Tattered Innocence (22 page)

“Hey.”

While they exchanged how-are-yous and caught
up, his mind flipped through and rejected all the openings he’d
rehearsed.

He cleared his throat.

Silence crackled between them.

He inhaled air and courage.

“I called because I wondered… wondered if
you’d thought about giving us another shot.”

She sighed into the phone. “I don’t know if
it could ever work. You adore sailing. I tolerated it. You didn’t
like my parents, my life….”

Truth slammed him. He’d been working so hard
to gain her family’s acceptance and fit into their world, he never
thought about whether he liked them. “Those things could have been
overcome—”

Gabs sighed into the phone. “Remember the
day I told you I loved you?”

Jake had beached the
Queen
on an
island in the Indian River beyond the north bridge. When the tide
went out, the boat listed to a fun-house tilt, exposing the port
side of her hull.

He’d hacked barnacles from the hull all day
with a hammer and an over-sized putty knife. The top half of his
wet suit floated at his hips as he worked. His muscles grumbled,
and he had another four hours of daylight ahead.

Gabs called his name, and his head jerked
up. A hand anchored to the forestay, she held out a sweating Dr.
Pepper from the bow.

“I love you!” he blurted.

Gabs’ voice coming through the phone jerked
him back to the present. “I said I loved you automatically, like
the
I’m away
message on my computer. The next thing I knew,
you were grinning at me like I was the America’s Cup trophy, and we
were picking a date. I should have thought things through better.”
She paused. “Jake, I honestly don’t know what I felt for you.”

He flinched as though she’d slapped him.
“You must have felt something to say you’d marry me.”

“Now that I—” she stopped.

“You’ve met someone, someone you love.”

Silence. “No….” Her voice lacked conviction.
“Jake, I’d like to think about this. You’ve caught me off guard. I
didn’t think you’d still be interested half a year after we broke
up. Why don’t we talk after the holidays?”

“I hope you’ll be happy together.” Jake
fought to keep the hard edge out of his voice and failed.

“No, it’s not like that. Never mind…. I
like
you Jake, but I just need some time.”

Whatever.
“Good bye, Gabs.”

Jake stared at the blackness of the night,
his anger dribbling down the porthole with the rain. The call had
confirmed what he already knew on some level. He was over Gabs.

He slumped back on the bench, letting Rachel
flood into his mind. The
Queen
seemed to sigh around him
waiting for Rachel’s return. Even with no guests aboard, she filled
the boat with her presence, laughter, sassy mouth.

Her mouth.

That was one thing he’d like to run into
again.

Jake tossed the nine hundred and fifty eight
dollar paint bill onto his desk and scrubbed his hands over his
face.
Note to self: all repairs will cost thirty percent more
than my most realistic estimates.
His mind circled back to
Rachel, where it always went.

He kicked his office chair at the desk.
Rachel could have lined up a new job and met someone while he and
Keenan spent patching the
Queen
and giving her three coats
of bottom paint.

He’d wanted to talk to Rachel all day every
day. But he needed to think rationally, get his head on straight
before approaching her. It was his own fault for blurting out
marriage one kiss in. It wasn’t fair to Rachel to discuss the rest
of their lives if all he had to offer was a love like he’d felt for
Gabs’ that came with a six-month expiration date.

But time had run out. The
Queen
went
into the water tomorrow, followed by Thanksgiving in two days, and
a packed cruise on Monday. He needed Rachel for his business to
survive. They’d just have to figure things out on the fly.

Rachel plodded behind the mower and breathed
in the scent of cut-grass. She wished the whir of the motor would
drown out Jake’s-in-love-but-not-with-you sing-songing in her head.
After eighteen days with no communication, it was time to look for
another job. Another life. She almost felt masochistic enough to
enroll full-time in college.

Perspiration dampened a ratty T-shirt. Moist
ringlets escaped their ponytail and tickled her neck. She bent and
yanked sweat pants above her knees.

Someone tapped on a horn.

She glanced up and froze.

Jake unfolded from his faded cream and
maroon Explorer.

Carbonation fizzed through her veins. She
wiped sweat from her face with the crook of her arm. Couldn’t he
have come when she looked—and smelled—better? She killed the
mower.

