Chapter Six:
Harry
The frigid water reached up to caress the sand and the toes of my boots, only to roll out again. Winter was already dying out, a cool draught left in its wake, and San Francisco Bay beach had been washed chalk-grey by the showers. The ocean wind blew in salty gusts and a thick layer of mist hung in the morning sky, distorting the view of the cars that shot up and down the bustling Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. The grey rocks above the tideline were splashed a glossy black. Headlights pierced the fog. I looked ahead, out into the empty horizon where grey water met grey sky, the hum of my guitar milking together with the liquid whisper of the waves. Theo sat beside me; book in hand, reading aloud. He turned it upside down on his leg, and in my outer vision I felt his eyes on me.
“Steel, I have a question. How am I supposed to really feel Fitzgerald’s metaphorical expression of longing passion whilst you block my brain waves with your band camp rehearsals?” His lips lifted into a smirk.
“How am I supposed to really feel the acoustics while you block my brain waves with your story time?” I retorted blandly, jabbing his ribs with my elbow. Theo grunted with a low guffaw and placed his book down in the sand. The humid air traced lines of sweat down his neck despite the lingering smell of rain.
“Okay. Time to put my listening skills to use,” he began, and I chuckled.
“You have listening skills?”
Theo smirked. “You’ve been quiet as hell for days. Tell Aunt Theo all about it.”
“I’ll tell you if you never say the words Aunt Theo again.”
“Deal.”
“I haven’t seen Hope for a week-”
“Harry Steel, you are not telling me you’re a lovesick puppy. I will not listen to it.”
“Listening skills, remember? That’s not what’s been on my mind. It’s what happened the last time I saw her.”
I told him everything. The late night phone call, visiting her hotel, her hushed conversation with the girl behind the door – the only thing I left out was our almost kiss.
“Wow,” Theo breathed, summing it all up in a word. “Do you think they were talking about you?” He laid back, his glasses glazed over by the pale light blinking through the clouds.
“I dunno. I’d never seen the other girl before and the first thing I heard her say was he looks just like him. It doesn’t make any sense.” I sighed. I’d gone through the conversation so many times in my head that it had become hazy and parts had been expelled from my memory altogether.
“Ask her then. It won’t hurt.”
“And what should I say? I was listening in on your conversation and wondered what it was about. Do you have time to fill me in?” I laughed and shook my head. “I’m probably being paranoid, but the girl told her she had to leave California, and Hope kept telling me I should keep away. It’s all so… weird.” I grumbled. I was tired of thinking about it. It was exhausting. “Do you think she’s coming back?”
“Yup,” Theo remarked simply. I raised my eyebrows and looked down at him. He’d placed his book over his face, blotting his head out in replacement of an extravagant illustration of another face.
“Yup? What does yup mean?”
“It means yup, she’ll be back. I’m your wingman, Steel. You think I didn’t guess your moping around was something to do with Hope Thorne?” He chuckled, and the book fell off his face. Almost on cue, the sand began to crunch beneath soft footsteps.
Walking towards us, Hope wore a loose grey jumper over denim shorts; prepared for both extremes of the weather. Her feet were bare and in her hand she carried my jacket, a small smile tipping the corners of her lips. I looked down at Theo and laughed. “You’re a rogue, Theo Barnaby.”
“You’re welcome,” he grinned, grabbing his book and walking down to the water’s edge. Hope sat beside me, laying my jacket down on my lap and smiling.
“Hey,” she murmured, “have you missed me?”
I laughed, pretending to think about it. “I have. It’s a good job you’re here actually, I was on the verge of an emotional prolapse,” I winked, and Hope’s eyes glittered when she laughed. “Theo tell you to meet us here?”
“You got it,” she nodded once and dug her elbows into the sand, her legs leaning against mine. Her skin was cool, like she had been walking in the breath of the ocean wind for miles.
“How did I guess?” In the near distance, Theo was now sitting with two girls, one either side of him. I shook my head instinctively, imaging the copious amounts of chat-up lines he had memorised and practiced on me recently. “So have you been avoiding me?” I asked her, trying to make it sound like a joke, but I wasn’t sure if it was.
“I have, actually.”
“You have?”
Hope nodded. “I freaked out.” She paused for a moment, the silence growing, inflating like a balloon filled with hot air. The longer it grew, the more tempting it was to rupture it. “Opening up to you like I did the other day isn’t something I do often… I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
“You can trust me,” I told her again. She paused for a moment, and then a smile spread progressively onto her lips. “What made you change your mind?”
“You did.” She paused. “I thought about you a lot. When Theo messaged me to meet you here today, well… I couldn’t turn that offer down, could I?”
“In that case, I guess I have to thank my wingman,” I laughed, nodding towards the silhouette of Theo and his new friends.
The mist had faded slightly by now, unveiling the variegated colours of the beach: fragments of glowing blue sky between the cracks in the clouds; green strands of seaweed strewn across the shore and the bottle-glass clarity of the water. Hope pulled her jumper over her head, the camisole underneath slipping over one of her hipbones, revealing a single black teardrop, branded onto her otherwise porcelain white skin. Hope pulled the material down quickly, and it was cut from my vision.
“Tattoo?” I asked.
“Tattoo,” she answered. Her tone was almost harsh.
“Is it a secret tattoo?” I asked, chuckling. I couldn’t figure out the hard set to her features when I mentioned the black marking.
“Something like that.” She was quiet now. Abnormally quiet.
“You have a lot of secrets, Hope.”
She sighed and nodded slowly, the subtle wind blowing her hair across one side of her face. Her lips pursed together tight. “I think I’m gonna go,” she was on her feet before she had finished the sentence. “I’ll text you, okay?”
I nodded, watching her disappear hurriedly down the beach, her bare feet expelling specks of sand from the ground. Theo was back in his spot immediately, storing the two new phone numbers he had gained under ‘Beach Girl 1’ and ‘Beach Girl 2’.
“So, are you in my eternal debt? How was she?” He asked, and I blinked at the distant shape of her leaving the beach.
“I honestly have no idea.”
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Teen Fiction[In the process of being edited and re-written.] "His strident voice cuts through the silence and a chill laces through my cells. In his naturally taunt voice, my name sounds like a death sentence. His pale brown eyes appear as black holes in the sh...
