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thirty-two
Rhett could see the yellow beacon from a distance, moving slowly in his direction. He assessed the height and size of the shadow, as well as the pace and gait of the person by the pattern of how the lantern’s light bounced.
Stanzi.
He clicked off the light on his watch and left the crabs in peace, then sank to the damp sand and waited for her to reach his side.
He smelled her before he got a glimpse of her face. Her sweet scents made his heart thud and his loins tingle. She settled next to him and stared out at the ocean by what little light the lantern afforded. The moon helped; it hung in a bright, eggshell-colored orb in the dark sky.
“What’re you doing out here, at this hour?”
Rhett checked his watch: 4:00 a.m. “What’reyoudoing out here at this hour?”
“Looking for you.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I got up for a drink of water and you were gone. I checked the back door and it was unlocked.” Stanzi dug her bare feet into the sand. “You’ve been doing this your whole life, haven’t you?”
“Pretty much. The first time Mama caught me, I was ten years old. She freaked out when she saw I was gone, but Papa kept her calm. He told her he knew I was fine because the tactical flashlight I’d begged for at Christmas wasn’t on my dresser where I always kept it. They found me out here. Mama threatened to ground me for a week until Papa cussed her out in Spanish. They got in a huge fight and didn’t speak for days. I felt bad. Not for sneaking out, but for causing a fight.”
“You should feel bad. Giving your mama a heart attack like that.”
“The crabs,” Rhett said, pointing at one that scurried past the lantern. “They act different at night. You can’t get to know their secrets during the day.”
Stanzi flicked sand at him. “That’s so you.”
He laughed. “I was planning special ops and recon from my bedroom to the shoreline from about age seven,” Rhett mused. “I even got Mel to do it a couple times, but she wouldn’t go very far. She’d get freaked out, worried we’d get caught.” Rhett could still picture Mel, standing on the shoreline in the dark, clutching her My Pretty Pony doll with the chopped-up rainbow mane, her lips turned down and eyes wide in fear.
“Smart girl.”
“Pain in the ass, you mean.”
“I bet she thinks the same about you.”
Rhett wasn’t going to argue. He found Stanzi’s hand and clasped it. What he felt for her was a dangerous thing. Like liquid nitrogen living in his gut, he had to be careful how he stepped, or everything could explode. He watched a tiny crab skitter out of his hole and dart in front of the lantern light. “You like it here, then?”
“It’s beautiful.”
Rhett watched the moonlight ripple in a wavy line over the water, which sucked in and out in a soothing roll. It was hard not to think about the morning he’d spent with her. He’d been thinking about her, anyway, all day long, whether she was in his presence or wasn’t. Neither one of them had wanted to stick to their plan to drive home, so they’d spent the rest of the day hanging out with his parents, cooking dinner, having some wine, laughing, walking to the shops across the street for ice cream. All day Rhett could smell her on his skin and taste her on his lips. He could feel her body, all around him, holding him close and tight. Heat would rise over his skin at random moments, like in the middle of dinner, and he’d look up and find his mother regarding him with an odd expression.
Rhett leaned back on his elbows, in the sand. “Should I apologize for...anything?”
Her soft laugh rippled over the sounds of the water. “You know the only thing I regret?”
“What?”
“Not getting a snap of your face when I dropped the towel.”
He pictured what he might’ve looked like, based on how he’d felt in that moment, and he laughed, loud and open. “My chin was on the floor.”
“A little bit.”
Rhett knew, in that moment, that she’d come into his gym to find him. Even if she hadn’t known it. Conceited as it might be, she was his for a reason. There were plenty of girls out there, like Katrina, who would stay fit and strong and help keep him in tip-top shape. Plenty of girls who would keep him on his toes. But Stanzi was different. She wasn’t a unicorn. She wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t pretending to be, or even trying to be, perfect. She was a dorky My Pretty Pony who wore cat barrettes. She massaged dogs, for Christ’s fucking sake. She was a mess. A good mess. His mess.
Rhett clicked his watch and the light popped over the sand, casting its green glow. The little creatures froze, some with claws in midair. Stanzi giggled, because she wasn’t just the kind of girl who would indulge his need to drive himself to the edge, or bring him back from the brink with her magical hands.
Stanzi was the kind of girl who would sneak out of the house and watch the crabs with him.
Rhett slipped his arm around her waist and drew her in, against him. One thing led to another, their shared urgency a need Rhett had never experienced. Their lovemaking was like a storm that came on sudden—thick, intense, with bright flashes of light that left them spent and happily confused. They lay back in the sand and she snuggled into the crook of his arm. There was nothing but the sound of the ocean, lapping the shore and crashing in on itself.
The next thing Rhett heard was the sound of a classic telephone ring. For a moment, he was a kid again, inside his house while the rotary on the wall pealed out.
He blinked his eyes open to the sunshine. It looked about 7:00 a.m. Stanzi was just sitting up, her cell phone in her hand, which was the source of the ringing. “H’lo?” she said, her voice sleepy. A long silence followed. Moments later, she turned to Rhett with an ashen face. “Rhett,” she said. “Something terrible happened to Sunny.”
