I pulled the screen door open and waited for them to file inside. David paused long enough to give me a quick elbow to the side before following his wife.
After dropping my bag in the room Jack and I often shared, I changed into a set of trunks and made my way down to the beach. David had already set up Jack’s bucket of balls, boogie board, and an elaborate array of pails and shovels beside the sun canopy, so I grabbed the sunscreen and headed down to the water.
“One, two, three, jump!” Lex yelled, tugging on Jack’s arm and all but dragging him over the top of a breaking wave.
They both had their backs to me, so when I got close, I called, “How’s the water?”
Jack giggled before replying, “Cold as tits.”
“Tips!” Lex yelled. “I said cold as tips, remember?”
Jack tilted his head up to look at her. “But cold as tips doesn’t make any sense.”
Lex at least had the good taste to look sheepish when she turned around. “It slipped, okay? Sorr—” The words died on her tongue when her gaze landed on me. Or, more accurately, when her gaze landed on my…abs?
“Shit,” she breathed, quickly turning back to the water.
“What?” I asked, looking down at my stomach, fully expecting to find a rogue hair or at the very least some belly button lint. There was nothing though and this meant she was back to acting weird. Which unfortunately meant a nap couldn’t cure everything.
“Jack, go play football or something with your dad. I’m going for a swim. I’ll be back in a few,” she announced.
“Hey, wait, I need you to sunscreen my back!”
“Oh God!” she shouted before diving into the water and swimming away as though the world had suddenly caught fire.
Jack moseyed over to stand beside me and shielded his eyes as we watched her go. “Jeez, what’s her problem?”
I shook my head, a sense of unease settling in my stomach. “I honestly don’t know.”
But she couldn’t stay in that water forever.
Something was definitely up with her, but if history had taught me anything, it was that she wasn’t going to talk until she was ready. Whatever was on her mind, it stung that she couldn’t talk to me about it, because for the rest of the night, she avoided me. Even when I asked her if she wanted to have a nightcap on the porch, she turned me down and went to bed.
I stood in the dark dining room, two beers in my hand by the sliding deck door. “Are you sure?”
She glanced down the hall toward the room she always stayed in and then back at me as if she were warring with herself over one lousy beer. “Not tonight, Hud. I’m tired. Good night.”
Hell, without her joining me, I didn’t even want the drink. I’d only used them as an excuse for her to maybe tell me what was up. Striking out, I put them back in the fridge and went to bed too.
At home, I wasn’t a stranger to sleeping in on my days off, but at the beach, the sunrise called to me. The real me.
It was still dark out when I threw on a pair of shorts and a hoodie, grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch, and slipped my feet into my flip-flops by the back door. The warm air blew across my skin in silent invitation, and the lights along the wooden path illuminated my way down to the water. The sounds of the morning birds and the lapping waves harmonized my every step.
This tiny spot on Earth had always calmed my mind, clearing the noise and stripping my emotions down to a level that allowed me to actually process them.
By nature, I’d always been wild. I liked getting a reaction or making people laugh, and in my younger years, it was probably how I’d gotten attention from the older kids. Lauren had always been lovely and sweet and perfect, but trying to be that hadn’t worked for me. Therefore, I used humor and sarcasm to differentiate myself. Also, having a thick skin had saved me more than once from the constant onslaught of being Calvin’s younger redheaded sister. It got me through the teasing and ribbing when Cal and Hudson left me to go off to college.
Brenden had loved my smartass ways, and together, we’d spent countless nights on the beach, laughing and talking long after the sun had gone down.