The Only Exception (8 page)

“Mom, I’m okay,” I cut her off. “I’m fine. I’m in the hospital watching a movie with a friend. They took the IV out and my knee really doesn’t hurt that bad right now.”

“Mac?” she inquires.

“No, Mac’s coming later I think,” I reply. “It’s Sawyer, the boy I told you about.”

“The one who’s an idiot? Or the twenty year old?”

“The one that’s my age,” I answer.

“Oh, so he’s not an idiot any more?” she prods.

“Mom, it’s complicated,” I reply. Just like the rest of my life.

“Well, have fun sweetheart,” she sighs. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I echo. “Bye.” I hang up and decide to call my dad, as Sawyer isn’t back yet.

“Hello?”

“Hey Dad.”

“Hey, sweetheart! What happened? Your grandparents said you fell off a roof?”

“Yeah, I’m okay though,” I assure. “Sally Emerson dared me to walk the ridgepole of my friend Sawyer’s garage, which I did, then twisted my leg funny at the edge and fell off. I hit my knee on the way down.”

“Ouch. Feel better kiddo. At least you got the competitions out of the way before this happened. Let me know if you need anything,” he instructs. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” I echo as Sawyer reenters the room, thinking of regionals. “Bye.”

“One Dr. Pepper,” he says, handing me the bottle of soda and taking his place beside me, hitting play and placing his arm around me again.

Okay. Maybe he isn’t such a jerkface after all.

Thirteen

I wake up warm and cozy, still wrapped in Sawyer’s arms. I’m not quite sure when I fell asleep, but I must’ve been more exhausted than I thought. I almost never fall asleep during movies. I yawn and move my head back just slightly to look up at Sawyer. “Hi.”

“Hey, you’re awake,” he says happily. “Mac texted you to see when she could come and I texted her back that she could come when you woke up.”

“Thanks,” I respond. “And thanks for letting me sleep. I needed that.”

“No problem,” he replies. “I’d better go. Training for regionals.”

“Have fun,” I quip. He gets up to leave when I remember the sweater. “Oh, don’t forget your sweater.”

“Keep it,” he says. “I hardly ever wear it anyway, and it looks good on you.” I smile, twisting the ends of the too-long sleeves around my hands.

“Thanks,” I reply, smiling. He smiles back and leaves.

A few minutes later, McKayla arrives and gives me a hug. She sniffs around me. “That’s not your sweater,” she states, pulling back and pointing at it. “It wasn’t in your closet yesterday and it smells like cologne. Who’s is it?”

“Oh, it’s Sawyer’s,” I tell her. “I was cold earlier and he went out to get this from his car for me.” She laughs and makes the face that reminds me of the one she made when she wouldn’t tell me what she was giggling about at Junior Champs. “What?” I demand. “What are you so crazy about?”

“Can’t you see it?” she inquires. “You and Sawyer.”

“What about Sawyer and I?” I ask.

“You like each other!” she exclaims.

“What?! I don’t like him, not like that!” I defend.

“Well, he likes you,” she comes back. She sits down on the edge of the bed. “You can’t tell me you don’t like him.”

“I don’t!” I repeat.

“Unbelievable,” she laughs. “He’s your very own, real life Mr. Darcy and you don’t even know it.” I open my mouth to retort but nothing comes out.

We move on and have a fun time hanging out together, but I can’t get what she said off my mind. I still can’t get it off my mind three days later when I’ve been released from the hospital. My grandmother stands at the kitchen counter making sourdough bread, having just watched
Pride and Prejudice
again
with me. I sit at the kitchen table with my leg propped up on a few chairs and wrapped in ice, twisting the sleeves of Sawyer’s black sweater around my hands, pondering whether to ask my grandmother about it or not.

“Grammy?”

“Yes, sweetheart?” she replies, glancing up from her dough.

“Do you think anyone would ever fall in love with me?” I say tentatively. “Regardless of whether I wanted to fall in love or not.”

“Oh, most definitely,” she responds confidently.

“Why do you think so?” I inquire.

“My darling, you underestimate yourself. You are beautiful, kind, loving, sweet, smart and a good friend. You’re just the kind of girl a boy would fall head over heels for.” Her eyes flick down at my sweater and smiles as if she knows who I have in mind. I heave a sigh.

“I told McKayla I don’t like him, but I don’t know,” I say, looking down at my sleeves. “I don’t know how I feel about him. I like having him as a friend, and I like the feeling of being around him. I like…” Things keep coming to me, and it seems that now I’ve begun, I can’t stop. I shock myself with how much detail I can go into. I’ve paid more attention to him than I thought I did. “I like the way he smells, and the way he gets so worried about me, and the little tiny waves in his hair. I like how it feels when I’m wrapped up in his arms. I like playing movie trivia with him and how he’s so competitive. I like how much his eyes remind me of the sea. But at the same time, I’m scared.”

