Killer Swell

44

She was stretched out on an old chaise lounge. White shorts with a Nike swoosh matched the jogging tank. Her dark hair was flying in several different directions. Her feet were bare, running shoes and socks in a pile next to her. Two empty beer bottles stood below the armrest of the chair.

She pointed to the tiny fridge on the corner of the deck. “Beer’s in there.”

Four chairs dotted the deck, and a small office refrigerator sat in the corner, next to a tiny wooden table. The barbecue sat in the other corner. With no other houses to get in the way, the view of the bay and the downtown landscape was striking.

I grabbed a Dos Equis out of the fridge. “Thanks.”

“I don’t want to be rude,” she said, looking at me. “But what the hell are you doing here?”

I sat down on the upraised brick wall that jutted above the deck, my back to the bridge and the South Bay. “I honestly don’t know.”

Liz studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay.”

We sat there in silence, drinking our beers. I felt awkward and out of place. When we had dated, we’d spent a lot of nights on the roof, drinking, eating, and talking. Arguing a lot, too. Our relationship had moved back and forth between easy affection and irritation.

“You go see Carter again?” she asked, sitting up in the chair.

I nodded. “Yeah. He’s better.”

“Take a lot more than a couple of bullets to kill that elephant,” she said.

“I think of him as more of a giraffe.”

“Rhino fits, too.”

“Yeah, it does.”

We both laughed. She set her bottle down and pointed at the fridge. I reached in, grabbed a full one, opened it, and handed it to her. She took a long drink.

“Still running, I see,” I said, the silence digging into me.

“About five miles every night,” she said. “If I’m not worn out.”

“Which you probably are more often than not.”

She pursed her lips and tried to look indifferent.

“Wellton said some nice things about you today,” I told her.

Her lips curled into a small smile. “John’s a good guy.”

“Said you take a lot of shit for partnering with him.”

“I do. But screw them, you know? He’s a good guy and a good cop. He probably takes shit for having a woman as a partner.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We drank our beers and watched the lights shimmer on the harbor.

“Being around you again is weird,” she said.

“How’s that?”

She tilted her head. “Well, when things ended, it was kind of bad between us.”

Our breakup had occurred outside a restaurant with each of us screaming at the other. I couldn’t recall what that specific argument had been about, but the force of our words left no doubt about the finality of it all.

“Just kind of?” I said.

“Okay. Really bad. And then, with all this,” she waved her hand in the air, “you’ve pretty much been the irritation equivalent of, say, a nail in my eardrum.”

“It says a lot about you that a nail in your eardrum would be only an irritation, rather than excruciatingly painful.”

She smiled. “I’m tough.” She pointed the beer bottle in my direction. “But, now, I’ve gotta admit…” Her voice trailed off.

“Admit what?”

She clutched the bottle in both of her hands. “I’ve gotta admit I don’t hate that you’re here.” She looked at me for a moment, then drained the beer, setting the empty bottle down next to the others. “But maybe I’m drunk.”

“I’m not sure how to take that,” I told her.

She swung her legs over the chair, sitting on the edge of it. “Well, neither am I.” She looked at me. “Why are you here, Noah?”

I rolled my empty beer bottle between my hands. A horn blew out on the harbor from a distance, echoing softly across the water. The thought in my head that had rattled around as I left Emily’s was this: if Liz had answered the door in another man’s shirt, I would’ve been jealous and upset. I couldn’t explain why, but I knew it as surely as I knew anything at that moment.

“I didn’t want to be alone and I kept thinking of you,” I told her. “Carter’s in the hospital. Who the hell else do I hang out with?”

“Ernie?”

I grunted. “Not anymore. I put him in a bad spot and I feel like shit for doing it.”

“He’ll forgive you,” she said.

“Maybe, but it’ll be a while.”

“Probably, but he will. Everyone does.”

I looked at her. “Everyone does what?”

She shook her head, a faint smile on her lips. “Forgive you, Noah. Everyone does-eventually. You screw up, you do dumbass things, but in the end, you get it right. You just have to do some stupid things before you get to the right things.” She paused, her blue eyes staring me down in the shadows. “It’s just your way.”

I gazed back at her, wondering if she realized that might have been the kindest thing she had ever said about me.

“You are drunk,” I said.

She stood. “A little.” She walked over to me and held out her hand. “Come on.”

I grabbed her hand and pulled myself up, stifling a groan as my ribs protested that I should remain seated. “Where are we going?”

“Inside,” she said, taking me with her.

“Why?” I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea.

She didn’t look back. “Because I don’t feel like being alone, either.”