Page 24 of An Overdue Match
I rack my brain, trying to think on my feet. I need a reason good enough that he won’t ask again. In my mind, I know that allowing any sort of romantic doors to open right now is a bad idea, but my chest aches with such a yearning to be loved and accepted that I’m afraid I could be persuaded to make a wrong choice in my current state of vulnerability. Between my head and my heart, my heart is the bigger bully of the two. In a streetfight, it will win every time. If Tai were persistent in his pursuit, he could possibly wear down my head’s resolve, my heart possibly ending up in more jagged pieces than it already is.
I cross my arms over my chest and tilt my chin, hoping my determination is enough to keep my pathetic need for romantic love in place. “You have trouble written all over you, and I’m not looking for any.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but I hold my hand in the air to stop him, wincing that I’ve used what he told me in the coffee shop about his reputation against him.
“I’m not interested in becoming a cautionary tale or the next tidbit in small-town gossip. Besides, I don’t date. But even if I did, I would only go out with someone who is sincere and committed, not someone who flirts with every woman he meets and only sees them as a game or a challenge or a means to pass the time.”
His face tightens. He looks as if he wants to say something, but then he just shakes his head. He opens his mouth, closes it, then finally turns and walks away without a word.
I watch him go, my chest caving in on itself. I’m still looking out the front glass door when a black Dodge Challenger zips out of the parking lot. I hate myself a little bit right now, and the feeling of guilt unsettling my stomach isn’t helping either. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone the way I just spoke to Tai. I hope I never do again.
I sigh and bend down to pick up the paper with the beginning of a love note on it. A dirty print of the sole of my shoe mars the surface. I’ll have to start over. But not right now. For some reason, I’m not really in the mood to pen a fake love letter anymore.
11
The frigid spray of water coming over the bow of Tai’s kayak from the white crests of the Ocoee River did little to cool the heat of blood pumping through his veins. He dug the blade of his paddle into the living beast of a river below him and pulled the shaft, his muscles bulging as he simultaneously fought and worked with the swirling, churning rapid that would enjoy nothing more than chewing him up and spitting him out.
Kind of like Evangeline had done earlier.
The river roared in his ears, but neither the low din of thousands of gallons of water breaking on rocks nor the high shrieks of fear mixed with enjoyment coming from the group in the large raft from a local adventure company could drown out the echo of Evangeline’s pronouncement. He’d been a bit taken aback and more than a little disappointed in her assessment of him.
“You have trouble written all over you.”
While body art didn’t hold quite the same stigma it once had, there were still some people who looked at him warily or with a quiet judgment in their eyes. He was mostly used to it and didn’t really care that much. Life was too short to live confined to other peoples’ expectations and opinions. He’ddone too much of that growing up—first by trying to appease and lessen his mother’s fears, but no matter what he did, how small and restricted he made himself, she still worried. That had led him to rebel when he’d gotten a bit older, trying to break free of the confines of her anxiety.
He’d admittedly made some bad choices in his teen years, which had consequently soured the town’s opinion of him. When he’d left for college, it had been that reputation that had kept him away for so long. It had only been relatively recently that he’d come to a point where he realized he couldn’t let what other people thought of him dictate his decisions. He’d much rather enjoy every moment he had on this planet than worry about what went on in someone else’s head. That was their problem, not his. Besides, it was totally out of his control anyway.
He hadn’t thought Evangeline had seen him in the same narrow-minded way others had, though. She’d shown interest and curiosity in his body art, not judgment or scorn. Could he really have been that mistaken? It seemed so, based off her reasoning for rejecting him.
Tai dipped the paddle blade into the water on the right side of the kayak’s stern to steer around a protruding rock. The rapid shot him out of the section of white water and into the calmer swirls of a slower current. He laid his paddle across the cockpit of the kayak and let his head fall back to feel the sun on his face.
Kayaking had been one of his firstrebellions, as his mother liked to call his more thrill-seeking interests. She’d railed on him after she’d learned he’d joined a group heading down the river with one of the tour companies. He’d grown up only hours away from multiple rivers people far and wide traveled to experience: the Ocoee, the Nantahala, the Nolichucky, and the Pigeon, to name a few. Right in his own backyard but never allowed to so much as put a toe in the water.
“What if you have an asthma attack?”his mom would say. It was too dangerous to put himself in situations that required physical exertion and were so far away from medical help. What if help didn’t come in time? It was too dangerous.
He’d lived with those words and fears drilled into his head. He tried to understand why she was so hypervigilant and worried about him at every turn. He could imagine how she must have felt those times she’d had to rush him to the emergency room because his airways were closing, his lips turning blue. How helpless and scared she must have felt. But the longer he lived in the shadow of her fear and hovering, the harder it had been for him to breathe. It hadn’t been the asthma that suffocated him—it had been existing under the weight of ordering his life with the consideration of what she would think of each of his decisions.
When he’d finally shucked off the yoke of caring what his parents or his hometown or anyone for that matter thought about him was when he was finally able to take a full breath.
He recognized a similarity in Evangeline. Granted, he didn’t know much about her and hadn’t really spent a whole lot of time in her company, but he saw the shadow of it darkening her countenance. Beneath the cordial exterior, she was drowning just as much as he’d been suffocating.
Tai picked up the paddle and, with smooth strokes, steered the kayak to the pullout along the bank of the river. He unhooked the spray skirt from the cockpit and stood. The boat wobbled under him before he stepped out, hooked his hand in the opening above the seat, and flipped the kayak over to drain the small amount of water that had leaked in from the rapids. He hefted the kayak onto his shoulder and marched up the knoll to the parking area where Hayley waited for him.
She pushed off the side of her yellow Jeep Wrangler when she saw him. “Good run?”
He nodded. “Just what I needed.” He fastened his kayak tothe roof of her vehicle, glad she’d let him talk her into buying her a rack for this reason. She’d take him back upstream to where his own vehicle was parked.
“How was your day?” He unclipped his life vest and tossed it into a crate in the back of the Jeep. He grabbed the zipper string dangling down his spine and pulled, his wetsuit opening at the back.
Hayley’s mouth pinched to the side as she considered. “Good, I guess. Evangeline was acting weird earlier, though.”
Tai peeled the wetsuit from his chest and arms. “Oh? Weird in what way?”
“I don’t know how to describe it exactly. She kept muttering to herself under her breath. Usually she’s this unflappable, happy-go-lucky person, but today she had something stuck in her craw.”
Interesting. Could she be feeling off-kilter because of their conversation earlier? He turned his head so Hayley wouldn’t see his smile. It was silly, this hope that began to inflate in his chest. Evangeline had laid some harsh accusations at his feet that he didn’t deserve, including questioning his sincerity in asking her out, but if she’d truly meant and believed everything she’d said, why had she been affected by the conversation for the rest of the day?
There was something else she’d said that was driving him a little crazy. That she didn’t date. Why? He had a feeling the answer to that was also the answer to the other questions that had crossed his mind since their exchange. Now, though, he’d settled on one thing. The door that she’d tried to slam in his face had bounced off the frame, leaving just enough room for him to try to walk through again.
