Page 8 of Always a Chance
“Finley is still at work.” Shane crossed his arms, his red button-down pulling tight across him. He must have come straight here from his job. I hadn’t realized it was so late in the afternoon.
“Well, no interventions without our dear sister.” I shrugged into the top of my wetsuit. “You two aren’t any good at them, so this can wait, yeah?”
“Johnny…” Tanner’s eyes narrowed. He too looked dressed for work, but for him, that was a pair of swim trunks and a t-shirt. “Talia is back.”
“And?” I picked up my board. “I have no feelings. None. Nada. Talia who? Oh, my old friend? Good for her for returning to visit her sister for once in her life.”
My brothers shared a look as I quietly seethed, my hand clenching and unclenching at my side.
Tanner rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, it’s not exactly the first time.”
I wasn’t sure why, but I laughed at that. “Of course not.” I should have known Talia wouldn’t abandon Gianna. I was the only one who never mattered to her. “It’s okay. Ten years is a long time. People move on. I know I have.” My string of relationships since high school was proof of that. Right? Or was it the opposite?
They shared another look, and I sighed. “Stop doing that. I’m fine. I have a mother at home. I don’t need you two all over me too.”
That made Tanner smile. “Does Aidan know you call him your mother?”
“I do it to his face.” The first time I said it, his response was to shrug and say my mom was awesome, so being compared to her wasn’t an insult. “The guy is weird. Now, can I please surf in peace?”
Tanner’s gaze drifted to the calm waters, one eyebrow raised. “This?”
I was in this now. No escaping. “Yes. Do you want to do an intervention about my surfing too?”
He stepped back. “Have at it, bro.”
Shane wasn’t so quick to back away. There were nine years between my eldest brother and me, and sometimes he could be more overbearing than our parents. Finley and Tanner liked to smile and laugh, and everything they did came from a place of caring. Shane’s quiet demeanor was more scrutinizing, as if he searched for what I didn’t say.
Uncomfortable, I jogged down the beach, not stopping until my feet crashed into the water.
It wasn’t until I paddled out that I realized how big of an idiot I was. Few people dotted the beach, but I was the lone figure out in the cold April waters of the gulf, looking for waves that wouldn’t come.
Yet, away from land, the tightness in my chest loosened. My board rose and dipped as a tiny wave rolled underneath, almost too small to notice. But I noticed everything out here. The smell of salt in the air, the birds overhead returning for the summer. The way the water lapped at my thighs as I sat up, swinging one leg to each side of the board.
On the water, everything had a place, everything made sense. There was no blame for circumstances out of my control. My kisses didn’t lead to tragedy.
This very beach, this very ocean, took so much from us back then. For a long time after that night, I couldn’t come here without seeing Gianna, without hearing her helpless cry or seeing her limp body. The sea was the first love of my life, and it took me a long time to forgive it, a long time to realize it could heal as much as it destroyed.
I skimmed my hand along the top of the water, wondering if the same held true for people. And if it did, would Talia ever look at me again without guilt in her eyes or pain in her heart?
5
TALIA
Emptiness surrounded me the moment I stepped into the familiar kitchen. Dad had a habit of forgetting to lock the sliding glass door at the back of the house, something I’d counted on when the front was locked.
My duffel slid from my shoulder, landing on the scuffed wooden floor with an echoing thud. Avocado green walls surrounded me, rising over shining white granite countertops and cabinets so dark they appeared almost black.
I waited for familiar smells to assault my senses, a feeling of rightness. The last time I’d come home was two years ago, and the place smelled of baking bread and mulled wine, my dad’s two favorite things to make.
I ran my fingertips along the oak table, over the backs of two chairs. On the other side was the bench seat I grew up sitting on next to my sister every evening. Even after Mom left, the dinner table was a place of laughter, of storytelling and jokes.
Dad used to love telling the cheesiest jokes.
I reached the hall, my eyes drifting to pictures hanging on the wall showing a different world than the one we knew now. Dad hadn’t changed the pictures since I first left home after high school. There was still the image of me sitting bedside in the hospital with a newborn Gianna in my arms.
In another, Gianna had buried me up to the neck in a pile of snow on our trip to Maine. That seemed like another life. I traced the images of those girls, tried to find out what lay behind those smiles, how they managed them.
That version of my family, the four of us happy and whole, no longer existed. Now, we were broken, all adrift in a sea of pain and anonymity. Except for Gianna. She’d never break.