“Andrea, you don’t need to be scared,” she advises, smiling. “You need to be cautious. When you aren’t careful is when you get hurt. When you are scared, though, it could hurt you even worse. My advice, sweet girl, is to be cautious, but listen to your heart as well as your head.”

Two weeks later, I’m standing on crutches on the Hensleys’ porch for the eighth time since my knee injury. Sawyer has made it a point to help me not be bored out of my mind, so either he’s come over to my house or I’ve gone over to his house almost every day since I was released. Melissa, as she has told me to call her, opens the door with a smile and helps me in. Sawyer is kneeling down by the large DVD cabinet underneath the TV mounted on the wall and must hear my crutches on the wood floor. “
Spiderman
or
Captain America
?” he inquires.

“Ooh, tough,” I say, pondering the choice. I think about it as I situate myself on the couch. “
Spiderman
. I’m in an Andrew Garfield/Emma Stone kind of mood.”

“You read my mind,” he agrees, popping the disc in the player and coming to help me get comfortable. He kneels down and pulls the ottoman a little closer for me to prop my feet up on, then helps me finish wrapping an ice pack around the joint and strapping it down with Ace bandages.

Peter Parker becomes Spider Man, falls in love with Gwen Stacey and saves New York City all in two hours and then, instead of engaging me in some debate about the movie as he usually does, we sit in silence. He’s reading the back of the DVD case and I have begun playing with the hem of my t-shirt. My eyes have gone out of focus (“staring into space,” as my dad would call it).

“How long have you had your board?” Sawyer asks out of the blue.

“The one here? About three years,” I reply. “I have a newer longboard at my Dad’s house, though.” He nods.

“Do you want to make a new one?” he inquires, smiling and eyebrows raised. I look at him quizzically.

We manage to get up and hobble outside. Sawyer leads me inside what looks like a big shed, but upon entering, I discover it’s a workshop. It smells like wood and foam and the workbenches that encircle the room are covered in power tools, some typical things like drills and cutters and others like I’ve never seen before.

He sets a piece of foam with a strip of wood called a stringer running down the middle on the work table beside me and grabs two pairs of goggles, handing one to me. I lean my crutches against the wall and try to work without them, like the doctor told me to start trying to do.

“That’s called a blank. It’s the foundation of the board,” he defines, pointing at the foam. “How long to you want the board to be?”

“5’ 10”,” I reply. “The one I have is six feet, but I’m used to working a five foot snowboard, so a few inches off might improve it a little.”

“Okay, so the first thing we’ll do is get a template,” he begins, dashing into another room. He returns with a sheet of plywood in the shape of a 5’ 10” board and lays the blank down on the wooden workhorse in the center of the room.

After laying the template on top of the blank, he traces the template carefully on both the front and back and cuts the foam. Then, he cuts a thin layer of foam off the deck (the top) to make it smooth, doing the same to the bottom. “Come here,” he instructs. He takes my hands in his and wraps my fingers around the handles of the carving tool. “Just gently shave down the blank until you have the rails you want. Like this.” He helps me drag the tool across the edges of the board, perfectly curving the edges.

“Now use this to shape the board,” he tells me, holding up a piece of steel. “It’s a steel mesh. It gives you the smooth, perfect curve you want.” He lets me try it by myself for a moment, then trades me and goes to work on it. I love watching him work. He looks like he does in the water: driven and focused, but with the edges of his mouth hinting at a smile. The muscles of his arms stand out as he drags the mesh across the board.

He turns the blank over and shapes the bottom, then lays a cloth over it, trimming and cutting the cloth to fold it over the rails. After the fabric is folded correctly, he has me mix and pour a bucket of resin over both the board and cloth. Quickly, he squeegees the board in an infinity symbol pattern to smooth it out. “It’ll have to set for about a day,” he says, putting his goggles down and taking mine. “Want to come over again to work on it tomorrow?”

“I’d love to,” I reply. “You’re really good at that.”

“Oh, thanks,” he says, smiling. “I started making my own boards with my dad when I was about ten.”

“Pretty nice skill to have,” I laugh.

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” he agrees. He retrieves my crutches and carries them back to the house as I try to walk. I stumble a little bit, and he slips his hand into mine, helping me to walk through the house and out front to the Jeep. He helps me in and drives me home.

