The Day the Jerk Started Falling (Jerk #2) Page 9

  I know now that it wasn’t mine to read, no matter the circumstances, but I have to be honest with you now, or I know all of this will be for nothing.

  I wouldn’t do it differently.

  [laughs]

  I know. I’m an idiot. But that article taught me something about you, and I needed the early lesson. You were vulnerable, more so than I ever would have imagined with how you presented yourself to me, and there was more to the story than a guy at home or a penchant for jerks in the background of our interaction.

  I felt like I needed the information—and I still do—even if I’m not particularly proud of how I acquired it.

  After reading the article a second time, I slipped the tablet back into the seat pocket and tipped your head gently to settle it on my shoulder.

  I felt personally invested in your heartbreak when it came to J—even so far as to feel personally offended by his unfaithfulness.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but that article—and the ones that followed—would irrevocably change the way I moved our relationship forward.

  They would influence and sway, and as much as I’m ashamed to admit it, they’d lead to the demise of everything I was working so hard to build.

  The deserved demise.

  God, I really can be a know-it-all bloody idiot when I want to be.

  I decided on that flight, when you woke up and ran to the bathroom to fix your already perfect face, that I wouldn’t let a few sharks hold me back.

  After all, I was a man of the ocean, and I’d been swimming with them for years.

  What could a few more hurt?

  * * *

  Episode 9: Which One of Us Is in Danger of Drowning?

  Days Twelve through Eighteen of Falling

  If you’d have told me ten years ago I’d end up falling in love with a woman who couldn’t swim, I would have told you to fuck right off.

  I mean, the irony of a professional surfer and a woman who can barely stay afloat to save her life is truly overwhelming.

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, huh? A woman who’s spent any time in the ocean at all doesn’t wear heels to the beach, fashionista or not.

  [laughs]

  And no, it’s not likely I’ll ever let you live that down, just as I imagine you’ll never agree that flip-flops are, in fact, thongs.

  Although, I guess there’s a possibility you won’t ever be around me enough to care anyway.

  [pauses]

  Fuck, I hope that’s not true.

  In fact, I have to believe that’s not true.

  I have to believe that you’re listening, Lucky. And that you’ll give me the chance to apologize in person when we get to France for the rest of the tour.

  I’ll even let you hit me with a shoe. Thong. Heel. Boot. Whatever’s in season, whatever you like, I’ll take it.

  [clears throat]

  Anyway, when I saw you at the pool on June 15th, lying in the African sun with the ocean behind you, I…

  [laughs]

  Well, I thought you looked bloody ridiculous. You had a big, floppy hat on to shade your face from the sun, sunglasses covering the blue of your eyes, and an umbrella on top of that, barely letting the light touch your skin.

  I’m well aware of your fair complexion and some necessity in practicing safe sun, but all my mind seemed to be able to liken it to was wearing two condoms at once. Impractical and, overall, counterproductive.

  I imagine it didn’t help that I hadn’t seen you in over forty-eight hours. And that wasn’t for lack of trying.

  After our arrival, I’d done just about everything I could to figure out where you’d be so I could be there too whenever I wasn’t stuck in a meeting.

  I had no understanding of your ability to hole up in your room and work like a dog—something I’d never been very good at—and in the beginning, I’d even suspected you might be avoiding me.

  But the buzz was that no one had seen you, and the fact that I stumbled into you at the pool that day—finally—seemed to be some sort of divine intervention.

  [laughs]

  I know. It seems like maybe God would be busy doing something other than helping me find you at the pool, but I swear the guy was having a light day. I checked. So there’s no need to start feeling guilty about commandeering his time or anything.

  Just know it was meant to be.

  I’d really love to spend this whole episode talking about our time in the pool.

  The way you felt clinging to me. The blatant trust it must have taken to let me teach you something you’d gone so many years fearing. The way you looked into my eyes, and I knew.

  I knew there had to be a metaphor about drowning as I got lost in the blue pools of yours. Because you might have been the one who didn’t know how to swim, but I assure you, I was going under, and I was doing it fast.

