Out of Nowhere (13 page)

“My sister is gay.”

“She
is
?” I said this so loud, both cats looked up. “Why are you just telling me this now?”

“I don’t know. The same reason I don’t talk about my brother being straight, I guess. I don’t really think of her as ‘my gay sister’, you know? She’s just my sister.”

I shook my head. “You are full of surprises, Cole Boyer.”

“Usually people say I’m full of something else.”

“That too, sometimes.” I snuggled down into my blankets, feeling sleepy and peaceful now. The tension between us had disappeared and it felt good to get everything straightened out. The last thing I wanted was for him to think I’d deceived him in some way. “So are we good now?”

“We’re good.” He cleared his throat, like he did whenever he felt embarrassed about something. “I have to admit, I’m pretty relieved right now. I thought it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To, you know, make my move. I thought maybe Lucas had beaten me to it.”

Warmth spread throughout my entire body and then came to rest in my cheeks. “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything else to say at that moment. The way I saw it, he’d already made plenty of moves. Flirting over brownies. Asking for my phone number. Asking me out in his car the day he drove me home from work. The moment between us in the park after he told me about his car accident. All moves, and all rebuffed by me.

Maybe, I thought, it was time to stop resisting and let whatever was meant to happen, happen. Maybe it was time to make my own move, even though—in the practical sense—it could never work out between us. We were too different, and he was leaving. Our future together seemed hazy and unstable, if not impossible. And I needed a future I could count on, one I could map out.

But just this once, I wanted to forget about the damn future. Just this once, I wanted to do something impulsive and scary, just because I felt like it. Cole seemed to bring that out in me.

“I’m going surfing again next Sunday,” he said, jolting me back to the conversation. “Do you want to come with me?”

“To surf?” I asked. The mere thought of paddling far out into the ocean and trusting a several-foot-high wave to bring me safely back to shore was daunting, to say the least. I may have been feeling adventurous, but I did have my limits.

“No,” he said, and I relaxed. “You’d need a bunch of gear and there’s no point in spending money on it if you’re not serious about learning. I thought you might like to watch me. And swim or bake in the sun or whatever else you usually do at the beach.”

“Well, I do have next weekend off. I might have to babysit though, if my mother’s working.” Then it hit me that I hadn’t been the beach once so far this summer. I hadn’t been
anywhere
so far this summer. “Screw it,” I said. “I can get out of it. I’ll come with you and watch you surf, on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I will
not
dive into the ocean to rescue you if you fall off your surfboard and drown. Are we clear?”

His laugh trickled through the phone. “Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”

“One more thing,” I said, remembering again how he looked in the ER all those weeks ago, so hurt and broken. Fragile. I found it hard to reconcile that image with the one I had of him currently. Back then I didn’t know him, didn’t care about him like I did now. If he ever got hurt like that again, and on my watch, I was quite certain it would wreck me. “Be careful,” I told him. “Please.”

Chapter Ten

A few days later I got a call from Dr. Maser’s office regarding my first appointment. The doctor was looking forward to meeting me, the chirpy receptionist told me after we’d agreed on a day and time, two weeks away. Sure she is, I thought.

Right after I booked the appointment, I briefly considered calling them right back and cancelling it. Partly because I was scared, but also because I’d been feeling good for the past week or so. I kept myself busy and out of the house, which helped. Eva was around now (and single) and Sydney had recently dropped her boyfriend too, so I spent time with them when I wasn’t working. In my down time, I went for long walks, browsed WebMD, and finished the second season of
Grey’s
. And of course, there was the beach plan with Cole.

Sunday turned out to be warm, sunny, and windy. Perfect surfing weather. Tristan was with our grandparents for the day so I didn’t have to babysit. I felt giddy and full of energy as I waited outside on the porch for Cole. His car—with three surfboards strapped to the roof—appeared shortly after ten. I jogged down the walkway and got in, realizing as I did that there were two people I’d never seen before scrunched up in the backseat amidst the CD mess.

“Morning,” Cole greeted me, then gestured toward the strangers in back. “My cousin Ian and his girlfriend Charlotte.”

