Tattered Innocence Read online

  “You, and every other guy I’ve dated, tested my conviction to wait for marriage. I’ve lain awake since one a.m., trying to figure out why I gave in…. I think I knew subconsciously something was wrong with our foundation. In a convoluted way, I thought sex would fix it…. Well, it didn’t.” She sobbed.

  Her words nicked open a fear he’d suppressed for months. “This isn’t about sex. You never loved me as much as I love you.”

  “The only way I could make things remotely ‘right’ would be to go ahead with the wedding…. God help me, I can’t. I can’t marry you.”

  A strangled sound wrenched from the back of his throat. “No!” He opened his mouth to argue and closed it. “You’ve been pulling away for a long time―” Jake grabbed her hand. “Don’t do this to me.”

  She wrenched away and tucked her hand inside the sheet.

  “Now I can’t even touch you?” His disgust hung between them.

  “Don’t you feel guilty?”

  He felt guilty for plenty of things, but making love to Gabrielle wasn’t one of them. “Last night was beautiful.”

  Her forehead creased, and pain radiated from her. “It was wrong. I blame myself. I’m the one who knew better. Someday you’ll wish we’d waited.”

  “So, if we didn’t have sex, we’d still be getting married?”

  She shuddered. “I can’t predict what might have happened.”

  “Oh, you have it all decided.” His voice hardened to granite—as though he could fend off the blows Gabrielle was dealing.

  “Finally, I get the real you, not the one who constantly sucked up to me because you cared more.”

  He watched her red-lacquered nails rake through her hair, then stood and grabbed his clothes from the floor. There was no point in arguing with her when she got like this.

  Gabs’ eyes darted away from the tan-on-white of his skin until he dressed. She looked back at him.

  He stared at her, clench-jawed. “We’ll talk when you’ve calmed down.” He buckled his belt and went out. Even his skin felt numb with shock, impervious to the cool morning air, the possibility that this really was the end.

  The orange light pouring through the galley porthole deepened to rose as he wiped the last of the ash from the oven and replaced the racks.

  He’d looked forward to sex with Gabs for the better part of a year, and the experience had been euphoric. But she’d smashed his awe in the vise of her revelation. She didn’t love him.

  He shut the oven door. He had to get off the boat. Thinking about Gabs and Gramps would drive him crazy.

  He texted Rachel that he’d go on her field trip. Even a trip to Walmart sounded better than staying on the Queen tonight.

  Chapter 7

  Rachel marched through the saw grass.

  The moon glinted off the ocean.

  A stalk jabbed her insole above her flip-flop, and she grabbed her foot.

  “Where are you dragging me?” Jake said from the darkness behind her.

  She inhaled the damp smell of seaweed and salt. “You’ll see.”

  Waves rolled in, churning up dirty foam like the guilt inside her. Ahead, maybe sixty people scattered around a bonfire—the gathering her cousin, Avra, and a few friends had started. The only place she knew to look for forgiveness.

  The musicians were warming up. She could hear their voices singing prayers to God, wafting upward and nudging something inside her that had been asleep. She wanted the God-songs to carry her to Him.

  Inside the circle of light, firelight glinted off Cat’s platinum hair. Never one to hold a grudge, Cat would probably knock her down and lick her face. Her cousin, Avra, wouldn’t make a scene, but Rachel tensed at the thought of facing her all the same. Thank God Hall had snagged a camp counseling job and wouldn’t be here tonight. She didn’t want to risk his reading the guilt on her face.

  Rachel stooped to shed her flip-flops. The sand cooled the arches of her feet and the skin between her toes. “Forgiven... clean….” The words pulled her toward the light. Hope trickled into her spirit for the first time in a long time.

  Jake caught up with her. Moonlight highlighted his clenched jaw. “I’m over this whole scene.”

  “Fine. Go soak your head in the ocean for an hour. I’ll meet you at the car.” She’d only wanted to help. If he didn’t want comfort, he shouldn’t fault her for trying.

