The Art Of My Life
By Ann Lee Miller
July 15
Ever have a painting you’ve stared at for years—and loved? Then, one day, you see something which alters the way you view the piece forever. And you have to decide whether the art has been irreparably marred or merely deepened.
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 1
Cal shoved through the tinted glass doors into the loamy scent of Bermuda grass and pine bark and freedom roasting in the Daytona Beach summer. The surf shorts and T-shirt he’d worn three months ago when the cop clamped metal on his wrists hung loosely, misshapen, like a life that no longer fit.
Sun glinted off the windshield of a silver Honda—Aly’s?— blinding his eyes, yanking her last words to him into the whiteness.
I love you, John Calvin Koomer.
Irrational hope thrummed against the ache fisted in his chest. He squinted at the Honda. Sweat slicked his armpits and tickled the side of his face.
He should have slept with Aly when she offered. What had protecting her gotten him? Two and a half years of the back of her head. Making a science of not thinking about Aly, smoking weed to forget, cramming Evie into Aly’s place inside him. But prison ripped away everything but the truth. He loved Aly. Always had. Always would.
And it was time to do something about it.
The rumble of an engine pulling into the lot jerked his head around. His mother’s minivan plowed toward him, mowing down the stubble of his hope.
He glanced back at the Honda.
Empty. Like he felt inside.
Mom angled into a parking space, her driving as precise as everything she did.
His flip flops scraped the asphalt as he shuffled toward her. Heat from the chrome door handle branded his palm, and he climbed into the stream of the air conditioning blowing from the dash. The door clunked shut, and he waited for Mom’s disappointment to ooze it’s pus over him.
She reached for him, and his breath stuttered. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him.
She wrapped awkward arms around him. “I—I’ve wanted to hug you ever since the first day I visited you at jail.”
His hand lit on the fabric stretched across her dancer’s back. His pores sucked in gulps of human affection and the talcum scent of childhood while his mind tried to solve the puzzle of his mother. He coughed, searching for words to fill the silence, and found none. For a heartbeat he was ten with tears pricking the backs of his eyes.
She released him. Relief and the desire to cling to her flushed through him making him feel lightheaded.
Slim fingers shifted the car into reverse. Her dark hair, slicked back from her face in her customary ballerina bun, exposed the scar running from her temple into her hairline. It whitened now, the only hint of emotion on her face.
According to Grandpa Leaf, Mom had been dropped on her head as a child—causing her to rebel into conservatism from her hippie upbringing. Leaf always cackled after he told it.
Why couldn’t Henna—his lumpy grandma, in one of her bird of paradise muumuus—have picked him up? Someone he didn’t have to measure up for.
“Your grandmother is giving you her boat.”
His jaw dropped. Mom might as well have said Cape Canaveral would launch another Discovery with Henna as pilot. “Whoa.” The forty-one foot Catalina he’d sailed a thousand times materialized in his mind.
“Your father and I thought it might give you a fresh start. You could run charters for tourists like you and Fish used to talk about when you were kids.”
Cal ran his finger over the jagged pocketknife scar on his index finger where he and Fish had become blood-brothers on Rattle Snake Island the summer after third grade.
His mind swerved back to Henna, the dots connecting. Henna held herself responsible for his going to jail. He’d tell her she didn’t owe him anything. But he knew she’d make him keep the Escape.
He’d rather spend three months in the Volusia County lockup than visit his grandparents at the jail. They were more like leftover flower children than drug dealers. And he loved them. His favorite childhood daydream had been Mom sitting him down and saying, all serious, that she was sorry, but Henna and Leaf were his true parents. He’d sniffle, plow a hug into Henna’s soft middle, then race free and wild into the rest of his boyhood—the way he was meant to be raised.
As they passed the New Smyrna Beach City Limits sign, Mom glanced at him. “Whatever you do in this town sticks to you for the rest of your life. Promise me you’ll never smoke pot again. Salvage your reputation.”
He’d always been The Scream to Mom’s American Gothic. “Your reputation. I don’t care about mine.”
“How can you go to jail, have to report a record every time you apply for a job—”
“Leave it, Mom.”
“Is pot why you never got through college?”
“I never got through college because I hated everything but art classes.”
“Maybe you’re self-medicating for ADHD—”
“I can paint a canvas for six hours straight.”
“Or bi-polar. You’ve always been mercurial.”
“Yeah, I get it from you.”
“Funny.” She didn’t crack a smile as she wheeled the van into a marina parking space.
He could sure use a good smoke about now. Maybe it was time quit weed. But it wouldn’t be because his mother extracted a promise. It was his own damn life.
Mom killed the engine. The car popped and crackled in the silence.
“Cal.”
What now? He gripped the armrest, poised to escape.
“We want to give you a shot at making something of your life.”
His failures throbbed in the car, the ones she’d spoken and the one’s in her head—his job at Stoney’s Tattoo, his want of religion. And there were more.
“We moved your stuff from Henna’s place to the boat. She kept your studio set up, so you can still paint there whenever you want.”
He heard the but in her tone, like the one that always followed her praise.
She dug the boat keys out of her purse and handed them to him. “Your father and I are on the title for now because you need us to cosign for a startup loan. But if you default, you’ll have to sell the boat to pay off the loan.”
The whiskey shot that he was twenty-five and couldn’t sign for his own loan burned all the way down. “Fair enough.” He swallowed. “How much is the loan?”
“We figured forty thousand would cover repairs and get your business off the ground.”
His head knocked against the headrest. He’d never had more than two hundred dollars in the bank at one time. And now he was getting a ninety thousand dollar boat and more money than his brain could compute. Henna had always been wacky generous, but his folks cosigning a loan—was mammoth. Was it a last ditch effort to shove him into the sausage casing of society? Well, he was willing this time. More than willing.
“I drew up a business plan—not so different from the one I did for my dance studio. We meet with Aly tomorrow at three to find out if the loan has been approved and sign the papers.”
He sucked in a breath. “Aly?”
“Who else would we go to? Aly’s almost family. She’s a loan officer.”
He wrenched the door open, ignoring the tremor in his hand. “Right.” He stepped out and turned back to face Mom. “Thanks for the lift. The loan.” He stared at her, gratitude and shame stopping up his words, dampening his eyes. He’d make her proud this time. “See you tomorrow at the bank.”
Cal swung open the pier gate and breathed in the familiar fishy, gasoline scent of the marina. The shock of freedom left him feeling exposed. He almost called Mom back to walk him down to the boat—like holding his hand on the way to kindergarten.
Afternoon sun baked his shoulders, dissolving the weirdness, leaving only a buoy of hope. And a physical craving to paint. He sucked in a breath, imagining he could smell the Vaseline scent of his oils.
Selling his work, seeing his face on the cover of People magazine throbbed in gut. But it was time to kill the dream. He’d always paint, but Aly needed a guy who owned yard tools, tires worth rotating; who carried AAA, Visa, and voter’s registration cards. His stinking driver’s license wouldn’t even be back in his wallet for another three months.
If he worked the Plan B his family had dealt him and succeeded at running a charter sailing business, he’d gain a shot at Aly.
The only shot he’d ever get.
His eye caught on Evie’s beater boat, the rotted rigging and his guilt flailing around its sail-less mast like a maypole in the hot breeze. The first part of his new start had to be ex-ing Evie—the epic mistake of his life—for good this time. The picture wasn’t pretty, but ninety days sober showed him he’d been using her.
And now he’d see her every day, living eight boats apart on the same dock. Well, he was ditching her this time, like he’d told her six months ago. She’d have to accept it. The guilt nearly strangled him.
A pelican settled on a piling in a flurry of clumsy feathers. Cal shook off thoughts of Evie and grinned. He’d snag a hot dog from Leaf’s stand on the beach—just a hot dog, no weed—grab his board and Fish, and hit the waves. Then, he’d head for Henna’s to paint—enough to get it out of his system so he could focus on Plan B. Three months without painting had been punishing enough.
Frenzied barking erupted from Zeke’s fishing boat two slips down. Van Gogh, his chocolate lab-wimeramer, scrabbled across the gangplank, his toenails dancing against the wood.
Joy bubbled up, something he hadn’t felt in three months. His throat tightened.
Had Mom brought the dog down to the marina? But what was he doing on Zeke’s fishing boat—a marina institution for as long as Cal could remember?
Van Gogh planted his paws on Cal’s chest, quivering, his tail beating a frenzied rhythm against the light pole. A sandpaper tongue swiped Cal’s chin.
“I’m glad to see you, too, boy.” Cal scratched soft, doggy ears and inhaled canine and river water scent.
Van Gogh shimmied, wagging his butt along with his tail.
“I should have known you’d show up sooner or later.”
Fish’s familiar voice, popped Cal’s head up and pumped warmth into his chest that washed away three months’ absence. It didn’t matter that Fish hadn’t visited him in jail. Like the hospital, who liked the pen anyhow? They’d scarcely gone a day, much less months, without seeing each other since toddlerhood.
Fish loped from the fishing boat to the dock. Wisps of baby-white, surfer hair stuck out from under a backwards baseball cap that brushed the arch in the Zeke’s Fishing Charters sign.
Man, he missed Fish. “Hey.” Cal went for a hug.
Fish shoved a palm against Cal’s shoulder. His face contorted. “Take your friggin’ dog and clear out.”
Fish’s harsh tone felt like stepping on a stingray out of nowhere. Cal’s brow scrunched. “Whoa. What’s got you pissed? And thanks for taking care of my dog. What? Did Van Gogh eat your stogies? Do his business in your Corn Flakes? Look, I’ll pay you for the dog food.”
“You don’t know, do you? You don’t freakin’ know. You got me fired. What were you thinking ditching your weed in my locker? I didn’t even know it was in there. It took me two weeks to get a job working for Zeke. I lost the apartment. I don’t have family around to coddle me.”
“What? You’re kidding me. Nobody told me.”
Fish stared him down, stone cold, the same look he’d given his parents when they’d told Fish they were moving to Peru.
Cal dropped back a step, remorse flushing through him. Throw another failure onto the pile. “I’m sorry, man. I had no idea.”
Fish’s lanky arms flexed at his sides. “That’s all you have to say?” Disgust radiated from his eyes.
“Look, it was what? A few joints. I was taking the rug rats to the beach, and I didn’t want the stuff anywhere near them. My sister-in-law already thinks I’m scum. I’m surprised she let me hang with the kids.” After he’d done time, he’d be lucky if she let him see his niece and nephew at all.
“Old Man Phillips called the cops. They hauled me off in the police car right out the front doors of Circle K.”
“Look, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Ever.”
“You don’t know what you’re apologizing for.” Fish flung his hands up in the air. “Poof—you killed my political career before it started. You killed my future.”
There was no use arguing with Fish when he got like this. “Screw you.” Cal knocked a shoulder into Fish’s arm, shoving him out of the way and stepped toward the Escape.
Fish grabbed Cal’s bicep and spun him back. “Looks like you already did.”
Cal’s gaze smacked into Sean Fisher scrawled inside the white oval of Fish’s work shirt. He’d never minded Fish’s shooting past him in height in tenth grade—till now. The grease-stained material flapped against Fish’s bony ribs in the wind as the barb embedded into the soft flesh of Cal’s gut. He jerked his arm out of Fish’s hold.
“Get Van Gogh’s crap off Zeke’s boat while I’m gone. We’re done.” Fish strode down the pier.
Done? Fire coral and kelp, anger and grief, wound around each other inside. “Aren’t you afraid the ex-con will clean you out?”
“Just make sure you clean your lousy carcass out of my life. It’ll be worth whatever you take.”
The comment stabbed deeper than we’re done. Fish knew he wasn’t a thief.
Van Gogh nuzzled his hand, and Cal scooped the fifty-pound dog into his arms to dull Fish’s rejection.
Van Gogh stared placidly into his eyes, fogging his face with doggy breath as though he were a purse dog.
“At least you still love me.”
The dog slurped his cheek.
Cal crossed the gangplank onto the mammoth fishing boat, Zeke’s Ambition. The cruiser must stretch fifty feet. He wrinkled his nose at the fish smell clinging to the bare wooden planks flecked with old paint.
He set Van Gogh down inside the cabin. “Where’s Fish’s bunk, buddy?”
As though he understood, Van Gogh trotted toward a wide shelf over a row of storage lockers where a sleeping bag spewed across a rectangle of foam rubber.
