The Art of My Life Page 12

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Oh? Sounds like an improvement to me.”

  Aly smiled. “Yeah, maybe it is.”

  When they docked, Cal’s family trooped off the boat. Henna yawned. Leaf chattered about the cops stopping people just for being out at this time of night.

  Cal hooked Missy with the crook of his arm around her neck. “Thanks, Sissy-Missy—and for taking such good care of my car, filling her up.” His voice sounded choked at the end.

  Missy elbowed him in the ribs and he let go. “You’re just lucky tomorrow is Saturday.”

  Missy still smiled when she looped an arm through her father’s and leaned her head on his shoulder.

  A phantom pang of longing for Daddy shot through Aly.

  Jackson looked at Cal. “Thanks for calling. I haven’t shrimped in years. It was… entertaining.” He shot a glance at Leaf and Henna squabbling down the dock, and they all laughed.

  “Thanks everybody.” Cal dropped an arm over Aly’s shoulder.

  Aly snuggled into his warmth and let the pain Missy and Jackson had spurred ebb. She should break away, but it felt too good.

  The family got into their cars, and Cal faced her. One hand rested on her waist. His mouth moved toward hers. He stopped short of her lips. Tired eyes searched hers. He let go, disappointment etching his expression before he hid it. “Stay over. You can have the fore bunk.”

  Aly nodded.

  Below deck, Cal looked over his shoulder as he headed for his bunk. “If you’re too cold, you can sleep in here.” He pulled his sweatshirt over his head, exposing the top of his tattoo as his T-shirt rode up. “I’m too tired to do anything….” Cal stared at her for another second, his eyes hopeful, then turned and went into his cabin.

  “Why won’t you show me your tattoo?”

  Cal looked back at her and tugged his T-shirt over the tattoo.

  “We’ve talked about everything at one time or another. Is it bad art? Elvis? What could possibly embarrass you after we shared my pregnancy scare?”

  Indecision wavered in Cal’s face. “Okay, I’ll tell you. Sometime. Not tonight.” He dropped onto his bunk.

  Aly eyed the open door warily. Her mind flooded with the sensation of falling asleep in Cal’s arms. A tide sucked her toward Cal. He’d give her a sleepy smile and open his arms.

  No. She’d told him not to kiss her. If she climbed into his bunk, there would be more than kissing… no matter how tired they were. She dragged her gaze away from Cal’s bare foot hanging off the bunk and reached for a sketch pad lying on the table to change the direction of her thoughts.

  She opened the pad to the sketch of her in glasses, gazing at her laptop. He’d drawn it on one of her first days as his partner. She studied her eyes and mouth, eerily like looking in the mirror—not just the physical, but who she was inside. Cal really knew her.

  He’d shaded her T-shirt where it stretched across her breasts. The effect warmed her. Even if she didn’t have his kisses or the male appreciation she’d caught on his face earlier as proof, this drawing revealed Cal’s attraction to her. Intuitively, she knew his care for her went deeper than physical attraction. But every other guy she’d known had dropped her. How could Cal, with all his issues, be any different?

  She flipped the page. A dolphin arced out of the water. The next page captured the South Causeway pummeled by rain. She thumbed through the rest of the pad—a pelican perched on a piling, the jetty jutting into the Atlantic, the beam of white across Ponce Inlet from the lighthouse, Ocean’s Seafood restaurant at sunrise.

  An idea flashed through her, knocking out desire for Cal or sleep. She grabbed her purse and keys and tip-toed up the companionway.

  Cal headed another shrimp, shoved the body into the Ziploc bag on the scale, and chucked the head into a bucket at his feet. He’d give the chum to Fish, payback for telling him where the shrimp were running. He pulled the drawstring tighter on his sweatshirt hood. At least the sun was finally coming up.

  He’d drifted in and out of consciousness, aching to feel Aly in his arms all night. But she never appeared. Maybe the honeyed lava from their kisses only shot through his veins. Maybe Aly didn’t want heat if it came from him. Maybe friendship was all Aly wanted. He should have spared himself the anguish and not even suggested she sleep in his bunk.