  Rachel stood in the dark watching flames lick the night and gathered her courage. The circle of light from the bonfire came alive with greetings and laughter as people arrived. Avra’s friend, Jesse, strummed his guitar. Avra’s husband, Cisco, beat softly on bongos.

  Firelight caught on Cat’s stick-straight, blond hair. She sat with her knees drawn up, her face toward the fire. Someone laughed. A surfer shoved his friend’s shoulder. Two high school girls whispered to each other and giggled.

  Rachel drew in a breath and headed toward Cat. She sank down shoulder-to-shoulder next to Cat’s good ear. “You were right about everything.”

  Cat’s gaze flew to hers.

  “We’ve never been disconnected for this long. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

  Cat wrapped her arms around Rachel’s neck and squeezed. “Of course I forgive you. I just didn’t want you to get hurt.” She released her. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I started having make-believe conversations with you, so it was past time to make up.”

  “Ya think?”

  Rachel shot her a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry I didn’t return your calls.”

  “I’m not getting another roommate in case you change your mind and want to move back in.”

  “Thanks. Maybe sometime.” When stepping through the door didn’t ambush her with shame. “But you know my weird compulsion to take care of Mom…. I’m good at home on the weekends for now.”

  Cat shrugged, a sigh slipping out. “Avra said you took a job crewing.”

  As if she heard her name, Avra looked up from the group of people around her and waved.

  Rachel smiled and focused back on Cat. “I had to get away from Bret.” She sifted a handful of sand through her fingers. “I’m here looking for forgiveness.”

  The crowd quieted.

  “You’ll find it,” Cat whispered.

  Rachel’s eyes slid shut. The God-song floated around her and seeped inside. No longer fighting, she fell into the melody and let it carry her. She hoped Cat was right. She believed God had forgiven her on some level, but her heart still wore the black swath of what she’d done. She hungered for a cleanness she hadn’t found anywhere else.

  A sullen Jake appeared beside Rachel.

  She glared at him until he melted onto the sand. The guy hurt. He needed God as badly as she did—whether he wanted to be here or not.

  A girl in front swayed to the music where she sat cross-legged on the sand, her eyes closed. The guy from the fish counter at Ocean’s Seafood rolled up onto his knees. Some faces lifted, eyes closed, some bowed.

  She lifted her eyes to the night sky. Oh God, make me clean.

  The music faded. Avra’s husband, Cisco, cleared his throat. Firelight glanced off leftover scarring from teenage acne on his face. “Jesse asked me to dump my gut tonight because I’ve got a boat-load of baggage—stuff I never shoulda done.”

  Bret’s body entwined with hers blazed to Rachel’s mind and she flinched.

  “I guzzled beer, downed a boatload of Jack Daniels, toked a couple pounds of reefer. And I’m ashamed to admit it.” Cisco gazed somewhere beyond them in the night, then hung his head. “I did my share—and somebody else’s—of sleeping around.”

  Wow. She’d known Avra had to work through a lot with Cisco, but not how much. Cisco sure wasn’t that guy now.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a good reason—my folks split up, and I kicked into escape mode. Maybe something motivated your bad choices, too. News flash. Everybody’s got an excuse to do the wrong thing. But nobody held a knife under my chin and made me do it. I chose.”

  W
as inheriting Mama’s weakness for affairs just an excuse?

  Cisco glanced at Avra. “Hey, if I had any idea how my actions would rip people I love, I never would have done it, any of it. And I never want to eat shame again. So, if you’re thinking ‘bout a bad choice—don’t. If you’re eating shame—get clean with God.”

  He nodded at Jesse and grasped Avra’s hand. Avra smiled softly at him, her face a picture of forgiveness.

  Jesse sat in the sand beside the fire. He stared down at the Bible lying open between his knees. “Here’s what faith is, friends—” Jesse held his Bible over his head. “Believing that what God says in the Bible is true—that if we admit what we’ve done is wrong, God will forgive us. Your feelings will catch up with the truth.”

  Jesse continued to speak over the surf and the crackling of the fire, but Rachel’s heart arched toward God.

  I stole Bret from his wife and children. Please, please forgive me. Help me believe You forgive me.

