“Hey, you’ve got this.” Torrin gives my hand a quick squeeze before moving it away because my dad has spent as much time checking the rearview mirror as he has the windshield. “I’ll be right here the whole time.” When Dad exhales loudly, Torrin adds, “We’ll all be right here.” When Dad turns around in his seat, Torrin tacks on, “The whole time.”
I bite my lip and bob my head, but I’m losing it on the inside. Not even Torrin’s injection of confidence can penetrate my skin this time. It doesn’t get inside and spread like I’m used to.
When I’d worked up the nerve to go to the real beach, I’d only planned on including Torrin. But when my parents found out, I knew they were hurt that the plan didn’t include them. So I invited them. And they invited Sam and her family.
So my first outing outside the house in two weeks is a family affair. I’d wanted to only include Torrin so that if I lost it—like I felt close to—my family wouldn’t have to witness it happening. Again.
“I’ll grab the cooler and chairs and find us a spot.” Dad checks me through his sunglasses then lifts a brow at Torrin before crawling out the door.
“Okay, so, sweetheart, you put on that special sunscreen I gave you, right?” It’s Mom’s turn to twist around in her seat and inspect me.
I answer her with a nod.
“And you’ve got the glasses and hat?”
I nod again.
“I brought the sunshade, so why don’t you just wait here while your dad gets it set up?”
I exhale at this suggestion. Lately, she’s been treating me like a preemie in the neonatal unit who has to be protected inside a clear plastic box.
“I know you put on your swimsuit, but you should probably stay covered up today just to be safe. Your skin hasn’t been exposed to sun in years. I don’t know if it’ll burn or blister, but let’s be safe just in case.” I sigh, but she keeps going. From the looks of the mental checklist she’s crossing off, she’s just getting started. “Oh, and the ocean. I know I used to not be able to get you out of the water, but it’s been a long time since you’ve swam. You should start in a pool first . . . not with the currents and tides and everything.”
This time I groan as I reach for the door handle. I need to get out of this car and away from my mom’s endless stream of concerns. “I’m made of flesh, Mom, not porcelain. Give me a little more credit.”
I swing my legs out the door, and the sticky ocean breeze coats them instantly. The smell hits me next, and it’s everything I remember. Briny—like seawood’s drying in the sunshine—and a little sweet.
“Torrin . . .” Mom says as I start for the beach.
“She’ll be fine, Eleanor.”
The waves are breaking, and the breeze is blowing, and the sun’s ducking in and out of the clouds, and the seagulls are screaming—and I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d want to be than right here. With him. With them.
Torrin lopes up to me when I’m halfway to the ocean’s edge. He’s loaded down with bags and chairs and boards, but he’s moving as fast as I am—like neither of us can wait to go play. Dad pauses from working on the sunshade when he sees us coming. He even breaks form and smiles in Torrin’s general direction when he sees the one on my face.
“Great day for the beach, isn’t it?” Dad says, wrestling with one of the shade’s poles.
I nod, but great doesn’t begin to sum it up. This is something else.
Torrin drops his load and helps my dad with the shade. Torrin’s wearing the same boardshorts and sweatshirt from our afternoon at the guest bedroom beach. I smile when I watch him. With the wind toying with his hair and the flip-flops on, he looks like the Torrin I fell in love with. The fifteen-year-old version is inside the man before me.
It makes my stomach feel funny. Like something’s dancing around inside it.
“Look who made it!” Mom’s voice carries from behind me.
When I turn to look, I see Sam and Patrick and . . . I cover my mouth with my hand. I’ve never seen her before, but I know I’m seeing my niece for the first time ever. Not a photo of her but the real, live her.
Sam’s holding her, and when she notices me looking all overwhelmed and speechless, she smiles and makes her way over. Patrick is even more weighted down with beach junk than Torrin was. I can barely make out his face from beneath all of it.
