“You just never should have volunteered to be tested,” I finish the sentence for him. “And I agree. That’s why Ineverasked you to be tested. Not once. You said you wanted to be there for me.”
“I am! I’ve driven you to doctor’s appointments and dialysis,” Tom defends himself and I try not to smile. He drove me to the doctor once and to dialysis once. “And I’ve given up all my weekends at home because you can’t drive to Portsmouth anymore because of all the medical stuff you’re dealing with here. I haven’t complained about that even though it totally sucks that I have to do all the sacrificing now with the distance thing.”
“Well, there’s a problem I can fix,” I say and unlock my locked front door. “You don’t have to do that anymore. We’re done. No need to spend weekends here or ever set foot in Ocean Pines again.”
He looks stricken. “Terra. Come on. I don’t want to break up.”
“Yeah but I do.” I say. “Can you go home now?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“Well head up to Route One. There’s about forty motels to choose from.” I open the door and hold it wide for him to exit. The bag he brought with him for his weekend stay is still packed and lying on the floor of my front hall. I pick it up and hand it to him.
“I’ve been drinking Terra.”
I pull my phone from the pocket of my cardigan and pull up the Uber app. I punch the screen and turn back to Tom. “Jay is on his way.”
“Terra…” he pauses. Our eyes lock and then I see it… the relief. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too.”
He steps through the open front door and I watch him disappear down the stairs before I close my front door and lock it again. I take three deep breaths, the last one ending in a small hiccup of a sob and then I slide down the door and dissolve into a puddle of tears.
4
Terra
My dad,Charlie Hawkins, isn’t a talker. If you looked up ‘Salt of the earth New Englander’ in a dictionary, you’d find his picture. He’s tough, rough around every edge and also a giant teddy bear. The one thing my brothers and I have never doubted is his love for us. And I’m thinking of him right now, on the beach as the sun crests and creates a shimmering golden glow on the waves. Because it’s his rare but sage advice that I’m taking right now. He once told me, when I was crying over teenage drama of some sort, that the best medicine for any emotional ailment was the beach. So I should pick my sorry self up and go take a walk, get my toes buried deep in that sand, inhale that salty air and let the waves crush my worries as they break.
I’m doing that now, only to be honest I’m picturing Tom’s face getting crushed under each breaking wave. Jerk. As I left the apartment for this walk, before sunrise, I noticed Tom’s car was already gone from my parking lot. He didn’t even try to talk to me again and fix things. It stung even though I realized halfway through my sleepless night that I was more humiliated than heartbroken. Tom triggered my worst fear—that someone I cared about felt this fucking illness that was an albatross around my neck was something I had tried to wrap around their neck too. I never outright asked him to try and be my donor. I promised myself when my doctor told me I was going to need a new kidney that I wouldn’t ask anyone. But did it hurt that he didn’t volunteer to help me like my family and even Nova’s brother did? Hell yes.
“Tinkerbell?”
The voice booms over the surf crashing to my left. It’s deep, friendly and oh so familiar. I turn to my right where a group of surfers who have just come in from the ocean are standing around talking, boards at their feet. My eyes lock with Jake’s right away.
Shit. I should have known he would be at the beach. He’d spent the last three years in the mountains, nowhere near the sea that he grew up loving, so of course he’s going to be here surfing for the second time in twenty-four hours. After a curt wave, I turn and walk the other way.
“Terra!”
Fuck. I pause at the very same time I consider pretending I didn’t hear him, which makes that idea impossible. I slowly turn around. He’s jogging toward me. Damnit all to hell. I try to transfer the seven sand dollars in my hands to one hand so I can use the other to pull the sunglasses holding my hair back down over my eyes. I get the sunglasses down but drop two sand dollars. Before I can bend to pick them up, Jake is on his knee in front of me doing just that. He holds them up to me, still on his knee in his wetsuit, and gives me the most dazzling smile. “Terra Lucille Hawkins, will you take these sand dollars as a symbol of my love and affection?”
My whole body heats up, and my ovaries do somersaults. Sweet baby Jesus, this man has no idea how much he affects me. And I’ve learned not to tell him.
“Very cute, ” I reply and try not to smile too big as I take the sand dollars out of his hand. “Don’t you have work in an hour? Your first shift.”
He laughs. I’ve missed that sound. Jake’s laugh is a deep chesty rumble. Hearing it for the first time at almost thirteen was the first time my girl parts tingled. “You took the sand dollar, that means you accept my affection. ”
“Uh-huh.” I start walking. “I’ll let you get back to surfing.”
“I can skip another wave. I’d rather chat with you. I told ya last night I missed you. That wasn’t a lie,” he replies and smiles. I know he means my family, not just me alone. But his smile isn’t its normal light, casual, lazy smile. It’s … intense. I must be hallucinating from exhaustion, right?
I stop walking and just stare up at him, a tall wall of muscle wrapped in neoprene. His hair is glimmering like wet coal in the sun turning the sky orange above us. He cocks that head and his full mouth quirks upward. “This sun is barely up, so the sunglass thing is overkill.”
He reaches out and lifts them off my face, pushing them back onto my head. He squints. “You’ve been crying.”
“Nope. Collecting sand dollars. Got sand in my eyes.” The lie is ridiculous and he will see right through it.
His dark, delicious eyes fall to my little pocket of sand dollars. “Yeah, you’ve been hunting sand dollars since you were three. And like the perfect girl you are, you don’t keep the live ones, and dead ones don’t spit sand at you.”
