Wavehouse Page 14

  At two, Myra arrived—or at least it looked vaguely like Myra.

  “Um…hi,” I said slowly. “What exactly are you wearing?”

  It wasn’t that Myra was wearing anything particularly outlandish, but her outfit, which was so normal for Kendall’s Watch, was so abnormal for Myra. Instead of her usual flouncy skirt and pedal pushers, Myra now boasted a pair of super tiny, tight red board shorts. Gone were the quasi-old lady orthopedic sandals with the bows that she loved to wear in summer, and instead she wore a pair of flip-flops—footwear she was continually telling me led to fallen arches and back problems. It was her tee shirt, however, that really caught my eye—a cropped pink number featuring a goofy cartoon surfer on the front with a word bubble coming out of his mouth that said, “Surf’s up, Dude!”

  Myra frowned. “I thought I would try and tone it down for our talk with Jimmy.” There was something odd about the way she was standing—all tight, with shoulders hunched and knees locked. “Dress like the natives.”

  “But you look so, um, uncomfortable.” And totally doofus-y, I wanted to say, but didn’t.

  “You’re right,” she sighed. “These stupid shorts are about to cut off my circulation.”

  “It’s just so totally not you.”

  “What do you mean?” Myra asked, tugging at the bottom of her tee shirt.

  “You look better in your own clothes,” I said. “Myra-type clothes.”

  “Argh. What was I thinking?” she cried. “I’m gonna go home right now and forget the whole thing.”

  “Well, let’s not forget the whole thing; let’s just postpone it, okay? Besides, it’s a madhouse in here and I probably shouldn’t leave, even just to go across the street.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow then?”

  Word on the street must have been that we were giving stuff away for free—the shop was so packed. “I might be stuck here if it’s like this tomorrow. Can we play it by ear?”

  “Sure,” Myra said brightly, the tiny furrow in her brow betraying her disappointment.

  “I’ll really try. I promise. I’ll call you either way. Just don’t come dressed like that.”

  “Don’t worry,” Myra sighed. “Momentary insanity. Won’t happen again. See you later.”

  “Yeah, see you later. And Myra, that comb you have stuck in your hair?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s a comb for scraping old, dirty surf wax off a surfboard. It’s not a hair ornament.”

  Rusty, surfing, late-night dates, crazy best friends—none of it could matter in frantic Shell-Shop times like these. It was all business and no pleasure. Thankfully, Sara had a bag of pretzels and a few granola bars stashed under the cash register. When I wasn’t on Shelly rescue alert, I rolled my eyes at Sara in a they’re-driving-me-loco kind of way; she nodded back and snuck her finger up to her temple, miming a shot through the skull. In this way we connected, acknowledging our love-hate relationship with the summer crowd. It was not as if a busy store made everything okay between us, but somehow our other problems took time off while we made sale after sale, and answered stupid question after stupid question. In times like these we were united, and I loved the feeling. I dreaded telling her about Rusty. I figured it would be best to wait until after closing, after adding up the sales of this ca-chink ca-chink day. Hopefully making megabucks would soften the blow of bad news. Fingers crossed.

  At four the phone rang. Sara picked it up. “Dugan’s Shell Shop. How can we help you?” Sara chirped.

  I was barely paying attention, focused instead on untangling a mess of slipper shell necklaces. But when Sara’s tone of voice suddenly changed, I stopped and listened.

  “No way…this never would’ve happened with our old guys…this is totally unacceptable.” Her tone was no longer bird-like, it was strident and bossy. “I’ll be there tomorrow night… You bet you’ll pay for this. You owe me big time.”

  Sara hung up the phone, looking angrier than I’d seen her in a long time.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Goddamn new manufacturer printed three hundred tee shirts that say, ‘Kendall’s Witch.’ This is what I get for trying to save a buck,” she snapped. Then she noticed the quiet, that all customer eyes were upon her, and she changed her tone. “Sorry, everyone. Just a little business snafu.”

  The customers resumed their browsing.

