Positively Beautiful (25 page)

Suddenly he curses under his breath and stops.

I sit up in surprise, blinking slowly in confusion and swirling sensation.

“No,” he says, and closes his eyes. He's breathing fast.

I look at him in amazement.

He opens his eyes and looks at me. “What are you doing?” He gestures at me, taking in my bra and underwear. “Think about it, Erin. Do you know how you look running around half naked? It was different in the beginning when you were almost comatose, but you're not anymore, you're alive and warm and soft. Do you know how hard this is for me?”

My mouth is open in shock.

“Here.” He takes off his shirt and throws it to me.

I pull it on, hugging its warmth around me. I do not know what to say. But I find myself noticing the hard lines of his chest, the white tan line across his lower stomach where his shorts have ridden down a little. I feel the warm fullness of my breasts press against my arms and I am aware of my bare legs. I tug the shirt over my knees.

“I don't understand,” I say in a small voice.

He looks away. He's so gorgeous I want to run my fingers through his wild curls and stroke the side of his clenched jaw.

“Do I have to explain this? Really?” he asks in a strangled voice.

I don't say anything. If you paid me a million dollars, I wouldn't have been able to find anything to say.

“You're … sexy, Erin.” He's not looking at me, and his face is beginning to heat with color.

“You think … you think I'm
sexy
?”

“
Yes
,” he says on an outward explosion of breath.

I stare at him, but his gaze is focused on the water.

“But I'm … I'm
not
,” I say.

He snorts and turns his beautiful turquoise eyes on me. “Yes you are.” He sighs, running his hands through his hair. “Look. I'm your friend, Erin. I want to be your friend, but it's hard to be your friend when you're running around in your underwear. So do me a favor, okay? Wear some clothes.”

He gets up, and I follow as he goes back to camp. It's starting to get late and I don't want him to leave, not like this, but I don't know what to say.

“Here's the thing,” he says, after he has hauled in more supplies from his boat. “A front's coming through, so it's going to be stormy and windy tomorrow. I have a charter scheduled in the morning, but I'll be here tomorrow afternoon. If it starts raining before I get back, I brought you some more books, and you can go into the tent and wait for me.” He takes me by the shoulders so I have to look in his eyes. “Are you sure you're not ready to go home?”

“No, not … not yet.”

“Okay.” He looks up at the sky, which is the clear, hard blue of a china plate. “Okay.” He shakes his head. “It's going
to have to be soon, though, Erin. We can't do this for much longer. Do you get that?”

“I know,” I say, but it's like the words are buried in the back of my throat.

He busies himself with the rest of his gear, dropping a cooler and cursing in frustration. He seems uncomfortable and jittery, and I just want things back the way they were before.

“I gotta go,” he says finally.

“Bye,” I say, trying not to sound forlorn but probably failing miserably.

He moves off into the bushes without looking at me again.

I lie awake most of the night. It isn't the night noises that keep me awake, though there are still plenty of them. It's the word Jason threw at me. “Sexy.”

He thinks I'm sexy.

I miss Trina so much because she would know exactly what to say; she would help me know what to think about Jason saying I'm sexy.

But he doesn't want to think of you like that.

The first guy who ever told me he thought I was sexy also told me he just wants to be friends.

Is there something wrong with me?

Of course there is. Everything is wrong with me. Why would Jason want to date a girl who is a complete wackadoodle?

But he said he didn't want to fall in love with
anybody.

Sure, but if he really wanted to, he could fall in love with me.

He just doesn't want to.

He doesn't want to because he knows I'm messed up.

Flawed inside and out.

It is cloudy and blustery when I wake, the tent swaying back and forth like a building in an earthquake. I get out and make sure the stakes are tight in the ground and try to make a fire, but it is too windy. The air has a strange electric tension to it and I feel a weird pressure in my chest. It isn't raining, but the clouds are low and racing across the sky.

I munch on a handful of nuts and follow the path to the front beach so I can look at the open water. It's choppy, sloshing around like giant washing machine, and I see very few boats.

I sit and watch the water turn steel gray and whitecapped, worried about Jason out in those angry-looking waves.

It starts to rain that afternoon, quick showers dumping on my head, and then turning off like a spigot. I run around the
campsite, throwing anything needing to stay dry into the tent. I eye the big cooler, and decide to put that in the tent as well. By this time, the wind is whipping through my small clearing, and I am afraid the tent might decide to act like a kite and fly. I think about crawling into the tent and curling up warm and snug with a book, but I am too on edge for that. The air feels taut and heavy and I spend the next few hours going from the cove to the front beach, looking for Jason. Something is wrong. He said he would be here.