Mom stays back a bit, letting Sam and me have a minute. I haven’t really talked to Sam since the day I went nuclear on the reporters swarming her car, but she doesn’t look at me like we’re on opposite teams anymore. She stops in front of me and looks at her daughter bouncing in her arms. She looks a lot like Sam did as a baby except she’s got brown eyes. I suppose one part of her dad had to make it into the genetic pool.
“This is Maisy.” Sam bounces her a few times, which makes her giggle and screech. Then she nuzzles her nose against her daughter. “This is Aunt Jade.”
A ball pops into my throat out of nowhere. Off to the side, Mom has to turn around as she wipes at her eyes. I know this is a big deal—Sam feeling comfortable enough to bring her daughter around me. I know that this is Sam’s way of accepting me back into the family, and when all I want to say is thank you, all I can do is wrestle with that ball.
Maisy stops bouncing and tips her head at me like she’s trying to figure out who this Aunt Jade person is. Then she giggles again and reaches out so far for me Sam has to tighten her hold so she doesn’t fall out of Sam’s arms.
“Um,” I say as she continues to wave her little arms at me, “is it okay?”
Sam looks at her daughter, and when she shallows, I’m pretty sure that same ball’s in her throat. “Of course it’s okay.” Her voice is tight when she hands Maisy to me. “You’re her family.”
I freeze once Maisy’s in my arms. She’s heavier than I’d guessed, and wigglier. She bounces against me like she’s giving me a hint. I’m so worried about dropping her or hurting her or anything else bad that can happen to a little baby I stay frozen a moment longer.
“It’s okay, Jade.” Sam touches my arm. “You won’t hurt her.”
I swallow and let go of the ball. “You want to bounce?”
Maisy blinks her brown eyes and makes a funny noise with her mouth. Sounds like a fart. It makes me laugh, and when I bounce her against me, she laughs with me.
“You’re a silly girl. You really must be my niece.” I keep bouncing her, and from the look on her face, I don’t think she’ll ever get tired of this.
When I turn a little so she can see the ocean, I see him.
Torrin’s watching me with an intensity that pulls my breath straight up out of my lungs. I want to look away because I think I know what’s going through his mind—in another life, under other circumstances, the baby laughing in my arms could have been ours.
When I smile at him, for the first time I’m met by something that looks almost like pain on his face. He turns away and wanders down to the water.
NOW THAT I’M outdoors, in the open, I can’t imagine crawling back inside my room and locking myself away from the world.
I’ve always loved the beach. Even the beaches up north that don’t know sunshine and blue skies the way the ones in the south do. The ones that are rocky and blustery and spend most days shrouded in gray.
I think, after everything, I love the beach even more now. And I love this day, with these people, shaping these memories.
We’re just about finished with the veggie burgers my dad grilled on his little charcoal grill when Mom gets that look on her face. I’ve seen it aimed my way a lot since coming home.
“Have you looked at the GED test dates and thought about registering for one yet?”
I lower the burger I’ve actually managed to eat half of. I think it’s the ocean air making me hungry, but there’s nothing like the pressure of picking-up-where-I-left-off to curb an appetite. “No, actually I haven’t.”
Torrin’s beside me on the beach blanket, and he sets down his plate.
“When
do you think you might get around to doing that?” Mom plays with the cap of her water bottle.
“Once I figure out how to be in public without passing out, melting down, or blowing up. Once I figure out how to quiet my head enough to think about literature and algebra. Once I find a tutor who can catch me up on everything I missed and everything I’ve probably forgotten.”
Mom waves at me. “Oh, Jade, you were an honors student. You’ll have no problem passing the GED.”
“Yeah, I was an honor’s student in high school. Ten years ago.” I tip the brim of the big hat Mom insisted I wear lower down on my forehead.
Torrin leans back and casually spreads his arms wide so one’s behind me. I don’t lean into it because I know I can’t with my family scattered around us, but I feel its support.
“You’re a smart girl.”
