I should’ve left well enough alone. I shouldn’t have seen her again after the first night. I knew better than that, but I never did anything the easy way.
My phone rang, drawing me out of my thoughts. “Hey,” I said, answering my brother’s early morning call. “Isn’t it early for you?”
“Can’t sleep.”
I rolled forward into a sitting position and faced the waves. “What’s wrong?”
Pike sighed. “I’ve been up half the night thinking about Mom. This is always a day where I have so many emotions.”
It had been a decade since she died, and yet, somehow it still felt like yesterday. I’d never forget finding her lifeless body covered in blood and the helplessness of being unable to save her.
“There’s nothing you could’ve done to repair the relationship you two had. She made her choices, not you. She should’ve fought for you, but she didn’t.”
“I just wish I’d known how she felt before she died.”
“At least she left you a letter, and you knew afterward,” I told him, curling forward to rest my upper body on my knees. “We can’t change the past, brother, and can only do the best with what we have for the future.”
“I could never turn my back on my kid. What kind of person does that?” he asked me, his voice laced with pain.
“I don’t know, Pike. Your version of Mom and mine were very different. I know you won’t make the same mistakes as Mom did. That’s her legacy, I suppose. None of us are perfect, her and dad least of all, but just know we’re not perfect either. We all have layers. Some good. Some bad. Don’t live with regret, Pike. It’s useless and destructive.”
“When did you get so wise?” he asked.
“I’m hardly smart. I never seem to learn from my mistakes.”
“What did you do?”
I collapsed back onto the warm sand. “I have my head all twisted about a girl.”
“The girl you’re just friends with?” He threw those words back in my face, knowing damn well I was full of shit when I’d called him the other day.
“It’s complicated.”
He laughed. “Women always are.”
“This isn’t just the typical complications.”
“Do you like her?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s so fuckin’ complicated?”
“The navy, man. There are rules about dating outside your rank. Then there’s the problem of being over a thousand miles apart.”
“Whoa. You’ve really put some thought into this.”
“There’s something about her that I can’t get out of my mind. I’m so fucked.”
Pike laughed at my pain, always enjoying seeing me getting twisted over a girl. “Shit has a way of working itself out. Maybe after a weekend here, you won’t feel the same way about her. You’ve only spent a few hours with her, and maybe after a little more, she won’t seem so amazing.”
“When did you know?”
“Know?” he replied, playing stupid, forcing me to say the words.
“When did you know you only wanted Gigi?”
Pike let out an even louder sigh than before. “It’s complicated. When I met her in Daytona, I figured it was what it was. Just a one-time thing. I thought about her after, wondered where she was and what she was doing. But when I finally saw her again, I knew I wasn’t going to let her get away a second time. You that into this girl?”
