Spring Tide (28 page)

I reduced the size of my grin. “Little bit. I’m not a total prude. It’s that after my dad passed, my brother partied a lot, got into trouble. It was hard on my mom.”

“I’m not judging you. I’m glad you’re havin’ a good time, love seeing you so chill.”

“Dude, I was referred to as ‘filthy’ twice tonight. What up?”

He chuckled. “Filthy what? Filthy cute, filthy hot, filthy sexed? What?”

“Something along those lines that I’d rather not repeat.”

“If I say that you’re filthy hot, it means it’s like you’re so hot it’s making me sick.”

I frowned. “Well I don’t like that.”

“Tyler call you filthy?”

“Rachel call you filthy?”

He stopped walking. “What do you know about her?”

“Julia filled me in. It was very enlightening.”

“You are so much more than she ever was and will be.”

“Did you talk to her tonight?”

“We don’t talk at all.”

“Oh yeah, she’s the one you ruined, huh?”

His head came forward. “What did Julia tell you about her, exactly?”

“Nothin’ really. It just popped out. I don’t know why I said that.” The thought of her was making me feel small again. I looked at his face. “For the life of me, I don’t know why you want me.”

His fingers ran through my hair. “Kris, it’s always been you and it will always be you.”

His face dropped to mine, his kiss as soft as the very first time.

In the morning, I started packing my bag, scavenging flops from the floor. “So what’s the story with Prescott? ’Cause I’m getting really concerned about the company you keep. You’re buds with Cosmic Jeff, Kelly reads palms—”

“Who?” Jericho said.

“You know, with the hair.”

“Preston? He surfs, not well, smokes way too much pot. How long have you been thinking about him?”

“You can’t stop me from thinking about him.”
Yuck.

He stood above me. “I’ve been asked to cover the comps in Australia, Brazil, and Tahiti. Come out with me.”

“Will Tyler be there?”

“If you bring up Tyler again, I’m gonna work him the same way I did Joshua.”

“I’m joking.”

“Think about Australia. It meant a lot to me to have you here.”

“This is about me being alone,” I tossed him his shirt that was mixed in with my things, “which you still haven’t explained.”

“No, this is about how much more I enjoy life when you’re with me.”

He gave up his last, precious surf session to take me to Diamond Head Crater so I could get in a touristy thing. The panoramic view was exceptional and although warm, the hike wasn’t too bad. We spent too much time on the rim and didn’t get to do the tunnel.

“Next time,” he said.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
fter lunch, he stood in front of the TV, blocking the cooking show I was watching, a red plastic disk spinning on his finger.
Oh boy.
For being so athletically inclined, he was a pansy with a Frisbee.

“Raincheck?” I stretched my arms.

“Chicken?”

“No offense, baby, but you’re a little weak with the ’bee.”

“I’m not gonna play nice this time.” His eyes glowed extra bright.

“Ooh, you are so scary. Let’s get it on, big man.”
Throw to his left and in ten minutes he’ll give up and go surf or work on the dragon and I’ll be back watching butter melt in a pan.

In the sand, he distanced himself from me but then jogged back to where I was standing. “Think about coral snakes. Think about acing Derek. I know I sound crazy, but listen, before you catch the Frisbee, picture in your mind how you want the catch and return to happen.”

“You’ve been hangin’ with Jeff too long. Just throw already.”

The game began slow and mundane as expected. After a few tosses, he launched the Frisbee straight at me. I sent it to him with my usual grace and elegance and it flew back to my right so fast that I missed it, the saucer moving at Mach 3. He yelled at me to concentrate. I imagined the Frisbee hitting him in the knees. My aim was true, but he caught it, delivering it to me in a heartbeat. I envisioned myself diving for it and sending it off before I hit the ground and I did. I was going to ruin Derek the next time we sparred. Matching Jericho’s speed and skill, I didn’t miss a beat, my attention on the goal and a song in my head. I jumped to catch his throw and calculated that my return would go straight and then veer left. It did and he missed. We’d been playing for over an hour and I was thirsty so I flung the Frisbee to the deck to end the match.

“Not bad.” I rinsed off my feet at the steps.

“You either.”

We went to the kitchen and he gave me a bottle of water. I chowed it, reveling in the cool flowing across my teeth.

“How do you do that without gagging or spilling?” He gave me another bottle.

“What? Slam it? Open up your throat.” I upended the bottle, got it all down in three seconds and looked him over. “With a skill like that, imagine what else I could do.”

His eyebrows wavered as he interpreted the words. I couldn’t help but laugh.

The light in the room brightened and darkened in cycles. The empty dropped from my hand and bounced on the floor.

I took hold of his shoulder. “Something’s wrong—”

My stomach wasn’t growling. It wasn’t churning. It was eating my other organs. The room was a cave and his arm was heavy on my waist, his thigh between mine. I quietly rolled out of bed. Standing, I tripped over my shoes, stumbled into his desk, and somehow made it to the kitchen. The first things I found on the shelves were soda crackers and their good buddy peanut butter. It was a stupid choice. I was dying of starvation and they took forever to chew and swallow. After three glasses of water I still felt strange. In the powder room, I splashed cold water on my face, the filling sink swirling in shades of green.
Your eyes are playing tricks on you.
The mirror proved me wrong.

I stopped breathing and clutched the counter.
No, no, no.

My eyes were glowing technicolor green, tainting the beige walls in their color, gleaming off the chrome fixtures. I had seen his eyes glow many times, but to see my own was demented and unnatural.
Claw them out.
I shut my eyes tightly and opened them to see two shining ovals beneath my brows.

