I stalk over to the sink, grab a glass and fill it with cold tap water. I absently take a sip then spit it out.
Keri Ann is watching me, the jug of filtered water from the refrigerator in her hand. “Everything okay, Jazz?” she asks. She knows I hate to drink tap water on the island, the taste of mud, sulphur, and ancient cast iron pipes grosses me out. I take the jug from her, fill my glass and drink. “So what movies did you queue up?” I ask.
She stares at me for a beat, realizes I’m not going to fill her in right now and sighs. “Come on.” She huffs and nods toward the living room. “Let’s go decide on the movie before Joey gets back down here.”
I’M STARING BLANKLY at the TV screen.
We’ve put on some movie with Scott Speedman, and as hot as he is, the movie just isn’t doing it for me. Keri Ann is curled on the other end of the sofa. On my other side, radiating tension, is Joey.
He’s freshly showered, wearing baggy workout shorts and a white t-shirt. His hair is damp and finger brushed back from his face.
That’s all the detail I can make out because I am deliberately avoiding looking directly at him.
I’m feeling the aftermath of my adrenaline surge in the kitchen and all my late nights last week. I’m tired, so I fail to catch myself glancing at him when my guard is down. Joey’s not watching the movie either.
He’s watching me.
Meeting his eyes in the dark, with the flickering screen as the only illumination, is a shock to my system again. Instinct makes me want to look away. Instead, I narrow my eyes at him. “What?” I mouth.
He shakes his head subtly then turns his attention back to the screen, but not before I see what looks like a smirk on his lips.
The hell?
“I’m done here,” I tell Keri Ann, getting up. “I preferred Scott Speedman in Underworld. I’m exhausted from the drive and frankly Brandon kept me up every night last week,” I add for Joey’s sake. “I need to get some sleep.”
She reaches for the remote. “No, don’t pause it,” I say and lean down to kiss her cheek. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Okay, be safe,” she says. “Don’t forget I need your help finding a dress for the Art Auction.”
“Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“Okay. Love ya.”
“Sweet dreams, Jazz,” says Joey as I pass his chair.
Without looking, I reach out my left hand and give him the bird as I keep walking. I’ve no doubt he sees it.
I take a few moments to sit in my car outside their house. I stare up at its beautiful old plantation bones. Its wide porches and fat columns. I love this house. And I’ve loved everyone I’ve ever known who’s lived within its walls.
But what the hell just happened in there?
The sand is shifting beneath my feet. I don’t understand it. Is this new terrain or quicksand?
THE NEXT MORNING, I check in with Faith at the boutique and field random texts from Brandon who seems to have woken up from his drunken haze and realized I was serious when I said I was leaving. I’m going to have to see the poor guy again and tell him to his puppy dog eyes that it’s over.
First though, I unpack my camera and take out the lenses to clean them. The partying down in Florida was brutal on my equipment. I didn’t take my dad’s stuff, thank God. Anyway, now that I no longer have access to the art department’s dark room, I fear I’ll be using his camera less and less. I’ve become dependent on the ease of the digital SLR I got last year. But every time I do something cool on it, or run it through one of my filters, the ache to talk to my dad about it becomes unbearable. I often wonder if he experimented with the early digital cameras. After loading the images onto my computer to look at later, I hop in the car to Beaufort.
I have to go back to campus and pick up paperwork and check the board for our work experience postings. As part of our degree in hospitality from USC Beaufort, we get assistance getting an entry-level resort position somewhere in the world. All the foreign kids in the program choose to stay in the United States, go figure. They get to roll their visa from student status to J-1 Internship Visa status and from there onto the path to citizenship. And the Americans among us seem to be split between the local crowd who lived local, studied local, and never want to leave the state, and those of us who want to experience some far-flung exotic locale. I’m in the latter. Maybe it’s my father’s blood.
I STEP ON the gas riding north toward the Bluffton campus. It’s a beautiful May day. The kind of day where you breathe a sigh of relief it’s summer again, even while knowing the brutal roasting of a hot South is dogging your heels. The sun sparkles on the rivers as I cross the bridges. On days like this I want to keep driving. Keep going past Bluffton, past Beaufort. Maybe even stop off on Edisto and see those wild and beautiful old oak trees. Maybe even keep driving and leave everything behind. Just be wild and free. Invent a new identity with every town I hit.