The ratty red and green plaid lining shot Cal back to a hundred campouts he’d shared with Fish on Pelican Island, the crunch of singed hot dog skin between his teeth, and a brotherhood that went deeper than blood.
The dog pranced and barked at a roach while Cal emptied his wallet, one hundred and thirteen dollars from the pay check he’d cashed the day he got arrested. The bills would cover three months of dog food and a little extra. He slid the money under Fish’s pillow. The faint scent of Fish’s sweat drifted toward him, wrenching him like the final twist of a C-clamp.
He grabbed the half-empty bag of food and stuffed the dog bowls and multiple pieces of an “indestructible” Kong dog toy into the bag. His flip-flop squashed the roach Van Gogh had cornered. “Come on, boy.”
Cal ducked his head through the door into sunlight and came face to face with Evie on the dock across from him.
Shock registered on her face, then she screamed. “Cal! You’re out!” As his foot touched down on the dock, she barreled into his chest—a flash of breasts, strawberry-blonde hair, and the scent of vanilla. Her greeting rivaled Van Gogh’s and almost tottered him into the drink.
Cal set her away from him with one hand and clutched twenty-five pounds of dog food and paraphernalia with the other. “Maybe you could have funneled some of your enthusiasm into visiting me in the pen.”
“Just one more way I don’t measure up to stinkin’ Aly. She probably came to see you every week. FYI, I had to visit my mother in jail when I was in junior high. I swore I’d never go back.”
His eyes traced the familiar tattooed daisy petals peeking from her blouse, the stem plunging into the valley between her breasts. He ripped his gaze away. Looking was what always got him into trouble with Evie. He walked two slips down and vaulted onto the Escape.
Van Gogh trotted across the gangplank, Evie not far behind.
He glanced at her, scrounging for words that would make her back off. He said the first thing that came to mind. “Ask Stoney if he’ll rehire me.”
“What will you give me if I march my butt to Stoney’s?”
Cal barked a laugh. “Like you’re not going down there every day to pierce anyway.”
“If you think I’m pissing Stoney off for nothing, you’re crazy.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Face time. I want face time.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation less than an hour out of jail. He sighed, emptying all the air from his lungs. “All we do is fight. We’re toxic together. We should have broken up two years ago and stayed broken up.”
“We’re good together. The sex—”
Cal rattled the boat keys in his pocket. “You talking to Stoney or not?”
“I’m not doing your dirty work—”
“Fine. I’ll talk to him myself.”
Evie flipped him off.
Two boats down the dock, Fish paused as he crossed Zeek’s gangplank. “Ditto from me.”
Cal turned his back on both of them and walked down the deck. His eyes skimmed over the Escape’s graceful lines, her mast jutting into blue sky, as he unlocked the hatch. He tossed the dog food through the opening, descended into the musty cabin with Van Gogh hefted under one arm, and shut out the drama. Salt and stale marijuana smoke hung in the air. Water lapped a rhythmic peace against the hull.
His eyes followed Van Gogh’s sniff-fest the length of the cabin from the forward bunk, to the dining nook, the galley’s gimbaled stove that rocked with the sway of the boat, and into the master suite.
He owned the Escape. Amazing.
Hope wedged in beside Evie’s crazy, Fish’s anger, and his mother’s expectations.
But first he had to face Aly. And talk her into loaning him forty thousand dollars.
July 16
Am I wacked, or do you ever stand in front of your favorite picture and try to breathe it in before you have to face something you dread? Does art bring tranquility? Is beauty an outgrowth of the divine? Thoughts?
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 2
By the time Starr swept the studio and wiped down the wall of windows facing the oversized bougainvillea hedge and the other three mirrored walls, the first drops of an afternoon shower splattered on the tin roof. She propped open the doors to let in the cool air.
Cal’s release and the thirty minute ride home had wedged wider the bedrock fissure inside her—the one his incarceration had cracked into her core. Frantic cleaning had done nothing to hold together the fracture.
Her only hope at damage control was to dance down the emotions warring to get out. She slipped on her ballet shoes, stretched, and warmed her muscles.
Today she’d fallen into the canyons of Cal’s silences. Did he feel shame? She sautéd, her feet briefly leaving the mat. Regret? Another sauté, the soft thud of her feet the only sound in the room.
She wished Cal would say what he thought like his brother, Jesse, did. Was Cal even able? She let her body fold at the waist in a cambré, her fingers trailing the dark mat of the floor. True, Jesse was older, married, and a father of two, but he’d always been uncomplicated like Jackson. And, at twenty, Missy’s life blurred through Starr’s with laughter, friends, and college—an open book.
Her arms spiraled up as though she were climbing an invisible rope to a port-de-bras. Sometimes she thought she loved Cal more than her other children. And hated him. No, hated his ability to ax into the fortressed person inside her skin.
Cal lived on the edge—artistic, moody, with emotions like hers that got tangled without words to expel them. She knew the eight-year-old with the impish grin smeared across his face who stared at her from his frame on the corner of her desk. But a stranger had ridden in the passenger seat of her minivan. One capable of breaking the law. Of doing it again. Fear whistled through her like air past a freshly drilled tooth.
Why wouldn’t he promise not to smoke marijuana? She pirouetted and spiraled down to the mat. Maybe cocaine was his drug of choice. Ice-wind swirled around inside her. She’d read in the Observer last month, black tar heroin had infiltrated sleepy New Smyrna Beach. Her arms swam through the chill as her body lifted from the floor.
Something blue caught the corner of her eye in the midst of the lush green of the hedge and its reflection in mirrors surrounding her.
Jackson stood in the doorway, watching her. Five-ten and solidly built, he could be Cal, except for his short hair—gray wired with white, stubbornly clinging to his scalp though he kept it clipped too short to curl. Behind him, rain pounded divots in the sandy drive that divided their house from her studio. Splotches of dampness darkened the thick shoulders of his polo.
She squashed down the feeling of having been caught doing something she shouldn’t and walked over to him.
He kissed her harder than hello and shoved his hands into his pockets. “What went wrong picking Cal up?”
“How did you know?”
“Give me credit after all this time. I can read your emotions in the way you move.”
“I don’t know what went wrong. It was strained—like always.”
“Maybe the boat and the loan will give him the leg-up he needs.” He blew out a breath, and her terror and hope mated with his in the air between them.
Jackson’s gaze traveled over her. “I fell in love watching your ballet—through Gabrielle’s Dance Studio plate glass window.” His voice was wistful. “You’re free when you dance—the girl I seldom see anymore.”
“You can watch.”
“You’ll go stiff, showing me the woman in control, the one you show New Smyrna Beach. Tell me why you shut yourself off.”
She hated how Jackson’s words pushed her off balance. She touched his chest with her fingertips. “I’ve loved you for thirty-three years. I’ve never wanted another man. How is that shutting myself off?” She rounded her lips into a tentative smile.
His finger traced a trickle of sweat into the well between her breasts. “Sometimes I wish you’d talk to me about what’s going on in here.” He dropped his hand. His eyes lingered before he raised them to hers. “It’s like you live this whole life nobody sees, not even me. Just once I’d like you to look me in the eye when you orgasm so I can see you need me.” He gave her a half-smile. His eyes peered into her soul while the rain drummed on the tin roof overhead.
For a minute she thought he would follow through with the steel-blue fire in his eyes, but he turned away. “I’m stopping by the marina to see Cal.” He walked into the rain.
She watched him go, the metallic, organic scent of rain filling her lungs. A piece of her ripped away. She wanted to call Jackson back, say the right thing, throw herself into his arms, make love to him.
Instead she twirled in unfinished arcs, hanging question marks in the air. What if the part of her Jackson asked for was dead? What if terror that Cal had lost his way killed it?
Dance was the way her soul cried out to God. Did Jackson have the right to eavesdrop on something so personal? Her body had turned wooden when she saw him framed in the doorway. She’d never noticed it before, but Jackson was right.
She didn’t even know what he was asking for. And if she figured it out, could she give it to him?
#
Cal followed his folks from the sticky ninety-four degree parking lot through the double glass doors of the PNC Bank branch. He tugged at the tie chaffing his neck. The last time he’d worn a tie in Aly’s presence he’d fallen in love with her—eight years ago when Jesse married her sister.
He scanned the teller line and the office cubicles for a glimpse of Aly. Hunger and dread arm-wrestled in his gut. He wanted to walk back across the tile—away from the humiliation of his life—part-time jobs, living at Henna’s for free, painting with art supplies his mother funded—and out the door. But this was the only way he’d get a life, the only way he’d get a shot at Aly.
His mother stopped at the office partition with Aly Logan, loan officer, laminated on a plastic strip at the right.
Over Mom’s shoulder, his gaze collided with Aly’s.
Her eyes widened and telegraphed nervousness he was sure she didn’t want him to see. A piece of him relaxed. On some level, she cared.
Aly’s gaze swept them. “Hi, Koomers.”
Jackson moved between them and took a seat. “Aly! How’s my favorite banker?”
She warmed Dad with a look that oozed affection, like the ones she used to give Cal. Before Evie.
He took the chair in the entryway, the only space left in Aly’s cramped office, as his parents settled beside him.
God, Aly was beautiful sitting in a beam of muted sun filtering through the window. His fingers itched to sketch her. Maize-colored hair swept back from her pale face in a loose ponytail. Hazel eyes picked up the olive of her sleeveless blouse. Sun had honeyed the skin tone on her arms. Her small nails were bare without the bumper car colors she’d worn in high school and the iridescents she’d favored in college.
Aly, fake-smiled at his shirt, avoiding his eyes. “Well, let’s get to it. You probably want to know what the bank decided on your loan.”
He couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. He’d been starved for Aly for too long. The last time he’d seen her was four months ago at Easter. She’d treated him like a pedophile uncle—as she had for the past two years.
“You’ve got the loan,” Aly said.
Her words jolted his back against the chair. Inside, emotions randomly beaded and separated like mercury. Yes! bumped and merged with a cringe that he wasn’t man enough to conduct his own business. An educated guess about what lay under the lace winking from the scoop of Aly’s neckline merged into hope that he’d see it someday.
Aly grabbed a file folder from the tidy stack on the corner of her desk and handed Cal the top sheet to sign. Her fingers brushed his, and she jerked away. He’d touched her hundreds of times, and he’d give just about anything to earn back the privilege.
“This is the loan application,” Aly said.
He signed and slid the page across Aly’s desk to his mother.
Aly was careful not to touch Cal as she passed him the loan agreement, then the loan origination document.
His eyes met hers with a silent communication that he’d noticed she didn’t want to touch him.
Aly looked down at the stack of papers in front of her. Message received.
“Your payments will be due on the first of each month.” Aly steepled her fingers as she continued explaining the repayment details.
His mind churned. Of course Aly didn’t want anything to do with him. Two years ago he decimated her heart. Yesterday he was in jail. Today he stepped from flat broke to forty thousand dollars in the hole. What in that picture would make her want to trust him again?
Aly rose, and his folks scooted their chairs back and stood.
He sprung from his seat, as desperate to get away from Aly as he had been to see her.
Mom reached a hand toward Aly. “Thanks. Don’t forget we’re planning a picnic for Labor Day at Blue Springs.”
Was Cal the only one who felt odd shaking hands with someone who had shared Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter dinners for nearly a decade?
Aly’s cheeks pinked as Jackson shook her hand.
Okay, so Cal wasn’t the only one caught in a whirlpool of Meet The Fockers awkwardness. But he could only reach across the metal desk. “Thanks, Al, I really appreciate it.”
Aly’s small hand branded his palm in the shortest handshake in the history of banking.
He hovered over the desk with his empty hand stretched toward her. The scent of forest mint filled his head. He couldn’t help himself. It had been so long. He backed away. He had to get out of here.
He stuffed the check and loan papers into his back pocket and strode out of the lobby and onto State Road 44 without waiting for his folks to exit the bank. It was just as well he’d lost his friggin’ license. He yanked his tie free and unbuttoned his already damp shirt. The two mile walk to Henna’s was just what he needed to reconnect with reality. He was crazy stupid for even imagining he could win Aly.
His folks’ minivan slowed, and he waved them past. No way was he up for discussing boat repairs and dry dock. Beaching the Escape and hacking the barnacles off her hull—now that had possibilities.
But first he had to purge the sea of bile and longing Aly surged up in him. He had to paint. He could almost smell the comfort of the color and oils sucking the chaos out of him, ordering it onto canvas.
