Huntley Fitzpatrick - What I Thought Was True

Now he’s watching her lazily, sifting through the sand next to him, probably in search of another flat skipping stone.

But . . . an engagement ring?

Hooper is attempting to get Ginny Rodriguez to give him the time of day by asking her to bet on whether he can drink five beers in ten minutes without barfing.

Manny scratches the back of his neck again, red-faced and uncomfortable. The flush could be the beer, but he seems to know he put his foot in it. “Gwenners,” he starts, then looks up and jumps to his feet. “Dude. You came.”

I shield my eyes and peer over at the newcomer.

Great.

I mean come on. Three times in one day!

“Sure I did,” Cass says easily, lifting a hand to greet Pam. He gives me a quick glance, then looks down, lashes shielding his eyes. “I’m an island guy now, right?”

“You are not,” I practically growl, “an island guy.”

Manny straightens, startled. Pam’s eyebrows rise and she looks back and forth between us.

“Course he is, Gwenners. He’s working for my dad. He’s an honorary Jose, aren’t you, dude? Nab something from the cooler and take a load off. The first days are killers.”

“Ah, it’ll be okay,” Cass says, “once I figure out the whole horizontal thing.”

That’s it. I feel suddenly exhausted. Cass. Nic, Viv, engagement ring. The Robinsons. The lobsters. I clamber to my feet, feeling as though I weigh about a thousand pounds—and, let’s face it, probably looking like it in my baggy, so-attractive clothes. I walk over to Nic and Viv, nudge Nic sharply with my toe, jerk my thumb toward the pier. “Let’s head out.”

Like Pam and Manny, Nic does a quick double take at my tone, checking Vivien for translation. She glances over at Cass, wrinkles her nose, then stands up, pulling Nic with her. We walk to the edge of the pier, dangle our legs over. Well, Nic and I do. Vivien slides her legs over Nic’s, entwines her hand in his. I open my mouth to ask, then think: If they haven’t told me, they don’t want me to know, and shut it again.

“Check that out,” Vivien says in a hushed voice, pointing out across the water. It’s low tide, shoals of rippling sand peeking up out of the sea-glass-green water, ancient-looking gray-brown rocks, the sun burning low and pale orange in the sky. “This is the most beautiful place in the world, isn’t it? I never want to leave. Everything I love is right here.” She rests her head on Nic’s shoulder.

I look at our legs lined up together. Viv’s skinny and already tan, Nic’s well-muscled and sturdy, and mine, long and strong.

Nic scrounges in his pocket for the skipping stones from earlier, hands me one, nods at the ocean. I squint, slant the stone to what seems the perfect angle, fling it out. One. Two. Three . . . sort of a sinking four. Nic edges Vivien off his lap, cocks his head to the side and throws.

Six.

“Still the champion.” He hauls Vivien to her feet, swoops her in for six kisses.

“It’s not as though Gwen is after what you are,” Vivien points out, a little breathless after kiss number four.

No, it isn’t. But . . . God, I wish, for the millionth time, that I could be like her and Nic, so sure of what they have, what they want. That I didn’t always feel jangly, restless, primed to jump off a bridge and let the current carry me away. I glance over my shoulder at the distant blond figure standing by the bonfire.

Especially tonight.

Dark’s just starting to glow into light the next morning when I bike down to the beach. I can barely make out the figure standing at the end of the pier, hands on hips, surveying the water. Only that familiar stance tells me it’s Dad. As I get closer, I see his tackle box open, a big bag of frozen squid beside him. He called last night, told me to meet him at Sandy Claw early.

I’d expected him to get on me for bailing on him at Castle’s this summer. But when I’d said on the phone “Hey Dad, I’m sorry that I—” he’d cut me off.

“You gotta do what you gotta do, Gwen. But, since you’re not gonna be around every day, I want to do this. I’ve got something for you.” Now he looks up from the hook he’s baiting as I scramble over the rocks. Noting the cooler I’m carrying, he gives me the flicker of a smile.

“What’d you bring me, Guinevere?”

He takes the loaf of zucchini bread with a grunt of satisfaction, motioning to me to pour coffee from the thermos. I stayed up late last night, following the directions in Vovó’s stained old copy of The Joy of Cooking, and turning that engagement ring over and over in my head. When she’s worried, Vivien gives herself pedicures and facials. Nic lifts weights. I bake. So, Vivien ends up looking more glamorous. Nic gets fitter. And I just get fat.

