The Carrier (The Carrier Series Book 1) (11 page)

No matter how confused and scared I felt only
an hour earlier, I couldn’t deny the feeling I had while wrapped up carefully
in Nolan’s arms. Maybe we all had a few skeletons in our closets. I’m sure to
come with a little baggage too. If I was truly honest with myself, I don’t
think I told Nolan everything about my last relationship and how scared I was
to love someone again. He was willing to take whatever I wanted to give him in
this relationship, and I should be happy to take what he had to offer me. So
with that, I very happily spent the rest of the night by my man’s side.

Nolan and I continued to date through the next
several weeks. I was able to basically put the discovery of the briefcase out
of my mind, although I noticed that the black box stayed right underneath his
bed, and it seemed to be staring at me every time I was at the cabin. We spent
almost every evening together and many nights, we hung out in his cabin
watching old movies and playing board games. It was so simple, yet so perfect.

The other evenings were spent doing very
traditional Dells tourist activities. I took him to the famous Tommy Bartlett
Ski Sky and Stage extravaganza, we saw the magic show, danced in the street to
a live band playing downtown, tried out many of the mini-golf courses, hit the
movie theater, tasted fare at the farmer’s market, and even got an Old Time
Photo taken. I was wearing a flapper outfit and he wore a gangster suit. He
held a bottle of whisky, and I got to hold a fake gun. It was all so much fun!
I felt so comfortable with myself around him, and we seemed to complement each
other so well.

As August came into view, Nolan had given me no
other reason not to trust him, so I quit worrying about the briefcase, and I
concentrated on enjoying the time I had to spend with Nolan.

I realized I had been so focused on Nolan that
I hadn’t checked in with
Kasie
in a while. I called
several times on different days and it always went to voicemail. I sent a text,
which went unanswered for a few days until I finally got a reply:

Sorry girl! No time to
talk! Had to take another shift at the pool and got a night job waitressing
downtown. Maybe I’ll be able to pay for next semester now.

I was pretty sure that was her way of asking if
my grades were okay, but I didn’t give her the bad news.
Good for you! But d
on’t work
yourself into the ground,
I replied.

There was so much I hadn’t talked to
Kasie
about. Come to think of it, most of the summer flew
by and I didn’t mention that Nolan and I were even dating. I decided to hold
off that information until I was able to tell her in person; plus summer was
more than half over, and although I didn’t like it, I was pretty sure my time
with Nolan was limited. Even though it was constantly on my mind, that was one
thing we never really talked about—what was going to happen when I had to go
back to school? Would Nolan be ready for a long-distance relationship?
Because I certainly didn’t want to end things soon.
Would he
be willing to relocate to Stevens Point? There seemed to be nothing keeping him
here in this area of Wisconsin.

Part of me wanted so desperately to bring the
subject up, but at the same time, I couldn’t find the guts within me to do it.
What if he wanted to end the whole relationship right then and there? I didn’t
know if I could handle hearing those words. I wanted to squeeze out as many days
of bliss as I could before I inevitably had to face the music at the end of the
month. But part of me was wondering—wasn’t he thinking the same thing? Maybe he
felt like I did and just didn’t know the answer.

One night we fell asleep cuddling together on
his bed in the cabin, and when I woke up, it was two in the morning. I thought
the end of my life was near as I sprinted through the yards separating Animal
Island from my parents’ house. My mother had thankfully fallen asleep waiting
for me in the Lazy Boy in the living room. I was able to sneak in the front
door, quietly ascend the stairs, change into pajamas, and climb into bed
without her waking up. The next morning, I smoothed everything over by telling
her we’d had a conversation at 12:30 when I got home, but she must have been
out of it since she couldn’t remember.

Things at work were certainly picking up. Jack
and I were selling a lot of tour books and making some good money. Jack’s
tricks were getting more complicated—fake poop on the floor, balloons flying
out of the back closet, the good
ol
’ whoopee cushion
trick, and many others. One time he even tried the paper on the window trick
again. Although this time he had written, “There’s a bomb on the boat!” and
before I could even read the paper, it flew off the window and tumbled into the
crowd.