And when sanity returned, he’d find a way to make things right with Aly.
#
Fish sprayed the last of the marine debris from the deck and coiled the hose. He hated to admit it, but he actually liked running fishing charters for Zeke better than working the counter at Circle K. It didn’t matter. Cal had gotten him thrown in jail for the longest six hours of his life. Scared the shit out of him. He never wanted to feel that helpless again. Never wanted to stand in court, guilt pressing in on him from every eye in the room—no matter how much he protested he didn’t know how the pot got into his locker.
Should he even apply for law school? Who would vote for a candidate with a record?
The desire for revenge churned on a primal level. He eyed Cal two slips down, polishing the Escape’s chrome work. Cal needed to know what betrayal felt like.
The gate clanged against its post at the end of the pier. Evie strutted up the dock. His eyes drifted to the breasts she wore like magnificent hood ornaments.
An idea solidified. “Evangeline!” He scooped out a left-over Coors Light from the cooler. “Want a beer?”
She stopped on the dock behind Zeke’s Ambition and leaned toward the boat to grab the Coors from his hand. His eyes traced the tattooed flower stem where it trailed south into the depths of her shirt.
She straightened, narrowed her eyes, and flipped open the beer.
“I have to study for a poly sci quiz. Stay and keep me company?”
She took a sip. “Looks like you’ve already started studying.”
He shot a glance at the tattoo peeking from the neckline of her blouse. “Botany. Dasies. One in particular.”
“Since when do you hit on me?”
Since Cal pissed him off. “Since I can’t fight it anymore.”
Her gaze slid to Cal as he walked aft on his boat.
“Hey, I’m only asking you to hang out.”
Evie stepped aboard muttering something about never measuring up. “So, I’m good enough for you?”
His eyes moseyed over her wavy blond tresses down to her hibiscus-red toenails. “Uh, that would be a yes.”
She plopped into a padded fishing chair. “One beer. That’s all.”
Fish leaned against the side of the boat and crossed his arms. “So, are you and Cal on again or off again?”
“I thought you had to study.”
He zeroed his gaze into her eyes. “I am.”
She took a drink, but not before he saw her hand quiver. He was getting to her. Good.
“So, about Cal—”
Evie snorted.
“I don’t get it. Why do you stick to him? His four-figure income? Because—thanks to his daddy’s lawyer-friend—he got three months jail time, three months probation instead of the pre-plea felony that would have locked him up for a year?” Never mind Cal’s surfer six-pack and his to-know-him-is-to-love-him personality.
“Cal’s got family. Ma left me on that piece-of-shit boat with her pervy boyfriend and skipped town when I was seventeen.”
Who knew they had something in common other than a mutual appreciation for hood ornaments? “My family ditched me the minute I graduated high school to run an orphanage in Peru.”
“Not the same. Do you even have a clue what it feels like to have a hole inside where family’s supposed to be—since you were born? Even when Ma was around, she didn’t, like, care.”
The ache in her voice unearthed his own, and he reached for the last beer in the cooler. Yeah, he knew exactly what it felt like to have a hole inside where family was supposed to be.
“I don’t know why Cal goes all sea-urchin prickly about his mom. If Cal married me, I’d be a best-freakin’-friend kind of daughter-in-law.”
“Hey, I’ve got family. Mom, Dad, sisters, a brother, one more sibling than Cal has.” He sounded petty, even in his own ears.
“Well, they’re not here, are they? And why would I care?”
“So, you’re in love with Cal?”
“Sometimes I hate him.”
Fish squinted at her. Was it the beer talking?
Evie stood. “I’m done puking out my issues.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cal moving around on the Escape. He followed Evie off the boat. “I’ll walk you down to your boat.” He threw an arm across her shoulders and darted a glance at Cal.
#
The doorbell rang, and Aly’s chin jerked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey she’d just opened. Mom had taken her out for her birthday yesterday, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. She jammed the spoon into the ice cream, stuck it into the freezer, and jogged to the door. Maybe it was elderly Mrs. Knox from the condo next door.
She whisked open the door, and the smile died on her lips.
Cal stood on the step, damp hair pulled into a ponytail, his jaw freshly shaved.
Shallow breaths moved in and out of her nose, registering the scent of soap. Pin pricks dotted her skin as though her whole body had fallen asleep
One corner of his mouth turned up. His eyes looked uncertain. “Happy birthday.” It almost sounded like a question.
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts to say it the last two years.” He tapped the framed pictures propped against his thigh. “I brought you something.”
She should invite him in. Handing her art on the doorstep was ridiculous. But if he came in, he’d see the three ink drawings he’d cast off years ago—the ones she’d expensively framed as the focal point of her living room. He’d think she was still in love with him after two years of almost no contact.
Cal shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “If you have company, I can come back another time.
She cleared her throat. “I don’t have company.”
The silence crept past awkward.
“If you’d rather I didn’t come in—”
“No, it’s okay.” She inched away from the door.
Cal lined three framed charcoal drawings against the couch, his back to her private Cal Koomer gallery. His gaze riveted to hers. “Thanks for the loan. The Escape will be in dry dock for a month or so. I’m doing all the work I can myself. You gave me a shot at a future.”
Did Cal remember her vow to own her own business by twenty-five? Did he realize she’d handed him her dream? Enjoy it for me, Cal. Succeed. “It was a sound business decision.” Not personal.
Hurt slashed through his eyes and disappeared so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it. “I’m still grateful, Al.”
She folded her arms across her waist and sunk to the edge of the coffee table. Her gaze veered to Cal’s gifts.
Cal’s genius lay in his ability to knead a viewer’s emotions into a visceral response. His art expressed things deeper than he was able to communicate in words. She had learned to read his work almost from the start of their friendship. Gratitude for the rusty skill wafted through her.
Two faces looking away from each other filled the first drawing propped against the couch. Though no one else might, she recognized herself. Hurt etched the planes of her face and seared from her eyes. She glanced at the bottom right corner for the date Cal always included with his signature. The drawing had been done on her twenty-first birthday, less than a month after she’d offered herself to Cal and been turned down. After she’d confessed her love. After she’d witnessed his hand planted on the polka dots of Evie’s bikini from where she stood on the side of the beach road. Glass shards of pain cycloned through her as though she lived it again.
Her eyes slid to the dark-jawed male face—the tilt of the thick brows, the kinks in the hair, and halted at the eyes swimming with bone-scraping regret.
So, Cal got how her heart crumpled beyond repair in the saw grass that day. The charcoal begged her absolution.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Cal stood with his back to her, starring at the wall she didn’t want him to see. Below the drawings and to the right, like a signature, she’d framed her favorite photo of Cal. Head thrown back, mouth open, he laughed. She could hear the sound in her head every time she looked at the photo.
How did Cal feel seeing himself enshrined on her wall? Did he pity her? Feel responsible for her? Did he want to erase her love? He didn’t need to worry. She jettisoned her feelings for Cal a little at a time. Eventually, none would be left. She’d made progress. Surely she had.
She turned to the picture dated on her twenty-second birthday. She and Cal stood angled away from each other with the sharp needles of a Christmas tree jabbing between them. Her eyes were downcast, and Cal peered over his shoulder at her longingly. He missed her friendship. But she couldn’t go back there again.
The charcoal dated today, her twenty-third birthday, depicted figures facing each other across her desk at the bank. She recognized Jackson’s forearm and hand, the crown of Starr’s head. This time she and Cal looked each other in the eye. Uncertainty clouded her expression; embarrassment, Cal’s. But he still-framed the moment when their fingers brushed against each other.
How had Cal captured the bond between them in charcoal? A bond she wouldn’t resurrect. Couldn’t. She stood and stepped behind the coffee table to absorb the picture as a whole.
Her arm clunked into Cal’s chest, firing off an all-systems-alert to her body—like the touch Cal depicted on paper. Her gaze flew to his, then darted away from the raw plea in his eyes. “Sorry.”
She stepped away from him and rubbed the bare skin of her arm as if she could erase the softness of Cal’s T-shirt, the warm, solid feel of his chest. She centered herself in front of the last drawing.
The picture communicated permanence in their connection, the subjects’ surprise that the welding still held. Well, Cal had gotten that wrong.
She stared at the other two drawings, willing her pulse to calm. How long had she been lost in the art? Two minutes? Half-an-hour?
She filled her lungs with oxygen and faced Cal. “What do you want from me?”
His eyes pleaded with her, but she needed words.
“I brought the drawings… to say I’m sorry for… for what I did to you.”
“I forgave you a long time ago.” How could she not? It wasn’t his fault she fell in love with him and ruined their friendship. She’d never make that mistake again.
“Do we still have…?” His hands waved between them, his eyes desperate to say what he couldn’t articulate.
How could she tell him they had nothing left? He’d just stared at what looked like a memorial to their relationship for who knew how long. She could tell him he was a brilliant artist, and she happened to be lucky enough to have some originals to hang on her wall. But he’d be hurt. He wasn’t looking for an art critique. He’d exposed his heart and begged to jumpstart their friendship.
While the sentiment was gratifying, she’d be a masochist to agree. No, the relationship needed to stay dead.
If Daddy’s deleting her out of his life when she was seven wasn’t enough to teach her to protect herself, all she had to do was look at her mother. Thank God Mom had a nursing degree when Daddy walked. But Daddy had left Mom’s heart out in all weather, something that could only have been prevented by trusting her heart to a safer person.
Bachelor of Science in business. Check. Owning her own company. Someday. She just wished she was one of those women who didn’t need a man. But sex, if only momentarily, filled her craving to be cherished, to be essential to another person’s existence. When she married, it would be to a stable guy who wouldn’t leave her for someone better. Or jail.
But she couldn’t throw Cal’s good intentions back in his face. Not today with his art filling her living room.
She motioned with her head toward the breakfast bar. “Come on. I was just celebrating. Sit down.”
She plopped the Ben and Jerry’s between them.
Cal reached for the spoon and stopped. He smiled into her eyes, and she knew he was remembering the last time they celebrated with Chunky Monkey—the day he’d taken her to get a pregnancy test that turned out negative. He took a bite and stuck the spoon back into the ice cream.
Aly’s lips turned up. It was a happy memory even though it happened at the darkest time in her life. She slipped the spoon into her mouth, thinking how weird it was that they’d shared food and silverware for eight years when they’d never even kissed. Her eyes strayed to his lips, and she shook herself back to reality.
She’d prepare a gentle this-isn’t-going-to-work speech, make it a painless as possible, and deliver it the next time she saw him. Her life depended on it.
August 25
Is it just me, or does the grandeur of life sometimes sneak up on you? I was going on in my same-old, same-old life when grandeur walked through my front door. Beauty, emotion, depth of connection. Art.
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 3
Fish flung his poly sci text at the bulkhead and rolled off his bunk. At ten p.m. the grimy blades of the box fan wheezed heavy, ninety-degree air at him. He’d stripped down to his gym shorts an hour ago. Tomorrow’s final knotted the muscles at the base of his skull. He needed a break.
He scooped up the book and smoothed out the wrinkled page corners. Next week maybe he’d get fifty bucks for it he could put toward fall semester books. He rolled his shoulders. One thing he’d fight to keep—if Cal hadn’t ruined his run at politics—was government funding for higher education. The one good thing about being dirt poor was Pell Grants that added up to free college. Maybe the country had problems, but some things America got right.
Some day he’d be part of the US getting more things right. He tossed the book onto his bunk and headed out to the dock. It had to be cooler outside.
Fish stood on the darkened deck and eyed Cal’s empty slip for the five-hundreth time since Cal left for dry dock six weeks ago. No Escape. But a girl sat on the dock storage box facing the empty slip, arms wrapped around a pair of shapely legs. A riot of dark curls cascaded down her back. She wore a tank top and short shorts that made guys glad they had eyes. Dock light rained down on her, leaving her face in shadow.
Realization dawned—the girl was Cal’s little sister, Missy.
She stood and stretched, her face tilting toward the light.
His breath stopped. His eyes galvanized to her mother’s cheek bones and nose, the lush brows and lashes. Her clothes carelessly hugged the curves of her compact form, oblivious to the energy-saver light bulb warming inside him.
She checked her watch and sat down.