  “So what are you gonna do?” I asked her. With Labor Day around the corner, this was one wicked disaster.

  “The only thing to do is to drive down to New Jersey tonight and supervise the re-printing tomorrow myself. Make sure those a-holes get it right this time. I’ll haul an initial load of tee shirts back in the Jeep to tide us over. Hopefully, it won’t take more than a few days, but with these bozos, who knows? We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

  “No need—”

  “—to get my knickers in a twist,” she smiled. “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  I smiled back. “Well, if anyone can get it done, it’s you,” I said.

  “Damn straight it’s me. Go see if Meghan can help you cover while I’m gone. Tomorrow shouldn’t be too busy. But later in the week will be a bitch, once the next crop of vacationers arrive.” Sara paced behind the counter. “I can’t friggin’ believe I’m gonna miss surfing Early’s on the big swell. Maybe I’ll bring my board with me and stop off in Manasquan on the way to the factory. Surf the inlet with those Joisey boys.” Her lips curved in a smile. “You remember Joe Pirella, right? Joe lives in Manasquan.”

  Fireman Joe. Sara’s main squeeze the summer after fifth grade. How could I forget? Joe had been a real honest-to-goodness firefighter and a bulldog of a surfer. Joe seemed head over heels for Sara that first week, and great fun with little-kid me. When Sara remarked on how natural and dad-like he was, Fireman Joe would shrug with a goofy “aw shucks” grin.

  Thing was, Joe really was a dad. Someone else’s dad. Three someone elses’, in fact. And someone else’s husband, too. We learned this the second week when Joe finally revealed he was married with kids. Wife Beth had kicked him out; they’d been going through a rough patch, so technically he wasn’t exactly cheating. But now he and Beth needed to work things out, blah, blah, blah. Surprise, surprise. So back to Jersey, bye-bye Joe.

  “Joe lives in Manasquan,” I repeated. “And so does Beth, and all the Pirella juniors.”

  “Oh Anna,” she sighed. “Don’t worry. I’m way over Joe. It would just be a hoot to surf with him again, you know? Like friends. For old times. You know I’m totally into Rusty.”

  Rusty. I had to tell her. “Sara?”

  She looked at me. “What?” Her eyes were wide, she was stressed. The knickers were a tad twisted.

  If I told her about Rusty now she would explode; the customers would flee, and it would be as if Godzilla had entered The Shell Shop. “Do you, um, want anything from the bakery? I’m starved. I’m gonna grab a cheese Danish.”

  “No. I have no appetite whatsoever. And hurry back. I think that brat over there just pulled a bird off the roof of a Shelly and stuck it in his pocket.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I locked the door at nine after the last customer left with enough stuff to open their own Shell Shop Outlet. I was dying to get to Secretspot and Chris, but it had been a crazy day and I wanted a moment with Sara. The strip of printout paper—I couldn’t remember it ever having been so long—spewed from the top of the cash register. Sara tore it off and read the final tally. “Oh my god…”

  “How much?”

  “We took in $1,789.50.”

  I did some crude calculations in my head. “So we cleared almost a thousand bucks?”

  “Right.” Sara took the tally ribbon and draped it over my shoulders like a special medal.

  “Sweet,” I nodded.

  “Maybe our luck is changing for the better
. In more ways than one.” Sara absentmindedly caressed her right ring finger with her left hand. I had been so distracted all day I hadn’t even noticed there was an actual ring there. It was brand new, expensive looking, and not from the Dugan Shell Shop jewelry display.

  “Nice ring. Where’d you get it?” I asked, already knowing and dreading the answer.

  “Rusty bought it for me.” Sara held her hand out for my inspection. “Is it beautiful, or what?”

  “Um, Sara? I need to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  She looked tired and wired, but happy.

  “Are you gonna see Rusty before you leave tonight?”

  “No, the only date I have tonight is with the Westbound Long Island Expressway. Hey, speaking of dates, how was your dinner with the weather nerd?”

