“I want to be your friend. And I want to take you to get a fucking burger.”
“Well, when you put it that way, how can a girl resist.”
He shakes my knee, just the way he did in the truck last night, but this time I don’t complain about personal space. This time I kind of like it.
He pulls out of the apartment complex onto Lumina and heads in the direction of Johnnie Mercer’s Pier. My body is suddenly zinging with nerves. This feels like a date, but he said he wants to be my friend. I despise uncertainty. I prefer being upfront and honest about everything—except my reasons for dropping out, of course.
A girl is allowed to keep one big secret.
Cora told me this the day I moved in after asking why I had moved all the way to Wrightsville Beach from Raleigh. I told her, jokingly, I’d moved here to see if the ocean could cleanse my sin. That’s when she told me, quite seriously, that I was allowed to keep one big secret. For some reason, hearing those words from Cora changed something inside me.
The truth was that I had come to Wrightsville Beach to disappear, possibly forever. After that conversation with Cora, I looked up yoga and meditation studios. Then a customer at the café recommended the female surfer who owned the shop next door. Fallon taught me a few basic meditation techniques and that was it. I was hooked.
When I meditate, I become someone better. I’m not this person who’s made a million mistakes; the kind of mistakes that will haunt me for a lifetime. I’m not the person who should be lashed for all the awful, selfish decisions I’ve made over the last year since he left. When I meditate, I’m the new Claire. And today that’s who I’ll be with Adam.
“You’re quiet,” he says as he pulls the truck into the pier parking lot.
“Are you taking me to lunch at Buddy’s? ‘Cause I’m allergic to shellfish. I can’t even go in there without my throat closing.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry. I didn’t know that.” He looks over his shoulder to see if it’s safe to flip a U-turn out of the parking lot. “Where do you want to go?”
“I’m only kidding, but I had Buddy’s a couple of days ago. Can we go somewhere else?”
He pulls back out onto Lumina and shakes his head. “Oh, you think that’s funny, making me think I’m about to kill you for the second time.” I shrug as he turns the truck around and heads back toward our apartment. “All right, jokester, I’ve got one for you. Why are E.T.’s eyes so big?”
“Duh. Because he saw the phone bill. Please, I’ve heard that one a billion times.”
“Okay, what did the pony say when he had a sore throat?” He pauses for a moment then says, “I apologize. I’m a little horse.”
“Are you ten years old?”
He laughs and I can’t help but smile as I shake my head. “I’ve got some better jokes, but I like to start with the clean ones.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
I want to ask him what he does for a living, but I’m afraid that will lead into what he went to school for. Then that will lead back to why I dropped out. I try to think of a nonstandard date question, but my head feels all cloudy just from being near him and I’m having a hard time focusing.
He pulls into our apartment complex a few minutes later and parks his car. “You’ve probably been to all the restaurants around here a million times. I’m going to make you some lunch.”
“Wow. You don’t waste any time, do you?”
He throws open his door and glances over his shoulder at me. “I said I wanted to be your friend, Claire. I have no intention of trying to sleep with you.”
I’m not sure I totally buy that, but I’ll go along with it. I’m starving.
“If this is just a friendly thing, can I invite Cora?” I ask as we cross the driveway.
“You’re going to make her walk up all those stairs?”
“Oh, right.”
Well, there goes my big plan to use Cora as a buffer. My stomach tightens more with each step and I begin to shiver the moment I see the stairs. He climbs a few steps and turns around when he doesn’t hear me behind him.
“Are you coming? I promise to be good.” He winks as he says this and I can’t believe the nerve of this guy.
What’s worse is that I feel drawn to him. I want to follow him into his apartment.
“You’re not going to poison me, are you?”
“I’m going to poison you with my charm, but only if you keep stalling. Come on.”
I take the first step and Chris’s voice echoes inside my head.
“I guess I’ll let you sleep and maybe when you wake up you’ll chill the fuck out and realize that just because someone’s nice to you it doesn’t mean they want to fuck you. Or you can come downstairs and hang out and maybe I’ll play you a song.”
I should have gone to sleep that day and I’m beginning to think I should have stayed asleep today.
Chapter Five
Relentless Questions
My jaw drops the moment we step inside his apartment. The living room looks like the cover of a beach home magazine. One day after moving in and he already has everything in its place, save for a few empty broken down cardboard boxes in the corner next to a sleek drafting table. His apartment makes our apartment downstairs look like it was designed by six-year-olds.
“Holy shit,” I whisper as he makes his way toward the kitchen. “This is amazing.”
He smiles as he glances over his shoulder and the dimple on his right cheek quirks up. “I plan on staying here a while.”
I follow him into the kitchen and I’m surprised at what he’s been able to do with the limited space. He has a fancy stainless steel refrigerator and his countertops are completely free of clutter. The only items on his counter are a coffee machine and a cordless phone. He pulls something out of a cupboard over the sink and I laugh when I see the box of macaroni and cheese in his hand.
“Is that what you’re planning to make?”
“Hey, I never said I could cook. I just said I’d make you lunch. You can’t expect me to be good at everything or this will never work.”
