Tattered Innocence Read online

  Rachel leaned away until he broke contact.

  “Does your church put out its own play book? The way I read the big guy’s top ten, the only don’t is the deed—which we haven’t gotten close to.”

  In your opinion. She crossed her legs, swung her foot back and forth as she gazed out her apartment window at the peeling paint on the theatre wall.

  He reached for her hand. “Aw, don’t be like that. Let’s not waste our time fighting.” His thumb rubbed the inside of her wrist.

  Rachel stood and blew out the candle, turned off the TV. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  He picked up the wallet, pulled out a five, and flashed it at her. “What’s that going to buy?”

  “DQ”

  “Everybody in town will be at DQ.”

  “In Daytona.” Rachel snatched his wallet as though she were a kid. “Are you sure? Let me look.”

  He grabbed for the wallet and missed, grabbed again, and Rachel dodged him. He lunged over the coffee table, but she pivoted as if she were on the basketball floor and sprinted to the bathroom two steps ahead of him. She clicked the lock as she heard his hand clamp around the knob.

  “A man’s wallet is private,” Bret said through the door. “I don’t go through your purse.”

  Rachel leaned her back against the door. “Hmmm.” Beside the five were several gas station receipts. And a condom.

  As if he could see through the door, he said, “Okay, so maybe I don’t know if I’m strong enough to take the high road. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to love someone and hold back?”

  Rachel slid the condom out from beside the bill and held it up. Orange sunlight bounced off the foil wrapper. She replaced it and wiped her fingers on her shorts.

  “You’re acting like a two-year-old,” he said.

  “Yeah, that’s going to get me to open the door.”

  Her eyes fell to Bret’s family portrait. She slid down the door to a sitting position and pulled the picture out of a discolored plastic sleeve. Bret cradled a petite woman with one arm. A hand rested on a toddler boy’s shoulder. A nearly bald baby sporting a bow circling her head sat beside her brother. Trusting, cornflower blue eyes peered from mother and children. Flipping the photo over, Rachel studied the cursive writing. We’ll love you forever, Sheri, Colton, Marissa, she deciphered.

  She wanted a husband and children, but not someone else’s. Her finger traced the woman’s smooth skin and high cheekbones. Rachel wasn’t following her heart, she was stealing this woman’s husband, these children’s father.

  Cat’s words from yesterday’s fight echoed in her mind. Would you want your husband making out with a hottie every Thursday night, telling her he loved her? And if you think this will end up anywhere but in bed, dyslexia isn’t your only educational issue.

  “Did I tell you Cat manipulated me into going to The Beach—a church service on the water?” she said.

  “When would you have told me? We haven’t spoken in two weeks.” She heard the pout in his voice through the door.

  “The music got under my skin, sort of pulling me to a place I didn’t want to go.” Like the photo in her palm was doing right now.

  “Like Homer’s Sirens.”

  Whatever. She replaced the photo, knowing it had already burned onto the hard drive of her mind. But under the voices screaming no, Mama murmured, You’re weak just like me.

  Bret thumped on the door and the blows reverberated against her shoulder blades, startling her into dropping the wallet.

  Just because she looked like a clone of Mama, they both chewed their nails, were lactose intolerant, and ate all the peanuts out of mixed nuts didn’t mean she’d inherited Mom’s weakness for affairs. “Go home.”

  “Rachel, I’m sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter. What we’re doing is wrong.”

  “For two months it’s a-okay. Now it’s wrong? We’re in too far to turn back now. It’s bigger than we are.” Bret spoke through the door, closer to her ear now. “You know how much you like it when I—”

  “Shut up, Bret.”

  “You want to touch as badly as I do.”

  His words kept coming, flowing over her where she sat on the parquet linoleum, as surely as if his fingers ran down her spine. As surely as Mama’s blood heated in her veins.

  “I keep drinking and drinking you, and I never get enough.”

  The honey of his words dribbled over her. The voices in her head grew softer.

  “I want to memorize the smoothness of your skin with my fingertips. I need you.”