  But…I don’t really have time to talk about that because I have way too much other stuff to talk about—stuff I know you don’t know.

  And as much as you denied it—to yourself and me—I know you know the way I looked at you that day. If you think back…if you let yourself get past the anger of everything that’s happened between us and just feel…you know.

  I was as deep in you as you were in me, and we were both powerless to stop it.

  [distinct pause]

  As you’re aware, our next encounter, a second lesson prompted by me, didn’t come for several days.

  What you don’t know, is how I spent the time in between. You were busy, deep in both your feelings and your work as you penned ex-boyfriend letters, but I was busy too.

  Busy reading the response to your first article from your ex, busy frisking Allie for any information I could attain without making her suspicious, and busy lying my way through what had to be a dozen competitors as they all buzzed about pursuing you.

  Honestly, it’s nearly frightening how oblivious you are to your appeal, and if at any time, by any miracle, you decide to give me a chance again, I’m going to have to take you through a number of thorough exercises to boost your awareness in the future.

  Peripheral vision therapy.

  Flirting in a monogamous setting.

  How to spot a creeper.

  I’m still working on the names, but you get the gist.

  Otherwise, I fear I’ll come home to find you’ve wed another man one day, simply in a naïve attempt to be friendly.

  [laughs]

  I imagine you’re mad at me again now, for calling you naïve, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it and tell you you’re not being overly sensitive. You are.

  Still, I’ve researched it, and several sources suggest apologizing, even when you don’t mean it.

  So…I’m sorry.

  [laughs]

  You’re growling, aren’t you?

  Ah, well, it’s still me, little fire. You know I’ve got to annoy you every once in a while, even if I’m trying to win you back. It’d be boring otherwise, right?

  I have a feeling it’s going to be hard to explain the information I gleaned from Allie without making her seem like an accessory—and therefore getting myself on her permanent shit list in addition to yours.

  As I’m about to be an uncle, I’m trying to avoid being banned from her home.

  So I’ll try to make it clear—Allie was merely a tool in my treachery, and if you’re going to blame anyone, make sure it’s me.

  As it is, she didn’t tell me anything you weren’t already telling me yourself.

  You were looking for more than someone who could make you laugh. You were looking for more than someone who would be there when you cried. You were looking for more than someone who could do any one thing.

  You were looking for a someone who could do all the things—who could be everything for you.

  And honestly? I wasn’t sure I could be that guy.

  I mean, I was the good-time guy, the guy who would challenge you…but was it really possible to be the intimate guy you could count on daily?


  I’d sure as fuck never been him before, and beyond that, I’d never wanted to be.

  Until that first swim lesson in the pool.

  The hours spent there with you, helping you through a moment of physical vulnerability, I felt it.

  The satisfaction. The thrill. The urge to be there for more of those moments, whether they were physical limitations or emotional.

  And, being the stand-up guy I’d now convinced myself I could be, I decided to wait for you to reach out to me. Surely, I’d hear from you at some point, even if it was to sling an insult, and I’d get another chance to prove myself.

  But after nearly a week of waiting, one thing became painfully clear—patience wasn’t my style.

  And the thing is…you don’t want it to be.

  I covered more ground with you when I didn’t wait, when I pushed, when I didn’t give you a chance to think. You’d proved it more than once, but in the late-morning hours of June 21st, you proved it irrevocably with one perfect kiss.

  One soul-crushing, life-altering, attraction-affirming kiss.

  God, Lucky, I can still feel the way your lips felt on mine. It feels a little risqué to describe it here, for anyone who might be listening, but at the same time, it feels like a crime not to.

  People need to know how it should feel. How the foundation beneath me was rattled, and the touch of your tongue to mine was powerful enough to send a shock all the way to my dick and my chest.

  All because I hadn’t backed down. About the lesson, about the ocean, about your so-called boundaries.

  As far as you’d shown me, if I wanted you, I had to go for it with everything I had, consequences be damned.

  That’s a dangerous lesson to teach an adrenaline junkie like me, Lucky.

  I was an expert at treading water, and I’d happily keep fighting in the deep end until you either gave in or I drowned.

