Seven Tears into the Sea by Terri Farley

Author:Terri Farley
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Published: 2003-10-14T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Just sitting on my step Jesse took my breath away.

His hands hung between knees canted out to the sides, and he smiled as if I’d brought Christmas.

He wore a long-sleeve black shirt, blue jeans, and he was barefoot.

“How’s this for wearing clothes?” he asked.

I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d told him. Something to do with me being less edgy if he wore a shirt. “It’s great,” I said. “But you must be too warm.”

“Clothes are too warm,” he said.

I laughed. He might be flushed from heat, but he was trying to please me.

“I want you to go swimming with me,” he said.

“You didn’t have to wait,” I said. “You could have left me a note.”

He considered his palms, then turned them down, examining both sides of his hands as if they were useless. “I can’t write.”

Every missionary impulse I had, flared alive.

“Or read?” I asked because they seemed to go together and because he didn’t seem embarrassed to tell me.

“I can read a little,” he said. “Signs and colors.”

When he pointed toward the highway, I swallowed hard. Logging trucks loaded with five-hundred-year-old redwood trees came barreling down this highway. If you didn’t read the warning signs, the trucks would surprise you. I couldn’t drown out the imagined sound of a truck horn blaring.

“But you can’t read eyes,” he said in a pitying tone.

Is that what he did when he seemed to be reading minds? That wasn’t possible, and yet I turned away, a little ashamed as I considered what Mandi and Jill would think of him. He wouldn’t fit in—probably anywhere. But part of me—most of me—didn’t care.

Jesse prowled away from my step. The nest over my head was silent as I watched him stare toward the highway that led to Siena Bay. There wasn’t a car in sight so I didn’t know what he was watching.

“Come swim with me,” he said. “Now.”

I would have agreed if he hadn’t added now. I’d already gotten off on the wrong foot letting him kiss me as if he had a right to.

I wouldn’t let him boss me around, but I studied Jesse and discovered I didn’t want to fight him. Or change him. Why would I want to change a guy who took my breath away?

I liked the way he looked. I liked that he didn’t act conceited even though I couldn’t stop gawking at him. I even liked how he got his feelings hurt when I didn’t believe him. He had some kind of integrity. And he’d promised to protect me with his life! Primitive, but it packed a punch.

With a scrape and a clang, a truck bottomed out taking a turn off the highway and onto Little Beach Road. My driveway. I saw a rooster tail of sparks where the oil pan scraped the asphalt and skidded onto the gravel.

Had Jesse heard them coming? Had he known they were headed for my cottage before he demanded I go swimming with him?

Raucous voices mixed with the cadence of rap, and I imagined they’d already been drinking.

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