She sucked in her breath.
“Busted!” Aly burst out laughing and immediately smashed her hand across her mouth to muffle herself. The whole bunk bed shook with Aly’s now
-
silent laughter.
Finally, she broke down and laughed with Aly.
Aly stilled. “Maybe you aren’t so different from me. Maybe we
can
be friends.”
A cloud passed by, and
moonlight bathed
Aly’s face. She leaned toward Aly. “Then you won’t tell Cal?”
Aly sobered. “Why don’t you want him to know? He’s a great guy.”
Could she trust Aly? She took a breath and plunged in. “After you left tonight, Cal and I got into a spiritual discussion.”
“No surprise there.”
“We are
so
not on the same page. I didn’t realize how much till now.” She sighed. “Everybody doesn’t get to question their faith like Cal does. I haven’t had the luxury for seven or eight years. I don’t know if Cal—or you, for that matter—can understand what it’s like to be so desperate you grab a stranglehold around God’s neck and hang on.”
“Seven or eight years! What is it?” She heard an uncharacteristic tenderness in Aly’s voice.
“Can you keep this to yourself? I’ve only told one other person.”
“Yeah. I can.” Aly’s voice held resolve.
“My—” She couldn’t hold it together. Silent sobs racked her body. Aly grabbed a roll of toilet paper and handed it to her. Then, she rubbed her back in circles till she was cried out.
Eddie, the trip to
Lost Lagoon
with Drew, and their argument trickled out.
When she stopped talking, they sat in the silence. The cabin creaked. Outside, crickets droned.
“I’m so sorry, Raine. I feel helpless. There’s not a single thing I can do to
fix things
.”
“You’re wrong. You let me cry. I didn’t have to cry alone.” She breathed in a ragged breath. “I actually feel better, like I could go to sleep now.”
Aly reached over and hugged her neck, pressing their cheeks together. Somebody’s hair was smashed between them. Aly held on. “Raine I was so wrong about you. So very wrong.” Another second went by before Aly let go.
“Wrong, how?”
She heard Aly’s chuckle in the dark. “You do need a friend.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you!”
Aly climbed into her own bunk. The bed creaked and Raine heard Aly’s voice nearby. “Thanks for trusting me. I won’t let you down. Night.” Her voice was soft.
Raine lay back and rolled onto her side.
Thank you, Lord!
The pillowcase was cool against her face. Weariness from expelling emotion settled over her, a welcome blanket of peace, and she drifted toward sleep.
What if Cal actually
liked
her? Her eyes popped open.
Drew padded across tiny castles last night’s squall had sculpted in the sand. The sky
had washed
out gray with a ribbon of light lying on the horizon. He stopped to watch the first millimeter of
a
butter-white sun poke through the Atlantic.
Morning, Jesus.
Fourteen minutes from his alarm going off. Not bad.
He glanced down the beach. Rainey’s dark bob moved toward the jetty. Her arms waved around in front of her as though she were talking to someone he couldn’t see. She hadn’t showed yesterday morning. She was probably still ticked at him.
The pages of his Bible whispered through his fingers. Loneliness yawned and stretched inside him.
Talk to me.
A cord of three strands is not easily broken
.
Well, he’d broken it with Rainey. He sighed and read the verse again. He had friendship with Jesus. And, yeah, it was sweet, but someone visible would be nice. Jesse and Keenan were good, but he needed a friend who was a peer. Like Rainey.
N
otes and words flowed out of him like water
out of the Cape Canaveral Canal Lock.
At last, he slumped over his guitar and closed his eyes. “Amen.”
When he opened his eyes Rainey
stood
a few feet away
,
looking uncomfortable.
They both spoke at once. “Sorry I went off on you,” Rainey said.
“Sorry I made you mad.”
They exchanged uneasy smiles.
“Forgive me?” He held his hand up to her.
Rainey nodded. “Yeah.” She shook his hand. “I’ll think about what you said.”
Silence pinged back and forth between them
. Rainey’s eyes,
green with pinpricks of light,
matched
the exact shade of the water sloshing on the sand. He sucked in fresh-washed air and blew out tension. Maybe Rainey could be that friend. He stood and dusted
the sand
off the seat of his shorts.
Rainey
gaz
ed out to sea. “I wanted to ask you about something.” She looked back at him. “Cal says we should explore other religions, not accept what our parents taught us. How can I explain God? It’s like trying to explain Narnia to someone who’s never stepped through the wardrobe. I feel so—’untried
,
’ Cal called me.”
“You’re tried alright.” So, she wasn’t telling Cal about Eddie. Something warm fizzed between his ribs. “But it won’t hurt to read up on other religions.”
Rainey chewed on her bottom lip. He set his guitar into its case and flipped the latches shut.
“I wish I’d listened better in my comparative religions class. All religions are about man reaching out for God. Christianity is about God reaching out to man. That’s what I remember. Pretty pathetic for a semester’s worth of classes.”
“Sounds like you boiled the course into a one-sentence summary.” He glanced at her sneakers as they headed toward the seawall. His lips tugged into a smile remembering how embarrassed she had been when he teased her about her feet. Well, she wasn’t in a teasing mood today. Was
it Eddie or Cal who
weighed down
this morning
?
He sat on the seawall bench and held a hand out to her. “You look like
you could use some prayer
.”