I look at her without blinking. “No, Mom, I’m not. Smart girls don’t get fooled into walking right up to strange men in vans. Smart girls don’t stay trapped in a house when . . .” The words lodge in my throat, creating a barricade. They still don’t know. But Torrin does.
“You need to start moving on, sweetie. You can’t stay trapped in your room, breaking out for occasional visits to the beach. It isn’t healthy.”
Her voice isn’t unkind, and I know she’s saying it because she wants the best for me, but she can’t understand. She can’t comprehend how trivial a GED and college degree seem to me when I’m struggling to roll out of bed each morning. Why should I care about what I’m going to do with my life if I can’t muster up the will to live more moments than not?
“Why? Why isn’t it healthy?” Torrin’s voice cuts into the conversation as he leans forward to look at my mom. His arm stays planted behind me. “My god, Eleanor, do you realize what your daughter went through? She didn’t wander off at the mall and get lost for a few minutes—she was kidnapped. By a sick, sick person. Who kept her chained up and made her pretend to be his daughter.” His voice is growing, and I’m glad Sam and Patrick are letting Maisy kick at the waves so they don’t have to witness this. “There is no protocol for this. There is no right or wrong way to behave after something like that. So why don’t you stop telling her what she should be doing and what she should be feeling and just listen to what she’s telling you?” Torrin settles his hands on his hips, grasping to collect his emotions.
Dad stays quiet in his chair, chewing on what’s left of his hamburger. That means he’s with Torrin. He’d never come out and say it—I still see his fists form when Torrin comes within a body-length of me—but his silence is support enough.
Mom continues to twist the cap of her water bottle, but she stays quiet.
Torrin suddenly pulls his sweatshirt over his head and drops it into my lap. He’s shirtless, and when he marches toward the water, I’m glad Mom insisted I wear dark glasses. No one can see the way I’m looking at him. I’m thankful for them when he looks over his shoulder and his eyes find me so he doesn’t see the way I’m looking at him.
His dark hair bouncing with his pace, his back familiar and foreign at the same time, his eyes trying to tell me the same thing I’ve ignored up to this moment.
I don’t realize I’m standing until I slip the hat from my head and drop it on the blanket. My sunglasses follow, then I shrug out of the long cotton dress.
“Where are you going?” Mom’s voice is worried as I step out of the dress onto the sand.
“For a swim.”
“Jade . . .”
The sun. The ocean. The current. It’s all a danger to her, and I know that feeling. But today, I’m not letting it keep me from the things I want to do and the people I want to be with.
Torrin’s already disappeared into the waves before I make it to the dark line where the wet sand starts and the dry sand ends. I feel strange in my old swimsuit. It kind of sags around my butt and puckers where I used to have this great part of the female anatomy known as boobs, but it still fits. Mostly.
When I reach the edge of the water, the first wave that crashes around my ankles sends ice into my veins. The Pacific at this latitude is so cold that most people prefer to watch it from the beach rather than swim in it.
I give myself a moment to adjust, then I walk out a little farther. Torrin’s making his way back now that he’s noticed me. His expression has cleared, but his eyes are still clouded by something. I think I know what it is since he doesn’t seem to have an issue with looking at me the way I was looking at him behind my dark glasses.
I want to shift in place and cover myself, but I don’t. If he wants to check me out like I’m still the seventeen-year-old who spilled out of her suit instead of swimming in it like I am now, I’m going to let him.
“I always loved that suit.” His arms stroke through the water.
“Yeah, I remember.”
He gets that look on his face like he’s remembering too.
“I feel like an eight-year-old in it now.” When I glance down at myself, all I see are flat planes and bony joints.
Torrin shakes his head, swimming closer. His wet hair plasters across his forehead. “You look good. Believe me.”
I clear my throat, and this time, I do shift. “I look like a deflated balloon. All limp and saggy and sad looking.”
Torrin makes a face and squirts a stream of ocean water at me. “You are fluent in the language of crazy, you know that?”
“I’m not the only one.”
