Page 7 of Troubled Water
I have a clear shot from my balcony of all the action, including keeping an eye on my girlfriends, whom I met a few months ago when I transferred into Rice—girls who encouraged me to come to Mexico during our winter break.
Rice, one of my top three schools. A school I transferred into in September at both my father’s and Dr. Powell’s urging. Something I agreed to, providing I continued to work at McCallister Construction on long weekends and all breaks. That and, “You have to continue with therapy, Dad. Not for me, but for Ellie, Abe, and Jordan.”
His eyes were bleak as he took hold of my hand. “Bethany, I don’t plan on stopping it. And it’s as much for you as for your brothers and sister.”
“Dad...” My voice trailed off. I knew I wasn’t the important one in this equation any longer.
My father spoke with a certainty that assured me he’d been thinking about his words for a long while. “Your mother would be ashamed of me, Bethany.” That and what he said next shattered both my heart and my reservations. “I know a part of me died on that cruise, honey, but the part of your mother that lived didn’t. That’s you kids. I forgot that her heart lived on.”
“I don’t think you forgot,” I whispered.
“What?” my father and Dr. Powell exclaimed.
That’s when I admitted the most painful secret I’d been keeping back during therapy to that point, “Every time you look at me, I think you wish I wasn’t here.” I lifted my head and met my father’s tormented eyes. “You wish Mama was.”
“Bethany, is that how you really feel?” Dr. Powell questioned.
My eyes cut to his. “It’s what I’ve lived.”
My father broke down at the certainty in my words. Was it that moment we began to heal? I can’t be certain. I just know that in the last twenty-four months, I finally felt comfortable leaving my family behind and being just a twenty-year-old woman.
Consequences, be damned.
Leaning against the balcony, I take a sip of the rum cocktail I mixed earlier and eagerly await Brendan Blake to take the stage. In the meanwhile, my hair lifts in the breeze as I stare out over the blue-green waters crashing against the sugar sand beach.
The first peace I’ve had in seven years is ruined when a voice barks at me, “Christ, no one up here is interested in you posing. Why don’t you go join your little friends waving at you from the pool?”
I whip my head to the left and meet steel gray eyes boring into mine. The man, clad only in board shorts, has his back to the setting sun, giving me a perfect view of enormous muscles that are darkly tanned from the Mexican sun. I admire thebreadth of his shoulders—a build I normally only find on the guys I work with on my father’s construction sites.
Unfortunately, his attitude needs to be adjusted and it’s too bad I left my tool kit back at home.
I find my eyes drifting up and down his form until they rest on his chiseled lips—lips set in a deep frown that just ruined my perfect beach oasis. My eyes narrow before I demand angrily, “What did you say?” I tip my head back and swallow another glug of my fruity drink, fortifying myself for his next words.
He lifts the bottle I didn’t notice at his side before sneering, “Meow, meow, meow.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“No. It’s what you girls sound like when you’re all talking. Do any of you ever shut up?”
I shrug before answering him honestly. “I wouldn’t know.”
He rakes his eyes up and down over me before he slugs back another swallow. “Are you just like your friends?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I grind out.
“Too busy fucking your latest toy to understand what the pounding on the other side of the wall means at four a.m.?”
I sneer at the bottle—catching sight of the rum label. I’m remembering the months of my father’s drinking I endured, the insults hurled at me. I didn’t survive being my mother’s doppelgänger to deal with this stranger’s abuse. “No.”
“Just no?”
I expound upon my answer. “No is a full sentence.”
“Yes.”
“Also a full sentence. I’m impressed,” I taunt.
He rolls his ridiculously attractive eyes, causing a tiny flutter in my stomach. I elucidate on my earlier dismissal. “Not that it’s any of your business, but?—”
