Forgiven (Ruined) (8 page)

             
The editing bays are still locked and untouched, but the studio is a mass of tapes strewn about, broken CDs and MP3s and a few thumb drives somebody tried to stomp on.

             
"What the hell?"  At Security's urging, I walk through first, cataloging every piece of equipment.  Not that I know them all yet but I know what surfaces are covered and how crammed the rooms are and they still are.  Everything's still there.  But the tapes and the discs are distressing.  It's like someone was trying to trash all our work.

             
Correction: someone was trying to trash
my
work.  Because even if the forgiveness series is now in the hands of DCTV and is in production through the station, it's my baby, and those are, for the most part, the tapes and discs that got hit. 

             
That makes me feel a little sick.  That coupled with whoever it was having been in here when I got here, and having caused no other damage.

* * *

             
I catalog what was damaged.  There are off-site backups for everything, which I remember part way through cleaning up.  Mostly I pile the trashed stuff into a box and leave it with a note that I'll handle it when I come in on Monday.  I had the weekend off and I'm still taking it off.  I could use some downtime and some Kellan time, and I think my mother and Bruce are going to Atlanta for the weekend.

             
"There are no cars in the parking lot," Balliol says as we finish up.  I'm locking the doors even though that now seems pointless.  Monday I'll put in a request for changing the locks – no, no, tomorrow I'll email the team to have somebody else do that and get it done before tomorrow night.  There, I'm learning to delegate.

             
"My friend Emmy dropped me off," I tell her.  I think I did before.  Only now the implications hit me.  "Can you stay with me while I wait for a cab?"  I no longer feel up to the five minute beach walk by myself and besides, it's now after 2:30 a.m.  That's a little late even

for me. 

             
"Better," Balliol says.  "We'll drop you off."

             
"We can't go off campus," Ferguson says.

             
Balliol sighs at him.  "Where do you live?"

             
"Five minutes down beach," I tell her and she just glares at Ferguson and leads the way.  Now it's his turn to sigh.

             
I'm fine with that, as long as it means I have a ride.

* * *

             
They wait while I go up to the front door, where my mother has left the light on for me.  I have my keys in my hand, and I make a show of opening the front door, turning and waving.  But once security pulls away, I shut the front door again.  Nobody's up, I don't think.  There's a lamp on in the living room but the house is utterly silent, just the funny ticks and clicks that a big house makes at night, like it's talking to itself. 

             
I'm restless now.  Riding back with security my mind was hamster-wheeling, spinning round and round without getting anywhere.  But now I'm here, I'm awake and aware again and ready to start turning the events of the evening over in my head.  I pull my phone out, start to text Emmy, then realize even if she's awake this will just worry her.  She'll feel all guilty that she ever let me go in alone even though I should have been completely safe in a locked building.  I have no idea where Reed got to.

             
I'm not texting Reed.  It's not his problem anymore.  Besides, he'll get all worried.  I can't imagine he'd come back to school – he had the opportunity to work in the field of his choice, learning on the job and completing his education in Boston.  Worrying him would be pointless and unnecessary.

             
So I'm left with no one to talk to?  Except Kellan.  Who I really want to see. 

             
So go find him
, I tell myself.  He must be upstairs.  In his room.  Asleep.  Warm and rough looking, his hair tangled from the pillow.  His green eyes smoldering as he wakes and sees me –

             
And the last thing on my mind will be the break in at the college station building.  Which is just fine with me.

             
Except even as I think that I'm walking out on the sand, my shoes discarded at the bottom of the steps, my keys inside them.  The sand is cold and feels damp even though this far from the tide it isn't.  That's just the effect of night air.  A tiny breeze blows my hair back from my face.  I use both hands to twist it up into a bun, tucking the edges under so the curls and tangles from the wind will make it stay.  Hands in my pockets, still wearing the light white pants I went dancing in, I head down to the surf, still thinking, looking at the moonlight on the water exactly as I'd imagined.

             
And there's Kellan.  He's out on the waves, which is probably insanely dangerous.  The first time I met him I warned him about the unpredictable tides here and he nearly bit my head off.  He didn't know who I was yet, and I had no idea who he was.  We didn't meet until later that night when he accidentally came into the room where I was sleeping and climbed into my bed.  He
said
he thought it was his room.

             
Now that I've seen him I feel suddenly shy.  Will he be happy to see me?  Or is he still annoyed that I went out without him?  So I'm not sure if I should call or go down to the wet sand or wave or wait.  Or walk the other way, up the beach in the night, a solo walk like I'd had in mind.  Since I can't decide, I retrace my steps to the stairs and sit down on the bottom steps, toes in the sand, keys in my hand, watching Kellan as his silhouette takes on the waves.  He's good, far as I can judge.  At least he doesn't wipe out very often.  The moonlight shines on his muscles, the broad shoulders and long lean legs.

             
Leaning my cheek on one fist, elbows on knees, I watch him surf.  When I first met him, he snapped at me, demanding to know if I was a lifeguard or what business of mine it was whether he went swimming under dangerous conditions or not.  Following our awkward arrival in the same bed we ended up encountering each other at awkward moments and eventually really encountering each other when Kellan showed up in my bed again and this time I invited him to stay.  Though either of our parents, his dad or my mom, could have been sticky about it, they both understood.  Our parents might be married, but we're not related at all.  I think Bruce thinks I might be good for Kellan.  I know my mom thinks Kellan might be good for me.