The next three days, I go over to his house to work on the board. On the fourth and last day of building the board, I decide to skip the crutches all together. Sawyer said to wait until later this afternoon to come over. Around two in the afternoon, Papaw strides into the living room with a triumphant look on his face. “Well, girls, I finally did it,” he announces. “I finally fixed up old Gertrude.”

“She runs?!” I exclaim. He nods.

“Just took her out for the first time in ten years,” he replies. My grandmother rolls her eyes, but smiles in spite of herself.

Gertrude is the bike my grandpa has had forever. Before my grandparents were dating, my grandmother said that bike was his girlfriend. She came up with the name Gertrude and it stuck. Gertrude died when I was eight and Papaw has tried to fix her ever since, even though he has another bike that he actually rides and lets me ride when I’m here. Between training for competition and my knee injury, I haven’t taken a ride all summer.

“Want to take her for a spin?” he inquires. My eyes widen as I grin and nod.

“Annie, really? A motorcycle?” Grammy interjects. “Is this really a good idea?”

“Grammy, the therapist said I can ride a bike with my knee,” I comfort. “I don’t even have to pedal a motorcycle. I’ll be fine.”

“Alright,” she consents, throwing her hands up as if she knows there’s nothing she can do about it.

“Let’s go!” Papaw cries. I follow him out to the garage and take the helmet he gives me. After putting it on, I heave my right leg over the bike and turn the key. The engine roars to life and Papaw grins. I flip up kickstand and ride down the driveway, zooming around the block. The wind on my face, I feel like I could just keep going forever. Upon pulling back into the driveway, I check my phone. Sawyer has texted me, saying it’s okay to come over now.

“Hey, can you take me to Sawyer’s?” I ask Papaw.

“Why don’t you just take the bike?” he suggests.

“Really?”

“Yeah, you were riding perfectly fine out there.” I kiss his cheek and “run” (more like speed walk) into the kitchen to grab my bag.

“I’m going to Sawyer’s,” I inform Grammy, giving her a kiss on the cheek too.

“Okay, have fun,” she replies.

I put my helmet back on and mount the bike again, kicking the kickstand and taking off. About ten minutes later, I pull up in front of Sawyer’s house. “So you’re a biker girl now, are you?” Sawyer greets, leaning against the doorframe. “I didn’t know that.” I laugh.

“I’ve always been a biker girl,” I reply with a coy smile. “And you don’t know everything about me.”

“Come on, your board’s dry, we just have to sand it and add the leash,” he bids. I follow him out back and follow his instruction in the workshop, sanding the board down and adding a long black leash. An hour or two later, we’re done and the board looks fantastic.

“Thank you,” I say gratefully. “It’s gorgeous.”

“No problem. It has to sit for three days, though before you can use it,” he replies. “So seriously, when did you get a motorcycle?”

“My grandpa has had that old thing since before he and my grandmother were even dating,” I laugh. “However, it died about ten years ago and he got it running today.”

“I’ve always wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle,” he says wistfully.

“Do you want to try?” I inquire, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t have a helmet, though,” he points out.

“Give me twenty minutes,” I reply. I put on my own helmet and race off to my house, grabbing an extra helmet out of the garage and racing back.

“Here,” I say, handing him the helmet when I’m back in his driveway. He fastens it on and climbs on the bike behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere.”

“Hold on tight.”

Fourteen

The two of us drive around the island, taking in the scenery, until Sawyer says “here. Stop here.” I pull over to the beach spot he’s point to and park the bike, letting him off first. I swing my leg over, pull my helmet off and shake out my hair.

“Why here?” I inquire curiously as he takes off his backpack. I didn’t notice the bag before: a large, black, L. L. Bean backpack.

“I figured we’d have a little change of scenery for dinner,” he answers coyly with a smile. I smile back and roll my eyes.

It turns out, he can do a lot in twenty minutes. He’s made two sandwiches, brought a bag of chips, a Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew. He’s also managed to snag a few of his mom’s chocolate chip cookies which are quite possibly the closest thing to heaven on earth achievable. I don’t know why or how, but they just are.

“So,” he begins, once we’re seated on the sand and eating our sandwiches. “You’re right. I don’t know anything about you. I feel like I know nothing about you other than you surf and I know your favorite movies.”

“Same. Favorite color, go,” I start, taking a sip of my soda.

“Blue,” he replies. “You?”

“Teal. When’s your birthday?”

“July tenth.”

“Mine’s August sixteenth. Favorite surf spot?”

“Pipeline.”

“Mine’s Mavericks,” I reply, taking a big bite of my chicken salad sandwich (also a Melissa Hensley creation).

Sawyer pauses, chewing and thinking, then decides “It’s because you’re absolutely nuts.”

“I am not!” I push his shoulder as he laughs.

