Break My Fall (No Limits) (4 page)

I’m normally not one to pry into someone’s life, but he had pretty much invited it by revea
ling all that he had, so I pried. “Don’t you have to work to survive? Or, I mean, to
live
?”

“I work for myself.”

“Doing what?”

“
Maybe if you’re lucky I’ll show you sometime.”

I finished off the last of my tea, taking a piece of ice into my mouth. Sometimes I crunch ice when I’m nervous. I wasn’t nervous with Drew anymore, though. I think I was just doing it out of habit. “Oh, so mysterious.”

“Something like that.” He was serious.

All of this was only making me more and more curious about him, and I have to admit there was a part of me that resented myself for it.

I said, “Sounds like you’ve really thought all this through.”

He nodded. “Yep.”

“But what does any of that have to do with me?”

He picked up his hat and
held it over the empty plate, wringing it out. There wasn’t very much water in it, just enough to make a little puddle on the plate. He put the hat on, pulled it down just enough to where I could still see his eyes. He finally answered, and it wasn’t what I expected at all.

“You’re the first girl I’ve ever seen surfing around here. I mean really surfing, not just messing around. That interested me. That’s why I talked to you those times.
Because you were different. Like me. You’re a risk-taker, but something’s holding you back. Something happened to you. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you mostly keep to yourself. That’s why you have those walls up.”

I felt my eyes narrowing in anger. I didn’t like this at all. Everything he was saying was true.
And it pissed me off. I slid off the seat and stood. “I have to go.”

I started walking toward the door
and I had just picked up my surfboard when he said, “Leah, wait. I’m sorry.”

I turned around.

He got up and moved toward me. “It’s raining like crazy, it’s still windy. At least let me drive you home.”

I looked out the window and saw that it was still quite blustery. Walking home with this surfboard wouldn’t have been much fun. And it was only a short distance, which meant I wouldn’t have to put up with him for long.
I pushed the door open and started to walk out. “Okay. But stop psychoanalyzing me.”

He held
the door open for me. “Done.”

Chapter Four

I hadn’t planned on saying much beyond giving him directions to where I was staying, but after seeing what he drove, I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you sure this thing will make it?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

I had never seen a truck like this in real life, only in the movies and on TV, and only when the setting was the 1950s.

Once we were seated, he said, “This is a classic.” He turned the key and the engine roared to life.

Good. A loud engine meant no conversation.

As we pulled down Ocean Boulevard, I was concentrating on how hard the rain was hitting the windshield and how Drew had been right—it would have been terrible walking home in this weather.

I started to tell him to turn left at the stop sign, but he was already making the turn, rounding the corner without stopping.

He looked over at me. “Don’t worry. I made sure there were no cops around.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye, baffled by his peculiar behavior.

We were pulling up to the street where I lived and before I could say anything, Drew made that turn as well.

“You know where I live,” I said flatly, growing a little concerned. Was he some kind of stalker? Had he followed me home after one of our previous encounters?

“I do,”
he said, and slowed down to turn into the driveway, passing the main house and going all the way down the long driveway to the carriage house I rented. He stopped the car and said, “My grandparents live here. They’re your landlords.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

Drew chuckled. “Sorry.”

“It’s really not funny.”

The smile dropped from his face. “You’re right. I need to check on them anyway. Come in with me.”

“How long have you known that I live
here?”

“Since you moved in
. I’m not here a lot, but I make sure to check on them a couple times a week. This is my grandfather’s truck, by the way. I just use it sometimes. Usually, I’m on my bike.”

I looked through the windshield, up at my little apartment. I thought back to the day on the beach when he said he knew I was new in town and when I asked how he knew, he said he had an ability to spot new people. “This is how you knew I wasn’t from here.”

He released his seatbelt. “Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you just say so then?”

He opened the door and started to swing his legs out. “I like to keep things interesting.”

I didn’t say anything.
Instead, my thoughts went to wondering how I hadn’t seen him around here, and realized it wasn’t that strange. The carriage house was near the back of the Russells’ property, the two separated by an expanse of lawn occupied by a few palm trees and one giant weeping willow. I came and went as I pleased. Mrs. Russell never came to my little apartment and I had only been inside their house a few times. So it made sense that I’d never seen him.

