Meanwhile I chug the Benadryl straight from the bottle.
By the time he’s finished, the pain has already started to subside.
“You’re my hero,” I say, closing my eyes.
“Come on.” He pulls me up by my arm. “Let’s get you home.”
“No. You didn’t even go surfing yet. I’m fine, I’ll just hang out here on the beach.”
“Liv, you can barely walk.” He scoops me up into his arms again and carries me across the sand to our blanket. But he doesn’t put me down. He grabs my towel and carries me to his truck, where he deposits me on the seat. “I’ll go get your stuff.” He hands me the keys so that I can start the engine. “Roxy, stay with Liv.”
I start the engine and turn on the air, but before Gabe returns, I fall asleep against the window.
I wake up to him scooping me into his arms again and pulling me out of the truck. “Are we home?” I mumble.
“Yeah, we’re home,” he says quietly.
I nuzzle his chest. I’m too tired to open my eyes. Maybe from the jellyfish venom or maybe the medicine—I don’t know which, and I don’t care. I just want to sleep. I feel myself rocking back and forth in his arms, like maybe he’s climbing stairs. Is he taking me to my bedroom? Where are my parents? The rocking soothes me back to sleep before I can find out.
* * *
I open my eyes and look around an unfamiliar room.
I sit up, startled.
“Hey,” Gabe says, sitting on the bed beside me. Roxy nuzzles my hand. “I hope you don’t mind, I brought you back to my place. You’ve been asleep for a while.”
“From the venom?” I ask, shaking my head.
Gabe smiles softly. “No, I don’t think so. I think it was a combination of the large dose of Benadryl you ingested and exhaustion from your two-hundred-meter swim.”
“I was already tired,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
He looks at me pensively, but doesn’t ask why. “You hungry?” he asks. “I was thinking about ordering a pizza. We could just be lazy and watch a movie while you recuperate.”
I smile and nod.
“Just not Steel Magnolias,” he says seriously, and I laugh, recalling how often I used to watch it growing up. It’s a rite of passage for Southern women, especially those in small towns like ours, where to this day ladies still consider their bi-weekly trips to the beauty shop a social event. Particularly the older women, who spend as much time getting their hair done as they do playing bridge.
“Okay.”
I look down and see that I’m still wearing my bathing suit, I’m wrapped in my beach towel, and my hair is a salty, matted mess. “Do you think I could take a shower?”
Gabe looks like he’s already taken one. His hair is clean and dry and he’s dressed in fresh shorts and a T-shirt.
“Yeah, sure. Bathroom’s over there.” He points across the open apartment.
I’ve only been up here once before, when Gabe’s parents were having a big backyard Fourth of July party. We snuck up here to make out. It was filled with boxes and bins and a lot of dust at the time. I look around the space now and see a clean, tidy apartment that isn’t much smaller than the one I was renting in Raleigh. The king-size bed is situated next to a dark chest of drawers, an oversized leather chair, and a matching leather couch that’s pushed up against the end of the bed. A large TV is mounted on the wall across from it.
There’s a small kitchen on the opposite side of the apartment with stainless steel appliances and white cabinets that make a U-shape around a table for two. It’s spotless, like the rest of the space.
The old wood paneling on the walls has been painted white and the windows are covered with wooden shutters that complement the hardwood floor. It’s a masculine space, but still light and airy.
I notice the pictures that cover the walls—framed black-and-white prints of the beach. And—I look closer—Little St. Simons Island. I recognize the images of the marsh and weepy oaks. I smile and point to the pictures. “Little St. Simons?”
Gabe nods.
“I’d recognize those pictures anywhere.”
“You should. They’re yours.”
“Mine? I took those?”
“Yeah, you saved a bunch of them on my computer.”
“You kept them?”
He nods again. “Yeah...that’s okay, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.” I can’t believe he has my pictures hanging all over his apartment. Pictures that I took when everything was still good, when Brandon was still here, when we were still us. I ignore the swan dive that my heart takes into my stomach. “You’ve really made this into a beautiful space, Gabe.”
“I guess it’s an improvement since the last time you were up here, huh.” The corners of his mouth turn up and I know he’s thinking about our marathon make-out session that Fourth of July.
“Definitely not as dusty.”
He shakes his head and grins.
“I’m going to go take a shower now, okay?”
“Okay.” He hands me my beach bag, which contains the clothes I was wearing over my bathing suit, but no bra or panties—I wasn’t planning on going anywhere after the beach. I really don’t want to put my damp bathing suit back on. I’ll just have to go commando. The shirt I was wearing is dark and loose-fitting, so it should be okay. I make my way to the bathroom and take a quick shower, inventorying Gabe’s hygiene products. Just as I suspected, Old Spice shower gel. And some fancy shampoo and conditioner that I don’t recognize. Explains his shiny new locks.
I reach for a bar of white Dove soap—the only option that won’t leave me smelling like a man—and wash the salt from my body. The red welts that streaked my thighs before are almost completely gone now, but I’m still careful when I wash over them. I wash and condition my salty hair until it falls in silky strands down my back.
When I’m done, I dry off and throw on my shorts and top.
I leave the bathroom and find Gabe talking to Roxy on the landing of the stairs outside. “Lay down,” he tells her.
“She can’t come inside?”
“She needs a bath. She’s all sandy.”
“She was just in the bed next to me.”
“You were sandy too.”
I look at the bed and see that he changed the sheets while I was in the shower. “Sorry.”
“It was a small sacrifice.” He shakes his head, unbothered by the chore. “Pizza’s on its way and the movies are in there.” He points to a cabinet beneath the TV. “Or we can stream one, if you want something newer.”
I sit on the floor in front of the cabinet and start thumbing through his DVDs.
Guy movie.
Guy movie.
Guy movie.
“Geez, Gabe. Obsessed with Jason Bourne much?”
“Jason Bourne is the man,” he says, sitting down next to me. He pulls out another DVD. “What about this one?”
Avatar.
“Yes, I love that one. I haven’t seen it in forever.” It was one of the many we kept in rotation during his recovery. We watched countless hours of movies that year.
He sets the movie up and we get comfortable on the couch while we wait for the pizza to arrive. I wrap myself up in his old afghan, poking my fingers through the holes and pulling it up to my chin. His apartment is freezing. He’s always been so hot natured.