  The door creaked. Rachel pictured them leaning back to back, a quarter inch of wood and a lock separating them. Her palm flattened against the door. She reached for the wallet and shoved it under the door.

  Bret’s sigh seeped under the door. Nothing moved.

  “It’s you I want, not the wallet.”

  She heard the wallet skim across the floor into the apartment.

  “I missed you so much last week. I’m starving here. Give me a taste. That’s all I’m asking.”

  She listened for the voices. Only Bret’s breathing answered. She reached over her shoulder and pushed the tiny lever at the base of the knob until it clicked.

  Bret moaned, and she felt his weight shift off the door. The knob turned, and the wood nudged her. She scooted toward the tub, and Bret eased open the door. He held out his hand to her in the deepening gray light, and she slid her fingers into his. The warmth she’d felt through the door pulsed through her.

  He pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her, his fingers splayed against her back, pressing her to him. They stood motionless as the shadows deepened in the room. He inched his face toward hers, desire swirling in sky blue eyes.

  Her mind emptied except for anticipation of his kiss.

  His mustache feathered against her skin. His lips touched down on hers like the gentlest landing of a jet.

  The engines roared in her ears as the kiss deepened.

  His thumb, rubbing circles on her waist, touched skin, and his lips dropped to her neck.

  “I want you, Rachel.” His breath curled in her ear.

  A hand traveled the length of her arm, raising goose flesh in its wake, and gripped her wrist. He tugged her with him toward the futon.

  The Queen jostled, and Rachel’s mind skipped tracks to the fiction of how she wished the evening had played out.

  In make-believe her foot kicked something. She glanced down and saw Bret’s wallet illumined in the streetlight beam. Jet brakes screeched to a sickening thud inside her. She scooped up the wallet, dodged left then right, almost in one motion, putting the coffee table between them. She thrust out Bret’s wallet, her breath coming shallow and fast.

  Startled, Bret put out his hand. She dropped the black leather into his palm, took two quick steps back, and yanked the apartment door wide. Her bare feet touched the cool, slick concrete, and her hand gripped the balcony railing behind her. She filled her lungs with the cleansing scent of orange blossoms. “You said a taste.” She cringed at the vibrato in her voice.

  He slid his wallet into the back pocket of his cargo shorts and gathered his keys from the table, his face grim.

  She shrank against the railing, afraid of her response if he touched her again. She hated her weakness.

  He paused in the circle of light from the fixture beside the door. “Don’t tease me again, Rachel.”

  He jogged down the steps beside the garage, got into his Subaru, and sped away. The exhaust of his anger muted in the sticky orange blossom smell that permeated her landlord’s yard.

  But that wasn’t how it happened. Instead of Bret’s anger or the sweet smell of white flowers, the stench of the truth flowed through the neighborhood.

  Rachel had closed the door and twisted the deadbolt locked after Bret left. She sank onto a corner of the futon, out of the glare of the streetlight. Bret’s family portrait projected across the alley onto the back wall of theater like her private movie of shame.
/>   “Oh, God, what have I done?” It was the closest thing to a conversation with God she’d uttered since the kiss in the pump house—since she’d quit asking His opinion about anything. Then the tears choked out. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry.”

  She felt slimy, like she’d awakened in a dumpster full of two-week-old movie theatre butter and coke syrup.

  She went into the bathroom and twisted on the shower spigots full force. A used condom lay in the empty wastebasket, recalling the act. Pain—expected and surprising—lingered, assuring her she could never go back.

  Water crashed down, weaving her tears into the spray, washing nothing away.

  Wavelets slapped against the Queen’s hull. Rachel stood and looked through the companionway at blue sky. She could only go one place where she had a prayer of getting rid of her guilt.

  Chapter 6

  The next day, Rachel plopped boxes of plastic cutlery and napkins on the cockpit bench and watched Jake head down the dock for a trip to North Causeway Marine’s Ship Store. Her peripheral vision caught Leaf’s hatch opening and his head poking out.

  “So, you like the trim of Jake’s sail, do you?”

