Somehow, Cameron gets both feet on the board. And Avery is right; wider is better. When she tells him in a pointed way that she’s taking him on her standard beginner route, he lets it slide. Puget Sound is freezing.
He follows her around a long, curved jetty. On the outermost rock, a seagull cocks its head, its glare comically angry. Studying the surly bird almost leads to another spill, but this time, he recovers. With each paddle stroke, he’s feeling steadier.
They’re halfway to the pier when Avery sets down her paddle and sits, cross-legged, on her board. Cameron’s eyes widen. Is he supposed to pull that off, too?
She giggles. “It’s not as hard as it looks. Keep your weight balanced as you lower down.” Holding his breath, Cameron follows her instructions and soon finds himself seated, bobbing on the waves.
“This is nice,” he says.
“Isn’t it?” Avery reclines, propping on her elbows. Her shirt hikes, revealing her perfect little belly button. “Sowell Bay has some of the calmest water in all of Puget Sound. Part of the reason I moved here.”
“When was that?”
“Five years ago? Yeah, that’s right. Marco was ten. We moved up from Seattle.”
“That must’ve been tough.”
“He did okay. His dad took a job in Anacortes, and Sowell Bay was halfway between.” She trails a hand through the water. “Plus, I’d always wanted to start a paddle shop, which I never would’ve been able to afford in Seattle.”
“What did you do before?”
“Some odd jobs, but when Marco was little, I was a mom, mostly. His dad is a deckhand on a fishing trawler, so his schedule is all over the place.” She stares out at the bay. “He doesn’t see Marco much in the summer. But he’s not a bad guy.”
“Aren’t exes always bad guys?” Cameron inches a leg toward his board’s edge and dips a foot into the water. It’s still cold, but the sun is so relentless out here, it almost feels good.
Avery smiles. “Actually, Josh and I are good friends. We never even dated. Just hooked up once my junior year of high school, and poof! There’s a kid binding us for life.”
“Poof! Is that what childbirth is like?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know what childbirth is like.” Avery flips over onto her belly and props her chin on her hands. “Sorry Marco was such a jerk to you earlier. Honestly, I don’t bring guys home often, and when I have, it hasn’t always gone well . . .”
“It’s okay. He’s fifteen. He’s allowed to be Oscar the Grouch, trash can and all.”
“Trash can? His bedroom is more like an actual dumpster! I don’t even go in there anymore.”
“Believe me, that’s wise,” Cameron says with a laugh. A speedboat buzzes by farther out on the bay, and after a few moments his board knocks gently into Avery’s, pushed together by a series of small swells. They’ve drifted almost all the way to the pier now. At the very end of the leggy wooden structure, some teens are horsing around, some of them tiptoeing along on the top edge of the slanted railing like it’s a tightrope. Avery’s eyes narrow, watching them.
“At least Marco doesn’t pull idiotic stunts like that.” She shakes her head. “It’s, like, thirty feet down, depending on the tide. And there are huge, sharp rocks under there. Old pilings. You hit the water wrong, you’re toast.”
“Yikes.” Cameron isn’t a huge fan of heights.
Avery paddles into the pier’s shadow where the water turns inky, and Cameron follows. Under here, there’s a cold, oily smell. Kelp clings to the pilings just below water’s surface reflected in cool shades of sepia.
Suddenly, Avery says, “I stopped someone from jumping once.”
“Jumping?”
“A woman. From this pier.” She pokes a barnacle-crusted piling with her paddle.
“Whoa. How?”
“I beached my board and went up to help her. Talked to her.” Avery shivers. “Talked her down.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start, talking someone down.”
“Mostly, I just listened.” Avery shrugs. “But it was weird. I’d never seen her before. Sowell Bay is such a small town. When someone new pops up, it’s an event.”
“I’ve noticed.” Cameron can’t help but think of Tova and her gossiping knit-nutters, or whatever they’re called. And about how much Ethan loves to give him the down-low on the town’s drama when he gets home from the store. “So, what did you do once you got her down?”
“Helped her to her car. Guess I could’ve called the police, but . . .” She lets out a long breath, then plasters on a forced smile. “Anyway, why am I telling you this? My original point was, Marco would be grounded for life if I found out he was messing around up there.”
“He’s lucky to have such a good mom.”
“Yeah, well, my own mama took no shit from me. I guess it’s how I was raised.”
“I wish I’d been raised that way.” Eyes focused on the water, Cameron tells Avery about his mother leaving him at Aunt Jeanne’s house and never coming back.
“God, I’m sorry, Cameron.” She lifts her paddle and lands it on the nose of his board, then uses it to pull his closer. After they bump softly, she rests a hand on his knee.
Footsteps pound on the pier above them, echoing through the wood. One of the teens lets out a shriek, and for a second Cameron expects a testosterone-fueled body to hurl over the side toward the dark water below. But then, peals of laughter.
He shivers. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s even still alive.” His voice drops. “But then I also wonder whether that makes it worse. That she’s been out there, all these years, and never tried to be a parent again, you know?”
“Your aunt never hears from her, either?”
“Nope.”
Avery runs her finger along the edge of her board, leaving a trail of little water droplets behind it. “That must have been really hard for your mother.”
“Hard for her?”
“To leave, I mean. To leave you with someone who could do better.”
Cameron snorts softly, about to retort, but he can’t quite find the words. Of course he’s heard that sort of line before, people saying that his mother ditching him with Aunt Jeanne was a blessing in disguise. An act of mercy, even. Even Aunt Jeanne herself used to say that. Those comments always seemed like grade-A bullshit, hollow platitudes meant to make him feel better. But somehow, hearing them from Avery, the words feel real and solid.
When he was younger, he used to imagine what life with his mother would have been like, but in those fantasies, the mom figure was always . . . well, a typical mom. Like some version of Elizabeth’s mom, with her aerobics videos and famous recipe for butterscotch cookies. Naturally, it hurt like hell to mourn the loss of that. But maybe Avery is right. It never could have existed.
“I went through some shit when I found out I was pregnant with Marco,” Avery goes on. “Decisions, you know. And every single person in my big obnoxious family had an opinion on the matter. Thought I’d be ruining my life, no matter what I did.”
“People and their opinions generally suck,” Cameron says. “And for the record, you’ve done an amazing job with your life.”
“Well, yeah, I kind of have, right?” A half-modest smile flashes across her face before it turns serious again. “But back then, I was seventeen. I had no idea what I was doing. I decided to keep the pregnancy, but there were moments when I thought it might be better—for Marco, if not for me—to let someone else have him.”
“You thought about giving him up for adoption.”
“Almost went through with it.” She hugs her knees to her chest. “My family, they all kept saying it was best for everyone. And in my case, they were wrong, you know? But I understood their argument. It can be the right decision.”