He shook his head, schooling his thoughts. He’d spent every holiday with her and the Koomers for as long as he could remember, the one tradition he’d clung to when his folks ripped themselves and his siblings out of his life. But when had she turned into the hottie camped on Cal’s dock box? Seeing her in a new setting flipped some switch inside him. He did the math. Geez, she must be twenty now.
He’d always liked her when she was a kid. Five years younger than he and Cal, she used to follow them around till Cal would chase her off. And he must have had a hundred conversations with her, sitting on the Koomer’s back steps, tossing shell pieces onto the sandy drive while he waited for Cal to finish his chores or homework or a fight with Starr.
Now that he thought about it, Missy had always been a hottie, at least since she hit junior high and made no secret of the major-league crush she had on him. He’d given her a wide berth since then.
Well, she wasn’t twelve years old anymore. He crossed the gangplank and walked toward her. “Hey, Missy, what up?”
She startled. “Where’s Cal?”
“Dry dock.”
“Why does no one ever tell me anything?”
Fish grinned, enjoying her familiar huff. “You’re the baby.”
She rolled wide-set eyes. “I finally get myself worked up enough to tell Cal what I think about his going to jail, and I sit here for an hour for nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I have my speech all ready, and I’m not giving it to you, Sean Fisher.”
“I’m not asking for your speech. Just tell me how you feel.”
Her face swung from the empty slip to him. Dock light illuminated the hurt in her warm, brown eyes the color of a cowry shell he’d once found. “How could Cal do this to me—the big brother I’ve always idolized? I can’t look up to him now. I don’t think he even cares about me. It’s like he cut me off. He never wants to hang out. I hadn’t seen him for weeks, maybe months before he went to jail. Did he look for me after he got out? I am so over him.” She smeared tears into her cheeks. “But you can’t get over your own brother. Not even if you want to.”
Fish smacked a mosquito on his arm. He knew what she was talking about. As pissed as he was at Cal, he still felt connected to him. Ditto for his family in Peru.
Missy dropped her legs over the side of the dock box and scooted to the edge. “Sorry. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Some part of his brain catalogued the absence of raccoon make-up smudges from the tears. “It’s okay.” His voice came out hoarse, and he cleared his throat. In five minutes she’d moved from being his best friend’s kid sister to a peer. He leaned against the dock box beside her trying to gain his equilibrium. “So, Chas started college online from Peru.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He jerked his chin back toward her.
“We e-mail.”
“Oh, so you e-mail my baby brother, and I haven’t seen you since Easter. And I’m right here in New Smyrna Beach.”
She shoved his bare shoulder. “Like you noticed.”
“On second thought, what would you want with the Fisher family black sheep.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I followed you around my whole life. I quit a couple of years ago—my eighteenth birthday gift to myself. I’ve grown up.”
He stared at the emotion pulsing in her eyes. All that hair, loose for once, dispelling forever the impression of Missy as Starr’s mini-me. Had her lips always been that full? “Yeah, I noticed you grew up.”
“When?”
“So, what about them Bucs?”
Missy narrowed her eyes at him.
“You still rescuing bad boys—visiting them in the hospital when they turn up shark-bit?”
“See, that’s what I mean. I’m like some great aunt you see on holidays and are polite to…. I’m a junior at Daytona State College. Get a clue.”
He stood and faced her. “What I was going to say was” –he lasered his eyes into hers— “you can rescue me.”
Her mouth dropped open. Missy speechless? That was a first. He got in her face, planting a hand on either side of her thighs on the dock box. “What do you say?” He could almost see her squirm. The evening just got a whole lot more interesting.
Missy’s chin lifted a fraction. “You don’t look shark-bit to me.”
Her breath fanned his cheek in soft bursts and warmth flushed through him. “Some wounds are inside.”
She pushed his arm out of the way as she slid off the dock box. “Maybe I could rescue you from yourself—if I had the inclination. But I don’t.”
Little Missy must have passed Flirting 101 with a four-oh. The spearmint scent of her gum hung between them. She was still close enough to kiss.
“But God knows you need saving.”
When had her voice matured into a woman’s? He’d swear she spoke an octave lower than she used to.
“End this stupid tug-of-war and go see your family. My folks Skype your parents once a month. It breaks my heart to hear how much your mom and dad miss you. You know they can’t get away from the orphanage. Go for Christmas.”
“It’s my business.”
“Yeah, but maybe it’s time somebody got in your business.”
He stared her down, feeling like he saw her for the first time. He didn’t want anybody telling him what to do. Irritation gnawed at his ribs. “You’ve grown up, I’ll give you that. But you’re just as annoying. You know what? I changed my mind. Don’t bother trying to fix me.”
Even in the shadows, he saw the stab flash through her eyes, but her voice held firm. “Be mean, Sean. You don’t scare me.” She pivoted. “Because I’m right,” she tossed over her shoulder and walked down the dock.
His gaze fixed on her legs as she moved toward the gate. She said she missed looking up to Cal. But he was the one who felt bereft. Her hero-worship had been a constant for as long as he could remember. Funny how he didn’t miss it until he knew it was gone.
Tomorrow he’d sign up to take the LSAT. It wasn’t reconciling with his family, but maybe getting into law school would buy back a few points with Missy.
#
Cal sat atop a ladder at the bow of the dry-docked Escape. He balanced a pallet of black, white, and various shades of gray left-over marine paint—the most expensive paint in the world as far as he could tell. Sodden clouds bunched in the September sky like his boat repair bills, the meeting with his probation officer, and the hundred and fifteen pound question mark of Aly.
He eyed the white expanse of the Escape’s hull he’d finished painting this morning and envisioned the figurehead the boat begged for. Flowing locks of hair spilled from his brush. Aly’s hair. Her graceful neck, chin, mouth.
And in an instant he scrolled back six weeks and perched on Aly’s stool, watching her lips close around the ice cream spoon. He wanted Aly with a passion that eclipsed even his seventeen-year-old starvation for her. He didn’t have another eight years to waste. He wanted his body fused to hers, his name tacked onto hers. Kids someday.
She’d framed and gallery-positioned some old sketches he’d tossed. That had to count for something. She loves me. She loves me not. sing-songed in his head.
Oh yeah, he was going find out. No more waiting his turn because she had a boyfriend. But no way was he going after Aly as a loser pothead with empty pockets and no driver’s license. Aly’s father was a doctor. Her college diploma hung on the wall of her cubicle at the bank. He had to win at business before he had a prayer of winning Aly.
His grandmother’s nineteen ninety-one Toyota Corolla rattled through the boatyard gates and coasted to a stop in front of the Escape. The car coughed and sputtered as Henna scooted her muumuu clad bulk from the driver’s seat and submitted to Van Gogh’s epileptic greeting. Her patchouli scent made Cal feel loved and enjoyed.
She squinted up at Cal’s work. “Love is in the paint,” she trilled.
Cal’s gaze skimmed from the sloppy white bun on top of Henna’s head to the face taking shape on the bow. Well, it was too late to disguise Aly now. Maybe no one else would notice the resemblance. “Let’s keep it our secret.”
Henna beamed at him, both chins smiling. “Ready to float your barge?”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
“She’s looking peachy cream.”
Cal shook his head at her fractured clichés and turned back to the figurehead. Did Henna think them up intentionally or did they just came out that way?
“I bet it cost a pretty nickel.” Henna hobbled toward the stern, taking her positivity with her.
With the rebuilt engine, the repairs had come in just under forty thousand dollars, twice as much as he’d anticipated. What would he use for startup costs?
After Henna’s Corolla putted away and he brushed the last strokes on the figurehead, there was nothing to do but wait for tomorrow when the boatyard Travel Lift would hoist the Escape off her wooden blocks and jack stands and deposit her back into the inlet.
He surfed all afternoon as though mastering the waves would conquer his worries about advertising money and whether Aly was seeing someone. And maybe it would have—if Fish had been with him. How many of his problems had shrunk to a manageable size while floating on his board waiting for the next wave beside Fish?
Stashing the joints in Fish’s locker had been monumental stupidity. He should have flushed the stuff. He needed a do-over. And epic grudge-holder Fish was unlikely to ante up. He’d never imagined a life without Fish. He was the brother Jesse—too many years between them and too different—had never been. Salt stung and crusted the edges of the gouge where Fish had been.
Cal propped his board in the sand against Leaf’s hot dog stand and poked his head through the window.
Missy! He hadn’t seen his sister in months. Man, did it feel good to run into her. She wore yellow rubber gloves and scrubbed the counter to some country tune about a guy wanting to check a girl for ticks.
He laughed. “Sissy Missy! You seriously need to upgrade your music choices.”
She looked at him and stilled. Her face paled.
He grinned at her. “What are you doing here?”
She crossed her arms and looked down at him through the window. “Leaf lets me haul the stand down here whenever he’s not in the mood to work. I keep the profits. Such as they are. I get a lot of POed potheads looking for Leaf.” She shrugged, her tone chilling him like the wind hitting his wet skin.
“So much for protecting the baby from the family dirt,” he said.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you got yourself arrested.”
It would hurt less if she’d slapped him. “What are you pissed about? I’m the one who got locked up for three months.”
She planted her palms on the counter and looked him in the eye. “Think about anybody but yourself much?”
She blindsided him. He expected things to be laid back, easy going, the way they always were between him and Missy. “Excuse me for being self-centered during the shittiest time in my life. If anybody should be pissed, I should. You could have visited me.”
“Forget it.” She turned her back on him.
He watched her brillo the hot plate, movements jerky, shoulders stiff. His stomach growled. “How about a dog and an A&W?”
Missy slipped off the gloves, fished a hot dog out of the crock pot, slapped it into a bun, ran two stripes of mustard and one of catsup down the middle just the way he liked it, and handed it to him. She snagged an icy root beer from the cooler, slid it across the counter, and turned back to the hot plate.
His gut churned. He stared at the hot dog in his hand and inhaled scent. No way could he chew and swallow. “Mis, look, don’t be this way.”
She spun around. “I don’t know why you care. I hardly saw you for months before you went to jail. Did you even remember I existed?”
“That’s not fair. I walked up here expecting Leaf, and I was glad to see you.”
Tears sprung to her eyes. “It’s almost September. You’ve been out a month and a half. Did it cross your mind, like, ‘Hey, I miss my sister, I think I’ll text her and hang out.’?”
Maybe he should have gotten in touch with her. “What? You couldn’t have texted me?”
“Whatever.”
“Why are you being such a drama queen about this? It’s not your life that’s totally screwed. You’re not the freakin’ family loser.”
“When you got arrested, I cried buckets. I’ve never known anybody who went to jail. Locked in there with evil men. I imagined you getting beat up. Worse.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t face seeing you behind bars. I was terrified you were suicidal.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t have the balls to kill myself.”
“When I was little I got my hair cut, and your ‘cool’ made me feel like the prettiest girl in third grade. Jesse was always off doing big kid stuff. But you let me tag along to the playground with you and Fish, patted my back when I cried over a skinned knee, made sure I didn’t watch inappropriate TV shows on Henna’s watch. In junior high and high school you were my hot big brother that reduced my friends to stuttering idiots. You were my hero.”
The sun warmed his shoulders. He really did love Missy, but how could she expect him to worry about her when his life went into nuclear meltdown. He took a bite of his hot dog.
“Now, I worry that you’re going to get murdered in some drug deal gone wrong. What if you’re doing coke or meth or fill-in-the-blank?”
The food turned to sand in his mouth. “I’m clean.”
“Save your words. They don’t mean anything. The only way I’ll know if you’re telling the truth is if you don’t turn up dead or in prison.”
Why didn’t she just soccer cleat him in the stomach? He could see the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice.
“I thought I knew you. But you’ve turned into a stranger. I wish I could climb inside your head and know how you think. But I can’t.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I’m not dealing. I drink. I’ve done a lot of weed, but I’m clean. I’ve snorted coke a couple of times, shrooms once, but I’m staying away from them.”
She stared at him. “Next time you’re going to do something stupid, stop and think about how it will slam me—and everyone who loves you.”
Her anger finally sparked his. “Fine. Cross me off your list of people to worry about. I didn’t ask for your freakin’ love.”
Missy leaned through the window on her elbows and got in his face. “Trust me, Cal, if it was possible to quit loving you, I would have done it already. Now, I’m just begging you not to screw up my life along with yours.”
“Shit.” He slammed the hot dog and soda into the trash can, grabbed his board, and stalked into the sea.