  “Oh, fine. He was a nice guy. Went right back to Manhattan on the nine o’clock train.”

  I couldn’t tell Sara about Chris. She would get way too excited, spin all sorts of surf-centric romantic drivel, and take it as a sign that I had changed my mind about the pro stuff. Sara was bound to find out soon enough, since the gossip mill in Kendall’s ran twenty-four-seven. “So, um, when will you see Rusty again?”

  “Probably not till I get back from Jersey. Why?”

  “Just curious.” I stalled. Better to wait until she returned with the new improved tee shirts. Then I would tell her about Rusty. Let her fix one problem before hitting her with another. “Sara, you did great today.”

  She smiled at me. “You too, kid. Hey, you’ll be staying at Myra’s while I’m gone, right? I want you to have company while I’m away.”

  If only she knew how much company I had these days. “Yeah. I’ll be at Myra’s,” I smiled. “G’bye Sara. See you when you get back. Hopefully sooner rather than later.” I started to leave. Before unlocking the door, I glanced back. Sara leaned over the display case fiddling with her ring, looking exhausted and devastatingly beautiful.

  My mother, what a piece of work.

  That night, Chris and I spent hours lying together on a blanket on the beach—and not doing much in the way of talking. When we did come up for air, Chris shared more of himself, information that wasn’t always easy to hear.

  “So you remember while we were eating our ice cream the other night, and I told you that some of us have to surf professionally because of the money?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well for me, surfing has also kept me out of trouble. Big trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I grew up in a really messed-up family. My mom’s sort of a waste case. She means well, but she’s been with tons of dudes and had kids with a bunch of them. I have eight half-siblings.”

  “Wow,” I said. At least Sara hadn’t been reckless like that after having me. “That’s a lot.”

  “No kidding. And some of my brothers are into seriously bad shit. Like dealing drugs and stealing. When I was really young, my oldest brother, Max, got me to help him rob a bunch of rich people’s summer houses. I was so tiny I could squeeze through security gates and scoot under cameras and stuff. Then, one time, I got caught, and the whole thing exploded. I got sent to a series of foster homes for a while, because the courts thought part of the problem was that my mom wasn’t paying close enough attention. Which was kinda true.” The dark cloud came back over his face. “That was bad. Like, really bad.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chris shrugged. “Yeah, well. Thanks. Anyhow, my mom got a little better at taking care of me. Once I was back living with her, the surf community saved me from spending too much time with the wrong crowd, which in my case, was my own family. Honestly, surfing kept me out of jail. People think surfers are a bunch of losers, but the folks who I hung out with in the waters of Kauai are my heroes and heroines. Those dudes and wahines took me in when my own mother was MIA, or just too drunk to get up off the couch. They kept me from following in my brothers’ footsteps. Kept me clean and relatively sober. They steered me in the right direction. I owe them my life.”

  We were quiet for a while. It was time for me to share something, but I wasn’t sure what I was ready to tell. I looked at his face, so open and vulnerable, and imagined him as a little kid who had never been cherished by his family—by the people who were supposed to care the most. I had to offer him something. “You know,” I started. “I was conceived in Hawaii.”

  Chris smiled. “Really?”

  “Yeah, I’m the proud product of a one-night stand in Oahu.” It felt as if nasty, trapped fumes had just been released from my body and wafted away forever. Maybe sharing wasn’t so hard after all, at least with the right person.

  “Whoa. Is your dad still there?”

  “No one knows where my dad is,” I sighed. “It’s weird to refer to him as ‘Dad.’ I don’t even know who he really is. He could be dead for all I know.”

  Chris nodded. “Mine, too. Haven’t seen him since I was ten.”

  “You know what I call my father? Clueless Sperm Donor.”

  “That’s harsh,” he giggled. “But also kinda funny.”

  I smiled. “It’s true. He has no idea I exist.”

  Chris pulled me back down to the blanket. “Okay. Enough talk about deadbeat dads. And for the record, I’m very glad you exist.”