  She sat down on the bench and opened the boxes. “Hey, Leaf. How’re you doing?”

  “Better and better.”

  The breeze bellowed a cloud of marijuana odor at her. “So I smell.”

  Leaf laughed a little too long. “Not much gets by you.”

  Rachel rolled a knife, fork, and spoon into a napkin and tucked them into an empty box. “Just sitting downwind.”

  “Want some home-grown?”

  “You’re growing weed on The Escape?”

  Glassy-eyed, Leaf stared at her across the finger pier. “I haven’t stayed clear of Big Brother for seventy-two years doing lame brained things like that.” He glanced furtively around the marina. “They’re always watching, you know.”

  Rachel placed a fork on a napkin. “Right.”

  “You ought to listen to short wave. That’s where you get the real goods. The truth. The government should be working at legalizing medical marijuana, not creeping through the South, disarming the populace.”

  She pushed a curl off her forehead with the back of her wrist. Did his paranoia fade as he sobered up?

  Leaf’s eyes drifted closed as he leaned back against his cockpit coaming, then blinked open. “You don’t need to mention this to Jake. I remind him of his gramps. Don’t want to upset that apple cart.”

  “Jake’s not stupid. One whiff and he’d know you weren’t smoking Cubans down there. But don’t worry about me. We’ve all got secrets.”

  A goofy smile spread across Leaf’s face. “Such as?”

  Rachel rolled three more sets of plasticware without looking up. Like she’d ever tell Leaf why she was the last person on Earth to judge him.

  Leaf nodded off, his chin bouncing on his chest as he breathed.

  Maybe she did like the trim of Jake’s sail. She wasn’t blind, just obsessed with another man. Her eyes settled on Jake walking up the finger pier toward her.

  The buzzing of the cockpit fan and the gentle buffeting of the rigging against the mast lulled her, and she leaned back against the coaming.

  Jake squinted into the sun and strode across the gangplank. His muscles strained under the weight of the spare fuel tank he balanced on one shoulder. His backwards baseball cap held curls off his forehead. He grunted and shoved the tank into the corner of the cockpit.

  Rachel held an imaginary monologue with Cat, who had known all her secrets since kindergarten. Jake outperforms Bret on standardized tests for integrity, spirituality—although that wouldn’t take much—and most definitely curb appeal. Acid rock? No results to date. Flatulence? Negligible. Emotional availability? Nil.

  She would have to make up with Cat soon. This was getting ridiculous.

  Jake wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his T-shirt, then met her gaze. “What are you staring at?”

  “I’m not staring,” Rachel lied. She dropped her gaze to Aug. 9-13 carefully lettered across the top sheet of the legal pad in her hands. “You could have told me the ten people we’re ferrying to sea camp are teenage boys.”

  Jake leaned over her shoulder and she smelled sweat and Juicy Fruit gum. “What’s wrong with teenage boys?”

  Her breath stopped in the quiet. He had to be reading her menu. Please don’t let there be any transposed letters. She could almost see the squiggles and backward letters on her original menu searing up through the page. Sweat broke out under her arms even though she sat in the stream of the fan. “I just had to write a new menu. Nothing’s wrong with teen boys.” Hall was eighteen now—even if he was stuck in her heart at eleven when she could still get away with mothering him.

  “Hmm.” Jake shifted away from her. “Hamburgers, corn dogs, spaghetti, chips, cookies—these guys will think they’ve hit food nirvana.” He stood and crossed his arms.

  She let the air out of her lungs and slumped against the coaming, annoyed that she’d overreacted. “We haven’t had to refund anyone’s money in the two months I’ve been cooking.” She should just tell him she had dyslexia and let him think her IQ was in single digits.

  “Get over yourself, Rae. I was giving you a compliment.”

  No one had ever called her Rae before. It sounded good, better than his compliment by a long shot. Her chin lifted.

  But the satisfaction of pleasing Jake smacked into the feeling she didn’t deserve anyone calling her Rae.