I take a seat on a barstool at the breakfast bar as he begins to prepare our gourmet lunch. “So what else are you good at?”
This is probably a bad question to ask while trapped inside his apartment, but it’s safer than asking him what he does for a living.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure that out soon enough.”
“You know, you don’t have to answer every question with a sexual innuendo. I get it.”
He fills a pot with some water and places it on the stove. “Let’s see…. Some would say I’m a good surfer.” He’s having trouble lighting the burner under the pot.
“Do you need some help?”
I guess he didn’t bring his own fancy oven, though I suppose that makes sense if his specialty is mac n’ cheese. It looks like the same model in our apartment downstairs. I slide off the barstool and join him in the kitchen.
“You probably haven’t lit the pilot yet,” I say, scooting in next to him.
He smiles down at me. “I can assure you, my pilot is lit.”
I roll my eyes as I open the oven door and lift the bottom out. “Do you have a match or a lighter?” He reaches into his pocket and hands me a Zippo. “Do you smoke?” I ask as I reach into the bottom of the oven and light the pilot.
“Sometimes,” he admits. “Okay, every night, but only at night.”
Probably after sex, I think.
“There you go. Now you can proceed with your culinary masterpiece.”
I shut the oven door and hand him back his lighter. His fingers graze my palm as he takes the lighter from me and a chill travels up my arm.
“Thanks. I guess it was your turn to save me.”
An image flashes in my mind of a letter tucked away in the top drawer of my nightstand; a letter I’ve only read once because once was enough. In a single flash I can remember the entire contents of that letter.
Dear Claire-bear:
&nb
sp; I’m sorry. I will love you forever.
Always,
Your Chris
I shake my head, attempting to shake off the guilt, as I scoot around Adam to get back to the barstool.
“I have something I need to tell you,” I say, climbing back onto the stool. “I meditate.”
“Cool. So do I.”
“You do?”
He dumps the dry pasta into the pot before he answers. “Well, sort of. Whenever I’m stressed or if I can’t make it to the beach to surf, I’ll chill out and do nothing for an hour or so, to clear my head.”
“You’re not supposed to put the pasta in until the water’s boiling.”
“Fuck the rules. How often do you meditate?”
I take a deep breath as I prepare to reveal my secret to this almost-stranger. “A lot. Like, a few times a day.”
“A few times a day? Do the customers at the café stress you out that much?”
This conversation is not going in a safe direction, might as well push it all the way over the edge.
“Meditation is the way I cope… with the memories.”
He looks up from the steaming pot of water and turns to face me. “Go on.”
“I’m not going to spill my guts to you,” I insist. “I just think you should know about the meditation thing so you don’t come banging on my door unannounced.”
“Why would I come banging on your door?”
“In the event you should run out of processed cheese, call before you knock.”
He finally drains the water from the pot and tosses the powdered cheese and other ingredients in. The pasta makes a gross squishing sound as he stirs it up and I can’t believe I’m about to eat mac n’ cheese on a first date.
I can’t believe I’m on a first date.
He grabs two spoons out of a drawer and stabs them into the pot. He sits next to me and places the pot on the breakfast bar between us.
“Bon appétit.”
“You really know how to impress a girl, Adam.”
He scoops some macaroni onto his spoon and holds it out for me. “I like the way you say my name.” I open my mouth and he slowly slides the spoon in. I close my lips around the warm steel and he slowly slides it out. “Look at you. You have that down.”
I scoop up some macaroni onto my spoon and he opens his mouth. I bring the spoon a few inches away from his lips before I swoop it away and jam it into my mouth.
“Aw…. Claire is greedy,” he groans. “That was my mac n’ cheese.”
He reaches for my spoon and I pull my hand back. “Nuh-uh.”
He doesn’t heed my warning and he grabs my wrist with one hand as I attempt to lean back to keep him from reaching the spoon with his other hand.
“I’m hungry,” he growls, and I laugh uncontrollably until the stool begins to tilt.
“Oh, shit!” I scream as my stool tips over and we both tumble toward the living room floor.
He lands on top of me, but he quickly scrambles to his feet and holds out his hand. “Are you okay?” he asks, and there’s a definite tinge of worry in his voice.
The carpet burns my elbows as I sit up and grab his hand. He pulls me up until we’re standing face to face, our noses inches apart.
“I’m fine,” I say, suppressing a chuckle.
He gazes into my eyes, unflinchingly, and I have to look away. “Claire, I find you very, very attractive.” I take a step back and hold out my spoon. “I’m not trying to get you into bed. I just wanted to make that known. Since I saw you last week, dancing next to your friend’s car, I knew I wanted to get to know you.”
I cringe as I realize Adam saw me dancing next to Senia’s car when I was imitating what Senia’s four-year-old sister does whenever a Justin Bieber song comes on. Then he saw me space out in the café yesterday and, somehow, he still finds me very, very attractive.
