The Reason I Stay (9 page)

According to Mr. Wolf—A.K.A. Tanie’s dad, and the principal at the local junior and high school—Mrs. Walters is the oldest teacher in the county, and was already enjoying her senior benefits when he started working at the high school twenty years ago. So Tanie’s degree in English Literature couldn’t have been more welcome to the old Mrs. Walters. Her degree couldn’t be more welcome to me, as well. For the past four years, I’ve missed living at a walking distance from my best friend like crazy.

“Lexington Amelia, you know better than to talk ‘bout an elder that way.” The voice of Jill Valentine comes from behind me. She’s the closest thing I have to a mother, and therefore, feels compelled to chastise me from time to time. However, I can tell she’s refraining from laughing.

I lift to my elbows, and turn to look at her. “C’mon, Gammy, you gonna tell me she wasn’t your teacher back when you were in school?”

Her lips flutter into a reluctant smile. “Doesn’t mean she’s been teaching for two hundred and fifty years. I ain’t that old, ya know?”

I laugh at her remark, and watch a couple of wet little girls running from the ocean in my direction. Immediately, I flop down to the sand and lay there very still with my eyes closed, trying to replicate the no-one-can-see-me thing Snow, my grumpy cat, does. Cold droplets of water splash against my exposed stomach, proving that the move is as useless to humans as it is to felines.

“Bras, what the bell?” Tanie yelps by my side.

I open my eyes to see what’s happening, but my view is obscured by the cutest seven year old on the planet. She’s standing over me, shaking her hair. Through the corner of my eyes I see the second cutest seven year old, pulling Tanie’s ankle and laughing as her sister continues to thrash her leg and yell at her.

“Whacha doing, Monkey?”

“Getting you used to the water temperature,” she tells me. “Gaddy doesn’t want to skip waves no more.”

“Anymore,” I correct.

I see her grandfather, Larry, dragging his feet toward us. A moment later his wife, Jill, speaks, loud enough so he can hear, “That’s what bein’ forty pounds overweight and chewin’ tobacco all day will do to ya.”

“I ain’t chewin’ now. And I ain’t fat; this is insulation for the winter time,” he hollers back, patting his protuberant tummy.

They live in a constant state of loving banter. I’ve known them my whole life, and although they are the happiest, most in-love couple I know, they also bicker more than any couple I’ve ever met.

“Time to play Ariel. C’mon.”

Knowing how futile it is to even attempt to fight those girls—they’ll annoy you until you do what they want—I remove my sunglasses and stand up from my sunbathing spot. Tanie, however, resists bravely to her sister’s pressure. When I call her, she pushes her sunglasses down the bridge of her nose, and gives me the death glare through those honey-colored eyes. I drop the subject immediately.

“Okay guys, we’re on our own today. Mermaid Montana has made a pact with Ursula to become human, so she’ll stay on the beach today. Let’s just hope Prince Eric comes along and kisses her so she won’t become one of those nasty seaweed things.”

I hold their hands, and we make our way to the shore. The entire walk both girls protest against me calling Tanie’s boyfriend, who’s actually named Eric, Prince Eric. According to them that would make Tanie Ariel, and that’s just wrong. After all, we all agreed a long time ago that the two of them would take turns being Ariel, while Tanie and I would be the two older sisters. We protested against the older part, but our substantial age difference can’t be ignored.

Of all the water games we have, Ariel is the one I like the most. It consists of basically making up mermaid stories, diving through waves with our ankles crossed as if they were fishtails, and letting our hair flow over the water. It’s quite relaxing, and on a warm day like today, the cold water is most welcome.

The monkey—A.K.A. Kodee—is today’s Ariel. As the princess, she got to pick the plot of the game. She’s rescued the prince from the evil sea witch, and in return he’ll take her to a ball, which means that as her sisters, Bras and I must show interest and help her get ready.

