From a friend? Bullshit. A friend would talk to me. A friend wouldn’t jerk me around like this. A friend wouldn’t invade my privacy.
Someone close to me had rummaged through Big, and I couldn’t wrap my mind around why, much less who. If his or her motive was good, in some distorted way, why was he or she picking these particular memories from Big’s arsenal of thoughts? He or she had to be picking specific things. I was convinced of that. But skinny-dipping and bridge-jumping? Those were hardly blackmail-worthy events. Was the culprit leading up to something else?
Both of those nights were fun.
Was that the point of this?
Regardless, I added this note to the first one and put them between the pages of an old book. Even with them out of sight, I couldn’t sweep the questions from the corners of my mind.
Gray randomly appearing on the beach last night, telling me he still loved me. Was that a coincidence? He knew exactly where our spare key was. Knew I jotted down ideas and memories and put them inside Big.
It could be him.
Except this didn’t feel like him.
Gray was many things; theatrical wasn’t one of them. Trent could have hatched something like this, but Gray was a straight shooter. This was sideways and cockeyed.
I worried it was Max. Thanks to our emails, he had more than enough information to pull this off.
Stop following. Start leading. Here was an opportunity. I needed to eliminate someone as a suspect, and I’d start with Gray, the friend I could afford to lose. Throwing on a pair of crops, a loose long-sleeve shirt, and a straw hat, I hurried back outside.
Three claps greeted me from the McCalls’s back porch hammock. Max lowered his graphic novel and waved.
Gosh, he looked like Trent. Except Trent hadn’t been a reader or a sci-fi fan. Trent would be paddleboarding or fishing at the pier or renting a kiteboard or something else outside to offset the impending threat of attending college away from the beach.
“You’re up early,” I said, heading over to Max’s porch so he wouldn’t have to strain to speak.
“Jet lag. What about you?”
“Life lag,” I said with a laugh.
“You’re not bailing on shopping, are you?”
“I wish. I’m running out to see . . .” I didn’t lie to him. “I need to ask Gray something.”
Max pressed the novel flat against his chest and raised his eyebrows. “You sure about that?”
“I’ll make short work of it.”
He kept most of his thoughts to himself and instead chose to quote one of my emails to him from last October. “Remember, the edge of darkness is one sand-filled step after another looking for the right thing in the wrong place.”
“I know. I know.”
When I’d cried my heart out last October, all the tears ended up on Max’s virtual shirt. After living through the Gina and Gray betrayal, I didn’t want Max to think this trip to visit Gray was romantic in nature. I also didn’t want to pony up about the letters. Not yet. Not while I still suspected everyone.
“This is a business call,” I said.
“You promise?”
I put my hand on Max’s shoulder and walked my fingertips up to his chin, skimming lightly over his neck. My touch brought sunshine to his dark eyes. The intimacy of that action didn’t strike me until I imagined him doing the same to me.
His hand near my mouth. His fingertips touching Idaho. His mouth on mine. I liked to imagine things like that. Imagination was a gift I kept in my front pocket.
“Hmm,” Max said as he laid his hand over mine. We sighed ourselves into a pair of smiles. “Do I get the rest of that later?”
So far we’d made the jump from emails to flesh better than I’d expected. Now, if I could just keep my shit together and be normal . . . “We’ll see,” I said playfully.
“Hurry back.”
“I’ll try.”
“My mother hasn’t been to a mall in a year. I’ll never get her out of there without reinforcements,” Max said.
Mom and I had argued about the mall last night. Much like the home-schooling discussions, I lost with flying colors.