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He starts whistling between drags of his cancer stick.
What song is that?
“Sympathy for the Devil.”
Of fucking course it is.
"Dude, get down! For real. The train'll be here in a few minutes!"
He leans between the rails of the trestle, his hair flopping down into his face. "Go the fuck away."
He sounds genuinely angry. What the fuck? I just saved his ass. "People have died up there. Are you from here?"
I idle closer to the land bank and drop the heaviest anchor I have. Then I jump off the back of the boat, swimming fast toward the grassy arm of land that extends from the Georgia side all the way out to the trestle bridge.
To get up to the bridge, I have to pick my way over a bunch of little rocks and shit. It takes maybe three minutes, and my heart’s pounding the whole time. When I get up onto the bridge, I try not to look down between the slats.
"Listen, man. I don't know you. Or what you're doing. But you need to come down. Like, I'm serious."
His eyes find mine, and I’m surprised at how hard they are. "Like, are you?"
"By the time you hear the train, sometimes it's too late to get down."
He smirks. "Take you a while to make a leap, do gooder?"
"Sometimes people get scared and freeze up."
"So go down now. Before it happens to you."
I look at him. At his face, which looks like something from a movie. Really all of him does. He’s very pale, with these striking, dramatic features. It's almost strange. Maybe he looks too thin. Too many angles. And he has those lips. Fish lips. Angelina Jolie on a boy. Sharp but bulky shoulders. He's lean, lanky, but he’s clearly large-framed. And then those lake-green eyes that are staring through me, round and somber.
"What do you want?" He sounds fed up. He looks tired.
"I don't want to see you turned to burger meat by a damn train on a Sunday afternoon. Dripping blood all into my boat."
He smiles grimly. "Move your boat."
"You're not from around here."
He takes a long drag of his cigarette and stares out at the water. I can't read his face. Nobody could. He looks almost fake. Like a picture come to life. I wish I had my camera. I could take a good shot of him. Here. Smoking the cigarette and being stupid.
"Smoking isn't good for you."
I don't know why I say it. Buzz kill's not my normal MO.
There's no time to wonder—because I hear the train’s whistle and my heart slams into my ribs.
"We still have time if we run!" I move toward him on instinct, reaching for him, commanding him with the force of my will to get up and hurry off the bridge with me.
He just laughs. It's so strange because the laugh is low and soft and rough; it moves through me like a physical thing—even as his face is so blank he looks almost frozen.
"Go," he says. To my ears, filled with the whooshing of my heartbeat, it's barely a whisper.
"You go!"
He grins again, but it's smaller this time—just one side of his mouth. "Nah."
I see the train's light as it barrels out of the woods behind the old, decrepit Isabella mansion on the cliffside, clacking loudly on the tracks—now maybe fifty yards away. Holy shit, it's just like in the movies. I close the distance between myself and the guy at the same moment he gets to his feet.
“C’mon!” It’s a groan.
For the longest second, our eyes lock. Then his hand claps my back, shoving me off the side of the bridge.
I see the boat as I fall, trailed by my own bellowing scream. Even as shock numbs my mind, I know it's gonna be bad. I twist my body, trying not to hit the damn boat. The last thing I remember thinking before impact is nice guys really do finish last.
Then I'm choking, and a heavy hand is slapping my back. I'm coughing up water, and my eyes are stinging. My head hurts.
"It's okay," someone says. I feel like I’m in a dream.
I wake up to the amber glow of later afternoon. My head’s throbbing so hard, I feel like I’m going to be sick, and there’s blood in my right eye. That’s because there’s a gash on my forehead.
Fuck.
I sit up slowly, feeling weak and weird and dizzy. The first thing I do is idle the boat back to the land arm, drop my anchor again. I hike slowly up to the trestle bridge, letting out a little moan because my head is hurting and I’m so damn scared of what I’ll find.
My hands tremble with relief to find there's nothing splattered on the trestle.
I walk back down to the boat, and that's when I remember hands on my back. Someone saying something to me in the water. So he must have jumped behind me. Reckless fucker.