After one hour of fluffing Kodee’s hair over the waves, and discussing if her seashells are pretty, I’m chilling in the water and keeping my eyes on them while they dive repeatedly, when Kodee yells that the prince has arrived and is talking to the king. Bras claps her hands and yelps, and before I can even turn around towards the beach to see what is going on, the two girls are running to the shore, and I’m running after them.

I’m so worried their sloppy running will put them face first in the sand that it takes a while for me to see that the prince who’s talking to the king isn’t a figment of Kodee’s imagination. He is in fact a real man with shaggy blond hair, wearing dark blue swimming shorts and a white tee. He’s also sitting on my towel talking to Larry, Jill and Tanie, and not a prince at all.

In the words of Tanie . . . forking bell!

I can’t help but wonder what his deal is. Why does he keep showing up? Yesterday, when I told him off, I felt the weight of his nastiness during our first encounter lift from my shoulders. We’d gotten even, I drank his outrageous tip dry, and he was forever out of my life. Life was good again. However, now he is here, and getting all cozy with the people I consider family.
This is not fair.

I want to turn around, go back to the ocean and swim away until I reach South America, but then I see Kodee’s face light up with a smile that almost reaches her ears as she greets him by folding her tiny, wet arms around his neck to give him a hug.
A hug.
That may not seem like much, but although Kodee is nice and friendly to most people, she’s not the kind of kid to take up to strangers enough to hug them. In fact, the only people she actually hugs out of will are me, and my beach companions for the day. Everyone else, including her paternal grandparents and her own father, only get hugs when they demand them, which makes her reaction to
him
kind of crazy.

I trudge out of the water and reach them, just in time to see her speed talking again.

“I’m so happy you came. I was starting to think you weren’t gonna sleep here twice. And that would suck, and not only for you. It’d suck for me, because I forgot the play before I got to tell Bras. But now, you can show it to us, and it will be so much fun.”

She closes her eyes in one of her blurting-out-dizziness episodes, and opens her arms to her sides to try to steady herself.

“Dizzy again?” Much to my surprise,
his
chuckling voice overlaps mine, asking Kodee the same question.

I make the mistake of looking at him at the same time that his head slowly turns to look at me. Everything seems to be happening in slow motion as our eyes meet. The smile on his face vanishes. He appears to be just as speechless and uncomfortable with the whole situation as I am, but that doesn’t keep him from checking out my barely covered, wet body.

I almost clear my throat when his gaze lingers a bit too long on my pierced navel, tattooed right arm and magenta bikini-covered chest. When his eyes meet mine again, I have a raised brow waiting for him. He replies to it with a slight curl of his lips.

“Mathew,” Kodee calls in a demanding tone that makes both of us look at her. She’s eyeing us with unblinking eyes, a raised brow and a crooked smile. “Do you know my godmother, Lexie?”

I don’t let him answer. With a steady gaze focused on Kodee, I change the subject. “The real question is, how did you two meet, Monkey? And what’s with the befriending older men and not telling me? We’ve talked about this. You never know what kind of weirdoes you may run into.”

Perhaps my hostility towards Kodee’s new friend is too clear, because various pairs of eyes focus on me at the same time. Through the corner of my eye I can see a smirk forming on Tanie’s face.

“We met at Grandma Sally’s. He’s staying there, and he was alone and I was alone, so we talked. He’s not a weirdo, Lexie. He’s cool, but you’re being weird. And I did tell you about him,” Kodee replies in her annoyed tone with a quirked brow.

We stare at each other for a second, then she rolls her eyes and leans her head towards the ocean, indicating that the prince in her story was him . . . Mathew. I sigh in frustration, but she’s no longer looking at me. Her eyes are focused on
the prince
.

“So . . . how do you know Lexie?” She’s such a copy of her mother sometimes. It’s irritating.

I raise my hands in frustration, and let them fall back at my sides.

He clears his throat, and keeps his eyes fixed on Kodee. “I met her at the diner the other day.”

“So, you gone and found the diner alright?” Larry asks.

I look from Kodee to Larry, my eyes narrowing in confusion. Clueless as always, Larry doesn’t even acknowledge me. He just keeps smiling at Mathew, who nods. “I did. Thank you for recommending it, Larry. The food was great.”