  A half-dozen more and he’d have twenty pounds of shrimp headed. The headed shrimp would bring five dollars a pound, and the other ninety pounds, four dollars a pound. The sooner they sold, the sooner he could sleep. He really should have told Aly the shrimp limit was five gallons per boat, but he hadn’t had the heart to shoot down her idea. At least they didn’t get caught. Yet.

  Where was Aly? Had he pissed her off last night?

  On the corner, Ken Scragg from Scragg Groves lined up bottles of juice next to a basket of oranges. The organic bakery truck pulled up and belched exhaust fumes on Cal.

  He sealed the bag of shrimp and tossed it into the ice-filled garbage can.

  The Oak Hill Seafood Co-op van rolled to a stop at the other end of the lot. Garner Fritz—Aly’s almost baby-daddy—hefted his football-player girth out of the truck. Chances were nil the moron would miss Cal bootlegging shrimp less than a hundred yards away. The three-hours-of-sleep gravel in the bottom of his stomach churned.

  Aly rounded the bakery truck, grinning like they’d already sold their shrimp. Walmart bags hung from her arms. “You, John Calvin Koomer, are genius.” She kissed him full on the lips. She spun around, strode to the bakery truck window, and ducked her head inside.

  Whoa. What happened to no kissing?

  Aly pulled her head and a bakery bag out of the truck. “Thanks. I’ll pay you in a minute.” She waved at whoever she’d spoken to in the truck.

  Aly pulled clothesline from a bag and strung it between the bakery truck and a tree. “You know the sketch pads you had lying around the boat? I matted the drawings on card stock, and we’re going to sell them for twenty-five dollars a pop.” She glanced over her shoulder at Cal as she clothes-pinned his drawings to the cord. “You okay with that?”

  Cal shook the kiss out of his head and dredged up her question. “As if anybody would want to pay money for them.”

  “They will.” Aly lobbed him a smile that fried the chill off his morning. Maybe she’d rethought the kissing ban.

  She glanced at her phone. “It’s showtime—seven a.m. Quick, make a sign.” She handed Cal cardstock from one of the bags and a Sharpie still in its package.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans and found a dry spot on the table.

  “Get your large Oak Hill Reds here! Caught last night,” Aly announced to the flannel-clad mother and daughter who stumbled toward the scent of coffee coming from the bakery truck.

  “Shh. The Seafood Co-op will turn us in.”

  “Then hurry up with the sign, Rembrandt.”

  Aly sold drawings at a steady clip, zinging him with I-told-you-so’s while he headed a million shrimp.

  He should be glad his art was making money, but it rankled that the shrimp he’d headed weren’t selling, and Aly’s idea was. What were they going to do with a hundred and twenty pounds of shrimp on their hands?

  Morning sun burned off night. Cal grabbed another muffin out of Aly’s bag.

  A fit, blonde guy his folks’ age squinted at the Ocean’s Seafood restaurant drawing for a good five minutes. He raked his eyes over their stall, his gaze catching on a painting of Aly’s mother’s house Cal had done for Aly years ago.

  Aly’d propped the charcoals he’d given her for her birthday against a cord. Would she sell those, too?

  “How much for a full-sized painting?”

  Cal opened his mouth to answer, but Aly spoke. “Five hundred.”

  The man’s eyes widened. His gaze panned to the painting of Aly’s house, the Ocean’s Seafood drawing, back at Aly.

  Aly held the man’s gaze and smiled. “Half up front. Half at completion.”

  The guy slid hi
s checkbook from the back pocket of his Levis. “I’d like Clancy’s Cantina, the view of the restaurant from Flagler Avenue. When is delivery?”

  Aly looked at Cal.

  “I’ll have it done by Christmas at the latest.” Cal wiped shrimp guts off his hand with a rag and held it out. “Cal Koomer, artist.”

  “Matt Clancy, owner of Clancy’s Cantina.”

  They shook. Aly introduced herself as Cal’s business partner, thanked him for his patronage, and bequeathed a thousand-watt smile on him.

  Matt Clancy ambled past the baskets and visor stalls.

  Cal eyed Aly. “Five hundred dollars?”

  She shrugged. “If a person pays with no hesitation, you’ve asked too little. He paused just long enough. I nailed it.”

