Kicking Eternity (23 page)

Drew rolled onto his knees. He bent toward her and dried tears she didn’t know she’d cried from her cheeks with
the tail of his
T-shirt. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this.” His eyes brimmed with compassion. He let go of the shirt, and his hand cradled her cheek. His face dipped to hers, and his lips touched hers with a kiss that was soft like the well-washed cotton of his shirt.

Drew sat back on his heels.

She looked at Drew. What did the kiss mean? What was he thinking?

Drew shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do at the moment.” He gave her a sheepish grin.

She looked away. Comfort. He meant it for comfort. She stood and brushed the sand off her shorts.

They walked toward the seawall.

“Why didn’t you tell your parents?” Drew said.

And, poof, the kiss disappeared as though it never happened. Fine. She drew in a breath and released it. “I guess I was protecting him because I knew this wasn’t Eddie. It
was the methamphetamine. I have so many more good memories of Eddie. When we were kids
he bought me a Harry Potter book my parents forbade us to read. He emptied his piggy bank
to buy that book
.”

Drew gave her a hand up to the seawall
,
and the touch materialized the kiss in her mind. She tugged her hand out of his. He was in love with Sam.

“Did you read Harry Potter
?”

“I hid it in my closet for a week, but, yeah, I read it under the covers with a flashlight and felt like a criminal. I finally confessed to Mom.”

Drew smiled. “Sounds like you.” He raked his fingers through his bed
-
head
,
making little improvement. “What was Eddie like before he got into drugs?”

“He went through puberty late–all legs and no shoulders, acne.  I was the only one who understood his know-it-all attitude covered-up insecurity.”

Her shock from the kiss was wearing off. She glanced over at Drew. Could he be interested in her? He looked as calm as ever.

“What drove Eddie into drugs?”

“He needed friends. When he was fifteen he learned to surf. Surfing bulked up his shoulders. The sun helped his acne. And the druggie surfers took him in.”

They passed the gazebo. She lifted a hand in Drew’s direction and veered off toward the lodge. She needed to be alone in her classroom to think. Maybe the kiss meant comfort to Drew, but he’d pitched her down a bumpy hillside end over end like Buttercup in
The Princess Bride.
She was too confused to know what she thought.

She sunk down to her knees on the carpet square next to the window where she usually prayed for her students.
Oh, God.

“Raine!” She tensed at the sound of Cal’s voice and jumped up like she’d been caught filching candy from the snack bar.

Cal strode toward her with a painting under his arm.

Her breath caught. When was she going to get used to the way he looked? His hair was down on his shoulders today, crimped and ocean-soft. His brows and mustache were sun-bleached white against the deep tan of his freshly shaved cheeks and chin. Did she love him?

He stopped in front of her. Energy radiated from him, crossing the small space between them.

She looked down, but she could still feel his brown eyes drinking her in.

“I finished your painting.”

Her gaze shot to the canvas under Cal’s arm. “When?”

“Stayed up all night.”

Why did that bother her? “Let me see it.”

Cal flipped the painting around to face her and propped it on a chair. Like looking in the mirror, only more—more of who she was inside. It was almost scary how well Cal had captured her.

Her hair was flipped up and away from her face, the way she always wore it. The inky brown was a perfect match. In her face, she saw grit and passion as she taught from the Bible open in her lap. She remembered
every one of
those hours she sat for Cal, hours spent praying for him.

Cal was a master with color. Out of the burnt oranges and browns in the room, the yellow of her blouse drew the eye, then upward to her face illumined from unseen light. Cal must have gotten that look the night he painted her by lamplight while it rained outside—the night they’d first acknowledged they had feelings for each other.

She glanced up at Cal. He stood there gauging her reaction.

In the painting there was a subtle white light shining from her eyes, but
her lips were full and parted
. She understood how Cal saw her—innocent and alluring. And it made her uncomfortable.

“Amazing.”

“
You’re
amazing.” His voice was reverent and it pressed down on her like layers and layers of quilts. “Hey, my folks are going to be gone all day tomorrow to Ocala for a district conference. They want to know if we can come over tonight.”

“You talked to your parents already this morning?” She was buying time.
Lord, what do you want me to do?
Drew had asked for guidance for today.

Cal laughed. “Yeah, M
om
‘bout fainted.”

“I’m committed to elementary campfire, but I’ll be free after that.” Drew had handled the campfire for a month without her, he could do alone tonight. But she loved counseling the kids afterward and helping Drew with his talks. This was the right decision.

If Cal was disappointed, he swallowed it. Picking up the canvas with one hand, he stepped toward her.

Please, please don’t touch me.
She was still on overload from last night. And Drew’s kiss.

He stopped in front of her, and she could see the exhaustion in his eyes—exhaustion that felt like the
too-expensive
roses the greasy-haired neighbor kid bought her with his paper route money in sixth grade.
She’d never asked for his devotion.

“I’ll pick you up from campfire, then.” He held her eyes for a moment longer. “Africa is sounding better all the time.” He turned, and walked out the door.

#

The sugary sand burned the soles of Raine’s feet as she marched toward the inlet. Eddie said he’d be here. She sloshed ankle-deep into the water and looked for Eddie among the die-hard surfers bobbing in the flat waves. No Eddie.

Her stomach knotted. She hated this lonely stretch of beach Eddie’s crowd favored. This was where that creep had tried to get her into his van. She tugged her visor down on her forehead. She’d had self-defense class since then. She knew she was less vulnerable if she walked like she had a purpose. And, boy, did she.