A smile split his face as he leaned on the
fence.

She stopped several feet away from him.
“What do you expect me to mow the lawn in?” She plucked the
faded-to-pink New Smyrna Beach High School T-shirt with her thumb
and forefinger.

Jake grinned. “Can’t I be glad to see
you?”

Rachel shifted her weight from one foot to
the other
.
She knocked a clod of grass off her sneaker,
avoiding his smile. Her eyes darted to his drying, recently-cut
curls to his smooth chin, and settled on the crisp North Causeway
Marine T-shirt she hadn’t seen before.

“Keenan made J.V. basketball.”

Rachel’s eyes swung to Jake’s.

“He wants us to go to his first game Friday
night.”

She stepped toward him. “Yes!”

He chuckled. “That’s the most enthusiastic
response I’ve gotten asking a girl out in a while.”

“Is he starting? Did he have a hard time
adjusting to the gym floor?”

“Ask him yourself—Friday night. I’ll swing
by for you at 6:30?”

She narrowed her eyes. It would feel weird,
like a date. “Okay, sure.”

His grin widened. He’d smiled more in the
last five minutes than during the whole cruising season.

Nothing for weeks, and now he cannon-balled
back into her life. She grabbed hold of the mower feeling rocked
off balance.

Jake’s hands slid into his jean pockets, his
eyes never leaving her. “Thanks.”

Something sweet and soft curled in her belly
and arced upward into her chest. She tugged her gaze away, and it
fell on the stubble poking from her green-stained ankles.
Great.
How embarrassing.

“The
Queen
goes back into the water
tomorrow. Can you give me a hand? Meet me at the marina at nine to
drive to the boatyard?”

“Yeah.” She gave the mower cord a vicious
yank. It belched gas fumes and ratcheted up to deafening. But she
would quit January First. She’d sign up for twenty-one hours of
college before she’d let herself fall any deeper for a guy who
could only want her as a consolation prize.

Rachel slid into Jake’s Explorer and smelled
the
Queen’s
faint, musty canvas scent. She’d tossed most of
the night and had been up for the past hour and a half. She had
color coordinated her red Converses and Levis with a red sweatshirt
and a red and black New Smyrna Beach High baseball cap—all for a
trip to the boatyard to sail the
Queen
back to the
marina.

She glanced at Jake and collided with his
full attention. Her breath sucked in and her back welded to the
seat.

“Morning.” He studied her. “You
conscious?”

He handed her a Starbucks cup. “Caffè
Mocha.”

She smiled her thanks and breathed in the
steam coming from the cup. “What’s the plan?” She took a sip,
wishing Jake wasn’t so fully there, dousing her in eye contact.
Where had the Jake she knew gone—the distracted, hard-at-work,
surly Jake?

He stared at her until she squirmed.
Five
weeks of awkward, here I come.

Jake cranked the engine. “We’ll drive to the
boatyard, motor the
Queen
back to the marina, and take your
car to the yard to pick up the Explorer.”

“The motor’s fixed?”

For the next twenty minutes, Jake filled her
in on the repairs and Keenan until all the weirdness over their
kiss at the hurricane hole evaporated as if it had never happened.
He pulled through the chain link boatyard gate and parked.

Rachel stared, wide-eyed, at the
Queen’s
propped-up underbody. “Wow. She turned out to be a
whale of a biker-chick.”

Jake laughed. “Biker-chick. You nailed her.
I missed you when we hauled out—you’re the only person who
appreciates the old girl like I do.” He chuckled. “Leaf wanted to
light one up to celebrate when they didn’t drop her.”

As they climbed out of the car, two men in
coveralls walked past them, the tall, Erector set arms of the
Travel Lift putting along behind them.

The guy with a rock star swagger and a
mustache that grew to his chin said, “We’re not dropping your boat.
Chill.” He mumbled something Rachel couldn’t make out. “Wait over
by the slip. We’ll lower her to the water safe as a baby.”

She followed Jake to the boatyard’s cement
pier. The Travel Lift cables squealed, and Rock Star and his
sidekick cinched huge straps a third of the way from either end of
the
Queen.

The straps creaked as the Travel Lift
operator maneuvered the
Queen
off the blocks. The jack
stands fell onto the asphalt.