Rainey sat beside him. “That’s the understatement of the week.”
Drew squeezed her hand and looked at the sun inching higher in the sky. “Lord, please lift Rainey’s chin.” His eyes darted to hers. “Sorry, I forgot I’m not supposed to call you Rainey.”
“It’s okay. I was mad
the other
night. I wanted to hurt you. That’s the first time in years Eddie’s used that name.” She smiled and the warmth spread through him
as though
the fizzing
infiltrated
his bloodstream.
Her head dropped and her eyes slid shut. “Guide me as I study things Cal’s into. Rescue, Eddie.” Her voice caught. “Please.”
“Yeah, and Rainey could use some peace. Hope.”
Rainey tapped the top of his hand that held hers. He swiveled his
eyes
toward her
s
.
“What do you want me to pray
for?” Her eyes bore into him.
He looked out across the water, and back at Rainey’s small hand resting loosely in his. He pushed the words out. “My brother left last week for Japan—for two years. I feel like he tossed my life out of the plane
somewhere between here and Toky
o, and none of the pieces have landed yet.”
Rainey dropped her chin to her chest. “Comfort Drew. Comforter is one of Your names, so I think You must be pretty good at it. And show Drew if he needs to make any course corrections.”
“Amen.” Course corrections? He hadn’t thought of his situation that way. He looked out at the gul
l
s dive
-
bombing for their breakfast and back
at
Rainey shoving strands of dark chocolate, ruby, and cobalt out of her eyes—from one kind of beauty to another. How about a course correction toward Rainey?
Rainey’s hand slid out of his as she stood and he wished it back. They walked toward camp.
“What do you sing on the beach?”
His guitar
case
thumped against his back in rhythm with his steps. “Sometimes I sing songs. Sometimes I just sing.”
“Do you ever write the words and music down?”
“Never thought about it.”
“Write them down.”
His grin arced inward
,
lodging somewhere near his heart. “Bossy aren’t we? The perfect case of a person living up to her name. Raine.”
“That’s the first time you’ve called me by my name. I order you to call me Raine!”
He stopped in the middle of the road and faced her. “Since when am I your subject, Rainey?”
She stared back at him for a long moment, emotions he couldn’t read warring in her eyes. “Since never.”
#
Raine sat in her empty classroom cutting out pa
tterns from purple construction
paper for tomorrow’s Bible craft. Deep orange light splashed across the table,
and a
mosquito buzzed through the open window. Raine waved it away with a multicolored sheaf of papers.
“Hey, s’up?” Cal walked through the door.
The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up. She’d waited until after supper to avoid being in the building in the afternoon when Cal taught classes. She hadn’t studied nearly enough to talk religion with Cal. “What are you doing here?”
“What, I can’t
st
op in and say hello?”
“I mean, now, when you don’t have class.”
Cal shrugged and pulled out a chair across the table from her. “No waves.” He flipped the chair around and straddled it.
Even with the table between them,
he felt
way too close. She obviously wasn’t making any headway killing the crush.
Help!
“Help?”
Raine’s head jerked up.
“Do you want some help cutting out—”
Relief shot through her. “Crèches.”
“Right.”
“I was finishing up.” She gathered the cutouts into a pile. She’d only started ten minutes ago. Maybe a white lie was okay when she was trying to stay away from Cal. She would come in early in the morning instead of taking her walk on the beach.
She grabbed her canvas bag. “I need to go. See you tomorrow. Thanks for the offer—” She avoided Cal’s eyes. She gave a little wave in his direction and walked across the classroom toward the door. Six more steps till she was safely out the door—away from his sharp mind that made her leap and pirouette to keep up, his citrus scent, the full lips she’d almost tasted. Three steps.
“Raine.”
She stopped, one foot in the hall, one foot in the classroom.
“Why do you do this? You were like a normal person the other night on the laundry porch. Now you’re this automaton. Cold. I finally decide there’s a real girl under the Bible college babe. A girl I like. Then you see-saw? Why?”
#
Drew sat on a two-by-eight in the outdoor classroom along the tree line. He ran through the last song he needed to practice before elementary campfire. From where he sat, he’d seen Rainey head into the lodge by the back door soon after dinner. Later, Cal had gone in through the front door. And he hadn’t come out.
He should pray for Rainey. Maybe she was having that spiritual conversation with Cal she wanted to have.
Please let that be the case.
Okay, so that wasn’t the kind of prayer he should be praying. He was sitting smack dab in the middle of limbo—not in a relationship and not free to be interested in Rainey or any other girl—where he’d been for years. Before it hadn’t mattered. Did it matter now?
Rainey thought enough about his music to order him to write it down. Had Samantha believed in him like that? Sam had been his world for a semester, yet he couldn’t remember ever singing in front of her. How did something that was such a huge part of his life not get woven into their relationship? Maybe after all this time he didn’t remember.
The point was, Rainey’s compliment had drummed on his heart all week. There wasn’t much else in his life, except God, that was more important to him than music. And Rainey had chosen that one thing to encourage.
Time had washed so much of Sam away. He remembered dumb stuff, like how the inside of her purse looked like a landfill; how her long, thin fingers laced with his like they were created for each other; that she liked Ranch on her fries and how she could beat him on the ropes course at
Daytona State
.
What did he know about Rainey? She was flat out for God and had a whacked brother.