  Cal glanced up and saw Garner Fritz, marching toward them. The bottom of his white-blonde buzz peeked from under an Oak Hill Seafood Co-op cap. Cal’s stomach knotted, choking the elation he’d felt over Aly’s commissioning a painting.

  Aly had humiliated Gar when she caught him cheating on her. Maybe it was his imagination, but he read revenge in the stiff set of Gar’s shoulders.

  Gar stopped in front of their stall, blocking out the sun. “Bootlegging will get you fined.”

  Cal glared into Gar’s mirrored sunglasses and saw two of himself. “You’d have to sell something for it to be called bootlegging.”

  “Maybe we should ask the authorities.”

  Cal was about to mention that authorities was a big word for a guy with Gar’s limited intelligence.

  Aly stepped into Gar’s personal space. “Hi, Gar. Kinda weird how we live in the same town and haven’t seen each other for two years.”

  He shifted from one foot to the other. “Yeah, well….”

  “You still with Carina?”

  His mouth tightened. “I didn’t walk over here to talk about who I’m seeing.”

  “Did you come to find out if I was pregnant when we broke up?”

  Color drained from Gar’s face and he fell back a step. His eyes darted around the stall as if he were looking for a child. “Were you?”

  Aly stared Gar down.

  Cal could almost smell Gar’s fear.

  Aly took a deep breath and let it out. She glanced at Cal and back at Gar. “No. You left me herpes instead.”

  Shock registered on Gar’s face, then his eyes shifted to the side, giving away his guilt. His cheeks splotched red under albino whiskers that sparked with morning sun. He spun and strode back to his booth.

  Aly folded her arms across her chest. “Guess we can sell our shrimp in peace now.”

  The quiver in her lip showed how much the performance had cost her. Herpes. At least it wasn’t something worse. “You didn’t have to do that. We could have given everyone we knew frozen shrimp for an early Christmas gift.”

  “You already know everything else there is to know about me.” Aly stared at the produce in the stall across the aisle, her cheeks pale, jaw tight. “It felt good to embarrass Gar. He had it coming.”

  He’d almost been disappointed Aly hadn’t conceived Gar’s child. “I would have married you if you’d been pregnant.”

  “What about Evie?”

  “There would have been no Evie.”

  A rap sounded on the table and Cal’s head swiveled toward the sound.

  “Oak Hill Red’s, huh? How much you got?”

  Cal eyed the hard-living face, gray beard, stocking cap, and shorts. “Jimmy, good to see you. This is Aly. Jimmy co-owns the Dolphin View restaurant. I have a hundred and ten pounds—twenty of it headed—caught last night, kept on ice. Five dollars a pound for the headed, four dollars for the rest. What do you say?”

  “You head all the shrimp, deliver, and I’ll buy the lot for four hundred.”

  “That’s almost a buck short a pound.”

  “I could buy from the co-op for full price….”

  “You fry up a couple of baskets for me and Aly and it’s a deal.”

  “Sold.”

  Aly would have scored four-fifty a pound from Jimmy and gotten a rush out of haggling.

  Of course, Aly wouldn’t have married him—even pregnant. He’d been freshly fired from camp, nursing a broken infatuation with weed and alcohol. Two and a half years had barely upped his real estate.

  Chapter 14

  November 24

  Call me crazy, but if someone is going to champion my cause, I want them to be gaga in love with it. Pity, chivalry, do-gooderism are not enough. Opinions?

  Aly at www.The-Art-Of-My-Life.blogspot.com

  Starr peered through the kitchen window as Jesse and Kallie’s kids careened around the kitchen table. The scent of Thanksgiving turkey filled the kitchen.

  Cal’s Jeep pulled in. She should have tried to make peace with Cal before today. She took a deep breath and opened the door for Aly who carried a Dutch oven of mashed potatoes. “Happy Thanksgiving, Aly. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Aly smiled. “I like being part of your family.”

  She had a pretty smile, gentle. Starr had never noticed before, never thought of Aly as anything more than Kallie’s morally-challenged sister who came over on holidays. That was going to change. Starr stepped outside the house and closed the door, sealing Aly and her grandchildren into the Thanksgiving smells of the kitchen.

