenever she felt like it. She paddled a lot
against the current. The fatigue in her arms felt good. The brine
in her nose smelled like home. Her hair was half dry and half wet,
and even its mess seemed right.
Only when she could breathe and not feel
pain did she let a wave bring her in. When she stood up, holding
her board beneath her arm, and waded in, her smile came easy and
free. The tension that had tried to crush her was gone, and she was
buoyed, bobbing along the surface just as she had on the water.
She was fixed, and she didn’t need the blade
in the medicine cabinet to accomplish the peace she felt now.
She sat her board on the porch and went
inside the house, expecting Hale to be working, but he was gone and
the house was just a hollow shell. As she walked back up to her
room, she wondered why she’d kissed him. It was impulse and
something inside her that demanded to be let loose. She hadn’t been
overcome with lust or something ridiculous like that; she’d just
wondered what it would feel like to do that right then, to surprise
him and herself, and really be in that moment.
She went into her bathroom and peeled off
her suit. The water screeched to life in the ancient claw-foot tub.
While it filled, Kyra stared at herself in the mirror.
She leaned closer, narrowing her eyes as if
she could see past the beauty to the woman within. She thought she
could do that with Hale. She saw a man whose honesty was brutal and
strange to others. The story of his life was on his arms for all to
see: his wounds and triumphs, all forever cast in ink. Kyra’s
secrets were hidden deep beneath shimmering blue eyes, a toned
body, and a bright smile.
She wondered what it would be like to bear a
secret on her skin, to pass a stranger on the street and let him
see a mark on her body that told a story of her. Kyra swallowed,
her eyes widening. Suddenly, all she wanted was to give away a
secret.
She hopped in the bath and washed off. She
bypassed all her normal products and just let the water cleanse her
again. By the time she was dressed and ready, her heart was
hammering. She pounded down the stairs and out the front door.
She glanced at Stevie’s house only briefly
before she headed to her Jeep. She wanted to do this alone. She
wanted to see if she could do this alone.
twelve
L
et me get this
straight. You got a tattoo
without
me?”
Kyra laughed. Stevie’s hair was flat against
her head on one side and sticking straight up on the other. She
held a glass of wine in her hand and a spatula slathered in icing
in the other. “Yeah, but I didn’t leave you out on purpose or
anything.”
“Oh, good. That makes me feel better.”
Stevie huffed and turned back to the doughy glob of cupcakes in
front of her. “Something about this doesn’t look right,” she
mused.
“Did you cook them?”
“Of course I cooked them,” Stevie said,
rolling her eyes. Suddenly, she sat down her wine glass and turned
back to Kyra. Her eyes were serious and almost as if she’d turned
it off, the sheen of alcohol was gone too. “Why did you get
that?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. That tattoo
makes it seem like you have problems, but you’re a girl who acts
like she doesn’t have a care in the world except for getting Hale
Cooper to kiss her.”
Kyra swallowed. “We can mark that one off
the list because I kissed him yesterday.” She offered a smile, but
Stevie wasn’t falling for it.
“Why that tattoo, Kyra? What’s wrong?”
Something in Stevie’s voice, whether it was
her sincere concern or just her tenacity to know the truth, made
Kyra’s eyes prickle. It wasn’t enough to form tears, but she still
had to fight down the urge. She flipped over her right wrist and
looked again.
A small thin anchor now adorned the pale
hollow of her wrist. Beneath it, the words ‘I will not sink’ were
inked in a fine, swirling script. She loved it.
“I have problems too,” she said, meeting
Stevie’s eyes.
Stevie scrutinized her face as if she could
pick apart Kyra’s truths. She studied for so long that Kyra thought
maybe she really was. Finally, Stevie blinked, and the seriousness
was gone. She went back to her counter and picked up her wine,
making Kyra think the conversation was over—until Stevie spoke
again.
“You hide it well. Too well.” Stevie looked
up. “Do you think I hide mine well?”
“No,” Kyra answered honestly. They bore
their pain in very different ways.
“Me, neither. I guess I can thank my parents
for that,” Stevie said with a dark laugh. “No more lies though,
okay? Let’s just be us with our problems unhidden when we’re
together. It’s too much work to fake it all the time, and I’m not
into manual labor.”
Kyra’s smile was real this time. It was shy
and small and very hopeful. For a second, Kyra thought now would be
a good time to talk to her about her drinking, which Kyra had
started to suspect was a bigger issue than Stevie let on. They were
being open and honest, and so very, very close to speaking about
the darkness within them, but the moment passed, and Stevie cranked
up the music after she’d tossed the cupcakes in the trash.
“We can just eat the icing,” she announced.
She hopped up on the counter and dipped her spatula into the frothy
icing. “So, you kissed Hale Cooper.”
Kyra took a spoon from the countertop and
dunked it into the icing. “Yeah.”
“Don’t just ‘yeah’ me. Give it to me
good.”
