The Ocean in His Veins by A.R. Hadley

Author:A.R. Hadley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: A.R. Hadley

Part Three

Twenty

June 1997

Don’t ask. Don’t receive. Lesson number 278 in Constance Prescott’s book of totalitarian wisdom.

“Where are you going?”

Cal glanced up after placing his duffle behind the driver seat of the 1932 roadster, the car something else he’d left behind after graduation. “Up the coast.”

“In this rickety thing?” She stood stock-still, arms folded over her chest, lips a hard-pressed line. Cal enjoyed watching her squirm; no one else would’ve noticed her discomfort.

“She’ll make it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t drive so far from home.”

Standing inside the frame of the open car door, he tapped his fingers across the roof. “This isn’t my home.”

“Then why have you been here?” She stared at him the way a bird might eye prey from its perch on a rooftop. “For months ... doing nothing.”

“I don’t know.” Cal glared at her, feeling like a rebellious teenager who thought they knew better.

“How long will you be away?”

It never ceased to amaze him — the way she could ask questions so acutely yet so unsentimentally. His fingers danced over the windshield now. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? You’re twenty-eight years old, Cal,” she said in her goddamn slow drawl, her eyes moving back and forth. “Other men your age are married and starting families. You are wandering…”

“I’m not like other men.”

“No.” She attempted to hold back a proud smile, but the sly grin won and escaped. “Is there someone?” She rolled her thumb over her palm and other fingers. “Is there a woman you’re going to visit, up the coast?”

Now, Cal glanced away, zipped himself up like the bag in the back seat of the car, attempting to contain his emotions.

Because there was a woman.

He’d made a few phone calls, poked around, and he had found her. He didn’t need to find her. She was always there — with him, part of him — but he’d started to forget her.

Constance, he couldn’t forget, standing feet away, watching him, still looking like an owl on a rooftop. Cal eyed the old bird, deciding to give her a morsel.

“I found someone to buy the car.” The woman he kept off his face. “He is... The buyer is up near San Francisco.”

“How did you find someone there? Do you know him? How will you return? With no car?” Constance uncrossed, then crossed, her arms.

Goddammit. He felt eight or twelve or even nineteen. He didn’t want to return. Not here.

Still, he would miss Ojai: the rustic house, the valley, the ocean nearby, his room. Cal had even missed his mother all these years: the cool crisp blue of her eyes, the never-ending antagonizing, the way she would proudly pout without producing a sound — like now.

However, after spending the last several months floundering — doing nothing, as she’d said — in his old room, he knew he didn’t want to return. Or maybe he was ashamed to.

Truly, what Cal wanted was to not have a care in the world.

But that was impossible.

The last five years had proven that. Attempting to live in a state of nonexistence, carelessness, selfishness.

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