             
But Kellan keeps worrying he's going to drag me down, ruin me like he considers himself to be ruined.  Kellan did time for the lives he took.

             
I only did time in my own mind.  I locked myself away from the world.  Sometimes it doesn't seem like that was enough.  For Kellan sometimes the five years doesn't seem like enough.  It's hard to go on living after something like that and for both of us, the events that ended in the death of others were accidents.

             
Mine was self-defense, technically, but I never meant to kill my father.  Kellan doesn't even have the self-defense angle to fall back on during those nights when his personal demons won't let him sleep.

             
I could tell him that the ruling – self-defense, justifiable homicide, innocent and not ever once proven guilty – doesn't help at four a.m..

             
I could tell him that.  If he'd listen.  What he hears, I think, is the self-defense part.  Even if I'm not saying it.  I can't tell him it doesn't help because he's convinced it does.  He's also convinced that I have a right to a life and he doesn't.  Parole is cruel, really.  It lets him out in to the world but only so far.  Like being a kid again, living under rules you can't do anything about and consequences that are dire if you dare to disobey.  Which makes sense.  There's the need to be certain society is safe, I guess.  But it makes getting back into life hard.

             
Would I want him drinking again?  Not really.  I don't drink at all anymore.  My father's alcoholism would have been more than enough of a deterrent even if events hadn't spiraled out of control the way they did.  The fact that it was drugs, not alcohol, that led to my father's death doesn't make a difference for me.  I don't drink. The one time I caved ended up making me look like an idiot anyway.

             
Kellan made a mistake.  He was 17 and it was a mistake.  A part of me thinks if some day he wanted to have a beer with a pizza while watching television in his own home, it wouldn't be a crime.  Or shouldn't be.  Another part thinks the inability to legally drink alcohol doesn't change one's enjoyment of life.  Or it shouldn't.

             
But the reasons behind it undoubtedly do.

             
Kellan on the waves is beautiful.  But I have no doubt he's brooding.  About what he did.  Or about my going out tonight.  Abruptly I don't want to wait for him to finish tiring himself out and come to the house.  I can't take an argument right now.  My nerves are still raw.  Going out like that, to a club, surrounded by people and light and noise and life?  That's hard.  That's me doing my own brand of therapy.  Reaffirming life.  That I have to leave my boyfriend behind to do it is hard enough without having to deal with his reaction to my leaving him behind. 

             
I take a last look at him, riding in the moonlight, and stand.  I'll go inside.  Take a shower.  Read a little.  Get ready for bed.  If he chooses to come to me, then maybe we'll be all right tonight.

             
That's when he sees me.  My movement must have attracted his attention.  He calls out, and when I turn back, he's waving.  I could wave back, pretend I didn't understand the
hang on a second
nature of the wave.  No point in lying.  And maybe we'll be all right tonight.

             
I walk down to the water's edge and wait for him.

             
When Kellan comes out of the water his skin is crusty with salt, cold and damp even where the wetsuit has covered him.  He rolls it down to his waist when he's free of the surf, leans to kiss me, then, teasing, wraps an arm around me, pulling me against his cold, clammy, damp body.

             
"Hey!" I protest, giggling.  "You're cold.  And wet."

             
"Sea monster," he says into my hair.

             
"Fifties pulp sea monster.  I can see the zipper."  Suddenly very aware of the zipper in the wet suit.  The one that zips all the way down…

             
He doesn't ask if I had fun.  I don't ask what he's doing out here.  There's so much we're not saying to each other it kind of eclipses what we are saying.

             
But his mouth has different ways of talking.  His kiss is deep and warm even if his lips are cold.  I sink against him, now reveling in the cold of his body against my warmth. 

             
"You should come inside," I whisper into his mouth when he pulls away, just a little.

             
"It's such a beautiful night," he says, and before I can start thinking about all the nights he couldn't be outside, he goes on: "If I go inside, what's going to make it worth my while?"  Teasing. 

             
In answer I run my tongue up his flat abs, his strong chest.  Kellan shivers.  "You do have a way with words.  You ought to be a journalist."

             
I pretend to consider it.  "OK!"

             
We don't go in, though.  Just long enough to grab a couple sodas and go back out to the porch, sitting where we can watch the moon as it tracks across the water. 

             
One of the things I love about Kellan is we don't have to talk all the time.  We can sit quietly, each in our own head.  He doesn't ask about the club and I'm glad.  I'd like to be able to share such things with my boyfriend.  And I don't want to make him feel bad.

             
After we finish our drinks he stands, pulls me into his arms, his mouth hot on mine.  His arms enfold me.  Kellan has a way of making me feel safe.  If I let him, I think he might stand between me and the world. 

             
I don't need anybody to do that for me now.  When it all comes down, he can't protect me.  Not really.  Not all the time.  And I don't need him to.  It's time for me to protect myself. 

             
And maybe him along with it.

* * *

             
After a few minutes he takes my hand and leads me inside.  I figure we'll go to his room, he'll shower, and I probably will too, showering off the club and the adventure afterward, and I might even tell him about it, in the shower with the water running.  I'd meant to talk about the station but the night and the moon, the waves and the silence we were sharing, it all washed it from me.