Ever have a painting you’ve stared at for years—and loved? Then, one day, you see something which alters the way you view the piece forever. And you have to decide whether the art has been irreparably marred or merely deepened.
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 1
Cal shoved through the tinted glass doors into the loamy scent of Bermuda grass and pine bark and freedom roasting in the Daytona Beach summer. The surf shorts and T-shirt he’d worn three months ago when the cop clamped metal on his wrists hung loosely, misshapen, like a life that no longer fit.
Sun glinted off the windshield of a silver Honda—Aly’s?— blinding his eyes, yanking her last words to him into the whiteness.
I love you, John Calvin Koomer.
Irrational hope thrummed against the ache fisted in his chest. He squinted at the Honda. Sweat slicked his armpits and tickled the side of his face.
He should have slept with Aly when she offered. What had protecting her gotten him? Two and a half years of the back of her head. Making a science of not thinking about Aly, smoking weed to forget, cramming Evie into Aly’s place inside him. But prison ripped away everything but the truth. He loved Aly. Always had. Always would.
And it was time to do something about it.
The rumble of an engine pulling into the lot jerked his head around. His mother’s minivan plowed toward him, mowing down the stubble of his hope.
He glanced back at the Honda.
Empty. Like he felt inside.
Mom angled into a parking space, her driving as precise as everything she did.
His flip flops scraped the asphalt as he shuffled toward her. Heat from the chrome door handle branded his palm, and he climbed into the stream of the air conditioning blowing from the dash. The door clunked shut, and he waited for Mom’s disappointment to ooze it’s pus over him.
She reached for him, and his breath stuttered. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him.
She wrapped awkward arms around him. “I—I’ve wanted to hug you ever since the first day I visited you at jail.”
His hand lit on the fabric stretched across her dancer’s back. His pores sucked in gulps of human affection and the talcum scent of childhood while his mind tried to solve the puzzle of his mother. He coughed, searching for words to fill the silence, and found none. For a heartbeat he was ten with tears pricking the backs of his eyes.
She released him. Relief and the desire to cling to her flushed through him making him feel lightheaded.
Slim fingers shifted the car into reverse. Her dark hair, slicked back from her face in her customary ballerina bun, exposed the scar running from her temple into her hairline. It whitened now, the only hint of emotion on her face.
According to Grandpa Leaf, Mom had been dropped on her head as a child—causing her to rebel into conservatism from her hippie upbringing. Leaf always cackled after he told it.
Why couldn’t Henna—his lumpy grandma, in one of her bird of paradise muumuus—have picked him up? Someone he didn’t have to measure up for.
“Your grandmother is giving you her boat.”
His jaw dropped. Mom might as well have said Cape Canaveral would launch another Discovery with Henna as pilot. “Whoa.” The forty-one foot Catalina he’d sailed a thousand times materialized in his mind.
“Your father and I thought it might give you a fresh start. You could run charters for tourists like you and Fish used to talk about when you were kids.”
Cal ran his finger over the jagged pocketknife scar on his index finger where he and Fish had become blood-brothers on Rattle Snake Island the summer after third grade.
His mind swerved back to Henna, the dots connecting. Henna held herself responsible for his going to jail. He’d tell her she didn’t owe him anything. But he knew she’d make him keep the Escape.
He’d rather spend three months in the Volusia County lockup than visit his grandparents at the jail. They were more like leftover flower children than drug dealers. And he loved them. His favorite childhood daydream had been Mom sitting him down and saying, all serious, that she was sorry, but Henna and Leaf were his true parents. He’d sniffle, plow a hug into Henna’s soft middle, then race free and wild into the rest of his boyhood—the way he was meant to be raised.
As they passed the New Smyrna Beach City Limits sign, Mom glanced at him. “Whatever you do in this town sticks to you for the rest of your life. Promise me you’ll never smoke pot again. Salvage your reputation.”
He’d always been The Scream to Mom’s American Gothic. “Your reputation. I don’t care about mine.”
“How can you go to jail, have to report a record every time you apply for a job—”
“Leave it, Mom.”
“Is pot why you never got through college?”
“I never got through college because I hated everything but art classes.”
“Maybe you’re self-medicating for ADHD—”
“I can paint a canvas for six hours straight.”
“Or bi-polar. You’ve always been mercurial.”
“Yeah, I get it from you.”
“Funny.” She didn’t crack a smile as she wheeled the van into a marina parking space.
He could sure use a good smoke about now. Maybe it was time quit weed. But it wouldn’t be because his mother extracted a promise. It was his own damn life.
Mom killed the engine. The car popped and crackled in the silence.
“Cal.”
What now? He gripped the armrest, poised to escape.
“We want to give you a shot at making something of your life.”
His failures throbbed in the car, the ones she’d spoken and the one’s in her head—his job at Stoney’s Tattoo, his want of religion. And there were more.
“We moved your stuff from Henna’s place to the boat. She kept your studio set up, so you can still paint there whenever you want.”
He heard the but in her tone, like the one that always followed her praise.
She dug the boat keys out of her purse and handed them to him. “Your father and I are on the title for now because you need us to cosign for a startup loan. But if you default, you’ll have to sell the boat to pay off the loan.”
The whiskey shot that he was twenty-five and couldn’t sign for his own loan burned all the way down. “Fair enough.” He swallowed. “How much is the loan?”
“We figured forty thousand would cover repairs and get your business off the ground.”
His head knocked against the headrest. He’d never had more than two hundred dollars in the bank at one time. And now he was getting a ninety thousand dollar boat and more money than his brain could compute. Henna had always been wacky generous, but his folks cosigning a loan—was mammoth. Was it a last ditch effort to shove him into the sausage casing of society? Well, he was willing this time. More than willing.
“I drew up a business plan—not so different from the one I did for my dance studio. We meet with Aly tomorrow at three to find out if the loan has been approved and sign the papers.”
He sucked in a breath. “Aly?”
“Who else would we go to? Aly’s almost family. She’s a loan officer.”
He wrenched the door open, ignoring the tremor in his hand. “Right.” He stepped out and turned back to face Mom. “Thanks for the lift. The loan.” He stared at her, gratitude and shame stopping up his words, dampening his eyes. He’d make her proud this time. “See you tomorrow at the bank.”
Cal swung open the pier gate and breathed in the familiar fishy, gasoline scent of the marina. The shock of freedom left him feeling exposed. He almost called Mom back to walk him down to the boat—like holding his hand on the way to kindergarten.
Afternoon sun baked his shoulders, dissolving the weirdness, leaving only a buoy of hope. And a physical craving to paint. He sucked in a breath, imagining he could smell the Vaseline scent of his oils.
Selling his work, seeing his face on the cover of People magazine throbbed in gut. But it was time to kill the dream. He’d always paint, but Aly needed a guy who owned yard tools, tires worth rotating; who carried AAA, Visa, and voter’s registration cards. His stinking driver’s license wouldn’t even be back in his wallet for another three months.
If he worked the Plan B his family had dealt him and succeeded at running a charter sailing business, he’d gain a shot at Aly.
The only shot he’d ever get.
His eye caught on Evie’s beater boat, the rotted rigging and his guilt flailing around its sail-less mast like a maypole in the hot breeze. The first part of his new start had to be ex-ing Evie—the epic mistake of his life—for good this time. The picture wasn’t pretty, but ninety days sober showed him he’d been using her.
And now he’d see her every day, living eight boats apart on the same dock. Well, he was ditching her this time, like he’d told her six months ago. She’d have to accept it. The guilt nearly strangled him.
A pelican settled on a piling in a flurry of clumsy feathers. Cal shook off thoughts of Evie and grinned. He’d snag a hot dog from Leaf’s stand on the beach—just a hot dog, no weed—grab his board and Fish, and hit the waves. Then, he’d head for Henna’s to paint—enough to get it out of his system so he could focus on Plan B. Three months without painting had been punishing enough.
Frenzied barking erupted from Zeke’s fishing boat two slips down. Van Gogh, his chocolate lab-wimeramer, scrabbled across the gangplank, his toenails dancing against the wood.
Joy bubbled up, something he hadn’t felt in three months. His throat tightened.
Had Mom brought the dog down to the marina? But what was he doing on Zeke’s fishing boat—a marina institution for as long as Cal could remember?
Van Gogh planted his paws on Cal’s chest, quivering, his tail beating a frenzied rhythm against the light pole. A sandpaper tongue swiped Cal’s chin.
“I’m glad to see you, too, boy.” Cal scratched soft, doggy ears and inhaled canine and river water scent.
Van Gogh shimmied, wagging his butt along with his tail.
“I should have known you’d show up sooner or later.”
Fish’s familiar voice, popped Cal’s head up and pumped warmth into his chest that washed away three months’ absence. It didn’t matter that Fish hadn’t visited him in jail. Like the hospital, who liked the pen anyhow? They’d scarcely gone a day, much less months, without seeing each other since toddlerhood.
Fish loped from the fishing boat to the dock. Wisps of baby-white, surfer hair stuck out from under a backwards baseball cap that brushed the arch in the Zeke’s Fishing Charters sign.
Man, he missed Fish. “Hey.” Cal went for a hug.
Fish shoved a palm against Cal’s shoulder. His face contorted. “Take your friggin’ dog and clear out.”
Fish’s harsh tone felt like stepping on a stingray out of nowhere. Cal’s brow scrunched. “Whoa. What’s got you pissed? And thanks for taking care of my dog. What? Did Van Gogh eat your stogies? Do his business in your Corn Flakes? Look, I’ll pay you for the dog food.”
“You don’t know, do you? You don’t freakin’ know. You got me fired. What were you thinking ditching your weed in my locker? I didn’t even know it was in there. It took me two weeks to get a job working for Zeke. I lost the apartment. I don’t have family around to coddle me.”
“What? You’re kidding me. Nobody told me.”
Fish stared him down, stone cold, the same look he’d given his parents when they’d told Fish they were moving to Peru.
Cal dropped back a step, remorse flushing through him. Throw another failure onto the pile. “I’m sorry, man. I had no idea.”
Fish’s lanky arms flexed at his sides. “That’s all you have to say?” Disgust radiated from his eyes.
“Look, it was what? A few joints. I was taking the rug rats to the beach, and I didn’t want the stuff anywhere near them. My sister-in-law already thinks I’m scum. I’m surprised she let me hang with the kids.” After he’d done time, he’d be lucky if she let him see his niece and nephew at all.
“Old Man Phillips called the cops. They hauled me off in the police car right out the front doors of Circle K.”
“Look, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Ever.”
“You don’t know what you’re apologizing for.” Fish flung his hands up in the air. “Poof—you killed my political career before it started. You killed my future.”
There was no use arguing with Fish when he got like this. “Screw you.” Cal knocked a shoulder into Fish’s arm, shoving him out of the way and stepped toward the Escape.
Fish grabbed Cal’s bicep and spun him back. “Looks like you already did.”
Cal’s gaze smacked into Sean Fisher scrawled inside the white oval of Fish’s work shirt. He’d never minded Fish’s shooting past him in height in tenth grade—till now. The grease-stained material flapped against Fish’s bony ribs in the wind as the barb embedded into the soft flesh of Cal’s gut. He jerked his arm out of Fish’s hold.
“Get Van Gogh’s crap off Zeke’s boat while I’m gone. We’re done.” Fish strode down the pier.
Done? Fire coral and kelp, anger and grief, wound around each other inside. “Aren’t you afraid the ex-con will clean you out?”
“Just make sure you clean your lousy carcass out of my life. It’ll be worth whatever you take.”
The comment stabbed deeper than we’re done. Fish knew he wasn’t a thief.
Van Gogh nuzzled his hand, and Cal scooped the fifty-pound dog into his arms to dull Fish’s rejection.
Van Gogh stared placidly into his eyes, fogging his face with doggy breath as though he were a purse dog.
“At least you still love me.”
The dog slurped his cheek.
Cal crossed the gangplank onto the mammoth fishing boat, Zeke’s Ambition. The cruiser must stretch fifty feet. He wrinkled his nose at the fish smell clinging to the bare wooden planks flecked with old paint.
He set Van Gogh down inside the cabin. “Where’s Fish’s bunk, buddy?”
As though he understood, Van Gogh trotted toward a wide shelf over a row of storage lockers where a sleeping bag spewed across a rectangle of foam rubber.
The ratty red and green plaid lining shot Cal back to a hundred campouts he’d shared with Fish on Pelican Island, the crunch of singed hot dog skin between his teeth, and a brotherhood that went deeper than blood.
