Page 80 of Wilder Love
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t set him straight. Jimmy set two chopping boards on the counter and tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from his garden. I took the knife he handed me and started chopping vegetables.
“Is steak okay? I could go buy fish or…”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
When I worked for Jimmy at the surf shop for those two years, he used to ask me that question all the time. Nine times out of ten I used to say no. Back then, I kept a lot of secrets. I hadn’t wanted him to know about my mom or my relationship with Shane or what was going on with Tristan. And now… I didn’t have a lot of secrets but my problem, of course, was Shane. I still couldn’t believe he made that surfboard for me. It was a beautiful board and even Dylan was impressed. Since then, we surfed together twice but only because I drove down to the break and he was there. So, it wasn’t like we were really together.
I added my chopped tomatoes to the bowl of mixed greens and set an avocado on the board. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
He chuckled and shook his head as he added his chopped cucumber to our bowl of salad while I ran the blade of my knife around the avocado, halving it.
“What’s so funny?”
“You and Shane.”
I didn’t really see anything funny about me and Shane, so I steered the conversation away from me and Shane. “How was your day? Did you go out on Sam’s boat?”
“I had a good day. And yes, I went out on Sam’s boat.”
“Good. That’s good.” I’d been reading up on brain tumors and I wasn’t sure that was good. I could understand why Shane was worried about Jimmy. What if something happened to him when he was diving? The avocado half slipped out of my hand when I tried to whack the pit with the blade of my knife.
Jimmy nudged me aside and took the knife out of my hand. “You looked like you were about to lose a finger.”
I leaned my hip against the counter and watched Jimmy remove the pit and the skin from the avocado. Bob Marley was singing “Three Little Birds” and the ceiling fans whirred above our heads. Jimmy and Shane had never liked air conditioning. They preferred to sweat out the heat rather than breathe artificial air.
“Shane’s never been good at dealing with his emotions,” Jimmy said, the blade of his knife slicing the avocado I’d mangled. “After Zoe died, he refused to talk about her. This went on for months. At first, I didn’t notice. I was too caught up in my own shit. I thought he was okay, that he was handling it better than most nine-year-olds would. But he wasn’t handling it at all. He was trying to block it out. Until one day, about six months after she died, he lost it.” Jimmy shook his head, remembering back to when Shane was a kid struggling to come to terms with his mother’s death.
“What did he do?”
“I couldn’t find him anywhere. It was getting dark and his bike was gone from the garage. I found him down at the beach. The break where he surfs now. He’d snapped his board in two. Smashed it right on the rocks. I was furious, yelling and screaming at him for taking off without telling me and for breaking his board. He loved that board. It was his most prized possession.”
“But he broke it. On purpose.”
Jimmy nodded. “He was so angry with me and he didn’t know what to do with all his anger.”
“Why was he angry with you?” I couldn’t even imagine Shane and his dad getting angry with each other. Their relationship had always been so easy.
“Because I wasn’t there for him. I wasn’t there when Zoe died. When I got the call about the accident, I was in Rio for a competition. I booked the first flight home. Thirteen hours on a plane. Zoe died before I got to the hospital and he’d been left to deal with that alone. Even after that, I wasn’t there for him. Not in the way he needed me.”
“I’m sure you did your best.” And I was also sure that Shane would argue that Jimmy was always there for him.
“That’s what I tell myself.” He looked lost in his own thoughts, so I tossed the salad, not wanting to intrude on his memories.
Jimmy went outside to get the barbecue going, and I set the patio table for three, thinking about the story Jimmy had shared. When I’d first met Shane, I never would have guessed that he had a temper. He had seemed like a chilled-out surfer dude and most of the time, he had been chilled out with a positive outlook on life. But even back then, there had been things that set him off and made him angry. When he caught me riding my bike late one night with no lights or reflectors. The time he asked me for more information about Russell, as if he was planning to hunt him down and make him pay for what he’d done to me. The time we’d gone to In-N-Out for burgers and shakes (a cheat day for him) and some guy had bumped into me, knocking the shake out of my hand. Kind of like the Frappuccino incident at school. Shane chased after him and made him come back to apologize. And then there was the time down at the break when Tristan dropped in on me. It was all those little things that had prompted me to keep Tristan’s bullying to myself. My rationale had been that Shane had too much to lose and couldn’t afford to lose his temper with Tristan. Obviously, that had all ended in a catastrophic way.
But Shane reacted to all those things the way he had because of what happened to his mom. He had seen his mom get hit by a white van that took off without stopping and she’d been left to die. He believed that people had to be held accountable for their actions. On our very first date, he’d shared the most defining moment of his life with me. So, it didn’t surprise me that Shane had broken his board or that he’d refused to talk about his mom. It was what he was doing now. Shutting down his pain instead of dealing with it.
I needed to be more patient with him. Or get him to open up and talk about it.
“What happened to Shane wasn’t your fault, Remy,” Jimmy said a little while later when he threw the steaks on the grill. “He made that decision to act on his anger. And he paid the price for it. But so did you.”
When Shane went to prison for manslaughter, I’d lost my mind.Six years. Six years of his life stolen from him. It hadn’t seemed real. I didn’t know how I got through those first few months. It felt like a death. I used to wake up in the middle of the night crying, the thought of him in prison unbearable, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. And he wouldn’t even let me visit him.
“Jimmy… I just… I feel so guilty.”
“I know you do. But I’m telling you that you shouldn’t. Shane doesn’t blame you for that. He blames himself.”
“Is that why he took that demolition job? To punish himself?”
