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The sound of Sofia’s voice alerted Isabella that Ryan’s departure hadn’t been expected, nor was it welcome.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Isabella said. “You know what they say about unmet expectations.”
“Yeah, that they suck.”
“Ha! They do. You hoped for something that didn’t happen. You’re bound to be let down. But the good thing is that by being interested in him, you’re obviously ready to get out there again.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Sofia said. “I have Ryan to thank, I guess. I must want it, or I wouldn’t be disappointed.”
“Jeff’s friend is interested,” she whispered, nodding to a guy keeping her boyfriend company at the grill.
“Alex? No way. He’s too young for me.”
“Wait, you never heard of the termboy toy?”
Trying to squelch their mirth, the sisters practically collapsed into a heap, they were laughing so hard.
“You’re not serious,” Sofia said, glancing at the men on the balcony. Jeff was swinging the spatula around, and Alex squatted at the cooler, looking for beer. The muscles of his back called out to all who gazed upon them.
“Oh, baby, I’m dead serious. Look at his body!”
“No. I might get scared,” Sofia said, still laughing. “If you’re staying up here with Jeff, I’m going down to the water for a while. I need to get out.”
“I’ll join you in a while,” she said. “I need to stay up here in case Tracy shows up in a thong.”
They laughed again at Sofia’s friend Tracy’s expense. That’s what she’d get if she showed too much bod at the beach.
Still smiling, Sofia went down the staircase to the beach, feeling proud that out of all of her friends, she had the beach house. She and Jake had sacrificed to save the down payment for the house, working during the school year and summers, going without vacations when their friends were all going to Catalina Island and Hawaii, and the big one, deciding against a honeymoon. It would have gone to waste anyway. She turned to look up at the house. Isabella looked down from the balcony and waved.
Being on the beach no longer had the same meaning without Jake. Nothing meant anything without him. Even the paper was just a means to bide her time. The others made small talk, and she even threw a Frisbee around for a while, but a ghostly surfer kept distracting her, riding his board far out in the sea.
Once the party was over, Isabella and Jeff stayed behind and helped her clean up. They’d be back the following day for leftovers. By ten that night, she was alone. Looking around, there was no sign that a party had even taken place. There were several open bottles of wine to choose from. Pouring a dry white into a glass, it was her least favorite, but she needed something to keep her frosty that night, the lure of the telephone and Ryan’s ready number both enticing and frightening.
In those sleepless hours after he’d moved out, she lay in bed wondering if there was anything different she could have done. The first thing would have been to ignore him after he entered Poki Poki. “Why!” she cried out in the darkness. The only excuse she had was loneliness.
So tonight, after shutting off all the lights inside the house, she lit a candle and took the full glass of sour wine out to the balcony and sat there alone. The salt air and sounds of the surf settled her into a state of gloomy contemplation.
After walking around numb for a year, Ryan had awakened that part of her that longed for companionship. She wanted arms around her, lips on her neck, the feel of hands on her body.
Giving a sigh of relief, she was just happy she hadn’t tried to seduce him. The thought had presented itself several times over the couple of weeks he’d lived with her. One sultry night the power had gone out for some reason, and they sat on the balcony in as little as possible to try to stay cool without air-conditioning. Sofia had on a bathing suit and had wrapped a towel around her body as a concession to modesty. Ryan, on the other hand, had none. He wore ratty shorts he referred to as ball-hangers, leaving them both laughing. Bare-chested, his dark skin glowed in the candlelight, and she longed to see him naked, desire cruising through her veins. But either he was determined to keep things platonic, or he wasn’t attracted to her at all. They were truly just friends who lived under the same roof.
Sitting on the dark balcony in the moonlight, she let herself wonder for a brief moment what he was doing. Did he have to work that weekend? Or was he partying with someone hewasattracted to? She wouldn’t know.
Listening to the waves hitting the shore, she hoped a ghost would visit in her dreams later.
Chapter 7
One hundred eighty hours of refresher course later, six months of AA meetings and proven sobriety, drug-free blood tests, and hard labor at Home Depot, the medical board reinstated Ryan’s license to practice medicine. In September, after contacting his former in-laws, the Behnigs, and Ed and Ruth to tell them the news, he called his former landlord, Sofia Saint. It would be the first time in a long while that they spoke. After the shock of seeing his number, she made the decision to be congenial at all costs.
“You’ll never guess where I am,” he whispered into the phone.
“Oh god, let me guess, the medical board office?”
“Yes!”
“Congratulations, Ryan! I’m so excited for you.”
“And I’m employed. Your uncle lined up a job offer for me at his branch.”