He huffs, swimming closer as a wave catches him. “Whatever. You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
I shift again, then he stands up in the waist-deep water. Seeing his back from a distance had been enough to make whatever had gone into hibernation in that region below my stomach stir. Seeing him so close, facing me, ocean water falling down the lines and ridges that had just been developing the last time I touched them fans that stirring feeling inside. The softness of boyhood has been ironed out by the harder, rougher planes of manhood.
“You’re checking me out, aren’t you?” He grins, and I swear he intentionally makes his stomach muscles tighten beneath the skin.
“I am not checking you out. I’m just examining. Making sure you don’t have any jellyfish or sharks hanging off of you.”
His smile spreads. “Whatever. You’re totally checking me out, but that’s okay because I’m totally checking you out.”
I wade out a little deeper because I need more of my body hidden. That flicker of a spark has grown into something that’s spreading. “Are people in your profession allowed to ‘check out’ others?”
Torrin’s shoulder lifts. Water rolls off the triangle carved into the top of his shoulders and trickles down his chest. “Not sure. That’s another one of those gray areas I’m happy to leave open to interpretation.”
I step out deeper until the waves are crashing across the bottoms of my thighs. My legs from my knees down have gone numb. “Thanks for sticking up for me back there.”
“I was just saying what you were too nice to.”
I wade out a little farther until the water’s breaking across my stomach. We’re in the same spot in the water, but I keep some space between us because I have to. I don’t trust myself to be too close with the way my body’s responding to his right now.
I feel something swirl at my ankle, then it grabs me. I’m sucked under instantly as the undercurrent slams me to the ocean bottom and tumbles me around. It’s happened before, so I don’t panic. I know that once it’s done with me, it will let me go. Once it’s twirled me around a few times, it will leave me alone.
I can feel it starting to lose momentum when two arms brace around me and break me free. When we pop through the surface, Torrin spins me around, terror drawing up his expression.
“Are you okay?” He holds me with one hand, inspecting me with the other like he’s going to find an elbow or organ missing.
I’m totally wet. I feel ocean water draining out of my ears and nose. My hair feels like a cyclone just had its w
ay with it, and I know my skin’s red and blotchy from the sand exfoliation treatment I just received free of charge.
I laugh. This is what alive feels like. I remember.
It’s adrenaline pulsing so hard in my veins they feel about to burst. It’s feelings that twist my stomach into knots. It’s feeling so cold my body goes numb and so attracted to someone my body feels the opposite of numb.
This is it. Living. I can almost feel the blood warm in my veins as it starts to run again.
“Why are you laughing?” Torrin’s face flashes with relief when he sees I’m okay, but he doesn’t let go of me.
On the beach, my parents slowly make their way back to the beach blankets once they’ve seen I’m okay.
“That was fun.” I rub my stomach because it hurts. From the laughter. I’d forgotten stomachs could hurt from laughing.
“Fun? Not my idea of fun.”
I wipe the water from my face and find just as much sand pasted to it. “What’s your idea of fun then?”
Torrin’s still shaking his head when he suddenly shouts, “This!”
He pulls me under the water with him. He lets me go right away, but I don’t want him to. I don’t want him to ever let go.
I splash him when he resurfaces a few feet away. “Did you just dunk me?”
He splashes back. “I just did.”
“You’ve heard of payback, right?” I move a little closer, ignoring the way I can feel my parents watching us from the beach.
“I’ve heard of it. Not really a big fan though.”
When I lunge at him and try to knock him under, he’s clearly bracing for it because all I do is smash into him. My wet body against his, our arms tangled together, our faces too close to not be aware of where each other’s mouths are . . .
“What’s this payback thing again?” He’s practically gloating, so I come at it from a different angle.
My eyes drop to his mouth and stay there until his lips part from his breaths coming faster. When my hand curves against the side of his face, sweeping down the line of his jaw, I feel his chest moving hard against mine. His arms tangle more tightly behind me because I’m slipping through them. When that doesn’t work, he hoists me higher, and his arms form a net beneath my backside.