 “Oh crap!” I heard Jack say from
downstairs. Then his head appeared in the hatch. “Get that paper!
NOW!”

I turned around to find it had stuck to a
middle-aged lady’s face and she pulled the paper off with disgust. I giggled a
little under my breath and then apologized and asked for the paper. Before she
could hand it over to me, her husband read the message, and he stood up
yelling, “There’s a bomb on the boat!” Panic ensued as many passengers tried to
file down the aisle.

I just about screamed over the microphone:
“Stop! Stop! Please return to your seat!” Then I
calmed
my voice down a bit and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I assure you we are in no
danger! Please sit down, and I will explain!” Many of the passengers settled
down and returned to their seats, but a few had escaped down the back stairs
and were contemplating jumping out the gate on the back deck.
“Ladies and gentlemen.
Please, return to your seats
immediately. You see, Captain Jack is a bit of a jokester and tries to make me
laugh every day. This is one of his pranks, obviously gone wrong. I assure you
we are in no danger.”

I sang an extra song for the crowd that tour
and put on the most charming personality I could muster up. I wasn’t trying to
sell extra books, but simply making sure they were happy and not ready to
report this to Darren. We got
gotched
again, but
this time we knew it was of our own doing. We actually had a good laugh about
it after the tour.

Jack was in the best of moods as his new
relationship seemed to be going about as smoothly as mine was. One day he
invited her on one of our trips. Natalie joined him in the quest to make me
laugh during our tour. I was up on the top deck of the boat, and when I came
down, she was sitting in the front row wearing a bright orange life jacket and
pretending to brush her teeth with a wire brush we used for cleaning. It rated
mild on the joke scale, but I was thrilled that she was joining in on the fun.
Natalie was great, and I was so happy for Jack. It was really starting to feel
like love was in the air down at the Lower Dells this summer.

But as August came to a close, our future was
sitting in the back of my mind. I contemplated not returning to college, but I
knew my parents would be disappointed, and I knew I should probably give it
another year. It was less than a week before I had to go off to school again,
and Nolan had no plans to report of. I wondered why he couldn’t simply make a
decision about what he wanted to do with his life. It was frustrating me beyond
belief. He was twenty years old, for goodness sake. A few times I researched
jobs and college programs in the Stevens Point area and tried to share the
websites with him. He was very good at changing the subject and never really looking
into any of my suggestions.

One day during the last week before school
started again, I went up to Lower Two after my first tour to say hi to Nolan. I
knew the second I entered the door that something was horribly wrong. His posture
was off and he looked incredibly nervous.

My lungs felt like they had collapsed in my
chest. “Hey, honey, are you okay?” I went over to him and put my hands around
his waist. He kissed my forehead and then pulled away. It was a courtesy kiss.

He looked deep into my eyes as if he was trying
to see right into my brain. “I’m good now. When are you off tonight?” But his
voice was all wrong; something wobbled behind his voice box. Why were his eyes
red and glossed over?

“We’re the first boat today. Our last trip’s at
5:15.” I grabbed his hand. Something was definitely not right.

He moved in for a hug and whispered in my ear.
I could barely hear him. “We can’t talk here but you need to trust me when I
say this...” But a middle-aged couple with some loud kids walked up to the
booth at that moment and he quickly pulled away from me.

What? What was he saying? Nothing was making
sense.

When the family left he said, “Can you come
over when you are done with work? I’ve got...ah, something planned.” He smiled
but it wasn’t the genuine smile I was used to. He was definitely covering,
afraid to say what he needed to say.

He pulled me in again. “I can’t wait for this
day to go by.” Then he kissed my forehead once more before some more customers
approached the window. I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

The day ticked by so slowly, and it seemed that
every time I went up to talk with Nolan, he looked more and more sick. He was
continuously swamped with customers all day and we didn’t get to talk at all. I
just needed a sign that everything was okay but I got nothing from him except a
strange foreshadowing that heartache was right around the corner.