The fear of him I’d locked away skulked from the shadows. “He’s damned and he’ll do the same to you,” echoed in my mind.
He’d whispered something to me to do this?
I didn’t think that’s what had caused the change. It was our connection. We’d had it so long it had altered me.
And he knew that’s what would happen all along.

For twenty minutes, my thoughts were silenced by delirium, and the only noises were my fingers sanding each other and my steps across the living room floor that were lit by my eyes. Creeping around the house, I put only necessities in my backpack. My acoustic was in his room, but I could leave without it. It was replaceable unlike the previous nine months of my life. And with that thought, shock became anger—horrible, hateful anger.

There were two times I could remember when Dad had been in the middle of a tirade that I’d sat, my heel quietly tapping the floor. From my foot, fury had shot up my back to my neck in the form of heat, so much heat that my hair had gotten damp. I’d wanted to yell back at him, scream that he was being unfair or scream because I was powerless. It was happening again and I tried to make it stop. I sat at the dining table, inhaling deeply so the monster inside would go back to sleep, but it rattled the cage, wanting out. My left heel started thumping the floor.

He came out of the bedroom. The sun was rising behind him, celestial gold lighting his profile, a false image. “Hon? What’re—?”

“Did ya need a couple more months to wear me down?”

“Wear you down?” He drank from the kitchen faucet. “You’re wearin’ me out.”

“How many days did I sleep this time? Four? Five?” I blinked twice.

He came toward me, his hand rising to his mouth. “Oh my God. You see it. You’re finally seeing it.”

My foot pounded the floor faster. The monster took over.

“Stay the fuck away from me!” Pushing back from the table, I grabbed the top rung of the chair and hurled it into the china cabinet. “I warned you.”

The song I’d used before raged from my mind into his at an intolerable volume.

His hands flew to his ears. “Kris! Please!”

Louder.

His knees bent and his eyes lit. “Let me … Stop! Kris!”

I killed the music. “You did this! You made me into this!”

“I’m not doing this to you. I don’t have that power. You—”

“You’ve been lying to me for months; don’t stop now.” I dug in my bag. “I never should’ve come back to you.”

He put out his hand to me. “I know how you feel. It was frightening when it happened to me too.”

“You can’t have my soul.” I walked past him and out the front door.

“You already gave it to me and you have mine.”

“You stole it.” I dropped my backpack in the dragon.

“I can help you. If you go there’s nothing I can do to protect you, to guide you into our existence.”

“What I’ve needed is someone to protect me from you.” I denied our connection, making his shoulders fall.

“Being away from me isn’t going to change anything. This is a part of you and has been for a while. It would be happening if we had met once or never. It would be happening if you were in Austin or Houston or Japan. If you weren’t like me, we never would’ve been together the way we have. If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be with you now. What you feel inside of you isn’t me. It was there before we met.”

I raised my hand and let it drop with my voice. “How could you do this to me? I loved you, trusted you.”

He snatched my keys from my hand. “I am not doing this to you. Stop for a minute and think. The day we met, do you remember how I looked at you? It was the spark when you touched me that got my attention, but your energy was flickering in your eyes. How is it that you can see my power when no other human does? How is it that I hear the music in your head if not for the fact that you’re like me? How is it you’ve been able to picture movement and make it happen—Frisbee, tennis, coral snakes? How far are you running these days? How about guitar? You’ve been using your energy, you just weren’t
aware
.”

I didn’t want to listen to him because I didn’t want to understand what he was saying. From my middle came a contraction, a vibration. My face tightened, pressure building inside of me.

“Please, whatever you’re doing, stop now!” I latched my arms around my waist to hold myself together.

“I’m not doing anything, I swear.”

The vibration intensified by twelve. “Please!”

An earthquake from within split me open, my senses falling away like rubble, compression waves venting in my sight. Phosphorescent barcodes a foot tall were suspended in the air five feet in front of me against the side of the house. The song he had given me was displayed, progressing in real time with the sound in my mind. The intro, the first verse, and the chorus were there, two acoustics and two vocals alternating. The notes were harmonically exact, ethereal.

“What are those waves?” I whispered.
Not percussion, not bass … it’s the sound of the ocean. Again.

The song started from the beginning, the pattern advancing before my eyes, showing me what came next. That I saw, not visualized in my mind, but actually
saw
the music was so profound I was aghast. Comprehending the compression waves had always taken a tremendous degree of concentration and abstraction combined to pull a melody from perception into action. It had become animate, an unimaginable gift.

“What is that?” Jericho murmured.

Stop.
The waves disintegrated into the air. As astounded as I was, I was terrified that I had witnessed my brain activity portrayed in the same green light as the glow in my eyes. I walked away, down to the shore. My thoughts were a merry-go-round, going up and down and around and around to circumvent his argument and what had just occurred. The revolution kept coming back to the day I’d received my scholarship notice.
It was only that I wasn’t ready.
But everything inside of me had told me not to go, that there was something else I had to find first.
No, he did this to me. The light in my eyes wasn’t already there.
But I’d felt a rapport with him early on, despite his eyes, because something in him corresponded to something in me.
No, I’m his victim, always have been.
“Makes you wonder,” he’d said. He’d been trying to tell me from the beginning.
No, he’s manipulating my mind. He made the compression waves.
But the waves were something particular to me and the semblance I saw was a product of a defect I’d had since birth.
But this isn’t me!
But the night of the storm, when I’d stood in the gale, my fate had been confirmed by a path of shimmering water. I’d wanted to follow it.
It was a waking dream.
It wasn’t.

I walked for over two hours.