There he was, leaning against a boulder at the inlet.

“What’s up?” Eddie was in his usual surf trunks. He crossed his sand-caked feet at the ankles and folded his arms across his chest.

She gave him her usual once over. She couldn’t tell if his eyes were blood shot through his sun glasses. His ribs were a washboard thin under a coat of sand. He wasn’t twitching today. Good.

“Money’s come up missing from the camp office.”

“So?”

“You took it.”

“I haven’t been anywhere near your stinkin’ camp. I’ve been working up at the other end of the beach scraping ba
rnacles off the hull of Boston W
haler. Guy paid me crap, too.”

Eddie was a liar. A good one. And a thief. No one ever confronted him, and now she wished she hadn’t. He sounded so sane.

“Listen to me. If you ever want to get another cent from me, stay away from the camp. I don’t care whether you stole that money or not. Stay away from Triple S.”

“I don’t have to put up with this—”

She winced at the word he spat at her. “Just stay away from the camp.”

“I love you, too, Sis.” He stalked up into the dunes.

She turned back toward town, small in the distance, feeling utterly alone.

#

Drew dropped an armful of kindling on the sand beside the fire circle. “Let me get this straight.” He looked up at Rainey. “You’ve never been to Africa?”

He’d been an idiot kissing Rainey this morning. Tension popped between them like pine sap on the fire.

“Was there something in the rulebook I missed?” She handed him a bundle of thin sticks to start the fire with. “I have to visit Africa before God can call me there?”

“I’m surprised.”

“My folks raised three kids on a teacher’s salary. All the money I earned went to my college, and lately to a one-way ticket to Entebbe.”

“And to Eddie.”

Rainey spun toward him. “Since when is my call and what I spend my money on your concern?”

He knew he should shut up, but this had been bugging him. He might not get another chance to say it before she bought her ticket. “Are you going to Africa to run away from Eddie?”

Rainey dropped her armload of logs smack on top of his carefully constructed newspaper and stick teepee he was going to use to light the fire. “Somebody better give Sam a head’s-up on your dictatorial side. Oh, maybe she already noticed.” She strode away, her shoulders as stiff as the logs criss-crossing the crushed teepee in the fire pit.

He pulled logs out of the pit and stacked them with the others in angry precision. He’d done Rainey a favor pointing out her faulty motivation for Africa and her enabling. And she turned around and knifed him in the gut about Sam. He sure picked the wrong person to tell about Sam.

And how was he supposed to lead campfire in half an hour? Anger percolated under his skin as he gathered the wadded newspaper into a pile and leaned sticks against it one by one. He stood and kicked the whole mess.

He stalked toward the shore. The water cooled his ankles. He bent and splashed the salty wetness onto his face.
Lord, I need some help here.

Seeing Rainey with Cal last night had made him crazy. Made him kiss her when she was vulnerable—which led to tonight’s blow-up. 

God help him, but he wasn’t sorry for that kiss.

He strode toward the shed, the direction she’d taken. When he came around the corner of the building, he found her crying into her knees, big sobs that shook her body.

His hand went to her shoulder, but she shook him off. He sat down on the sand beside her. “Rainey, I’m sorry. Sorry for fighting. I was in a bad mood.”

She gradually quieted, but didn’t raise her head. “But you don’t think I should give Eddie money,” she said into her knees. “You think I’m running away from Eddie to Africa.”

“This is about the kiss.”

Rainey’s head jerked up. Her face was smeared with tears, her eyes red-rimmed. And he felt like a total jerk.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you. I’ve got to deal with Sam. You’ve got to sort things out with Cal. I put us both on edge. Will you forgive me?”

“But you still think—”

“It’s between you and God. Not my business. Come on, say you forgive me.” He put a hand on her arm. “Please.”

Rainey turned toward him, curling into his chest. He gathered her to him. Oh God, that he could hold her forever.

But he wasn’t making the same mistake twice. “Let’s pray.” Drew eased her away from him and held out his hand. They leaned back against the shed and prayed for the campfire till the sun slipped a notch in the sky and they heard children’s voices coming up the road.

He would Facebook Sam tonight.

Cal sat in his ‘89 Celebrity Wagon
and
drummed his fingers against the chalky paint under the surfboard racks
. In the distance, Raine bowed her head as though she were
praying over a boy in a Spiderman T-shirt that looked older than
the kid
was. The boy
lifted his head
and wiped one eye with the back of his wrist. Raine hugged him. Nearby, a
girl
slapped Drew
high
five and took off after h
er
cabin mates.

Drew shared something with Raine he didn’t—ministry. That torqued him, but what could he do about it? He was barely holding together his newfound spirituality, much less helping anyone else.

Twenty minutes later, Dad
lumbered
out of his easy chair to shake Raine’s hand. M
om
stretched an arm out to Raine, an arabesque.
Mom
’s jean
capris
and oversized T-shirt made her look ten years younger than Dad who had gone grey sometime when Cal wasn’t looking.

Dad launched the inquisition, and Cal settled into the couch cushions to enjoy the show. He should have brought Raine home weeks ago
.
This was going to be better than the last time he brought home straight A’s—in fifth grade.

“
This is a treat, Cal bringing a girl home,
” Dad said. “
So, what are you going to do with your degree?
”