But I can’t shake the nagging voice in my head that tells me Chris would think this was way too soon. Why the fuck should I care what Chris would think? He’s the one who left me to go pursue his solo career—even if I did encourage him to leave. I knew it would happen, he was the best rock-blues guitarist I’d ever known, but I guess I never really expected to be left behind. So why the hell should I care what he thinks? He’s gone, probably fucking a new groupie every other night, or that Disney celebrity he was seen with three weeks ago.
Ugh! I hate that I even care enough to keep track of this stuff.
“Claire? Where did you go?”
Adam’s voice breaks through my troubled thoughts and I push aside that voice in my head that wishes it were Chris calling my name.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “This is why I meditate. To keep this shit out.”
He uprights my barstool and takes a seat on his stool again. He pats the seat the cushioned seat and I pretend not to notice that our knees are touching as I sit down.
“I won’t make you eat my gourmet mac if you tell me why you dropped out.”
The question shouldn’t stun me, but it does. It’s like a punch in the chest and I’m suddenly breathless as I try to imagine why Cora would tell him I dropped out.
“Did Cora tell you that?”
He shakes his head adamantly. “I took a guess and you just confirmed it. A smart girl like you doesn’t end up working in a small town café unless she’s running away from something. So what is it?”
I rest my arms on the breakfast bar and practically lean my face into the pot of pasta. “I wish I could tell you.”
“It’s easy. Just move your jaw and your tongue a little and—voila!—out come the words. It’s like magic.”
I push the pot away and bury my face in my arms. “I wish that were true.”
It’s true. I really wish I could tell him the truth. I wish I could tell everybody the truth. Keeping the secret alone is enough to make me grind my teeth in my sleep. This secret is eating away at me. The only thing that keeps it from consuming me is meditation.
“Does it have to do with money?”
“No, my tuition was paid for by the State of North Carolina.”
“If you tell me why you dropped out, I’ll tell you why I moved to Wrightsville Beach,” he offers, and he has my attention.
I sit up and look him in the eye. He nods at me as if to say, the ball’s in your court.
I want to tell him everything, from the day I arrived at the Knight Family’s house more than five years ago to the day I moved into this apartment almost three months ago, but I can’t. Everyone thinks they’ll understand, they swear they’ll understand, but when you tell them about the horrible things you’ve done they can’t help but judge you or worse pity you. I don’t want anybody’s judgment or pity. I just want to be forgotten and, if I’m lucky enough, forgiven.
“Sorry, but that’s a trade I can’t make.”
He doesn’t appear disappointed. He probably anticipated this. “All right. How about this?” He closes his eyes as he takes a beat. “If I can get you to tell me why you dropped out of school then you have to go back.”
I chuckle. “That’s funny.”
“It’s not funny. I’m serious. This is a serious bet. I think you desperately want to go back to school and I’m willing to put our friendship on the line in order to see that you make it back. What do you say?”
How the hell does he know so much about me from a conversation with Cora? The truth is I do want to go back to school. I was a Sociology major. My dream was to become a caseworker; a better caseworker than the half-dozen I had. I wanted to make sure that no kid felt the way I did, like a nuisance.
I arch my eyebrow and pretend to think about it, because I know he’ll never weasel this out of me. “What’s in it for me if I don’t give up my secret?”
“You get to keep your secret.”
“No, you have to do something.”
He lets out a deep sigh. “I’ll stop stalking you at the café.”
“And you’ll never try to kill me again?”
“I can?
??t promise that.” The sexy smile on his face makes my heart race and, for once, I’m a little worried about the security of my secret.
Chapter Six
Relentless Scheming
Cora Johnson can take up to twenty minutes to answer her front door. Sometimes she doesn’t hear the knocking and other times her joints ache too much to move swiftly. I have a key to her apartment—“In case I croak,” she told me, when she handed it over—but I purposely leave it in a drawer in the kitchen. I can’t help being a little superstitious, even though life has shown me that there is no order to the universe.
I knock once more and the plaque on the door rattles. The truth is, though I gave Cora the plaque for her birthday, I hoped it would serve as a reminder to me every time I walk out my front door. Where we love is home. After eight years of being kicked around, I had a home and people who loved me. Sometimes, I don’t know who I miss more, Chris or his mother.
Cora needs to hurry up and answer this door or I’m going to be late for work. I knock again and the door above my head opens. I don’t look up, but I can hear Adam’s feet tapping the steps as he descends. I cast a sideways glance at the bottom of the staircase, just to watch him from behind as he walks to his car, but he’s walking straight toward me.
“Good morning, sunshine. Did you get in some quality meditation time this morning?”
I try not to ogle him as he approaches me looking impossibly fresh and ready to tackle a day at the beach in his gray cargo shorts and Quiksilver tank top, which shows off the defined muscles in his arms.
“I did. I’m just checking in on Cora before I head to work.”
“Maybe she’s still asleep.”
“Cora is up before the sun every day. It takes her a while to answer the door sometimes, but I have to get to work.”
He places his hand on my shoulder as his eyebrows furrow. “You look worried. I can check on her for you.”
That one sentence coupled with the look of concern and the feeling of his hand on my shoulder takes my breath away. “Really?”
“Yeah, of course. I’ll walk you to work and I’ll check on her when I get back.”