The dog pranced and barked at a roach while Cal emptied his wallet, one hundred and thirteen dollars from the pay check he’d cashed the day he got arrested. The bills would cover three months of dog food and a little extra. He slid the money under Fish’s pillow. The faint scent of Fish’s sweat drifted toward him, wrenching him like the final twist of a C-clamp.
He grabbed the half-empty bag of food and stuffed the dog bowls and multiple pieces of an “indestructible” Kong dog toy into the bag. His flip-flop squashed the roach Van Gogh had cornered. “Come on, boy.”
Cal ducked his head through the door into sunlight and came face to face with Evie on the dock across from him.
Shock registered on her face, then she screamed. “Cal! You’re out!” As his foot touched down on the dock, she barreled into his chest—a flash of breasts, strawberry-blonde hair, and the scent of vanilla. Her greeting rivaled Van Gogh’s and almost tottered him into the drink.
Cal set her away from him with one hand and clutched twenty-five pounds of dog food and paraphernalia with the other. “Maybe you could have funneled some of your enthusiasm into visiting me in the pen.”
“Just one more way I don’t measure up to stinkin’ Aly. She probably came to see you every week. FYI, I had to visit my mother in jail when I was in junior high. I swore I’d never go back.”
His eyes traced the familiar tattooed daisy petals peeking from her blouse, the stem plunging into the valley between her breasts. He ripped his gaze away. Looking was what always got him into trouble with Evie. He walked two slips down and vaulted onto the Escape.
Van Gogh trotted across the gangplank, Evie not far behind.
He glanced at her, scrounging for words that would make her back off. He said the first thing that came to mind. “Ask Stoney if he’ll rehire me.”
“What will you give me if I march my butt to Stoney’s?”
Cal barked a laugh. “Like you’re not going down there every day to pierce anyway.”
“If you think I’m pissing Stoney off for nothing, you’re crazy.” She planted her hands on her hips. “Face time. I want face time.”
He didn’t want to have this conversation less than an hour out of jail. He sighed, emptying all the air from his lungs. “All we do is fight. We’re toxic together. We should have broken up two years ago and stayed broken up.”
“We’re good together. The sex—”
Cal rattled the boat keys in his pocket. “You talking to Stoney or not?”
“I’m not doing your dirty work—”
“Fine. I’ll talk to him myself.”
Evie flipped him off.
Two boats down the dock, Fish paused as he crossed Zeek’s gangplank. “Ditto from me.”
Cal turned his back on both of them and walked down the deck. His eyes skimmed over the Escape’s graceful lines, her mast jutting into blue sky, as he unlocked the hatch. He tossed the dog food through the opening, descended into the musty cabin with Van Gogh hefted under one arm, and shut out the drama. Salt and stale marijuana smoke hung in the air. Water lapped a rhythmic peace against the hull.
His eyes followed Van Gogh’s sniff-fest the length of the cabin from the forward bunk, to the dining nook, the galley’s gimbaled stove that rocked with the sway of the boat, and into the master suite.
He owned the Escape. Amazing.
Hope wedged in beside Evie’s crazy, Fish’s anger, and his mother’s expectations.
But first he had to face Aly. And talk her into loaning him forty thousand dollars.
July 16
Am I wacked, or do you ever stand in front of your favorite picture and try to breathe it in before you have to face something you dread? Does art bring tranquility? Is beauty an outgrowth of the divine? Thoughts?
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 2
By the time Starr swept the studio and wiped down the wall of windows facing the oversized bougainvillea hedge and the other three mirrored walls, the first drops of an afternoon shower splattered on the tin roof. She propped open the doors to let in the cool air.
Cal’s release and the thirty minute ride home had wedged wider the bedrock fissure inside her—the one his incarceration had cracked into her core. Frantic cleaning had done nothing to hold together the fracture.
Her only hope at damage control was to dance down the emotions warring to get out. She slipped on her ballet shoes, stretched, and warmed her muscles.
Today she’d fallen into the canyons of Cal’s silences. Did he feel shame? She sautéd, her feet briefly leaving the mat. Regret? Another sauté, the soft thud of her feet the only sound in the room.
She wished Cal would say what he thought like his brother, Jesse, did. Was Cal even able? She let her body fold at the waist in a cambré, her fingers trailing the dark mat of the floor. True, Jesse was older, married, and a father of two, but he’d always been uncomplicated like Jackson. And, at twenty, Missy’s life blurred through Starr’s with laughter, friends, and college—an open book.
Her arms spiraled up as though she were climbing an invisible rope to a port-de-bras. Sometimes she thought she loved Cal more than her other children. And hated him. No, hated his ability to ax into the fortressed person inside her skin.
Cal lived on the edge—artistic, moody, with emotions like hers that got tangled without words to expel them. She knew the eight-year-old with the impish grin smeared across his face who stared at her from his frame on the corner of her desk. But a stranger had ridden in the passenger seat of her minivan. One capable of breaking the law. Of doing it again. Fear whistled through her like air past a freshly drilled tooth.
Why wouldn’t he promise not to smoke marijuana? She pirouetted and spiraled down to the mat. Maybe cocaine was his drug of choice. Ice-wind swirled around inside her. She’d read in the Observer last month, black tar heroin had infiltrated sleepy New Smyrna Beach. Her arms swam through the chill as her body lifted from the floor.
Something blue caught the corner of her eye in the midst of the lush green of the hedge and its reflection in mirrors surrounding her.
Jackson stood in the doorway, watching her. Five-ten and solidly built, he could be Cal, except for his short hair—gray wired with white, stubbornly clinging to his scalp though he kept it clipped too short to curl. Behind him, rain pounded divots in the sandy drive that divided their house from her studio. Splotches of dampness darkened the thick shoulders of his polo.
She squashed down the feeling of having been caught doing something she shouldn’t and walked over to him.
He kissed her harder than hello and shoved his hands into his pockets. “What went wrong picking Cal up?”
“How did you know?”
“Give me credit after all this time. I can read your emotions in the way you move.”
“I don’t know what went wrong. It was strained—like always.”
“Maybe the boat and the loan will give him the leg-up he needs.” He blew out a breath, and her terror and hope mated with his in the air between them.
Jackson’s gaze traveled over her. “I fell in love watching your ballet—through Gabrielle’s Dance Studio plate glass window.” His voice was wistful. “You’re free when you dance—the girl I seldom see anymore.”
“You can watch.”
“You’ll go stiff, showing me the woman in control, the one you show New Smyrna Beach. Tell me why you shut yourself off.”
She hated how Jackson’s words pushed her off balance. She touched his chest with her fingertips. “I’ve loved you for thirty-three years. I’ve never wanted another man. How is that shutting myself off?” She rounded her lips into a tentative smile.
His finger traced a trickle of sweat into the well between her breasts. “Sometimes I wish you’d talk to me about what’s going on in here.” He dropped his hand. His eyes lingered before he raised them to hers. “It’s like you live this whole life nobody sees, not even me. Just once I’d like you to look me in the eye when you orgasm so I can see you need me.” He gave her a half-smile. His eyes peered into her soul while the rain drummed on the tin roof overhead.
For a minute she thought he would follow through with the steel-blue fire in his eyes, but he turned away. “I’m stopping by the marina to see Cal.” He walked into the rain.
She watched him go, the metallic, organic scent of rain filling her lungs. A piece of her ripped away. She wanted to call Jackson back, say the right thing, throw herself into his arms, make love to him.
Instead she twirled in unfinished arcs, hanging question marks in the air. What if the part of her Jackson asked for was dead? What if terror that Cal had lost his way killed it?
Dance was the way her soul cried out to God. Did Jackson have the right to eavesdrop on something so personal? Her body had turned wooden when she saw him framed in the doorway. She’d never noticed it before, but Jackson was right.
She didn’t even know what he was asking for. And if she figured it out, could she give it to him?
#
Cal followed his folks from the sticky ninety-four degree parking lot through the double glass doors of the PNC Bank branch. He tugged at the tie chaffing his neck. The last time he’d worn a tie in Aly’s presence he’d fallen in love with her—eight years ago when Jesse married her sister.
He scanned the teller line and the office cubicles for a glimpse of Aly. Hunger and dread arm-wrestled in his gut. He wanted to walk back across the tile—away from the humiliation of his life—part-time jobs, living at Henna’s for free, painting with art supplies his mother funded—and out the door. But this was the only way he’d get a life, the only way he’d get a shot at Aly.
His mother stopped at the office partition with Aly Logan, loan officer, laminated on a plastic strip at the right.
Over Mom’s shoulder, his gaze collided with Aly’s.
Her eyes widened and telegraphed nervousness he was sure she didn’t want him to see. A piece of him relaxed. On some level, she cared.
Aly’s gaze swept them. “Hi, Koomers.”
Jackson moved between them and took a seat. “Aly! How’s my favorite banker?”
She warmed Dad with a look that oozed affection, like the ones she used to give Cal. Before Evie.
He took the chair in the entryway, the only space left in Aly’s cramped office, as his parents settled beside him.
God, Aly was beautiful sitting in a beam of muted sun filtering through the window. His fingers itched to sketch her. Maize-colored hair swept back from her pale face in a loose ponytail. Hazel eyes picked up the olive of her sleeveless blouse. Sun had honeyed the skin tone on her arms. Her small nails were bare without the bumper car colors she’d worn in high school and the iridescents she’d favored in college.
Aly, fake-smiled at his shirt, avoiding his eyes. “Well, let’s get to it. You probably want to know what the bank decided on your loan.”
He couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. He’d been starved for Aly for too long. The last time he’d seen her was four months ago at Easter. She’d treated him like a pedophile uncle—as she had for the past two years.
“You’ve got the loan,” Aly said.
Her words jolted his back against the chair. Inside, emotions randomly beaded and separated like mercury. Yes! bumped and merged with a cringe that he wasn’t man enough to conduct his own business. An educated guess about what lay under the lace winking from the scoop of Aly’s neckline merged into hope that he’d see it someday.
Aly grabbed a file folder from the tidy stack on the corner of her desk and handed Cal the top sheet to sign. Her fingers brushed his, and she jerked away. He’d touched her hundreds of times, and he’d give just about anything to earn back the privilege.
“This is the loan application,” Aly said.
He signed and slid the page across Aly’s desk to his mother.
Aly was careful not to touch Cal as she passed him the loan agreement, then the loan origination document.
His eyes met hers with a silent communication that he’d noticed she didn’t want to touch him.
Aly looked down at the stack of papers in front of her. Message received.
“Your payments will be due on the first of each month.” Aly steepled her fingers as she continued explaining the repayment details.
His mind churned. Of course Aly didn’t want anything to do with him. Two years ago he decimated her heart. Yesterday he was in jail. Today he stepped from flat broke to forty thousand dollars in the hole. What in that picture would make her want to trust him again?
Aly rose, and his folks scooted their chairs back and stood.
He sprung from his seat, as desperate to get away from Aly as he had been to see her.
Mom reached a hand toward Aly. “Thanks. Don’t forget we’re planning a picnic for Labor Day at Blue Springs.”
Was Cal the only one who felt odd shaking hands with someone who had shared Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter dinners for nearly a decade?
Aly’s cheeks pinked as Jackson shook her hand.
Okay, so Cal wasn’t the only one caught in a whirlpool of Meet The Fockers awkwardness. But he could only reach across the metal desk. “Thanks, Al, I really appreciate it.”
Aly’s small hand branded his palm in the shortest handshake in the history of banking.
He hovered over the desk with his empty hand stretched toward her. The scent of forest mint filled his head. He couldn’t help himself. It had been so long. He backed away. He had to get out of here.
He stuffed the check and loan papers into his back pocket and strode out of the lobby and onto State Road 44 without waiting for his folks to exit the bank. It was just as well he’d lost his friggin’ license. He yanked his tie free and unbuttoned his already damp shirt. The two mile walk to Henna’s was just what he needed to reconnect with reality. He was crazy stupid for even imagining he could win Aly.
His folks’ minivan slowed, and he waved them past. No way was he up for discussing boat repairs and dry dock. Beaching the Escape and hacking the barnacles off her hull—now that had possibilities.
But first he had to purge the sea of bile and longing Aly surged up in him. He had to paint. He could almost smell the comfort of the color and oils sucking the chaos out of him, ordering it onto canvas.
