Read Still Waters for Free Online Page B

probably angry. And rightly so. She waits for me to explain
further, but I give her nothing.
    “So,
do you do this often?” she says suddenly, stopping in her tracks so that I have
to stop too. When I don’t say anything she says, “Pick up girls who are new in
town, take them up to the observation deck, tell them to ‘close their eyes’?”
    “No!”
    “Then
what was that?”
    “I’m
sorry,” I say quietly. “I should have told you before I kissed you that I’m
leaving soon. I just, I.. I need to know what it would feel like to kiss you. Look,
there’s some stuff about me and my past, it’s complicated….”
    She
narrows her eyes and runs the back of her hand across her mouth as if she’s
trying to wipe away the feeling of my lips on hers. Her cheeks are blotchy and
pink from the wind, and she’s shivering a little. I wish I had a jacket to put
over her shoulders. Instead, I just stand back and watch her wrap her arms
around her middle to try to keep warm.
    “Everyone
has a past, Crew,” she says bitterly. “Even me.” She yanks her hair into a
ponytail and looks out to sea. “You asked me if I felt it, and I told you that I
did. That means you felt it too.”
    I follow her gaze out to the ocean. The waves
are still twice their usual size, and the storm has thrown piles of seaweed and
driftwood onto the sand. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me down to this
beach with a metal detector. Once I found a diamond ring buried deep in the
sand. He promised I could keep it so I could give it to a girl on Valentines
Day. But then he sold it.
    Hartley
looks like she’s ready to leave. I know I should let her go, but I feel so bad
about leaving it like this that I move next to her and reach out to hold her hand.
She stiffens a bit but doesn’t shrug me off.
    “I
felt it,” I say. “But I also travel 11 months of the year. And we don’t know
anything about each other, thanks to your personal question rule.”
    She
smiles a little at that and looks across to meet my eyes.
    “I’m
going home.”
    She
takes her hand out of mine and looks up towards the dunes.
    “Look,
I’m sorry that I kissed you –“
    “Are
you?”
    She
glares at me like she can see right through my bullshit. I look away because
I’m pretty sure that if she sees my face she’s going to see my every thought
written there for her to read. We stay like that for a few long seconds. Me
looking out at the surfers riding the waves, and her looking down at where her
foot is kicking at the sand.
    “Can
we just start again?” I sigh, looking back at her and holding out my hand for
her to shake.
    “Didn’t
we do that already?”   She keeps her hands
by her sides. “I don’t like being made a fool of, Crew. I think we’re done,
don’t you?”
    She
turns away and starts walking up the beach towards the dunes. I should let her
go. She’s given me the perfect out. But instead I jog after her like some
lovesick teenager. I’m fully aware that I’m messing with her, and I should just
leave her alone. Fuck it.
      “I’ll walk you.”
    “There’s
no need. I live just over the dunes.”
    “Everyone
in town lives just over the dunes. Let me walk you home.”
    She
stops walking and looks up at me, her hand shielding her face from the loose
sand that’s picking up in the wind.
    “What
do you want, Crew?”
    There’s
a panicked note to her voice as if she’s fighting to keep her emotions under
control. For the first time, I notice that there are dark smudges under her
eyes like she hasn’t slept well for a long time.
    “I’m
begging you, please, just leave me alone.”
    And
just like that, I realize I don’t want to leave her alone. I’m not one of those
men who have an overinflated opinion of themselves. I know exactly what kind of
guy I am, and I know how far I can go when it comes to relationships. Which if
you look at my track record over the past few years, isn’t very damn far. But
there’s something about this girl