Page 35 of The Cadence

“Really?” I tried to imagine that. It was very, very easy to picture him naked and having sex, but it was harder to think of him doing it somewhere that wasn’t orderly and non-smelly.

I had to admit to myself that I would have been ok with some action at the loading dock, as long as that action was with Will.

But then, I thought of him having sex with someone other than me. I thought of the woman in Alabama, the one he’d just seen on his road trip there. She probably had a beautiful bed with silk sheets.

I quickly stood. “Do you want anything else? You should go to bed. Your own, alone, where you have cotton sheets.”

“What?” He looked up at me. “What happened? Did you get disgusted by what I said about my former standards?”

“No,” I answered, and it could have been the moment to ask about Nicia and if he’d seen her on Friday night.

But it wasn’t my business! Not at all! I was the person who shared a grilled cheese with him, not the person who should have been included in all sex information, and actually, I didn’t want to know.

It would have been pretty awful to hear how they had “seen” each other, even though it was none of my business.

“I’m going to bed myself,” I said. “Do you need help?”

“No, I can do it.” He also stood. “I don’t understand what just happened. Why did you turn red and jump up? I won’t say things like that anymore, ok?”

“You can say whatever you like,” I promised him. “Are you positive that you don’t need me?”

He was, so I went upstairs and reminded myself that your emotions were one thing but your actions were another.

I could feel sad and sorry that Will and I weren’t the people having sex next to the loading dock or anywhere else, but I didn’t have to behave like a bitter child. I could do better, and I would.

I decided I would also check on Will a few times that night, as I used to do for my grandma.

It had reassured me to know that she was still there and ok, until she wasn’t.

And those thoughts, along with others, made me get more tissues from the latest multi-pack. We were still buying them in bulk.

It was a relief to go to church the next morning and refocus.

Will was getting picked up by one of the trainers and they’d devised a way for him to get his car at the airport—it ended up that he had driven it home himself, which I saw when I arrived back and he was lining it up carefully in the garage.

I tried to do the same but I was also in a hurry to question him about how he was and what the Woodsmen doctors had said.

But before I could ask any of that, he was talking to me. “Hello, Calla. Go put on your bathing suit.”

“My what?”

“A bikini, maybe? Something to wear in the water,” he explained. “Don’t you have one?”

I had to think about that, but I was mostly still confused about why he had said it. “What are you talking about?”

He was talking about a beach day, which seemed like a really bad idea for someone with a bum ankle. He hadn’t wanted a rideshare from the airport in order to hide the severity of his injury, and now he was suggesting a public outing?

“Go get your suit,” he urged me again.

“You can’t walk on sand!” I protested. “You wanted to be cagey!”

But he had answers. School had started and the tourist population had fallen off a lot, which meant fewer people staring.

We would go to a place that didn’t get many visitors anyway, and he would use his crutches.

The Woodsmen had released a vague statement about his ankle so no one would be surprised by anything.

“It’s not even a bad sprain,” he told me. “I’ll be off it for a few days so I’ll miss the next game because it’s midweek, but then I’ll be back.”

I was unconvinced. “It seems like a better idea for you to elevate and ice it,” I said.

“We can do that at the beach.” He took my hand and tried to pull me along with him as he went into the house. “Let’s go.”

It took a little bit more for me to agree.

And it took a little bit of time for me to find a bathing suit, which I did have.

In eleventh grade, my class had gone on an end-of-the-year trip to a waterpark so I’d had to purchase one.

I hadn’t worn it much since, except for some sunbathing in my grandma’s back yard.

I did find it and put it on, and the image I saw in the bathroom mirror was not wonderful.

“You’re a beautiful girl,” my grandma had told me, and I was definitely improved from when I’d been dropped on her porch.

I wasn’t anything like Nicia—that didn’t matter, since we weren’t in competition, except in my own mind.

I threw on a sweatshirt and shorts over my suit and when I came downstairs, Will had put out a cooler, towels, and other gear.

“Stay off your leg!” I ordered, and set myself to filling that cooler with what I imagined would be good beach food. I carried it and everything else and I drove, too, informing him that he was lucky I was permitting him to walk on the sand at all.