My heart felt like it was in overdrive all day,
and by the time my last tour had finished, I was exhausted. I swept the boat in
record speed, paid Jack for his share of the books sales, and then sprinted
down the dock and up the stairs to street level. When I glanced back at Lower
Two, I saw that it was closed up. I waved bye to Brian as I ran past Lower One
and down the sidewalk to the parking lot.

I didn’t even stop at home to change. I drove
directly to Animal Island and parked next to Nolan’s cabin. His car wasn’t
there. I went up to the door and knocked and yelled for him, but there was no
answer. The cabin was locked, and when I pressed my ear to the door, I didn’t
hear a sound. I didn’t know what to do, so I walked around the back of the
cabin, and that’s when I noticed the window right next to his bed was broken. I
examined it and saw blood and tiny pieces of flesh stuck to the shards of
glass.

I stood there stunned, confused, and panicked.
Who was this man and what was going on? My body didn’t know what to do except
drop to my knees and cry. I put my head in my hands and let the tears flow
through my fingers and onto the
unmown
grass.

The briefcase! I should have confronted him!

It was almost fifteen minutes before Nolan
found me. “Ava? What’s wrong? Are you alright?” He knelt down on the grass
beside me and put his arms around my back. I wanted to throw them off me, but
instead I let his arms pull me into his chest, and I melted into his body. He
smelled so wonderfully, and his touch made me feel so safe. A million emotions
flooded my heart. I was so scared, yet so in love with this man. I sat up and
tried to look at him through watery eyes.

“Please, sweet Ava, tell me, are you hurt?” He
brushed a flyaway piece of hair from my nose and held my face in his hands. I
looked up at his eyes and saw they were filled with tears as well, and his left
eye was all bruised and bloodshot. He kissed me hard and sweet. I gave into
him, kissing him back with all my emotions, tears still streaming down my
cheeks. Then, suddenly, he picked me up in his arms and carried me to the front
of his cabin. He placed me in the front seat of his car, got in, and peeled
away from Animal Island, spraying gravel everywhere.

He didn’t say a word as he sped down Minnesota
Avenue past the post office and around the back of the swimming pool. I quietly
sobbed as the summer sun was setting beneath the trees. He parked next to the
baseball fields. Make Out Rock. He was taking me to the site of our first kiss.
He shut off the ignition but stayed in the car, staring out the windshield with
anger and frustration splashed across his face.

“I don’t want this to end. This
has
to
end.” It was like two people were fighting in his head.

I didn’t know what he meant. Was he breaking up
with me?

“I don’t want this to end either.” I reached
for his hand, but he jerked it away. None of it added up. If he could just tell
me what was going on...

He dropped his head into his hands and mumbled
something I couldn’t make out. Then he lifted his head and screamed to the
ceiling of the car, “I just can’t do it!”

“What?” I screamed back. This was it. This was
the end. My heart cracked into a thousand pieces. What had I done to bruise
this relationship?

Then he completely changed demeanor, like he
had found the answer in his head. He leaned over and whispered to me, “Say nothing.
Let’s get out of here.” He opened the car door, and I followed his
instructions. He impatiently waited for me to come around the front of the car,
and then he grabbed my hand and held on tightly. He pulled me until we were
running towards Make
Out
Rock.

A train’s loud horn rang out down the tracks
several hundred yards away. “Perfect,” he said. We jumped over the train tracks
and ran the deep path until we were at the rock cliff. I turned to see the
train speed by right as he grabbed me firmly by the shoulders and turned to
look me straight in the eye.

His face was within inches of mine. “I don’t
have much time.” The train was so loud he was yelling.

“What is going on? Tell me right now!” I
screamed between sobs. “Nolan, I love you. You can tell me anything!” I willed
his eyes to speak to me; they were flooded with tears again. The train wailed
behind us.