  Things definitely progressed, but only so far. For one, I was totally inexperienced and scared I would make a sexual fool out of myself. Plus, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sara and all the guys she’d fallen for, and how her heart had been broken over and over again. I wanted no part of that. Chris was different, or so I thought, but I had no relationships to compare him to. My brief hand-holding stint with Benji Shaw in kindergarten didn’t really count. I could feel Chris’s goodness in my bones; still, were bones trustworthy sources?

  And then, as if Chris were a mind reader, he sat up after one really long and powerful kiss and said, “Hey. We don’t have to be in such a rush. We’ve got time. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’re not?” I squeaked. Didn’t all guys end up leaving?

  “I’ve got that one publicity gig in the city in three days, but after that I plan on sticking around Kendall’s Watch for a while.”

  “Thank you, bones,” I murmured, as I leaned my head on his shoulder and stared out at the dark ocean, waiting for the next wave to rally and crash. Good as it all felt now, I couldn’t help but feel—in another set of bones—that I was in big trouble.

  Was I falling in love? I wasn’t sure—I had never been in love before. If Sara was anything to go by, I was genetically predisposed to fall hard and fast. I barely knew Chris, but still I was a goner. Going, going…gone. I couldn’t help myself.

  I floated through the next two days like a delirious fool. Chris and I surfed together in the mornings, mixing it up with kisses way out in the ocean where no one could see us. Then I went to work in the shop where I was uncharacteristically nice to just about everyone, even Meghan De’Errico, who was a compulsive talker and usually got on my nerves in about ten seconds. It was a good thing she was helping out in the shop, because I was so lovesick that I rang up items incorrectly on the cash register and stocked beach umbrellas in the body lotion section.

  I also avoided Myra. But just temporarily. I was relieved to find her asleep when I got back to her house after my nights with Chris. I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk to her about all this intimacy stuff. Talking about sex with Myra was easy. We’d done plenty of that. But it felt like a betrayal of Chris to tell her how our two bodies connected, how he was becoming important—maybe too important. Things were shifting faster than I expected. On the third night, I stumbled into Myra’s house after yet another romantic evening surf, and found her sitting at the table eating a leftover semi-stale bagel from the most recent Sheila shipment.

  “Any more of th
ose around?” I asked. I was starving. Food hadn’t even entered my Chris-smitten state of mind.

  “Nope. This is the last one.” Myra said coldly as she smeared cream cheese on her sesame. She was pretending to read the Kendall’s Kalendar—in which there was absolutely nothing of interest for someone like Myra.

  “Hey, are you okay? You seem sort of out of it.”

  “I’m fine.” She didn’t look up.

  I grabbed the newspaper out of her hands.

  “Hey! I was reading that!”

  “No you weren’t. You were pretending to read it.”

  “Whatever,” Myra sighed.

  “So, what is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said unconvincingly.

  “You’re lying.”

  Myra looked at me with that little furrow in her brow. “Well, for one, you never called to reschedule our Jimmy Flannigan event.”

  “Oh damn,” I groaned. “I’m sorry. I’ve been really busy.” Now I was the one who was lying. I hadn’t been busy. I’d just been really self- and Chris-absorbed.

  “Well, it doesn’t even matter. I found out two days ago that they’re charging vendors a fee to exhibit at the tournament now that it’s a money-prize event. The Kendall’s Community Action Group doesn’t have enough to cover the cost of real brochures or a decent website, much less a rental fee.”

  “That blows, Myra,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, well, I was really upset two days ago, but I’m over it now.”

  Two days ago I’d been MIA. Now my best friend looked like there was a black cloud pouring little cold pellets of rain on her head.

  “Hey,” I tried. “We could still go over to the motel so you can meet Jimmy.”

  “Never mind. I’m not really interested in him anymore.” Myra took a passionless bite out of her bagel.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she rolled her eyes. “Who cares about some lame Kendall’s local.”

  “Um, I’m a lame Kendall’s local,” I muttered. “And by now, you qualify as a lame Kendall’s local too.”