Second Star

27

“Well, you were right,” I say after a few more miles of silence. My pulse has slowed to an almost normal beat, and the tissues I pulled from my purse have wiped away all traces of my tears. “The Jolly Roger is a bad scene.”

Jas laughs. “Told ya so,” he says, and I smile. “Hey,” he says gently, “I’ve got some news. There was a guy in the back who recognized Michael and John.”

“Really?” I ask, my heartbeat quickening again. “Oh my god, should we go back?”

“Back there?” Jas laughs. “Your friend’s probably still waiting for us in the parking lot. If he regained consciousness.”

“But if someone there knew John and Michael—”

Jas shakes his head. “This guy had shared a motel room with your brothers a few months ago—three or four months ago.”

“After Pete kicked them out,” I say, doing the math.

“Don’t be so hard on Pete,” Jas says. “I was the reason he had to kick them out.”

I look over at him, shocked that he’s taking the blame. That’s when I see that Jas’s right hand is bleeding all over the steering wheel.

“Your hand!”

Jas shrugs. “There was glass on the ground.” Whether it was from the shattered mirror or just from the dozens of broken beer bottles littered across the Jolly Roger’s parking lot, I don’t know.

“We’ve got to get it cleaned up.”

“Believe me,” Jas says, “I’ve had a lot worse.”

I don’t want to imagine just what that means. I see a sign for a service area coming up and I say, “Pull over there.”

Jas keeps the car headed straight ahead.

“Now!” I say firmly, and this time, to my surprise, he listens. The fog is thick as we curl along the exit ramp.

“Now it’s my turn to tell you to stay in the car,” I say, hopping down from my seat. I run into the shop next to the gas station. When I come back, carrying water, bandages, and a cup of ice, Jas is sitting in the flatbed of the truck, his long legs hanging down and swinging back and forth like a little kid’s.

“I thought I told you to stay in the car,” I scold. I hop onto the truck beside him and pull a towel out from between a couple of the surfboards, pouring the ice into it. In addition to his bleeding hand, an ugly bruise is blossoming above his left cheekbone. I press the ice to his face, and he leans into my touch before placing his left hand over my own.

“I’m sorry,” I say, dropping my hand and opening up a package of gauze. I pull his right hand into my lap, cleaning out his cut as gingerly as possible.

“What for? You didn’t punch me.”

“We went to that place because of me,” I say. “And for what? Another dead end. We don’t really know any more than we did before.”

“It was my idea,” Jas says, cringing as I clean the gravel from his wound. The cut is long and skinny, horizontal across his palm. I can tell now that it’s not deep, at least.

“Will you be able to surf tomorrow?”

“Takes more than a few bumps and bruises to keep me out of the water.”

I smile, nodding.

The fog turns into a light drizzle, soaking our clothes and the truck beneath us. I shiver, but I don’t want to move.

“We’re not far from Witch Tree now,” he says. “Surfers from all over the place will be there tomorrow. No one’s going to want to miss this swell.”

“So if my brothers are still out there, they won’t want to miss it, either.”

Jas shakes his head, dropping the ice into the truck behind him. “Wendy,” he says, “I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” I say, but a lump is rising slowly in my throat. My tongue feels like it’s made of cement. Jas’s cut is clean now and the bleeding has almost stopped; I cover his hand with Band-Aids, spread across his palm. When I’m done, Jas lifts his undamaged left hand to my face. I close my eyes and imagine the way these hands propel him through the water when he paddles into the surf.

“They could be there,” he says. He sounds so sure, so certain. I open my eyes; his face is just inches from mine. His blue eyes are clearer than water. His breath is cool on my skin. He begins to drop his hand from my face, but I cover it with my own hand, pressing his touch even closer. His fingers are warm and solid, as strong as the rest of him.

Before he can back away, I lean forward and kiss him. Softly at first, like it’s my first kiss and I don’t quite understand the mechanics of it. For a split second, he doesn’t kiss me back, and I think maybe he’s not going to. Just the thought makes my stomach hurt, makes me want him more, makes me want to lean in closer, press my lips to his that much harder. And just when I think I can’t take it anymore, he kisses me back.

He lifts his wounded hand from my lap so that his palms are on either side of my face, cupping my cheeks. The Band-Aids are rough against my skin; I can smell his blood and his sweat, the stale beer that must have soaked into his clothes in the bar’s parking lot. I weave my fingers through his dark hair, gently brushing out tiny pieces of gravel from the ground.

The kiss seems to last forever and yet seems to end too soon. Jas is the one who finally pulls away.

“We should get going,” he says, jumping down to the ground. He has a look on his face, in the fog and the rain and the cloudy light shining down from the streetlamps above us, that I’ve seen before. A look I now understand is reserved just for me.

“Hey,” I say, emboldened, “that day, on the beach at Kensington. You didn’t really come to Pete’s side of the beach for the waves, did you? You were there because of me, weren’t you?”

Jas smiles. “What do you think?” he says. He lifts me down from the truck and takes my hand in his, leading me back to the passenger side, opening the door for me. When he gets in on the other side, I slide across the seat to lean against him and rest my head on his shoulder. As he pulls back onto the freeway, he puts his arm around me, and I fall asleep listening to the patter of the rain on the roof of the truck.

I wake up a couple hours later in another motel parking lot, almost identical to the one we left behind this morning. The only difference is that parking lot is filled and the sign flashing VACANCY has the word NO in front of it.

The rain has increased from a drizzle to a pour, and Jas runs from the motel lobby to the car.

“Come on out,” he says, opening my door. He takes off his sweatshirt and holds it over my head to keep me dry, the other arm around me, holding me close. He’s so warm that I wonder what it would be like to crawl up inside him.

“It says no vacancy,” I say, pointing to the sign above us.

Jas shakes his head. “Honey, I made these reservations days ago. The very second I heard about that swell.”

I stand on my tiptoes and kiss him again, quickly this time.

When I pull away, he says, “I got us separate beds again.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” I reply, winding my arms around his waist as we walk toward our room. I mean it. I want to stay this close to him for as long as I possibly can.