Page 18 of Tempting as Sin
Which left her, of course, with the alternative. She found Rafe’s—Clay’s—last message. She had to, in order to text him.
I was doing whatever I could,he’d written.Couldn’t you tell?
Oh, boy. She didnotneed to read that again. She typed, backspaced, typed some more, backspaced some more, and uttered a strangled noise that had the guy across from her, whose hair was once again slicked back and who she’d have bet money actuallyhadreached the Diamond Sales level, looking at her pretty keenly.
He was about to talk to her, she could tell. She shifted position, angled herself away from him, typed again, and didn’t let herself backspace.
That was a nice gesture but not necessary. I can be civil.
No wait this time. He must have had the phone in his hand.I thought back and couldn’t remember if I’d even apologized. Consider this my effort.
She should leave it right there. Did she? Not even close.For which part?she typed right back.
Take your pick,he answered.I’m no Cary Grant, but even he stuffed up.
In the movies.
Well, you’ve got me there.
She realized she was smiling, and stopped.Don’t worry. I told you, I can be civil. We can both be civil.
And that’s it?
Another moment of hesitation, schooling her face so Diamond Sales across from her couldn’t read it. And then she typed,
That’s it.
She didn’t have a glass of champagne on the plane. First Class came with its own set of restrictions, especially if you didn’t pay for it yourself. Or if you paid for it in the wrong way.
On the other hand—maybe she couldn’t buy that much anymore, but nobody could buy her, either. Something to celebrate even from Economy.
She looked out the window as the jet took off over the water and wheeled slowly around toward the north again. Over all those miles of ocean, stretching all the way to Hawaii…and, eventually, all the way to Australia. A long, long way from a teenager sitting on her bed in a two-bedroom, sand-colored house in absolutely inland Modesto, California, holding a globe that her mom had bought at a thrift store, so it didn’t have all the new countries on it. Spinning that blue ball, letting her finger trace along its smoothness, and when her finger stopped, repeating the name to herself, trying to imagine herself there, drawing on every book she’d ever read and every movie she’d ever seen.
Whitewashed buildings and doors painted all different colors in Greece. Green jungles in Thailand, with pythons hanging from the trees like ropes as you floated by on the river. On safari in South Africa, coming out of sleep in your round hut at the thrilling roar of a lion outside the fence.
Wishing herself onto a plane like a movie star, seeing herself crossing the ocean in style and emerging someplace new, when she was rich and famous and gone from here.
Shanghai, China. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. New Orleans, Louisiana.
Her mother’s voice, then. Unheard for nearly four years now, and still so missed. Mamá sitting down on the bed beside her, asking what was wrong, and waiting patiently until she got out of Lily that she’d been called a “Coconut” on the school bus. White on the inside, and her blonde hair a mark of shame. The name-calling was all she shared. Her mother had enough to worry about.
Martina Garcia, it had been that day, furious because her boyfriend had talked to Lily too long. He’d done more than that. He’d leaned over her, his arm trapping her against the lockers, and she’d thought he was going to kiss her and had turned her head to try to avoid it, her heart galloping and everything in her shrinking away, afraid to call out and afraid not to.
That had been bad enough, but Paige hadn’t been with her on the bus home, and Lily hadn’t known how to make Martina stop, or how to get out from the ring of girls. Her face still burned from the shame, and her scalp still burned where Martina had ripped the patch of hair out from the roots. She’d run home from the bus stop with the girls after her, their taunting voices ringing in her ears and her breath coming hard from fear, hearing their laughter as she’d slammed the door shut with trembling fingers. She’d started dinner with the tears dripping onto the flank steak, wished for her sister, despised herself for her weakness, then crept into the room she shared with Paige, spun the globe, and wished herself away.
“Remember,mija.”The soft voice, the gentle hand smoothing over her hair, the fatigue on Mamá’s still-beautiful face after another day on her feet under the fluorescent Walmart lights. “Having somebody hurt you doesn’t make you weak, any more than hurting somebody makes you strong. Walking away can be the strongest thing. Nothing is forever. You’re going to go to college, and Martina Garcia is going to go to the poultry plant and work with her mother. That’s why she’s so hateful. You can feel sorry for her, and you can hold your head high and wait for your day.”
“I’m not…” Lily wiped the heels of her hands over her cheeks and said it. “Why can’t I ever be tough like Paige? Why do I have to be so scared? I don’t want to walk away. I want to fight. Why can’t I ever fight?”
The tears came again, and she felt all the burning shame of them.
“One day,” her mother promised, “you’ll fight. A waterfall starts with a single drop of rain, and look what happens after that. Today is a drop of rain. Maybe tomorrow will be your waterfall.”
It had taken a lot more tomorrows than that, but finally, all those raindrops had joined forces and washed her all the way down the mountain, down into her pool where she could be still.
There were all kinds of survival, and all kinds of winning, too. Including the kind where nobody else had to lose, where it was only about living your own life, however quiet it was, and about holding your ground in the world, however small a space it was. Even if you weren’t in Rio or Paris or Shanghai, and you’d flipped all those teenaged dreams upside down and seen their ugly side. Even if you were living in Sinful, Montana, and what you had was a lease on a shop, some goats, a thousand-square-foot-including-the-basement cottage with a mortgage, and the knowledge that every decision was your own.
She had that, though. She surely did. And every bit of it was a win.