I can’t believe that the source of my pain and suffering through this past two days is Larry Valentine.
The son of a bitch!

My heart is pounding and my breathing is heavy, but I only realize I’m glaring at Larry when he asks, “Whatcha looking at me like that for, child?”

All eyes, including Mathew’s, turn to me. If ever there were a time when I welcomed death in my life, this would be it.

I smooth my expression, and fill my lungs with the salty sea breeze. “Nothing, Gaddy. I just want a towel to dry off,” I say, trying to divert the attention from myself.

“I ain’t got no towel. I just have beers.” He pulls a bottle from the cooler. “You want one, son?”

Mathew kindly accepts the drink. “Is this towel yours? I could get up,” he softly asks me.

I consider saying that I’d definitely like for him to get up from my towel—and leave—but Jill produces another towel from her beach bag and hands it to me, saving me from having to direct my attention back to him.

“What made you stay here in Jolene? I remember you sayin’ you were just drivin’ through,” Larry asks.

Despite my interest in the question, I continue drying myself as I stare out over the ocean. Mathew takes a couple of seconds to reply, in which I steal glance at him. Like I’ve seen him do many times in the past two days, he runs a hand through his hair, tucking a lock behind his ear. It seems like a nervous thing, and as much as it pains me to admit it, it’s kind of cute. A reluctant smile makes its way to my lips.

“Mmm . . .” he starts, glancing quickly at me before returning his eyes to Larry. “I was just passing through, but something came up, and I had to stay a while longer to fix some things. Then I met Kodee and, well . . . here I am.”

“I sure hope it wasn’t nothing with your car? I reckon you ain’t gonna find replacements ‘round these parts.”

Mathew chuckles. The sound makes funny things happen to my gut and, once again, I’m forced to boss my body around against acting all funky around him. I wish he’d just go away, because I have the distinct impression that as long as he’s around, this will be a recurring problem, and it’s annoying and frustrating.

Amid his chuckles, Mathew explains, “No, Larry. All is well with Greta. The things I needed to fix are completely unrelated.”

He stares at me again, and it takes everything in me to even try to avoid his gaze. My cheeks heat up with an inconvenient blush—which I’ll blame on the scorching sun. In another attempt to look uninterested, I move to the umbrella behind Jill and Larry to hang my damp towel. Those blue eyes follow me.

“Have you fixed it?”

The inappropriate question comes from my so-called best friend, and to most people, the tone she uses may seem unimportant. However, I know that high pitched tone well, and nothing good ever follows it. I raise a brow at her, warning her against speaking again, but she doesn’t even look at me. She’s too busy looking expectantly at Mathew.

He shakes his head, and takes a long swing of his beer. I’m once again at the diner, looking pathetically, entranced by
those
lips clasped around the bottle.
I wonder how they’d feel clasped around my lips.
That thought is flowed by a mental bitch-slap.

“I tried, but I suck at fixing things. Or so I’ve been told.”

A grin the size of Texas spreads across Tanie’s lips as she looks from him to me.
Bitch!

My face turns scarlet, and I’m suddenly very happy that only Tanie and Mathew can see me. Both are aware of the reason behind my blush, and though that’s not really comforting, it saves me explaining something I don’t even want to acknowledge.

Mathew traces patterns through the sand on either side of his bent legs in a mindless, nervous sort of way, while his left foot flicks up and down over the sand. But just like mine do to him, his eyes keep coming back to my face. Jill’s voice breaks the very awkward moment between us. “Well, we’re good at fixing things, son. Just let us know if you need help.”

Tanie’s shoulders shake the tiniest bit. It makes me want to kick sand at her while digging a hole to burry myself.

Mathew smiles, and nods. “Thank you, Jill. I’ll keep that in mind. Meanwhile, there’s one thing I don’t suck at, and that’s soccer.” His eyes move from me to Kodee, and his smile widens. “So how about we go play a little?” The question is directed to the two little girls, who jump up from the sand as if it’s on fire.