And when sanity returned, he’d find a way to make things right with Aly.
#
Fish sprayed the last of the marine debris from the deck and coiled the hose. He hated to admit it, but he actually liked running fishing charters for Zeke better than working the counter at Circle K. It didn’t matter. Cal had gotten him thrown in jail for the longest six hours of his life. Scared the shit out of him. He never wanted to feel that helpless again. Never wanted to stand in court, guilt pressing in on him from every eye in the room—no matter how much he protested he didn’t know how the pot got into his locker.
Should he even apply for law school? Who would vote for a candidate with a record?
The desire for revenge churned on a primal level. He eyed Cal two slips down, polishing the Escape’s chrome work. Cal needed to know what betrayal felt like.
The gate clanged against its post at the end of the pier. Evie strutted up the dock. His eyes drifted to the breasts she wore like magnificent hood ornaments.
An idea solidified. “Evangeline!” He scooped out a left-over Coors Light from the cooler. “Want a beer?”
She stopped on the dock behind Zeke’s Ambition and leaned toward the boat to grab the Coors from his hand. His eyes traced the tattooed flower stem where it trailed south into the depths of her shirt.
She straightened, narrowed her eyes, and flipped open the beer.
“I have to study for a poly sci quiz. Stay and keep me company?”
She took a sip. “Looks like you’ve already started studying.”
He shot a glance at the tattoo peeking from the neckline of her blouse. “Botany. Dasies. One in particular.”
“Since when do you hit on me?”
Since Cal pissed him off. “Since I can’t fight it anymore.”
Her gaze slid to Cal as he walked aft on his boat.
“Hey, I’m only asking you to hang out.”
Evie stepped aboard muttering something about never measuring up. “So, I’m good enough for you?”
His eyes moseyed over her wavy blond tresses down to her hibiscus-red toenails. “Uh, that would be a yes.”
She plopped into a padded fishing chair. “One beer. That’s all.”
Fish leaned against the side of the boat and crossed his arms. “So, are you and Cal on again or off again?”
“I thought you had to study.”
He zeroed his gaze into her eyes. “I am.”
She took a drink, but not before he saw her hand quiver. He was getting to her. Good.
“So, about Cal—”
Evie snorted.
“I don’t get it. Why do you stick to him? His four-figure income? Because—thanks to his daddy’s lawyer-friend—he got three months jail time, three months probation instead of the pre-plea felony that would have locked him up for a year?” Never mind Cal’s surfer six-pack and his to-know-him-is-to-love-him personality.
“Cal’s got family. Ma left me on that piece-of-shit boat with her pervy boyfriend and skipped town when I was seventeen.”
Who knew they had something in common other than a mutual appreciation for hood ornaments? “My family ditched me the minute I graduated high school to run an orphanage in Peru.”
“Not the same. Do you even have a clue what it feels like to have a hole inside where family’s supposed to be—since you were born? Even when Ma was around, she didn’t, like, care.”
The ache in her voice unearthed his own, and he reached for the last beer in the cooler. Yeah, he knew exactly what it felt like to have a hole inside where family was supposed to be.
“I don’t know why Cal goes all sea-urchin prickly about his mom. If Cal married me, I’d be a best-freakin’-friend kind of daughter-in-law.”
“Hey, I’ve got family. Mom, Dad, sisters, a brother, one more sibling than Cal has.” He sounded petty, even in his own ears.
“Well, they’re not here, are they? And why would I care?”
“So, you’re in love with Cal?”
“Sometimes I hate him.”
Fish squinted at her. Was it the beer talking?
Evie stood. “I’m done puking out my issues.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cal moving around on the Escape. He followed Evie off the boat. “I’ll walk you down to your boat.” He threw an arm across her shoulders and darted a glance at Cal.
#
The doorbell rang, and Aly’s chin jerked up from the pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey she’d just opened. Mom had taken her out for her birthday yesterday, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. She jammed the spoon into the ice cream, stuck it into the freezer, and jogged to the door. Maybe it was elderly Mrs. Knox from the condo next door.
She whisked open the door, and the smile died on her lips.
Cal stood on the step, damp hair pulled into a ponytail, his jaw freshly shaved.
Shallow breaths moved in and out of her nose, registering the scent of soap. Pin pricks dotted her skin as though her whole body had fallen asleep
One corner of his mouth turned up. His eyes looked uncertain. “Happy birthday.” It almost sounded like a question.
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t have the guts to say it the last two years.” He tapped the framed pictures propped against his thigh. “I brought you something.”
She should invite him in. Handing her art on the doorstep was ridiculous. But if he came in, he’d see the three ink drawings he’d cast off years ago—the ones she’d expensively framed as the focal point of her living room. He’d think she was still in love with him after two years of almost no contact.
Cal shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “If you have company, I can come back another time.
She cleared her throat. “I don’t have company.”
The silence crept past awkward.
“If you’d rather I didn’t come in—”
“No, it’s okay.” She inched away from the door.
Cal lined three framed charcoal drawings against the couch, his back to her private Cal Koomer gallery. His gaze riveted to hers. “Thanks for the loan. The Escape will be in dry dock for a month or so. I’m doing all the work I can myself. You gave me a shot at a future.”
Did Cal remember her vow to own her own business by twenty-five? Did he realize she’d handed him her dream? Enjoy it for me, Cal. Succeed. “It was a sound business decision.” Not personal.
Hurt slashed through his eyes and disappeared so quickly she wondered if she’d imagined it. “I’m still grateful, Al.”
She folded her arms across her waist and sunk to the edge of the coffee table. Her gaze veered to Cal’s gifts.
Cal’s genius lay in his ability to knead a viewer’s emotions into a visceral response. His art expressed things deeper than he was able to communicate in words. She had learned to read his work almost from the start of their friendship. Gratitude for the rusty skill wafted through her.
Two faces looking away from each other filled the first drawing propped against the couch. Though no one else might, she recognized herself. Hurt etched the planes of her face and seared from her eyes. She glanced at the bottom right corner for the date Cal always included with his signature. The drawing had been done on her twenty-first birthday, less than a month after she’d offered herself to Cal and been turned down. After she’d confessed her love. After she’d witnessed his hand planted on the polka dots of Evie’s bikini from where she stood on the side of the beach road. Glass shards of pain cycloned through her as though she lived it again.
Her eyes slid to the dark-jawed male face—the tilt of the thick brows, the kinks in the hair, and halted at the eyes swimming with bone-scraping regret.
So, Cal got how her heart crumpled beyond repair in the saw grass that day. The charcoal begged her absolution.
She glanced over her shoulder.
Cal stood with his back to her, starring at the wall she didn’t want him to see. Below the drawings and to the right, like a signature, she’d framed her favorite photo of Cal. Head thrown back, mouth open, he laughed. She could hear the sound in her head every time she looked at the photo.
How did Cal feel seeing himself enshrined on her wall? Did he pity her? Feel responsible for her? Did he want to erase her love? He didn’t need to worry. She jettisoned her feelings for Cal a little at a time. Eventually, none would be left. She’d made progress. Surely she had.
She turned to the picture dated on her twenty-second birthday. She and Cal stood angled away from each other with the sharp needles of a Christmas tree jabbing between them. Her eyes were downcast, and Cal peered over his shoulder at her longingly. He missed her friendship. But she couldn’t go back there again.
The charcoal dated today, her twenty-third birthday, depicted figures facing each other across her desk at the bank. She recognized Jackson’s forearm and hand, the crown of Starr’s head. This time she and Cal looked each other in the eye. Uncertainty clouded her expression; embarrassment, Cal’s. But he still-framed the moment when their fingers brushed against each other.
How had Cal captured the bond between them in charcoal? A bond she wouldn’t resurrect. Couldn’t. She stood and stepped behind the coffee table to absorb the picture as a whole.
Her arm clunked into Cal’s chest, firing off an all-systems-alert to her body—like the touch Cal depicted on paper. Her gaze flew to his, then darted away from the raw plea in his eyes. “Sorry.”
She stepped away from him and rubbed the bare skin of her arm as if she could erase the softness of Cal’s T-shirt, the warm, solid feel of his chest. She centered herself in front of the last drawing.
The picture communicated permanence in their connection, the subjects’ surprise that the welding still held. Well, Cal had gotten that wrong.
She stared at the other two drawings, willing her pulse to calm. How long had she been lost in the art? Two minutes? Half-an-hour?
She filled her lungs with oxygen and faced Cal. “What do you want from me?”
His eyes pleaded with her, but she needed words.
“I brought the drawings… to say I’m sorry for… for what I did to you.”
“I forgave you a long time ago.” How could she not? It wasn’t his fault she fell in love with him and ruined their friendship. She’d never make that mistake again.
“Do we still have…?” His hands waved between them, his eyes desperate to say what he couldn’t articulate.
How could she tell him they had nothing left? He’d just stared at what looked like a memorial to their relationship for who knew how long. She could tell him he was a brilliant artist, and she happened to be lucky enough to have some originals to hang on her wall. But he’d be hurt. He wasn’t looking for an art critique. He’d exposed his heart and begged to jumpstart their friendship.
While the sentiment was gratifying, she’d be a masochist to agree. No, the relationship needed to stay dead.
If Daddy’s deleting her out of his life when she was seven wasn’t enough to teach her to protect herself, all she had to do was look at her mother. Thank God Mom had a nursing degree when Daddy walked. But Daddy had left Mom’s heart out in all weather, something that could only have been prevented by trusting her heart to a safer person.
Bachelor of Science in business. Check. Owning her own company. Someday. She just wished she was one of those women who didn’t need a man. But sex, if only momentarily, filled her craving to be cherished, to be essential to another person’s existence. When she married, it would be to a stable guy who wouldn’t leave her for someone better. Or jail.
But she couldn’t throw Cal’s good intentions back in his face. Not today with his art filling her living room.
She motioned with her head toward the breakfast bar. “Come on. I was just celebrating. Sit down.”
She plopped the Ben and Jerry’s between them.
Cal reached for the spoon and stopped. He smiled into her eyes, and she knew he was remembering the last time they celebrated with Chunky Monkey—the day he’d taken her to get a pregnancy test that turned out negative. He took a bite and stuck the spoon back into the ice cream.
Aly’s lips turned up. It was a happy memory even though it happened at the darkest time in her life. She slipped the spoon into her mouth, thinking how weird it was that they’d shared food and silverware for eight years when they’d never even kissed. Her eyes strayed to his lips, and she shook herself back to reality.
She’d prepare a gentle this-isn’t-going-to-work speech, make it a painless as possible, and deliver it the next time she saw him. Her life depended on it.
August 25
Is it just me, or does the grandeur of life sometimes sneak up on you? I was going on in my same-old, same-old life when grandeur walked through my front door. Beauty, emotion, depth of connection. Art.
Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com
Chapter 3
Fish flung his poly sci text at the bulkhead and rolled off his bunk. At ten p.m. the grimy blades of the box fan wheezed heavy, ninety-degree air at him. He’d stripped down to his gym shorts an hour ago. Tomorrow’s final knotted the muscles at the base of his skull. He needed a break.
He scooped up the book and smoothed out the wrinkled page corners. Next week maybe he’d get fifty bucks for it he could put toward fall semester books. He rolled his shoulders. One thing he’d fight to keep—if Cal hadn’t ruined his run at politics—was government funding for higher education. The one good thing about being dirt poor was Pell Grants that added up to free college. Maybe the country had problems, but some things America got right.
Some day he’d be part of the US getting more things right. He tossed the book onto his bunk and headed out to the dock. It had to be cooler outside.
Fish stood on the darkened deck and eyed Cal’s empty slip for the five-hundreth time since Cal left for dry dock six weeks ago. No Escape. But a girl sat on the dock storage box facing the empty slip, arms wrapped around a pair of shapely legs. A riot of dark curls cascaded down her back. She wore a tank top and short shorts that made guys glad they had eyes. Dock light rained down on her, leaving her face in shadow.
Realization dawned—the girl was Cal’s little sister, Missy.
She stood and stretched, her face tilting toward the light.
His breath stopped. His eyes galvanized to her mother’s cheek bones and nose, the lush brows and lashes. Her clothes carelessly hugged the curves of her compact form, oblivious to the energy-saver light bulb warming inside him.
She checked her watch and sat down.