“Damn good thing you can cook. Not like your mom. A woman who can’t cook . . .” He trails off, clearly unable to think of a terrible enough comparison.

“Is like a fish without a bicycle.” I was on debate team last year and we used that quote from Gloria Steinem as a topic.

“What does that mean?” Dad asks absently, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. I guess you could say he’s handsome. Not stop-you-dead-in-your-tracks gorgeous, but good-looking enough that I can squint and understand what Mom was thinking. He’s still fit and muscular in his mid-thirties, his hair thick. Nothing soft about Dad. He wears flannel shirts, year-round, sleeves rolled up to reveal the ropy muscles of his arms. He’s got high cheekbones and full lips, which both Emory and I inherited. “Did you bring cream cheese?” he asks.

“No, I did not, because cream cheese on zucchini bread is disgusting.” I hand him a tub of butter and a plastic knife.

“Sorry I haven’t seen much of you lately, pal. I’ve been doing the grunt work, gettin’ set up for the summer crowd. Sysco trucks coming and going to restock—they never tell you what time, keep you hanging all damn day—and I’ve got the new summer bunch for training—you know what that’s like.” Even though it’s been twenty years since Dad moved here from Massachusetts, his er’s are still a’s and his ar’s are ah’s. In fact, his accent gets stronger every year.

I refill the cup of coffee he’s already gulped down and pour one for myself.

“Start cuttin’ up the bait,” he directs, mouth full, handing me a box cutter and jerking his chin at the bucket of squid.

It’s still early June and not all that warm in the mornings yet. I feel as though my fingers are freezing to the slippery squid as I try to slice them—harder to do on the jagged rock than it would be on a flat surface. The tide is high, so the air’s not as briny yet, there’s a fresh breeze coming off the water, and the waves slap gently against the rocks. The dark blue sky overhead is fading fainter in the east.

“Good coffee.”

“Thanks.”

“Gwen.”

“Yes?”

“You’re making the pieces too big. The fish’ll just run off with the hook like that.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

More silence as he polishes off half the zucchini loaf and I deal with freezing cold slimy bait.

“Dad,” I finally say. “You were eighteen when you and Mom got married, right?”

“Barely,” he says. “Here, let me bait your hook.”

“Would you say that was . . . too young?”

He gives me a sharp look from under his thick brows. “Wicked young. We had no business getting hitched. But . . . well . . .” He clears his throat. “You were on the way and—why are you asking me this? You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”

“No! Of course not. Jeez. I’m on the Pill.”

He winces, and I realize I should have said I’d never even held hands with a boy, not reassured him about my effective birth control. Whoops.

“It was a medical thing. For my complexion and because my period was—”

Dad holds up a hand, hunching his shoulders in pain. “Stop! As for me and Luce, we were kids. Had no freaking clue what we were getting into.” He holds out his coffee cup. “Got more?”

I splash hot black liquid into his cup, the plastic top of the thermos, then ask something I’ve always wondered about. “Do you regret it? Marrying Mom? Like, if you had a do-over, would you?”

Dad takes a sip of coffee, screws up his face as though it’s burned his tongue, blows out a breath. “I’m no good at this garbage”—the way he says it sounds like gahbage—“imagining things fell out some different way than they did. Waste of time. That’s your ma’s territory, with all her foolish books. If you mean, do I regret you, no.” He hands me my pole, reaches into his back pocket, pulls out a wad of bills. “Your back pay.”

I take it from him, count it out, then hand him back half. Our tradition. He’ll put it into his pocket, then take it to the bank for my college fund when he deposits Castle’s income. Dad’s big on the fact that it matters that I see the money before half of it is gone. I’ll give most of the rest to Mom.

“You can have first cast, kiddo.”

I hoist the pole to my shoulder, fling it out, watching the fragile transparent line shimmer in the air as the hook dips into the waves.

“Decent,” Dad says. “Put a little more arm into it next time.”

He grins at me. For a moment, I feel this surge of affection for him and I want, the way I wanted yesterday with Mom, to tell him the whole story . . . the boys and Nic and Vivien and the ring and . . .

But we’ve never talked like that. So, instead, I reel my line in, hopeful for an instant as it snags hard on something, until I realize it’s just a clump of kelp.

“Pal, look.” Dad clears his throat, squinting as he stares out at the far horizon. “I’m gonna give you something my folks didn’t give me when I was your age.”