“What’s the one thing you wanted most for Christmas as a kid?” he asks.

“A puppy. Hands down. Still want one, actually. You?”

“I always wanted one of those gigantic automatic Nerf guns. I got it when I was ten,” he laughs. “Favorite book?”

“That is like asking a mother to choose her favorite child.”

“Fine, top five books or series.”

“
Three Hours Too Soon
,
Pride and Prejudice
, the
Harry Potter
series, the
Anne of Green Gables
series and the
Traveler’s Gift
and sequel,
The Final Summit
,” I finally reply.

“
Three Hours Too Soon, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, The Outsiders,
and I actually really like
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Favorite music artists?”

“Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, One Direction, Eric Clapton and Sting. Other than that, it’s a lot of different songs by different bands.”

“Sting is pretty great,” he agrees. “I like the rest of them too. My favorites, though, are U2 and Eric Clapton. Other than that, like you said, a lot of different songs by different bands.”

“Like what?”

“Here,” he replies, hitting shuffle on his phone. “Tonight Tonight” by Hot Chelle Rae comes on and I laugh.

“You like this song too? My friends tease me all the time for still being into this song,” I laugh.

“Heck yeah! It’s a good song!” he agrees. He starts to lip-sync along, which makes me laugh even harder. “What I Like About You” comes on next, to which he gets up plays air guitar. To my protesting, he pulls me to my feet and tries to get me to dance. “Please?” he begs, making puppy dog eyes and a pouty lip.

“No, I’m a terrible dancer,” I counter.

“And I’m good?!” he exclaims. I roll my eyes and get up for the rest of the song. We laugh and dance ridiculously, lip-syncing and playing air guitar all the while. After it’s over, “The Only Exception” by Paramore comes on, making my smile disappear a little. “What’s the matter?” Sawyer asks, noticing. “I thought you liked this song.”

“Nothing,” I reply, smiling again. “And I do.” He holds out his hand to me. I was afraid he’d do that.

“May I have this dance?” he inquires. I hesitate, then take his hand. He brings it up and lays it on his shoulder, along with the other and sets his own hands on my waist. My heart rate accelerates to a million miles per minute as he gazes into my eyes.

I laugh nervously. “I’ve never actually danced with a guy before,” I confess.

“Really?” I nod. “I can’t imagine why.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re amazing.” The words make the heat rise in my cheeks. He continues to stare into my eyes and goes on. “You’re beautiful and smart and funny. You’ve got fantastic taste in movies, music and books.” I laugh. “You. Are. Amazing.”

“You’re not too bad yourself,” I laugh. He smiles warmly and stares into my eyes again. Suddenly, he’s leaning in closer to me and I realize he’s about to kiss me. I take my hands off his shoulders and turn around. “I think we should, um, go.”

“Oh.” I can’t see his face right now, and I’m glad I can’t. His voice alone is enough to almost make me cry out of sympathy. “Alright.”

I strap on my helmet as he packs up his backpack and mounts the bike behind me. At his house, he gets off without a word. Not even a goodbye. I watch the door shut behind him, then hit the gas and blaze down the street.

I drive home, park the bike and run inside to throw myself on my bed without greeting anyone. I must’ve slammed the door without noticing, though, because a moment later, I feel the bed sink down beside me and a gentle hand begin to rub my back. A waterfall of silent tears trail down my face. “Grammy,” I whimper.

“I’m here, sweetheart.”

“Why’d he have to go and do that?” I ask, trying to be angry, but it comes out sad. I shift to face her.

“What did he do?” she asks gently.

“He tried,” I sniff. “He tried to kiss me. We were having a fine time until he asked me to dance and then he tried to kiss me!”

“What did you do?”

“I stopped dancing with him and said ‘I think we should go.’” She closes her eyes as if pained by this answer. “Why’d he have to ruin it?! We were finally getting along, when he just, he, he had to go and ruin it!”

After a short pause, she answers “Because he loves you.”

“What?” I ask, disbelieving, sitting up.

“He loves you,” she repeats. I shake my head.

“He can’t,” I protest.

“He does.”

I fold my arms together and sit there, unwilling to believe it. “Just think about it,” Grammy says, laying a black sweater around my shoulders before she leaves.

I pull the sweater off and toss it on the floor, as I am already verging on overheated. About to turn around and go sit outside, I stop short at the sight of the black mass of fabric, all balled up on the ground. I turn around again and pick it up. It’s his. The one he gave me at the hospital.

Memories start to flood back to me. He wasn’t able to sleep after I got hurt. He was worried about me when Sally dared me. He spent tons of time with me, keeping me from getting bored with my injury. He built me a new board. He danced with me. He tried to kiss me.

He loves me.