  She needed to go where she’d get the help she needed. She glanced at Jake. Maybe he’d find some comfort there, too. “Sunday night—I’m taking you on a field trip. No excuses. It’ll be good for you.” She needed this like air, and maybe he did, too.

  Jake quirked a brow, stared at her for a heartbeat, then went back to coiling the sheet. He stowed the rope in the cockpit locker and headed aft.

  Whatever. She was too desperate to care about Jake and his bursts of sullenness. She’d go alone.

  The Queen rose and fell under Jake’s feet, her clumsy attempt at consolation. Rachel had left for the weekend, and the sea campers wouldn’t arrive till Monday.

  He circled the deck looking for something to do. Saturday and most of Sunday had crept past with little to distract him from the throbbing under his ribs.

  His eyes swept the ship. Gramps would have loved running the business as much as Jake did. They would have been good together, but they both lost out. And it was Jake’s fault. If it hadn’t taken him six years and Gramps’ death for him to figure out the corporate world was killing his spirit in tiny increments, they could have been sailing since he graduated.

  Jake jogged down the steps into the main salon.

  Shafts of sunset cut through the portholes, slashing color across the white paint and teak trim of the salon. He had painted every surface in the cabin while Gabs worked nearby on other projects. The clarity of hindsight told him they’d always been together, but separate.

  Orange light bathed the stove―Gabs’ pride and joy―the only thing Jake had bought top-of-the-line on the Queen. The racks Rachel had pulled from the oven before starting the self-clean cycle leaned against the cupboard. He could finish cleaning the stove. Anything was better than chewing on his regrets. He filled the sink with soapy water and tossed in the burner guards.

  He’d eaten so many of Gabs’ meals staring into her face, talking about dreams she never shared.

  His emotions rolled back over the weeks he’d spent in a haze of plodding through his to-do list readying the Queen for her new career. The tasks had been his link to sanity. Always, in the back of his mind, he hoped Gabs would come back to him and the Queen. But he’d seen the stubborn set of her jaw when she said good-bye on their not-wedding-day.

  He’d refused to grieve—for Gabs, for Gramps. Every week people boarded the Queen, ready to sail—people who had prepaid, whose money he’d already spent. The next week, a new set of sailors―airline printouts for Daytona
Beach or Orlando crumpled in their pockets—walked up the pier.

  And on it had gone. Except for weekends when the pain surfaced. It hadn’t shrunk or faded or toughened to a scar.

  The morning Gabs broke up with him, Jake woke curled around her. His skin warmed in the places where it touched hers.

  Curtains fluttered in the pre-dawn grayness. The scent of rain-wet concrete floated through the window.

  He felt her body quake, then heard the telltale sound of a sob she tried to silence. That must have been what woke him.

  “What is it, Gabs?” Jake mumbled and reached for her shoulder. She flinched away from him and pressed her forehead against the wall.

  Crickets chirped between her sobs. Soft light spilled over the crucifix on her bamboo dresser.

  He went up on one elbow.

  Tears rolled down her face and soaked into the rumpled sheet.

  “We shouldn’t have had sex.” She sat up and cinched the sheet around her.

  The ceiling fan hummed in the growing light.

  Jake thumbed a tear from her cheek, a caress. “I love you. We’re six weeks from the wedding―” He begged her to see reason.

  She pushed his hand away. Her head drooped over the sea-green comforter bunched between them. “I’ve let God down.” Hysteria tinged her voice.

  “I’ll go to confession with you.”

  “You’re not Catholic. You didn’t go to twelve years of parochial school. You don’t have the voice of Sister Mary Kate in your head telling you sex is evil.”

  “Of course nuns and priests are going to think that. That’s why they don’t do it. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the rest of the population thinks sex is a healthy part of life. It’s normal to want the woman you love. I need you.”

  “Need me? You have a chokehold on me, and we would both drown in marriage. I didn’t see it till now.” She moved further away from him on the bed. “I can’t marry you.”

  Amber light filtered into the room. Gabs scrubbed a damp corner of the sheet against her cheek and stared at him.