But as I look out at the scary rolling water and the froth flying high into the air as the waves smash onto the beach, I know he should not be out in this. It's too dangerous, and that means I am on my own.

When it gets dark, I finally go back to the tent. Not that I see the sunset. The air grows murkier until I can no longer see the water, just feel its stinging spray on my cheek.

I drop my wet clothes outside and stand in the rain for a few moments to wash the salt off of me, and a bolt of white-hot lightning sends me diving inside the tent. The rumblings turn into full-fledged booms, and the lightning flashes like strobe lights. I am glad I put the cooler inside, because I am not certain the wind couldn't lift the tent, even with me in it.

I hear something under the crash of thunder, and I strain to listen. I hear it again. It sounds like a
boat
, and
oh my God
, please tell me Jason isn't out in
this
? Because as much as I want, need him here with me, I know it must be really bad out on the water. I could never live with myself if he died trying to get to me.

I unzip the tent and am hit with a wall of blinding water.
Thunder murmurs restlessly as I race along the path toward the cove, lightning splitting the chaotic darkness. I see Jason's boat slide onto the shore and he gets out, shrouded in a yellow raincoat. He ties the boat to a tree branch and grabs my hand.

“Come on!” he yells over the rush of rain.

We start toward the tent and the world explodes in howling, ferocious light, dazzling, blinding, burning, as lightning hits one of the tall, lanky palm trees near us. The pure, encompassing whiteness is punctuated with a boom that sends us both to our knees.

“Storms … are worse than they thought … ,” Jason says.

“Ya think?” I stare at the top of the tree, which has burst into flames despite the driving rain.

“Had to get to you,” he says and his teeth are chattering.

“Seriously, you almost killed yourself!”

He is shaking, his hand ice-cold.

I shove him inside the tent and crawl in after him. He falls on top of the sleeping bag.

“Can you take your clothes off or do you need help?” I try to sound matter-of-fact. “Don't look if you can't take it, but I'm getting dry clothes on.”

“I'll … close my eyes,” he says through chattering teeth.

“You better,” I say. “Wouldn't want you to think I was trying to seduce you or anything.” The words are a little bitter but I don't think he notices.

I strip and pull on dry shorts and a T-shirt, my back turned as I hear him struggle to pull off his wet jeans.

I help him into the sleeping bag and have to zip it because
his fingers are shaking so badly. I lie down next to him, outside the sleeping bag, my head on a backpack.

“Why did you come?” I ask after a while, when his teeth have stopped chattering.

“I said I would,” he says.

“But it's storming! You could have been killed!”

“That's what friends are for,” he says, a little flip.

“Are we? Friends?”

“I hope so,” he says. “I wouldn't want to lose you. As a friend. Are you ready to go home yet?”

I don't answer.

He is quiet for a while and I think maybe he's fallen asleep, and then he says, “My mom is the strongest woman I know. She was going though chemo when my grandmother died. Mom would go to my grandmother's room and sing to her and stay with her for hours. Mom had the chemo port her chest, but she would crawl up in bed with Grandma and lie with her. She was there when Grandma died, singing to her. And after Grandma died, Mom got up and went the next day for another chemo treatment. She did that for
us
, for me and my sister. She knew she couldn't give up. She knew we needed her. She got up out of that bed and went and did what she needed to do to stay alive.”

In the light, I can see his throat working, but I don't see any tears.

“And right after my mom went into remission, my aunt, my mom's twin sister,
she
got cancer. After she died, my mom still had to keep on keeping on. I've never seen anybody that strong in my life. All she went through, she still can paint, and
smile, and crack jokes, and take care of her family. Because she loves us, and that's what you do when you love someone.”

I'm not sure what to say. I'm not sure why he is telling me this right now.

I ask, “Do you think I was wrong? Wrong for leaving like I did?”

He doesn't say anything at first. Then, “What do you think, Erin? I mean, I understand, I
understand
, I do, but yes, I think you were wrong. How many times do you think I wanted to check out, go away, and pretend the bad stuff wasn't going on? But I couldn't. I had to be there for the ones who counted on me. We've
got
to, or family doesn't mean a goddamn thing.”

That hurts. Hurts bad. I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees.

“How can you think of me as a friend,” I say in a low voice, “if you think I'm so terrible?”

“Erin, I don't think you're terrible.” He reaches over, grabs my knee, gives it a little shake. “It's hard. I
know
it's hard. But if you want to make it right, you need to grow up, go back, and
be there
for your mom, like she's always been there for you.”

I'm crying and I hold my knees tight.

“I don't know if I can
be
that strong,” I gulp through my sobs. “I fell apart completely the last time I tried. I don't know if I can go back and do it all over again.”