Joey really shocked me last night. If I hadn’t been so exhausted I would’ve been up half the night thinking about it. Did he seriously come on to me?
I’ve tried not to be the pathetic ex hook-up for the past three years, but after the phone call when I called him about Jack and Keri Ann, I feel like I just regressed. I made so many slip ups on that phone call. The kind of slip ups that would send most guys running in the opposite direction. He not only came running home, but in the same day made a pass at me.
It makes no sense and frankly it’s doing my head in to try and figure it out. One thing I learned about boys early on is there’s usually not much to figure out. So why would Joey be any different? What was he expecting last night anyway? That we would just pick back up where he left it years ago?
Didn’t he know what an asshole he’d been to me three years ago? And I was his sister’s best friend for Christ’s sake. Why would he risk messing that up?
I shake my head. The alternative scenario is one I can’t even bear to think about. If I even open my mind to the possibility that Joey might finally want something with me, I fear my heart may crack in two from the impact.
Besides, I have plans for next year.
On that note I find a parking spot right outside the Gateway building. I turn off the ignition, take a deep breath, and go to find out whether I’m even staying in Butler Cove at all.
THAT SPRING BEFORE I turned eighteen was fast and easy.
Before I knew it, my best friend and I were melting in the sticky Lowcountry heat. It was easy because back then I didn’t know loss. Fear, yes. Instability, of course. But not loss, yet. For right then, life took on a kaleidoscopic glow of fun. It was vibrant with dreams and plans, hopes and infinite possibilities.
And boys.
It was the end of high school, and the beginning of the rest of our lives.
Then it was summer.
I lost a lot of things that summer.
That summer changed me forever.
I SECURED MY paddle by sliding it down inside the fiberglass hull of my kayak and reached for the green slime-covered trailing rope on the back of the moored Catalina sailboat.
Coasting in, I pulled myself alongside and tied my vessel to the larger boat. Balancing my weight, I performed the tricky maneuver of climbing out without falling into the dark briny estuary water of Broad Creek. In my hand, held tight, was our mail. The mail had been delivered to the bar at Captain Woody’s, instead of our apartment, for as long as I could remember.
The morning breeze whipped my ponytail across my face, the strands sticking to the Cotton Candy Clouds lip gloss I wore. It was a better smell than the marshland pluff mud exposed by low tide. The mildewed sails also had their own familiar scent. That of must and abandonment. They were bundled into long logs of dirty canvas that used to be white and were now blackened, perhaps Charleston Green, and holding leftover stagnant rainwater in various divoted pockets. Salty air had left a thick residue over the boat, dulling the once shiny metal and frosting the cabin windows.
My dad’s boat, his girl, even though her real name was All That Jazz, was considered one of the abandoned boats in Broad Creek. There were a few of them, anchored just far enough from the marina to not be under the jurisdiction of the harbor master and just close enough to give the impression they were allowed to be there. Some were probably lived on, some were not. Who knew the real reason some of the boats were anchored one day and abandoned the next? My daddy would spin me tales of wanted men hiding out, love affairs, drug smugglers, and people dropping anchor to swim with the baby dolphins in the creek and loving it so much they simply never returned to their boats.
I knew how All That Jazz had gotten here. My dad dropped anchor, then left Butler Cove and me and my mom, for good.