AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doesn’t reply.
“Got it?”
He nods silently. I forgot I told him not to say another word, but he’s at least following that order. Which means maybe he’ll actually go home and think instead of just drinking himself to sleep.
Still, I feel like I’ve just scolded an ever-joyful golden retriever and sent him off moping to his house. So before I send him on his way, I kiss Jessie on the cheek.
“Now go. Think. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I stay on the beach for ten more minutes. My mind switches over to a channel filled with nothing but static as the waves mesmerize me. Then I slump back to my pitiful shack. Fall on the bed. And fall asleep thirty seconds after I set my alarm.
Chapter 10
Jessie
The morning comes slowly, and with it, a groggy mind and eyes that squint against the first rays of sunshine over the horizon. I haven’t slept all night, because I’ve spent the night researching. My eyes are so sore that they may just fall out of my head, but I’ve finally got a solid plan.
I know exactly what I want. Now it’s just a matter of seeing what Holly thinks.
When I tread out across the sands cooled by the night, I don’t actually expect to see her. She always was bad about sleeping past her alarm, and I can only imagine that this bad habit is only made worse on vacation. But she’s out there, her sexy figure obscured only slightly by the gauzy blouse she wears over her bikini.
“Hey,” I say and hand her a smoothie I just blended up using the fruit basket the owner of my rental had waiting for me in the kitchen the first day I arrived.
“Hey,” she says back. “What is it?” she asks motioning to the glass I’ve just handed her.
I honestly don’t remember. I just threw stuff absentmindedly in a blender. I was too busy thinking of what was going to come after this meeting. So, I simply answer, “Fruit.”
She takes a sip and doesn’t gag. She doesn’t say anything either, which allows this silent crevasse to open up between us like an earthquake spitting the sand, carrying us farther and farther apart the longer I allow it to go on unbroken. I don’t know exactly how I want to say what I want to say, so I just come out with it.
“I stayed up all night thinking about what you said last night.”
She watches me but reveals nothing.
“You said I needed to figure out where I wanted to go. And while I’m not 100% sure where that is, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it might look like.”
Holly’s demeanor exudes calm. It’s like she read some ancient Buddhist text about finding tranquility within herself, and she learned the techniques of the ancient monks overnight. When I leave my vague declaration hanging in the air, she turns towards the ocean.
“Don’t you just love the water here? It kills me how clear it is. You can see straight down to the bottom. Nothing’s hidden.” She says all this as if to herself. But I get the message.
“I’m not trying to hide anything.” But even as I say this, I don’t go into more detail because I thought about it last night and figured that showing her my idea would probably yield a better result than telling her. Words are just sounds, but actions can move anything, including Holly’s heart back to mine.
“Would you take a walk with me?”
“You still haven’t told me your plan,” she says.
“My plan right now is to take a walk.” I start moving without her. Once I’m ten steps ahead, I look back. “Just a little walk.”
After a deep breath she relinquishes, and I slow to match her pace. She walks to my left, the ocean on her other side. But with her half empty smoothie glass in her right hand, I take the hint that she isn’t in the mood for a hand-in-hand stroll down the beach. Her calm may be like that which comes before a storm. Or it could be resignation. I can’t know yet.
The sun rises and with it the temperature. The beaches fill, shifting from morning joggers to the few tourists in this area staking out their little bits of the beach that they deem to be the best. We pass an area where at least a dozen surfers congregate, taking turns that seem to follow no rhyme or reason to me.
“I wouldn’t mind learning to surf,” I blurt out. More to myself than to start conversation.
“If we were here longer, I might give you a free lesson,” Holly comes back with.
“Wait a minute.” I point out at the athletic bodies riding waves. “You’re telling me you can surf. Like that?”
“We met when I was just out of university. I was too busy getting a job to surf. Besides, I was never one of those kids who checked the wave forecast each night. It was more of a once a month sort of thing for me back when I was a teenager. And when I got busy with my job and met you, it just sort of faded into my past.”