Rachel’s heart skipped a beat.

Jake’s hand closed around hers, shooting
sparks of sunshine up her arm. Her gaze shot to Jake.

His teeth dug into his bottom lip. She felt
the tension in his grip.

The familiar, yet strangely mammoth
Queen
inched toward her habitat. Her keel sliced into the
murky greenness first, then her broad, black hull sloshed water
against the pier.

Rachel and Jake stood, linked like paper
dolls, till the slings slackened.

The
Queen
floated.

Jake’s breath whooshed out as though he’d
been holding it. “Come on, let’s go.” He jogged, tugging Rachel by
the hand out of her stupor. Jake leapt aboard and turned to help
her span the four-foot gap between the cement wall of the slip and
the boat.

“Hold up.” Rock Star hauled the
Queen
closer to the pier with her mooring line and held a hand out as if
Rachel were seventy-five and needed help boarding.

“Thanks.” She clattered aboard. Jake’s
orders rang in her ears before Rock Star’s sun-leathered fingers
let go.

The surrealism of Jake’s attention and the
Queen’s
out-of-water experience dissipated in a blur of
fenders flipping into place, ropes lofting from pier to ship, and
the motor burbling to life.

The
Queen
glided into the waterway,
majestic as her name.

Two hours later, Her Royal Highness nestled
into her slip beside Leaf’s
Escape,
shipshape topside and
below deck.

Rachel and Jake headed for the parking
lot.

Rachel scooted into the driver’s seat of her
car.

Jake plunked into the passenger seat and
shut the door on the cool, clear day. “I’m glad we won’t have to
haul the old girl again for another three years.”

Rachel pulled out of the parking lot. Jake’s
presence crowded into her personal space in the small car. A rubber
band of tension vibrated in her chest.

“I thought they’d drop her today. The belts
weren’t positioned in the same place as when they hauled her,” the
new, chatty Jake said. “Then, the spotter with the Fu-Man-Chu
stared at you as if you were the one who’d crack up on the asphalt
instead of the
Queen
.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Oblivious, just like I said.” Jake smirked,
shaking his head. “When we got out of the car at the boatyard,
didn’t you hear the guy ask why all the hot girls were off the
market?”

She braked at the stoplight on U.S. 1 and
shot him a
yeah-right
look.

He pinned her with his eyes, and the Escort
shrunk to a Smart Car. “Rae, you look like a freakin’ model.”

“That’s my mother.”

“That’s you.” He stared her down, melting
her like ice cream under a heat lamp.

The light turned green and she screeched
onto U.S. 1. She couldn’t deposit him at the boatyard fast enough.
She didn’t know how to deal with this weird Jake. When she finally
pulled in beside his car, she swallowed a sigh of relief. “Do you
need anything else before I go home?”

Jake leaned in till her breath stilled.
Humor and heat hopscotched in his eyes. “An invite to
Thanksgiving?”

She cranked down the window hoping for
oxygen. “Okay, sure. Four o’clock.”

Jake climbed out, and her pulse dipped
toward its normal cadence. In the distance, Rock Star drove the
empty Travel Lift between the dry storage building and the
pier.

Jake poked his head into the car, an arm
propped on the roof. “Rae.”

She swiveled toward the command in his
voice, and her eyes smacked into the intensity in his. Breath stuck
in her throat.

“I talked to Gabs, and I’m over her.”
Challenge radiated from his mahogany gaze.

Her heart thrummed, a basketball pounding
down court.

Possibility zinged between them close enough
to grab.

Before she could form words to respond, the
Explorer door opened. Closed. The engine fired and rumbled across
the boatyard cement and onto the street. Cool wind blew through her
window.

Maybe she could enjoy Jake’s rebound for
five weeks—a gallon of Starbucks Caffè Mocha, all the happiness she
deserved. Then, it would evaporate and she’d get the broken heart
she’d dished Bret’s wife. Wasn’t that how life worked?

Rachel’s hands shook as she jammed turquoise
and aquamarine studs from last Christmas into her earlobes. Jake
would meet her family in fifteen minutes and she stood in her bra
and panties beside a mound of discarded clothes on her bed.