  Jesse’s voice gained strength as he spoke. “Basketball went first,” Jesse said. “Then my band broke up. Sometimes I still miss the rush of performing with the group.”

  Rachel leaned forward to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

  “I graduated. By that time there was only one girl I was into, and she ditched me.” He glanced at his wife.

  “I ended up alone in the woods, screaming at God. I can’t explain it, but I knew he was there. For the first time, I wanted God.”

  Jesse’s words tugged at Rachel, reminding her of how she used to listen for God, the sound of the ocean in a conch shell—constant, ethereal. But she’d dropped the shell, not wanting to hear what He had to say about Bret.

  Jesse strummed his guitar. “What about you? Is it your time to give up, to let God run you?”

  Way past time. Did she even have the strength left to pick up the God-shell?

  Rachel leaned back to gaze at the constellations. Jake’s shoulder bumped hers and she smelled the Suave Ocean Breeze shampoo she’d seen in the shower. Her cheeks burned under the tears slicking her face. The words of the song ran over her, “Forgiven… clean,” and puddled around her. Finally, she rubbed her eyes dry with her palms. When she dared a glance at Jake, he was gone.

  The crowd thinned. Jesse talked with a kid whose swimmer’s hair glinted in the firelight.

  Rachel headed toward the fire where Avra stood. She looped an arm around her cousin’s shoulder. Months had passed since she’d spent quality time with Avra… or anyone else in her family.

  Avra slid an arm around her waist and propelled her toward the surf. “You’re done with Coach Bret?”

  “How about a ‘Hi, how are you?’ before you go for my throat?”

  “Sorry. The night you came home from State, I walked over to your apartment and waited on the steps. Cisco and I were having drama, I wanted to talk to you…. When I saw you guys kissing, I took off.”

  The bile of shame rose in the back of Rachel’s throat—forgiveness, too new to have taken root. “I wish I’d been there for you. I had no idea what you went through till tonight. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We got through it.” Avra toed a piece of driftwood. “But I worried about you.”

  Rachel’s eyes teared at the tenderness in her cousin’s voice. “I—quit seeing Bret. I’m here. I’m listening.”

  Hall—who loved God with an abandonment she used to understand—had been tainted by her sewage, too. She wanted to shop-vac all the gossip sludging the walls of the high school and restore his idealism. But it was much too late.

  Jesse’s words churned in Jake’s gut as he hiked into the dunes, away from the kids heading to their cars from the bonfire. He glanced back at Rachel and her cousin strolling toward the water.

  The guy screamed at God.

  “God, this whole deal sucks.”

  What an opening when listening to Gramps say grace was the sum total of Jake’s prayers. He lifted his eyes to the star-spattered sky.

  “Aren’t You the one who created men and women to—want each other? And Gabs and I wanted each other for a year. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  Silence.

  He flung a piece of driftwood into the dunes. “Maybe she never loved me. That’s what I always suspected.”

  He closed his eyes and listened to the surf crashing yards away.

  “Honestly, I don’t regret it. I had sex because I wanted to. Now I’m paying. I hope You’re happy.”

  Jake opened his eyes to moonlight glinting off the water-slicked sand, the fire glowing on the beach nearby. Everything had been sucked out of his life but the Queen. Gramps and Gabrielle gone in the same year. Sailing only displaced the hurt in five-day increments.

  He inhaled the scent of salt and seaweed. His damp T-shirt clung to his skin.

  Jesse said he needed to let God run him, Gramps’ words more or less. The guy had given up everything—music, love. And he got them back. Even if Jesse didn’t get the girl who made him scream at God, he’d married—probably the blond hottie who sat near Rachel’s cousin. A wry chuckle slipped out. It couldn’t be too rough to wake up to her every morning. Maybe God could be trusted to give him back a life.

  But it was a gamble. With Jake’s luck, God would make him sell the Queen and join the Peace Corps. Or become a priest.

  God had always been a friend of a friend—Gramps’ friend. Gabrielle’s friend. Probably Rachel’s friend. Even that shirttail connection eased some of the ache inside. Maybe he’d actually survive Gabs’ rejection if he stepped toward God.