The three of us exchanged smiles and hellos. They both looked to be about nineteen or twenty. Cole mentioned his cousins to me several times, but he had so many it was hard for me to keep track of names. This one was obviously his surfing buddy.

“This is Riley,” Cole told them. “The non-surfer.”

His cousin laughed. There was a slight family resemblance between them, I noticed, only Ian was taller with short hair and not as attractive. “So you’re the hodad,” he said to me.

“The what?” I replied.

“Someone who doesn’t surf,” Charlotte explained. She had wavy auburn hair and freckles and a husky voice that seemed out of place with her small size.

“Oh,” I said as Cole handed me a coffee.

“Cream and two sugars,” he told me, heading toward the highway.

I looked down at the coffee, which came from one of our competitors. “You’re cheating on Jitters now?”

He shrugged and sipped from his own cup. “It was on the way.”

Vickers Beach was about a forty-minute drive from Weldon. Cole’s car didn’t have air conditioning so we drove the whole way with the windows rolled down. Luckily I’d pulled my hair back before I left the house because by the time we got there we were all totally windblown.

In the parking lot, the guys unfastened the surfboards from the roof and placed them on the ground. Then Cole opened the trunk and they each grabbed a wetsuit and started pulling them on.

“Why do you need those?” I asked, pretending not to notice when Cole took off his shirt. Then I pretended not to stare.

“Warmth,” he replied, shaking his hair loose and then tying it back again. “It’s freezing out there.”

Once they were all suited up, the four of us picked our way across the sand, which was slowly filling up with blankets and small children. We kept going until we reached the far end of the beach, near the cliff. I could see a couple of other surfers out there, tiny figures bobbing around in the waves.

“We’ll be back in a bit,” Cole told me after we’d staked out a spot. He picked up his surfboard. “And don’t worry, I won’t drown.”

“Better not,” I said, dropping my bag on the sand.

He tossed me a grin and the three of them left me there with instructions to keep an eye on their stuff. I spread out my towel and sat down on it, feeling a little abandoned. For a moment I thought maybe I should learn to surf, then just as quickly decided against it. I had pretty good balance, but I wasn’t agile and gutsy like Cole.

I watched them, my hand shading my eyes, until they got so far out that I couldn’t tell who was who anymore. Then I stripped down to my black bikini (I’d pre-sunscreened at home) and lay back on the towel, eyes closed against the sun. The sound of the ocean was hypnotic, and soon it had me lulled into a sort of trance. My brain felt washed clean of any significant thoughts. Well, all except for a few. The image of Cole’s smooth-looking, sun-browned skin, broad shoulders, and firm, flat stomach strolled through my mind, and I wiggled on my towel.

Something had definitely shifted between us after the whole incident with Lucas last week, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what had changed in our relationship. Was it the dawning realization that staying just friends was futile? An upsurge of sexual tension? Maybe both? All I knew was that it had been over a year since I’d experienced any intimate contact with a guy and my hormones were getting impatient.

I turned over on my stomach, resting my chin on my arm. Okay, so we were undeniably attracted to each other. We both knew it. Still, I’d watched enough TV dramas to know there were potential risks involved with two friends crossing the line into something more. If it didn’t work out, the friendship could get ruined beyond repair. And that possibility scared me.

There was also the ever-present concern that if I did let myself get involved with Cole, his adrenaline-seeking tendencies would send me into a nervous breakdown. Even now, knowing he was out there getting tossed around and possibly dragged away by sharks or dangerous currents, my muscles felt stiff with apprehension. I sat up and squinted toward the water, but I couldn’t make out anything. Just a few dark specks in the waves. Then I caught sight of Charlotte on the shore and my heart skipped a beat.

“Hey,” she said when she reached me. “It’s wild out there.”

“Where are the guys?” I asked, unable to spot them anywhere on the beach.

She shed the wetsuit and sat down on her towel. “Still out there. They’re coming in soon, they said.”

“Oh.” I relaxed a little.

“Cute bikini,” she said, adjusting the straps of her own suit, a pink and yellow striped two-piece.

“Thanks,” I said. It was my favorite swim suit; the top had a padded demi-cup that made me look bustier than I was. “Yours is cute too.”