  Cal grimaced over Aly’s crock pot in his arms. “I know we argued, but isn’t barring the door to keep me out of Thanksgiving extreme?” He softened the words with a half-smile.

  Starr met his eyes, cast around for the words she had to say to him. “I… I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I seem to put my foot into it with you on a continual basis. I’m proud of you—your art, your affection for animals—even if you didn’t get that from me—your hard work to make your business succeed, that you keep coming back even when I say the wrong things. I love you—more than I can express.”

  I’m just terrified that you’ll keep making stupid choices until you’re sucked completely away from me. Those were the words she promised herself she wouldn’t say. She gave him a tentative smile.

  “I appreciate your making the effort, Ma. Just let me work this out on my own. You can’t figure out life for me.”

  “Thanks.” Starr pressed her lips together, holding back foreign tears. “And you were right about Aly. I wasn’t thinking about life from her perspective. I’m sorry.”

  She opened the door, and Cal started through.

  He kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, too.”

  The air emptied from her lungs. She’d never been a huggy kind of mother. In a heartbeat she wanted to change. But Cal was halfway to the counter with the crock pot.

  Henna and Leaf came around the corner of the house as Fish and Evie pulled in behind Cal’s Jeep. Evie’s presence would make Cal uncomfortable, but Evie deserved family on a holiday, even if it wasn’t her own. When she looked at Evie, she saw herself as a young woman, starved for a sense of belonging. She hoped this small kindness to Evie didn’t backfire on her and make Cal mad.

  Fish and Evie crowded into the kitchen. Cal barely acknowledged Evie, but Starr caught the strained glance Fish and Cal exchanged. Well, they hadn’t kept a lifelong friendship going without learning how to resolve their differences. They would work it out.

  Henna handed her a Tupperware bowl containing her usual orange Jell-O with shredded carrots and marshmallows—a dish Starr could be certain contained no marijuana.

  “Someone stole my panties,” Henna blurted.

  Every eye in the kitchen landed on Henna.

  “I left my laundry basket on the front seat of my car with eighteen pairs of panties on top when I ran into Winn Dixie. Do you think eighteen pairs are too many? How many do you have?”

  Starr opened her mouth and shut it. She didn’t know how many panties she owned, and even if she did, she wasn’t telling her mother. And definitely not with Jackson, Missy, Cal, and Jesse snickering behind her. “Finish your story, Mama.”

  “So, I
came back out to the car, and somebody had stolen my panties and replaced them with their ratty old panties.”

  Henna had obviously smoked one doobie too many. Starr furrowed her brow. “Were they your size?”

  “Well, I don’t know—”

  “Were they the silky kind you like?”

  “Yeah. Can you imagine why someone would steal my panties?”

  Starr glanced around the room at the people she loved most. “As long as you’ve got some on now, it’ll be a happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Hey, that was funny, Mom,” Missy yelled over the laughter.

  It was a day of firsts—an apology, a kiss from Cal, and she made a joke.

  Fish exited the kitchen following the Koomer tradition of the males cleaning up and doing the dishes on holidays. Hopefully, Jackson, Leaf, and Jesse didn’t miss the rat-tailed war he and Cal usually instigated. He didn’t know if their holiday cease-fire would hold up under battle conditions.

  He wiped his pruned hands on his jeans.

  Evie waltzed up to him and bopped him with her hip. Earlier in the day, he’d thought Evie flirted with him to get him to replace the rigging on her boat. But she amped it up whenever Cal stepped into the vicinity. Ten to one she’d wasted her efforts on a misguided ploy to make Cal jealous.

  Evie’s antics might have scored him some points with Missy. But if Missy was jealous, her usually open, expressive face didn’t show it.

  Evie positioned her hood ornaments in his personal space. “Hey, Fish, wanna be my partner in Euchre?”

  He crossed to the couch where Missy planted kisses all over her three-year-old nephew’s face. He wouldn’t mind getting in on that. “Maybe later,” he said to Evie. “Missy was going to show me something in the garage.”

  Missy’s brows arched.

  Pint-sized Chase took off after his big sister.

  Fish grabbed hold of Missy’s hand and hauled her off the couch. “Come on.”