The storm seemed to be letting up, and it was just before nightfall so I was looking forward to a shower and relaxing for the rest of the night.
The power hadn’t gone out, which meant I’d have Wi-Fi, and that meant I had a date with Netflix.

I suppose
d a little diversion into the Russells’ home wouldn’t be so bad. They had always been nice to me, and I figured it would be polite to check on them with Drew.

I followed Drew to their house. He knocked and a moment later, his grandmother opened the door
. “Have you been out in this storm?”

“I was earlier
, but things got a little rough,” he said, stepping into the house and kissing her on the cheek.

Mrs. Russell put her hand on my shoulder and looked at Drew. “I see you’ve met Leah.”

Drew nodded.

I smiled, wondering why she hadn’t mentioned anything about having a grandson who lived nearby. As chatty as she’d been each time I’d been around her, I was surprised it hadn’t come up. She probably had her reasons. Maybe I’d find out at some point.

“Would you two like some soup?” she asked, her eyes moving from Drew’s face to mine.

“No
, thanks,” I said. “I think I’m going to get cleaned up and stay in for the night.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Russell
looked a little disappointed. “I made plenty of clam chowder and it would be a shame if it went to waste.”

“Maybe if y
ou have some leftover tomorrow,” Drew said.

Mr
s. Russell looked at her grandson. “Clam chowder’s no good the next day, sweetie,” she said. “But I won’t force it on you.”

“Thanks.” Drew
peered down the hallway. “I guess you guys are doing okay. I was just stopping by to make sure.”

“We’re fine,” Mrs. Russell said.

“And Grandpa?”

She frowned. “Sleeping, as usual. I tried to get him to play cards earlier, but he wasn’t having any of it. When he gets grumpy, I’m glad all he wants to do is sleep.”

I didn’t know very much about Mr. Russell, other than the fact that he had Alzheimer’s, a fact Mrs. Russell had shared with me when I moved in. I’d assumed she was her husband’s one and only caretaker. Now I realized Drew was also involved in caring for him.

Drew hugged his grandmother again. “I’m going to head home. If you need anything, call me.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” she said. “You, too, Leah. I appreciate it.”

We stepped out onto the porch. Drew looked up at the sky. “
Looks like the storm’s finally dying down. We dodged a bullet again.”

Mr
s. Russell looked at him. “Drew, she’s from Florida. She knows all about tropical storms and hurricanes.” She looked at me. “Heck, that’s reason enough not to go back, I reckon.”

.  .  .  .  .

Weather had nothing to do with my reason for leaving Florida. As I took a shower, I kept thinking about his grandmother’s words. I had my reason for not going back, and I didn’t need another one not to return to Tampa. At least not for a while, anyway, and certainly not one as mundane as the weather.

My
reason for leaving was simple: Humiliation. I had to get away from the embarrassment and shame for a few months. In fact, I decided I couldn’t stay anywhere in the Tampa area, and finally settled on the fact that the only answer was to get the hell out of the entire state of Florida.

It was the end of my junior year at USF when it al
l happened. I had known Kevin Blake since we were freshmen, but we didn’t start dating until second semester of our sophomore year.

I wasn’t completely inexperienced with all sexual acts when we started dating, but I was a virgin, and that changed during spring break that year. We had been going out for a few months, but I knew I already loved him, so he was my first. I, on the other hand, wasn’t his first,
but I never thought much of it.

Lik
e me, Kevin had grown up in and around the Tampa area, so we spent a lot of time together that first summer, and also during Christmas break of our junior year.

By
the second semester of our junior year, I was sure he was The One. I could picture us married, with a couple of kids, probably still living around Tampa or at least somewhere close to the beach, because I couldn’t imagine not being near the water. I had my surfing, and I was also majoring in marine biology while Kevin was studying to be an oceanographic engineer. His dream was to work for an oil company, designing safer and more environmentally-friendly ocean rigs, so even our career goals meshed well.

We had a fairly big group of mutual friends. Many of them were couples like us who we’d hang out with—parties, movies, long days on the beach, just about everything you’d imagine college students doing.