  But how could he get past what he’d done to Gramps?

  Rachel parted from the people standing around the fire and walked alone down the beach.

  He sprang to his feet and followed her. She shouldn’t be alone on the beach at night. It wasn’t safe.

  He headed for the water, shoulders hunched, hands buried in the pockets of his shorts. He didn’t want to be here. She had no right to hijack him tonight.

  Up ahead, Rachel gripped her flip-flops in her hand. She waded through the foam to the clean water beyond.

  He walked past her on the hard-packed sand toward the jetty.

  Maybe tonight had been good for him. Gramps would have thought so. As much as he hated to admit it, those guys talked his language.

  The rocks of the jetty pointed a jagged finger into the ocean. A wave ran out, and Rachel crossed the water-sheened sand to where he stood. She raked fingers through her ringlets. Her tears must have been over the guilt she’d talked about the night they went on the Dr. Pepper run.

  A hermit crab scampered across the sand. Jake looked up from the crab to Rachel. “Those guys made sense. But that screw-up got his girl. I saw the look she gave him when he finished talking.”

  “You saw that, too? That screw-up is my cousin’s husband.”

  “Sorry.”

  She shrugged.

  “Sleeping with my fiancé wasn’t half as bad as what that guy—your cousin-in-law—did. And I lost the girl.” He stared at the waves crashing on the tip of the jetty. Gabs said she’d still feel shame even after they married. He’d wrecked her religion or something. “One lousy mistake and God zapped me. Presto, no Gabrielle. No future.”

  He turned away from Rachel. This was crazy, puking his life out on the rocks. The bonfire must have gotten to him more than he realized.

  “Avra chose to stick with Cisco. Gabrielle chose to ditch you. How is that God’s fault?”

  “Isn’t He like the great webmaster in the sky who runs everybody’s show?”

  Rachel’s chin dropped. Seaweed sloshed against the jetty beyond her toes. “He made me choose a guy who already belonged to someone else? No. It was my choice.” A gust of wind blew her hair away from her face as she gazed seaward.

  Jake started back down the beach. “The guy with the guitar got one thing right. I’m hacked because God’s rubbing my face in the dirt over this.”

  Rachel walked beside him in the surf. “I hope… I hop
e God forgave me tonight.”

  Her words were so soft and plaintive that he had to strain to hear them. “I don’t get your guilt. What did you do that was so bad? What did I do? We’re not talking murder or robbing banks.”

  “Yeah, I felt that way for a long time. Then, one day, the whole dump truck of guilt unloaded on me.”

  They headed into the dunes, not talking. Something tugged him toward the God people sang to tonight. A part of him had always strained toward the man of integrity Gramps had been, maybe even the man of faith he’d been.

  Jake paused with his hand on the door handle of Rachel’s faded-to-white Ford Escort. He peered at her across the roof. “Gabs dragged me to mass every Sunday for a year, and we never had a conversation like this. I don’t feel like you do, but I get what you’re saying. Gabs’ religion was too high to reach—not down in the muck where I live.”

  Rachel smiled.

  Nice smile.

  She ducked into the car. “That would be me—down in the muck.”

  Monday morning Jake killed the spray from the hose and looked up at Leaf. “What did you say?”

  Water ran down the teakwood deck and gurgled through the scupper drain in the gunwale.

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “At Winn Dixie. So, she’s Rachel now. She been slipping you granola or something?”

  Leaf laughed. “You ought to sweeten up on her yourself. She’d make you a mighty fine lady-friend.”

  “If you like her so much, you go for her.”

  “I would if I didn’t have a woman of my own.”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re full of surprises.”

  “My old lady lives down by where they tore down the old Faulkner Street Elementary School down.”

  “You’re married?”

  Leaf shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again. “We been together more or less since nineteen fifty-five. A good woman. Like your girl.”

  “She’s not my girl. You’re not married?”

  “What? You never slept with Miss Country Club? You can have a woman, and I can’t? I may be old, but I’m not dead.”