Kicking Eternity (19 page)

“I’m sorry, kiddo.” Cal kissed her eyebrow and took off at a run toward the electronic doors.

Two hours later, after her mother had come downstairs from intensive care and fussed over her, the ankle had been declared badly sprained
,
and she had been plied with pain meds
stronger than Cal’s smile
, she bumped along in the camp van.

She woke with a start as the
truck
came to a stop. The pain
had
blessedly gone and she felt fuzzy-brained. Cal opened the door, pulled her arm around his neck, and picked her up.

“Put me down.” The words sounded funny.
She wanted to tell him to take her back to camp, not her house.

“No.”

No?

Cal set her carefully on the edge of her bed in the dim light coming in from the hall. Had she told him which room was hers? She couldn’t remember. She pulled down the covers and lay back on her pillow pulling her hair up so she could feel the cool of the pillowcase against her neck. Cal came in with an ice bag and extra pillows he layered under her foot. Her eyes slid shut as she looked at her ankle wrapped like a piñata.

“You okay? Need anything?”

“You.” Her eyes slid shut and Cal’s chuckle fell on her like gardenia petals. She grabbed for his arm. “Thanks—for being here for me.” Cal was so solid—and warm. She didn’t want to let go.

#

Still caught in the sync of working together during the campfire, Raine and Drew turned toward the moon-washed beach instead of the road toward camp. This is what ministry in Africa would be like. Maybe with someone like Drew or several people who worked seamlessly as a team the way she and Drew had tonight.
Thank You, Jesus.

Drew sprawled in the sand under the night shade of a pine.

Tonight, laughter bubbled up in her
,
unquenched by
Eddie. She sat cross-legged in the cool sand while the moon dappled her, shining through the swaying pine branches.
“The whole camp is calling me Rainey.”

Even in the shadow of the tree, she could see Drew’s grin.

“You’re not sorry!”

“I’ve always called you Rainey. I
think
about you as Rainey.”

It was time to turn the teasing back on Drew.  “You
think
about me, huh?”

“As in, ‘Rainey sure doesn’t have the gift of celibacy—’”

Raine swiped at him.

“Hey!” Drew jerked out of her reach. “I remember your right hook.”

“I think
you
have the gift of celibacy.”

“Hope not!”

“Then, who are you going to marry?” She leaned toward him, trying to see his expression in the shadows. “You’re, like, old and decrepit.”
Wow, was that a lie!

“At twenty-five?”

“What’s her name?” He wasn’t dating anyone. He would have mentioned her by now or brought her to camp.

“Sam.”

“Sam? Now you’re gay?”

Drew gave a long-suffering sigh and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He flipped it open to Samantha’s picture.

Raine slid the dog-eared photo out of its plastic sleeve and held it up to the moonlight. She stared at what must have been the girl’s high school senior picture. Sam had long, honey-colored hair and wide, intelligent eyes. “You’re dating someone?”

Drew heaved in a sigh and let it go. His face turned toward the
saw-grass
waving on the dunes nearby. “Freshman year of college I fell in love with Sam. After a semester, she thought she was too young to settle on one guy. But by that time
, I was in too deep to swim out
.” His face turned toward her, but his eyes were shaded by the pine. “I always thought we would have gotten back together if she hadn’t transferred to Flagler College soph year.”

“She’s still single?”

“As of last week on Facebook.”

“So, try again.”

His shoulders shrugged and relaxed. “Who wants to get shot down twice?” He stood and headed toward the seawall.

“You’ll
be
celibate talking like that! Surely she’s grown up by now. Wouldn’t it be worth the risk?” She trailed after him, her words clanging in her head like discordant notes. “Tell me about her. She’s beautiful—”

“She’s history.”

“Someone else, then?” Her voice came out like a squeak.

Drew took a big step onto the seawall and turned to offer her a hand. “There’s this girl with great biceps and cute toes.” He whisked her onto the wall.

Face to face, she saw something warm mixing with the laughter in his eyes—something she wanted to fall into. But she felt herself tugging her hand out of his grasp. “Honestly, Drew! Just when I think I’m getting used to your teasing, you amp it up a notch.”

The look melted from his face with his smile. The breeze cool
ed
, and they started down the road.

“Hey, I found some verses that talk about whether or not you have to obey your dad.”

“And?”

“Ephesians Six and Colossians Three both say, ‘Children obey your parents.’ Since you’re not a child, you could go to Africa on those verses. But there are a couple of verses in Proverbs—”

“Yeah, I found them, too. ‘Listen to your father,’ and ‘Keep your father’s commands.’ Raine brushed away hair that had fallen in her eyes. “I guess I could listen to Dad and not obey him. But keeping his commands is pretty explicit—and there’s no age limit.”

Drew walked between her and the
New Smyrna Beach Surf and Sailing Camp
sign. “Lord, I know Rainey has set her heart to do what You want her to do, even if it means not buying that ticket until she has her father’s blessing. Show her what you want her to do—”

“Can I ask you a question?” Sh
e stopped in front of the dining hall and
faced
Drew. “Why, after seven years, are you still carrying Sam’s picture? Why have you checked her Facebook within the past week? I thought I’d marry Jud at one point, but I hardly think of him anymore.”