His parents were wonderful to me, and mine really liked him. Even my dad, who was so protective of me while I was in high school that I thought he would invent some kind of electric force-field he could place around me when I moved in to the dorm to start my college career. Don’t get me wrong; my dad wasn’t the mean kind of protective, it was actually sweet in his own way, and by Christmas break of our junior year, he actually treated Kevin like the son-in-law everyone thought he would someday be.

If this all sounds too perfect to
you, trust me, you’re right. It was way too perfect. So perfect, in fact, that if I hadn’t been so smitten with Kevin, if I hadn’t been so naïve, if I had been more skeptical in any way at all, I would have seen the crash-and-burn ending coming. But I liked the optimistic, trusting girl I was with Kevin, and that trust was why it was so shocking.

W
hile devastating to me, it wasn’t a rare occurrence. Kevin cheated.

I found out through some friends,
then confronted Kevin, who denied it at first, but finally admitted it.

I asked him who he wanted to be with
, me or her, and his response was direct and blunt: “I’m not sure.”

So
I made it easy for him and informed him that he didn’t need to make a decision; I was removing myself from consideration. Thanks, but no thanks.

Having gone through that, I couldn’t have imagined anything worse, which is why the second hit was like a tsunami, demolishing all that was familiar, washing away everything I had. Or thought I had.

It was early May, two months after the break-up, and everyone was preparing for exams, looking forward to the last summer being college students, and eager to get on with our senior year and become adults.

I shared a two-bedroom apartment with my best girlfriend, Liz. I was up late one night, cramming for my ecology exam—the one I dreaded most—so I was already not in a great mood. I thought Liz might be asleep because I heard no noise coming from her bedroom. It turns out she was quiet because she was studying, too, but she
had taken a break to answer a text from her boyfriend, Travis.

Liz knocked urgently on my door and when I asked her what was up, she came barging in and sat down on the bed next to me, whe
re I had papers strewn all around my laptop.

“
Travis just texted me something you have to see.”

“Can it wait a few minutes?”

She thrust her phone at me. “No. Look.” As I reached to take the phone, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

I looked at the screen and there, staring back at me,
in full screen was…me. A picture of a naked me. Well, the top half, anyway. Totally bare-chested, with my hand up near my face and one finger at the corner of my mouth, my eyes half-shut—a forced seductive pose.

A pose I had struck for Kevin.

It was one of several pictures I had allowed him to take a few months before the breakup, and which he promised me no one would ever see.

Liz was silent, and I couldn’t bring myself to let her see my face.

I had to stop looking at the picture and my head just dropped. “Where did Travis get this?”

“
Here.” She reached out and I handed her the phone. She pulled up the text Travis had sent her, then handed the phone back to me.

He told her that
a mutual friend of theirs had texted him, asking
Isn’t Liz friends with this girl?
and included the link to a site called My Hot College Girlfriend, where there were pictures of naked girls. Girls like me who had trusted guys to take intimate pictures of them. They call it “revenge porn.”

How fucking stupid could I have been?

Liz hugged me. “I’m so sorry. I feel so bad showing you this.”

I held on to her tight. At that moment, she was more than a best
friend, she was the only person in the world I could have sought refuge in. No longer was Kevin that person.

I cried for a few minutes as we sat there on my bed, and then the anger set in. More than anger, actually. It was pure fury.

I didn’t bother calling Kevin. It was almost two in the morning and I left our apartment, got in my car, and sped the entire four miles to his house. I banged on the door violently for a solid minute until I heard the door unlocking.

Kevin’s roommate,
Ari, opened the door. He looked like he’d been in a deep sleep.

“What the hell, Leah? What’s wrong?”

I barged into the apartment, shoving him out of the way and hearing him say, “What the fuck?” as I made my way to Kevin’s room. I opened the door and found him just waking up. A faint beam from one of the parking lot streetlights shone into his room and I could see him stirring beneath the covers.

He mumbled something as I flipped the light switch.
I half expected to find him with a girl. Not that I would have cared. But he was alone.

My voice came out high-pitched, almost a screech. “How could you do that to me?”

“What’re you talking about? What time—?”

“What the fuck does it matter what time it is? You posted those pictures on the Internet and showed your friends.
My friends.
Our
friends!”