The icing was a little too sweet, but it was
still edible. Kyra took another nibble and licked her lips. “We
kissed yesterday. And it was…” She didn’t really know what it was;
she was still trying to figure that out herself. “It was honest,”
she said, because it was the best she could come up with.
Stevie plunked her spatula back into the
bowl, sending a glob of icing over the rim. “You’re not going to
tell me kissing him was just ‘honest.’ If you tell me that is all
it was, I will burn down your house.”
Kyra figured a girl like Stevie probably
knew how to go about burning down a house, so she didn’t press her
luck. “He was playing his music too loud, and I was trying to make
a video. I had a time-sensitive mud mask on and the sound of his
radio was ruining it. It did ruin it,” she added with a sigh. “So I
was pissed. And I went downstairs and started yelling at him, but
he ignored me. I wanted to get his attention.” She shrugged.
Stevie mimicked her shrug and made an awful
face. “
I wanted to get his attention
,” she repeated in an
awful rendition of Kyra’s voice. “
So I kissed him
.”
Kyra shook her head at her friend and
laughed. She took another bite of frosting. “I got his attention
for sure. And that’s what I meant by being honest. I thought about
kissing him because I knew it would shut him up. And I did it. I
just…
did it
. And that felt almost better than the kiss.”
Stevie raised her eyebrows at Kyra’s words. “I mean the feeling
made the kiss even better.”
“Well,” Stevie started, picking her spatula
back up. “I’m going to start with the most obvious question: Is he
a good kisser?”
Kyra bit her lip and nodded, making Stevie
roll her eyes dramatically. “It was probably the best kiss I’ve
ever had, but that really isn’t saying much since my kissing
experience is pretty limited. His skin was warm from where he’d
been working. He wasn’t quite sweaty yet, but I could still smell
it. When I kissed him, I tasted the salt of it around his lips. I
had my legs around his waist—”
“What?” Stevie screeched, throwing her hands
in the air and flinging icing everywhere. “That is so
not
just a kiss! You pounced on the poor guy! You’re a freaking
animal!”
“I did,” Kyra agreed, smiling rather
dreamily. “I jumped onto him, and he caught me. I could feel the
muscles in his arms go all tight to hold me. And then I kissed him,
but that didn’t last long.”
“He stopped it?” Stevie asked, slightly
breathless.
“No. He starting kissing me back, and it was
like…”
“Like what?” Stevie yelled.
“Like he needed to taste every part of my
mouth. Like maybe he had wanted to kiss me too, but I was the one
that did it first. It kind of felt like he wanted every inch of me,
but all he had was my mouth. So he took it. And all I could do was
just hold on.” Kyra shrugged when she was finished.
Stevie was wide-eyed with her mouth parted
slightly. She blinked as if she was waking up from a dream. Then
she shivered. “Well, I’m good to go for another few months.” She
squeezed her legs together and made another face. “Oh, yeah.
That’ll do.”
Kyra’s laugh bubbled up from deep in her
chest. It was the most authentic kind, the kind she couldn’t
control. It overtook her until she was doubled over with the force
of it. When she was able to look up, she saw that Stevie was
laughing the same kind of laugh.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Kyra said when
she could speak again. She wiped at the tears beneath her eyes.
When she’d recovered too, Stevie asked, “So,
what are you going to do about him?”
“I don’t know. He wanted to know too, but
then my grandmother came by.”
“Oh, good grief. No wonder you went and got
inked. I guess we’re lucky it doesn’t say, ‘
screw you all
’
or something.”
Kyra’s shock turned into another rolling,
uncontrollable fit of laughter. “Not quite,” she choked out.
“You’ve got to deal with your crazy-ass
grandma.”
That killed Kyra’s laughter. She stared into
the bowl of frosting. “I have no idea what to do about Florence.
She’s awful.”
Stevie crinkled her nose like she’d smelled
something sour. “Yeah, she’s a real twat. And I hate being
disrespectful toward old people…” She paused, considering her
words. “Just kidding. I hate old people. I hope she kicks the
bucket soon.”
“Stevie!” Kyra sputtered, choking on the big
bite of frosting she’d just taken. “That’s terrible!”
Stevie shrugged, clearly unconcerned.
“Eh.”
Their silence was comfortable. Together they
cleaned up Stevie’s baking disaster, discovering she hadn’t even
turned on the oven, hence the unbaked cupcakes. That ensued another
round of bellyaching laughter. It was a good afternoon full of
laughter and jokes. Kyra was glad she’d met Stevie, who was
possibly the only person on the island who would accept Kyra and
all her darkness. Emotions weighed on her. That didn’t make her
crazy; it just made things tough.
After she said goodbye to Stevie, Kyra felt
good enough that she figured today was as good as any. She crossed
over to her house and locked up before she piled into her Jeep. She
couldn’t avoid it forever. Sitting behind the wheel with the engine
off, Kyra evaluated herself.