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“Why? Thinking of joining a group for laid-up athletes?”
“Is there such a thing?”
This drags another smile from her. “There’s a group for everything.”
“Interesting. How do you know that?”
“Google?” Her smartass response settles over me, easing my tension. That’s her—Nala. Giving me shit just like the girl I used to know.
“That’s not it.”
She sighs. “What do you want to know, Mal?”
I ignore the sound of resignation in her voice, one that was never there when we used to talk. I’m determined to make this wall between us go away, and today is only the first step. So, instead of getting angry or calling her on her pissy attitude, which I know she has a right to, I ask my questions and fill my greedy self with every detail she will give me.
“Why do you teach a group when you don’t have a degree in psychology? Why does it seem like you’ve been doing this forever, Nala, like you know exactly what those girls need and how they’re feeling?”
She waits a minute, as if calculating something.Whatshe’s thinking about I have zero idea, and it’s one more punch to the gut. “Why do you want to know?” she asks again.
This time, it’s my turn to wait, to calculate, and in the end, I give her the truth, or as much of it as I think either one of us can handle.
“Because I’ve realized we don’t really know each other anymore, and I want to know you again. This you—the grown up Nalani Jansen who still surfs every day, but who doesn’t dream of competing anymore. Who still wears rings on every finger, but not the one ring she used to never take off.” Her eyes lower to that pointer finger where a jade stone once sat, and then back to me. “The Nalani Jansen who talks to me, but doesn’t really tell me anything.” I reach out the hand closest to hers, palm up, and I wait while I look into her eyes. “The girl who once rescued a broken boy from the ashes, and who now rescues young girls.”
I wait, not daring to move a muscle, but my heart thumps an unsteady rhythm in my chest, and my breath threatens to back up in my lungs. Nala watches me with those blue eyes, so intent and steady, and then finally—finally—she looks down at my hand, and slowly places hers inside of it.
My eyes sweep down, too, and for the span of several heartbeats, we both stare at my much larger fingers wrapped around hers.
“I was one of those girls.” She doesn’t take her eyes off our hands, and though I wish she would look at me, I wait. “For a long time, I was one of those girls who came to group and stayed quiet, who went through the motions each time telling myself it would be the last time.” Now she does look up, but not at me, at some memory I’m only getting pieces of.
“But every week, I found myself back at the beach with a group of girls I didn’t know, surfing or paddling silently, until one day, Mac—my facilitator—said, ‘Okay, Nala, your turn.’ And she made me answer a question.”
“What was the question?”
She pauses, staring at our hands still, so I wrap mine more securely around hers, letting her know that I’m here, that I’m not leaving. God, that I can’t imagine ever leaving her again.
Finally, she sighs and looks up at me, those beautiful eyes hinting at secrets that were never there before. I try not to resent them now.“What’s one goal you have for your life?”
I blink, because it wasn’t what I expected. Her smile tells me she knows this. “Was this a career counseling group?”
She shakes her headno. “Goals are a big part of group therapy—of any therapy, really. If we don’t set goals, we run the risk of staying in the same place, the same state of mind, and the purpose of therapy is to move past where we are.”
I cock my head, impressed. “Are you a psych major, Nalani?”
This elicits laughter, and makes her shake her head. “No. Thought about it, but psychology seems so…removed from this.” She shrugs. “I think maybe a sociology major, or anthropology.”
“I have no idea what either of those things are.”
“Useless,” she says, but the words aren’t annoyed—they’re amused. “But interesting. They both study human nature, behaviors, then and now. Cultures,” she explains. “I find the more you know about where someone grew up, and how they lived, what and who was important to them, you can also understand who they are now.”
Words that Brooklyn spoke last year filter through my mind, ones that have haunted me since he threw them at Nala after his own sister’s funeral. Before I can ask her about it, she speaks.
“What’s one goal you have for your life, Malcolm?”
Her expression tells me she’s not joking, but I consider making it one anyway. That question…it’s harder to answer when I’ve already got a life planned out and it’s currently not going the way I want. I look at her, and I see that she’s challenging me, not only to answer, but to be honest.
“Be the best at my sport. Win another fucking title before I wreck another part of my body—prove to everyone that I’m worthy of being at the top, that the first few titles weren’t accidents, weren’t flukes, but deserved fucking wins.”
Show Nalani Willow Jansen that I love her more than anything else in the world, and convince her to love me back. I don’t say this part because I’ve already admitted a lot, and before I can ask her to love me, I have to remind her that she once liked me. And that I liked her.