“My injured leg won’t go on the sand,” he told me, and I nodded.

“That’s right, it won’t! I’m going to carry everything again and you’re going to be very, very careful. Otherwise, we’re not going.”

“Is this your version of ‘I’ll turn the car around?’”

“I will also turn the car around if I get any disagreement,” I answered, and he laughed. Once again, I felt so much better after hearing it.

But I was very tired after the long night of skulking around the house.

When I had managed to sleep, I’d had strange dreams mostly about my grandma, but they had included my mother, too.

It had been a long time since I’d seen her so clearly and that had shaken me up a little.

Maybe I was quiet on the way to the beach, and Will noticed.

“You’re not this worried about my ankle, are you?” he asked. “It’s very normal for me to get hurt.”

“I don’t have to like it,” I answered. “I know you’ll be ok.” He kept watching me as we drove, though.

It wasn’t that far to the lake. The map on my phone showed how big it was but still, when I saw it for the first time, I didn’t know what to say. I stood staring instead.

“It’s pretty,” he remarked.

“I thought it would be like the Tennessee River, where you can see the other side. It’s huge!

” And it was pretty—beautiful, actually, but it was also very forbidding.

A sharp wind blew and the waves were choppy and white-crested.

As he’d predicted, there weren’t many people out on the sand, which meant fewer eyes on Will and me.

I carried our stuff and then watched suspiciously, but we didn’t go too far and he was very careful. “So this is beach life,” I commented as we sat on the towels. It was a little chillier than I expected.

“We should have come last month. Everything was so busy,” he said. “Next year, we’ll be here before the season starts and it’s warmer.”

Next year. I thought ahead, wondering about that.

I’d never been a person who looked into the future very far.

When I’d lived with my mom, mostly on my own, I hadn’t thought beyond getting food, staying warm or cool, and figuring out how to fill the hours of the day.

Then, after my grandma had been diagnosed when I’d been in tenth grade, we had focused on the present because we hadn’t been sure how long we would have together.

“I need to think more about my next move,” I said.

“Do you want to go swimming?”

“I mean, beyond today. I went to beauty school before but honestly, I only signed up because Grandma really wanted me to. She wanted the assurance that I’d have a steady career when she was gone. Now I’m working at the store and painting tables? That’s not very steady.”

“You’re also working for me,” he pointed out.

“Will, you made up that job,” I stated. “I know it and you do, too. You were trying to help me because you think you owe me, and I let you because I was so lost and confused. When I think back on myself and how I acted in the weeks after she died, I don’t even know…”

“We didn’t bring any tissues. Here.” He pulled off his t-shirt and gave it to me. “Use this.” And when I didn’t take it, he dabbed my eyes himself. “I did want to help you but I also know that as the company gets bigger, you’ll get busier.”

“And you’ll need someone who’s competent.”

“You can learn,” he told me. “You learned everything else that got thrown at you. It amazes me how you managed it.”

“That’s a nice thing to say.”

“It’s a true thing to say. When I saw that you graduated, I was—it sounds like I’m being condescending, but I was really proud.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It doesn’t sound condescending, it sounds…wait, where did you see that I had graduated?”

“Our high school has a directory, and you went into it as an alumna.”

“Why were you looking at our directory, though?” I wondered. It seemed like an odd use of time in the life of someone who was so busy.

Will studied me silently for a long moment. “I was looking for you,” he finally responded. “I had asked your grandmother but she wouldn’t share information with me.”

“What?”

“I was in contact with her a few times over the years. I just wanted to make sure that you were all right, that you were keeping up with school and that you didn’t need anything,” he explained. “She wasn’t interested in me being a part of your life.”

“She never told me that!”

“She wasn’t interested in me being a part of your life,” he repeated. “She made it very clear. She knew about my family and she didn’t trust my intentions with you. I thought it was a good thing. I was glad she was looking out for you like that.”

“But then, when I was an adult…” I thought about Cully’s relationship with his parents and how they treated him like a child. “She struggled to let me grow up. It’s like the rocking chair,” I said.

“The one on her porch that you squeezed yourself into?”