He shook his head, schooling his thoughts. He’d spent every holiday with her and the Koomers for as long as he could remember, the one tradition he’d clung to when his folks ripped themselves and his siblings out of his life. But when had she turned into the hottie camped on Cal’s dock box? Seeing her in a new setting flipped some switch inside him. He did the math. Geez, she must be twenty now.
He’d always liked her when she was a kid. Five years younger than he and Cal, she used to follow them around till Cal would chase her off. And he must have had a hundred conversations with her, sitting on the Koomer’s back steps, tossing shell pieces onto the sandy drive while he waited for Cal to finish his chores or homework or a fight with Starr.
Now that he thought about it, Missy had always been a hottie, at least since she hit junior high and made no secret of the major-league crush she had on him. He’d given her a wide berth since then.
Well, she wasn’t twelve years old anymore. He crossed the gangplank and walked toward her. “Hey, Missy, what up?”
She startled. “Where’s Cal?”
“Dry dock.”
“Why does no one ever tell me anything?”
Fish grinned, enjoying her familiar huff. “You’re the baby.”
She rolled wide-set eyes. “I finally get myself worked up enough to tell Cal what I think about his going to jail, and I sit here for an hour for nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I have my speech all ready, and I’m not giving it to you, Sean Fisher.”
“I’m not asking for your speech. Just tell me how you feel.”
Her face swung from the empty slip to him. Dock light illuminated the hurt in her warm, brown eyes the color of a cowry shell he’d once found. “How could Cal do this to me—the big brother I’ve always idolized? I can’t look up to him now. I don’t think he even cares about me. It’s like he cut me off. He never wants to hang out. I hadn’t seen him for weeks, maybe months before he went to jail. Did he look for me after he got out? I am so over him.” She smeared tears into her cheeks. “But you can’t get over your own brother. Not even if you want to.”
Fish smacked a mosquito on his arm. He knew what she was talking about. As pissed as he was at Cal, he still felt connected to him. Ditto for his family in Peru.
Missy dropped her legs over the side of the dock box and scooted to the edge. “Sorry. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Some part of his brain catalogued the absence of raccoon make-up smudges from the tears. “It’s okay.” His voice came out hoarse, and he cleared his throat. In five minutes she’d moved from being his best friend’s kid sister to a peer. He leaned against the dock box beside her trying to gain his equilibrium. “So, Chas started college online from Peru.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He jerked his chin back toward her.
“We e-mail.”
“Oh, so you e-mail my baby brother, and I haven’t seen you since Easter. And I’m right here in New Smyrna Beach.”
She shoved his bare shoulder. “Like you noticed.”
“On second thought, what would you want with the Fisher family black sheep.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I followed you around my whole life. I quit a couple of years ago—my eighteenth birthday gift to myself. I’ve grown up.”
He stared at the emotion pulsing in her eyes. All that hair, loose for once, dispelling forever the impression of Missy as Starr’s mini-me. Had her lips always been that full? “Yeah, I noticed you grew up.”
“When?”
“So, what about them Bucs?”
Missy narrowed her eyes at him.
“You still rescuing bad boys—visiting them in the hospital when they turn up shark-bit?”
“See, that’s what I mean. I’m like some great aunt you see on holidays and are polite to…. I’m a junior at Daytona State College. Get a clue.”
He stood and faced her. “What I was going to say was” –he lasered his eyes into hers— “you can rescue me.”
Her mouth dropped open. Missy speechless? That was a first. He got in her face, planting a hand on either side of her thighs on the dock box. “What do you say?” He could almost see her squirm. The evening just got a whole lot more interesting.
Missy’s chin lifted a fraction. “You don’t look shark-bit to me.”
Her breath fanned his cheek in soft bursts and warmth flushed through him. “Some wounds are inside.”
She pushed his arm out of the way as she slid off the dock box. “Maybe I could rescue you from yourself—if I had the inclination. But I don’t.”
Little Missy must have passed Flirting 101 with a four-oh. The spearmint scent of her gum hung between them. She was still close enough to kiss.
“But God knows you need saving.”
When had her voice matured into a woman’s? He’d swear she spoke an octave lower than she used to.
“End this stupid tug-of-war and go see your family. My folks Skype your parents once a month. It breaks my heart to hear how much your mom and dad miss you. You know they can’t get away from the orphanage. Go for Christmas.”
“It’s my business.”
“Yeah, but maybe it’s time somebody got in your business.”
He stared her down, feeling like he saw her for the first time. He didn’t want anybody telling him what to do. Irritation gnawed at his ribs. “You’ve grown up, I’ll give you that. But you’re just as annoying. You know what? I changed my mind. Don’t bother trying to fix me.”
Even in the shadows, he saw the stab flash through her eyes, but her voice held firm. “Be mean, Sean. You don’t scare me.” She pivoted. “Because I’m right,” she tossed over her shoulder and walked down the dock.
His gaze fixed on her legs as she moved toward the gate. She said she missed looking up to Cal. But he was the one who felt bereft. Her hero-worship had been a constant for as long as he could remember. Funny how he didn’t miss it until he knew it was gone.
Tomorrow he’d sign up to take the LSAT. It wasn’t reconciling with his family, but maybe getting into law school would buy back a few points with Missy.
#
Cal sat atop a ladder at the bow of the dry-docked Escape. He balanced a pallet of black, white, and various shades of gray left-over marine paint—the most expensive paint in the world as far as he could tell. Sodden clouds bunched in the September sky like his boat repair bills, the meeting with his probation officer, and the hundred and fifteen pound question mark of Aly.
He eyed the white expanse of the Escape’s hull he’d finished painting this morning and envisioned the figurehead the boat begged for. Flowing locks of hair spilled from his brush. Aly’s hair. Her graceful neck, chin, mouth.
And in an instant he scrolled back six weeks and perched on Aly’s stool, watching her lips close around the ice cream spoon. He wanted Aly with a passion that eclipsed even his seventeen-year-old starvation for her. He didn’t have another eight years to waste. He wanted his body fused to hers, his name tacked onto hers. Kids someday.
She’d framed and gallery-positioned some old sketches he’d tossed. That had to count for something. She loves me. She loves me not. sing-songed in his head.
Oh yeah, he was going find out. No more waiting his turn because she had a boyfriend. But no way was he going after Aly as a loser pothead with empty pockets and no driver’s license. Aly’s father was a doctor. Her college diploma hung on the wall of her cubicle at the bank. He had to win at business before he had a prayer of winning Aly.
His grandmother’s nineteen ninety-one Toyota Corolla rattled through the boatyard gates and coasted to a stop in front of the Escape. The car coughed and sputtered as Henna scooted her muumuu clad bulk from the driver’s seat and submitted to Van Gogh’s epileptic greeting. Her patchouli scent made Cal feel loved and enjoyed.
She squinted up at Cal’s work. “Love is in the paint,” she trilled.
Cal’s gaze skimmed from the sloppy white bun on top of Henna’s head to the face taking shape on the bow. Well, it was too late to disguise Aly now. Maybe no one else would notice the resemblance. “Let’s keep it our secret.”
Henna beamed at him, both chins smiling. “Ready to float your barge?”
“Yeah, tomorrow.”
“She’s looking peachy cream.”
Cal shook his head at her fractured clichés and turned back to the figurehead. Did Henna think them up intentionally or did they just came out that way?
“I bet it cost a pretty nickel.” Henna hobbled toward the stern, taking her positivity with her.
With the rebuilt engine, the repairs had come in just under forty thousand dollars, twice as much as he’d anticipated. What would he use for startup costs?
After Henna’s Corolla putted away and he brushed the last strokes on the figurehead, there was nothing to do but wait for tomorrow when the boatyard Travel Lift would hoist the Escape off her wooden blocks and jack stands and deposit her back into the inlet.
He surfed all afternoon as though mastering the waves would conquer his worries about advertising money and whether Aly was seeing someone. And maybe it would have—if Fish had been with him. How many of his problems had shrunk to a manageable size while floating on his board waiting for the next wave beside Fish?
Stashing the joints in Fish’s locker had been monumental stupidity. He should have flushed the stuff. He needed a do-over. And epic grudge-holder Fish was unlikely to ante up. He’d never imagined a life without Fish. He was the brother Jesse—too many years between them and too different—had never been. Salt stung and crusted the edges of the gouge where Fish had been.
Cal propped his board in the sand against Leaf’s hot dog stand and poked his head through the window.
Missy! He hadn’t seen his sister in months. Man, did it feel good to run into her. She wore yellow rubber gloves and scrubbed the counter to some country tune about a guy wanting to check a girl for ticks.
He laughed. “Sissy Missy! You seriously need to upgrade your music choices.”
She looked at him and stilled. Her face paled.
He grinned at her. “What are you doing here?”
She crossed her arms and looked down at him through the window. “Leaf lets me haul the stand down here whenever he’s not in the mood to work. I keep the profits. Such as they are. I get a lot of POed potheads looking for Leaf.” She shrugged, her tone chilling him like the wind hitting his wet skin.
“So much for protecting the baby from the family dirt,” he said.
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you got yourself arrested.”
It would hurt less if she’d slapped him. “What are you pissed about? I’m the one who got locked up for three months.”
She planted her palms on the counter and looked him in the eye. “Think about anybody but yourself much?”
She blindsided him. He expected things to be laid back, easy going, the way they always were between him and Missy. “Excuse me for being self-centered during the shittiest time in my life. If anybody should be pissed, I should. You could have visited me.”
“Forget it.” She turned her back on him.
He watched her brillo the hot plate, movements jerky, shoulders stiff. His stomach growled. “How about a dog and an A&W?”
Missy slipped off the gloves, fished a hot dog out of the crock pot, slapped it into a bun, ran two stripes of mustard and one of catsup down the middle just the way he liked it, and handed it to him. She snagged an icy root beer from the cooler, slid it across the counter, and turned back to the hot plate.
His gut churned. He stared at the hot dog in his hand and inhaled scent. No way could he chew and swallow. “Mis, look, don’t be this way.”
She spun around. “I don’t know why you care. I hardly saw you for months before you went to jail. Did you even remember I existed?”
“That’s not fair. I walked up here expecting Leaf, and I was glad to see you.”
Tears sprung to her eyes. “It’s almost September. You’ve been out a month and a half. Did it cross your mind, like, ‘Hey, I miss my sister, I think I’ll text her and hang out.’?”
Maybe he should have gotten in touch with her. “What? You couldn’t have texted me?”
“Whatever.”
“Why are you being such a drama queen about this? It’s not your life that’s totally screwed. You’re not the freakin’ family loser.”
“When you got arrested, I cried buckets. I’ve never known anybody who went to jail. Locked in there with evil men. I imagined you getting beat up. Worse.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t face seeing you behind bars. I was terrified you were suicidal.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t have the balls to kill myself.”
“When I was little I got my hair cut, and your ‘cool’ made me feel like the prettiest girl in third grade. Jesse was always off doing big kid stuff. But you let me tag along to the playground with you and Fish, patted my back when I cried over a skinned knee, made sure I didn’t watch inappropriate TV shows on Henna’s watch. In junior high and high school you were my hot big brother that reduced my friends to stuttering idiots. You were my hero.”
The sun warmed his shoulders. He really did love Missy, but how could she expect him to worry about her when his life went into nuclear meltdown. He took a bite of his hot dog.
“Now, I worry that you’re going to get murdered in some drug deal gone wrong. What if you’re doing coke or meth or fill-in-the-blank?”
The food turned to sand in his mouth. “I’m clean.”
“Save your words. They don’t mean anything. The only way I’ll know if you’re telling the truth is if you don’t turn up dead or in prison.”
Why didn’t she just soccer cleat him in the stomach? He could see the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice.
“I thought I knew you. But you’ve turned into a stranger. I wish I could climb inside your head and know how you think. But I can’t.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I’m not dealing. I drink. I’ve done a lot of weed, but I’m clean. I’ve snorted coke a couple of times, shrooms once, but I’m staying away from them.”
She stared at him. “Next time you’re going to do something stupid, stop and think about how it will slam me—and everyone who loves you.”
Her anger finally sparked his. “Fine. Cross me off your list of people to worry about. I didn’t ask for your freakin’ love.”
Missy leaned through the window on her elbows and got in his face. “Trust me, Cal, if it was possible to quit loving you, I would have done it already. Now, I’m just begging you not to screw up my life along with yours.”
“Shit.” He slammed the hot dog and soda into the trash can, grabbed his board, and stalked into the sea.