She dug out a bottle of sun block and started coating her skin, which was even paler than mine. “So how long have you and Cole been going out?”

“We’re not, really,” I told her. “I mean, we’ve been friends for a couple of months, but we’re not dating.”
Yet,
I added in my head.

“Really?” She stopped rubbing and looked over at me. “Huh. I just assumed you were. The way he was talking about you earlier…” Her voice trailed off and she went back to her UV protection, leaving me in suspense.

“He was talking about me? What did he say?”

“Oh, just stuff about how smart you are and that you want to be a doctor and that sort of thing.” She capped the sunscreen and smiled at me. “I think he’s proud of you.”

My face started burning and it wasn’t from sun exposure. He
bragged
about me?

“Cole’s a nice guy,” she went on. “He has a real positive energy about him.”

The way she phrased it sounded kind of New Agey, but I knew what she meant. “He does,” I agreed.

Charlotte left to go to the washroom and I resumed my position on the towel, flat on my stomach with my head cushioned by my discarded clothes. I’d just started slipping back into my white noise-induced stupor when a shower of ice-cold water on my skin ripped me back into consciousness. I lifted my head to see Cole standing above me, an evil grin on his face.

“Mature,” I said. “How was surfing?”

“Awesome.” He wrung out his hair, away from me this time, and started peeling off his wetsuit. I turned away in an effort not to ogle him. I wasn’t Sydney. “You’re looking a little pink,” he said, stretching out on the sand next to me.

“Really? I sunscreened. Maybe I didn’t get my back good enough. It’s not the easiest thing to do, you know.”

“You want me to get your back for you?” he asked jokingly.

I hoisted myself up on my elbows and reached into my bag for my sunscreen. “Would you mind?”

He wasn’t expecting me to actually agree. Still, he took the bottle without a moment’s hesitation and squirted some into his palm. When he touched me, I gasped. “Your hands are freezing,” I said, but he didn’t take them away. Instead, he got into a kneeling position so he could do his job more thoroughly.

“They’re not freezing,” he told me, moving my hair so he could get my shoulders. “It’s just your skin is so hot.”

Not just my skin, I thought as his hands slid across my lower back. “They’re warming up now,” I said lazily. My entire body felt like liquid, soaking into the sand. “You should be a masseuse.”

“Maybe.” He finished and wiped his hands off on his shorts. “Okay, now turn around and I’ll do your front.”

I half-heartedly punched him in the leg. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

He laughed and stood up. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a swim.”

As much as I could have used a blast of cold water right then, swimming in the ocean had about as much appeal to me as a trip to the dentist. I preferred warm, filtered, chlorinated pools. “But it’s cold,” I protested.

“You get used to it.” He extended a hand to help me up. “Be brave.”

I rolled over onto my back and sat up, peering out at the water. I had to admit, it did look inviting in this heat. “I suppose,” I said, grabbing his hand. It still felt a little slippery from the sunscreen. He pulled me up and we made our way down to the shoreline.

“Holy crap,” I said when my feet touched the water. It was frigid. “How do people swim in this?” Ian and Charlotte were a few feet ahead of us, already up to their necks, but I could barely work up the nerve to go in past my ankles.

“It’s not so bad once you get in,” Cole told me. He was standing next to me, checking out my massive goosebumps.

“Right, because hypothermia is such a pleasant experience,” I said, my teeth chattering. “I’m numb.”

“I promise you won’t get hypothermia.” He moved in front of me and started walking backwards, urging me to keep going. When I still didn’t move, he took my hands and gently eased me forward, like Mom and I did to Tristan when we were teaching him how to walk. “Getting warmer?”

“No,” I said, even though it was. Or maybe it just felt warmer because I’d lost all sensation in my legs. “If you pick me up and throw me in, Cole, I swear to God I will never speak to you again.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. Besides, he would’ve done it already. We were up to our waists now.

“This is deep enough,” I said, stopping.

“A little further.” He towed me another couple of feet. I yelped when a small wave came up over my bikini top. “There,” he said, letting go of my hands. “Was that so bad?”