Page 18 of The Moment of Letting Go

I look over. “What—” I smile to show her that she’s wrong. “Oh, no, I’m just tired. I’m always like this after an event.” This is only half true—this time I feel much worse.

She hooks her arm around my back, her hand around my arm, and pulls my shoulder against her side.

“We’re gonna go on a real vacation sometime,” she says. “We can go anywhere. Just name the place.” She points at me briefly and interjects, “Of course, it has to be someplace sunny where I can wear my bikini—nothing cold and no deserts or anything like that.”

I chuckle. “We’ll figure it out,” I tell her with a smile in my voice.

Paige stands up, her small frame hardly shielding me from the sun.

“We should get our stuff packed,” she says. “I can’t miss this flight. My family reunion is tomorrow. My mom will kill me.”

I stand with her, taking up my towel and beach bag and repositioning them on my arm and shoulder. As I walk alongside Paige toward the hotel, from the corner of my eye I see a tanned, athletic figure in navy cargo shorts and a red T-shirt tramping through the sand toward me. Squinting in an attempt to get a better visual, I put my hand up above my eyes to shield my face from the sun. And when I see that it is, in fact, Luke, my face breaks into a smile that I instantly try to conceal from my best friend.

I turn to Paige, stopping her on the sidewalk.

“I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes,” I say.

Paige, without asking any questions, agrees and heads inside the hotel lobby without me.

I meet Luke halfway, stopping in the sand, glad that I’m wearing flip-flops this time and can stand up on my own. Luke appears out of breath, his feet like fifty-pound weights on the ends of his muscled legs, burrowing into the sand nearly to his ankles with every difficult step. His back is hunched over, his hands propped on his bent knees when he finally comes to a stop in front of me. The more I look at him, the more confused I become—surely he’s not serious? Everything about his demeanor seems overly dramatic and … strangely humorous.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says between quick, unsteady breaths. “I ran all the way here. You’ll never believe what happened.” He takes a few more fast breaths, his hands still propped on his knees to hold up his weight, the muscles in his arms hard and defined. “I was on my way this morning when a bicycle came out of nowhere and clipped me as I was crossing the street.” My eyes widen and I feel the warm, salty air hit my teeth as my lips slowly begin to part. “And I hit the asphalt hard—”

“Are you OK?” I look him over, seeing no visible injuries.

He nods heavily, rapidly, and tries to catch his breath some more.

“I lost consciousness and woke up in some house—weird beads and shit were hanging from a doorway, and it smelled like incense.” My forehead wrinkles as I try to put the odd scene together in my head. “My wrists and ankles were tied to a chair.” He points at me briefly. “You know those fancy patio chairs with cushions that you wonder about leaving out in the rain?” Huh? “It was that chick on the bike. Somehow she got me to her house and tied me up. I thought: OK, this feels a little like Misery—you’ve seen that movie, right?” He points at me again.

Knowing now that he’s full of shit, I cross my arms, crushing the beach towel between them, and narrow my eyes.

“No, I can’t say that I have,” I answer with a smirk.

I catch him grinning, but he recovers quickly and continues with the charade that I find both ridiculous and charming.

Luke falls down in the sand, lying with his back against it and his knees bent, his hands resting on his chest, the right one crossed over to lie flat against his so-called rapidly beating heart.

“And just what did this girl do to you?” I play along.

He gazes up at me as I hover over him—he looks so serious.

“She wanted me to teach her how to surf,” he says matter-of-factly.

I try not to laugh, pushing the urge down and putting on my own serious face.

“So what did you do then? Did you teach her?”

Luke’s head moves side to side against the white sand. He swallows and looks into the clear blue sky, recalling the “event.” “No,” he answers distantly. “I told her I couldn’t, that I was booked for the day.” He looks at me with concentrating eyes. “I said I had a very important, beautiful client today that I couldn’t reschedule under any circumstances.”

My cheeks feel like they’re on fire.

“The look on her face when I told her that, it scared the hell outta me.”

“It must’ve been so awful for you,” I say dramatically, pressing my hand to my bikini-covered chest. “I just can’t imagine.”

“I know, right? But I managed to get my hands free from the rope and then untied my legs. I was about to jump out the window when she came back into the room and saw me. A tray with chips and a sandwich fell from her hands to the floor. She lunged”—his hand juts out in front of him, his fingers arched into a claw—“like a cat.” He bares his teeth and makes a hissing sound—my serious face has vanished and I can’t stop smiling. “I leapt at the window, crashing right through the screen, and then rolled when I hit the grass outside. I ran all the way here.”

He stops and releases one last quick breath from his lungs. And then he just looks up at me.

---