Drew went still.

Had she overstepped their friendship? Did she have a right to know why Drew was still in love with Sam?

Drew kicked a rock into the grass growing in tufts around the building.

She should
say
he didn’t have to tell her, that her curiosity had gotten her in trouble more than once. But she clamped her teeth together and waited. She wanted to know. If Drew was in love with Sam, what did that look he gave her on the seawall mean? She knew him as a friend. Could you be in love with one woman for years and flirt with others? She needed to know.

#

Drew blew out a breath. “It’s a long story.” He’d already told Rainey more than he wanted about Sam. Now she was gunning for full disclosure. “Another time.”

“Now.”

His head jerked up
, and annoyance buzzed through him. “Bossy.”

Rainey stared him down, hands planted on her hips.

“Since when is my life your business?”

Hurt flashed through her eyes.
“Since I thought we were friends.”
Her shoulders drooped, b
ut she didn’t move.

He
didn’t want to unearth something he’d buried for six years. He could almost feel the cadaver of pain resurrect
in his chest.

Her eyes pleaded with him.

He’d asked for a peer friend, and
he knew that friend was Rainey.

Her shoulders slumped, and she turned away.

His hand reached out and closed around her wrist. He didn’t want her to leave.
He blew the air out of his lungs
.
M
aybe finally telling someone the whole story would move him down the road. “All right. I give up.” He
let go of her and sunk down
on the dining hall steps. Rainey s
cooted onto the step beside
him.

He rubbed his face with his hands.
So
much energy over the years
had gone into
trying not to remember, he felt like he had to brush dead leaves and sand off the manhole cover before he could excavate.

“We met at freshman orientation at
Daytona State
College. Samantha was sitting in the row in front of me in the auditorium.
T
he sparkle of her earring kept flashing at the corner of my vision. After a while, I just watched the refraction of light when she moved. She had this stick straight hair in a pony tail, but curls had escaped at the nape of her neck. I was intrigued. What did she look like?  I imagined everything from Miss Piggy to Hillary Duff. After two hours of speculation, the session broke up. I scrambled after her, afraid I’d never see her face.”

Raine folded her arms over her knees and
waited
.

He took a deep breath and crawled the rest of the way into the manhole of his past.

“Hey, I’m Drew Martin. Sitting behind you.”

The girl turned gray-green eyes on him, appraising. After a moment her lips turned up at the corners. “Samantha.” 

Whoa.

Drew made himself quit staring. “Man, was that session a snoozer or what? Want to help me find the closest source of caffeine?”

“Sure.” She had a clean look, like a girl in a soap commercial, a lean, athlete’s build, and thick brown eye lashes that didn’t need makeup. 

They talked through the next
orientation
session and the one after that, and by the end of the first week of school they were going together.

One day, h
alf way between midterms and finals, he walked toward Sam. Her head bent over her medieval history book, a four hundred level class she’d gotten into as a fluke when all the sections of freshman history were filled. She sat on top of a picnic table beside the
creek
, one long, blue-jeaned leg draped over the other, her
DSC
sweatshirt pushed up to her elbows.

His love for Sam seemed to always have been there, waking slowly like a Saturda
y morning creeping toward noon.

As he walked toward her, winter sun poured through a window in the clouds like a divine finger pointing to Sam. He didn’t hear the words, but sensed God saying, “She’s the one.” He could almost see flecks of dust in the light. He stopped and stood watching her.

The clouds moved by
,
casting her in shadow again. She pulled her sleeves down, scratched her nose, and kept reading. She lived in fear of flunking the class, but so far she had a solid B. He was good for her. She was all about grades and training a
nd scoring points on the volley
ball court. But life was to be lived
and
enjoyed, sometimes laughed at
.

He crossed the rest of the way to her. When she looked up, he smiled into her eyes. He leaned over her history book and kissed her. Well. She tasted of banana and surprise.

“I love you, Sam.”

Her eyes rounded. He could almost read her fumbling for a response. He put a finger to her lips.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.” He could wait. He was at peace. God had spoken to him.

By New Year’s Sam still hadn’t told him she loved him. But he wasn’t concerned. They were only freshmen; they had their whole lives together. After
a Saturday morning concert at Christmas Park, they walked over to the New Smyrna Beach city marina and dangled their
feet off the
end of the dock.

The sun
had baked
the
boards warm
where they sat thigh to thigh. They swung their legs back and forth over the
water
. Drew had grown up fishing
with a hand-held line
off th
e small cement
bridge
they faced
.
The light changed at Washington and Riverside Drive, freeing the crawl of cars across the bridge.

Sam stared at her white Converses.
“It’s funny, but I’m afraid my shoes will fall into the
river
. It makes no sense because I tied and double knotted them this morning when I put them on.” She
glanced
up at him. “I’m afraid of something else. Maybe it’s illogical, too.” 

She raked her fingers through her hair, straight like the pages of a book, and it fell back again where it had b
een. “You’re the only guy I’ve
ever
dated. I’m afraid I’ll always wonder if there was someone else for me if I don’t date other guys. I’m too young to be sure.”