  And, well, that’s where my head was when Jordy Fuller interrupted us.

  Suggesting the two of us dine together was the perfect out for you, but you have to know, throwing us blokes together, with my head in the spot it was, was asking for disaster.

  Don’t get me wrong, I take full responsibility for my actions—actions, I, uh, know you’re wondering about—but I implore you to see my state of mind as a conditional catalyst.

  With you out of the equation, and the two of us officially bound to eat lunch together, Jordy and I headed to the hotel restaurant as you headed to your room.

  Jordy and I had literally never struggled for conversation, but that walk to the restaurant made the two of us seem like mutes.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever felt like you could hear the sun—you know, when it gets really hot and powerful? Well, that day, as we made our way in from the beach, the rays were screaming.

  My skin burned, my chest ached, and my mind raced as to how I was going to get through an entire meal with a guy who obviously shared feelings for you.

  I must have been halfway through my burger when one of us finally spoke.

  Good ole Jordy.

  “So…you and Lucky spend a lot of time together?” he asked casually, curling his hand around the rest of his turkey wrap and shoving it deeper into his mouth.

  I eyed him closely as I chewed the rest of my bite. I swear, until the very last moment, I didn’t know how I was going to handle it. Then, it just happened.

  “Yeah, mate,” I replied with a smile. “We’re close.”

  Jordy nodded, taking my statement and deflecting it as skillfully as possible. No doubt the guy was trying his best to keep the exchange light and airy. Too bad I was determined to drag it into the mud. “She’s best friends with your sister, right? I guess you’ve known her a while?”

  “We met the day she arrived for the tour,” I told him honestly. His eyes rounded. “Instant connection,” I added on a lie.

  “Friendship?” he asked.

  “More,” I lied again.

  To be fair, I was only lying on your behalf. As far as I was concerned, it was true. But, yeah. I knew what I was doing. And for the most part, in the context of speaking for you, I knew it was lying.

  I still did it.

  “You’re together?”

  I smirked. “Not officially. But I don’t think the kiss we had before was about being friends, you know?”

  [groans]

  Ouch, right? Fucking hell, I actually still feel bad about that one. At the time, I had no clue about the kiss you and Jordy had shared, and I certainly didn’t know about the line of friendship you’d drawn in the sand afterward.

  Unintentionally or not, I’d really slapped him with a fucking hit.

  Jordy, man, on the off chance you’re listening and you don’t hate me too much already for the way I’ve manipulated you, I apologize. That was a low blow, mate.

  Whether I knew the extent of it at the time or not, the rooting was burrowed in evil.

  Still, I’d like to say I was better from here forward. That I learned a hard lesson and sought change and peace as a human being.

  But we both know that’d be a lie, don’t we, love?

  The truth is, I’ve got plenty more sins to confess to, and I hope you’ll come back and listen again.

  Telling the truth…telling our truth…takes time.

  * * *

  Episode 10: The Turning of the Tide

  Day Twenty-Nine through Thirty-Two of Falling

  July 1st is a day that will live in infamy.

  Not because of some sort of national holiday or worldwide peace, not because we’ve made progress in civil rights, and not because someone or someones gave their lives for the greater good.

  No, this is a more personal infamy, the kind of thing I’ll remember for the rest of my life, but it’s doubtful it’ll mean anything to anyone else.

  Except, hopefully, you.

  See, on July 1st, you boarded a flight bound for Tahiti, and you expected me to be on it. I can see why, since we’d been doing most of our traveling at the same time whether by coincidence or careful crafting by yours truly. But that day, I’d been delayed by a meeting.

  A meeting, actually, prompted by you.

  [laughs]

  I never would have thought I’d get enjoyment out of anything that meant we weren’t together and stemmed from so many mistakes by me, but here I am, laughing—and doing it for a reason.

  I might never have told you all of these little details if the wave we’d caught together had been completely smooth. Details…like the fact that you inspired an entirely new line of surfboards.

  For the first time in years, I had the inspiration to do something new—something innovative—and Zoe was damn near foaming at the mouth.

  Hell, the fact that she’d dropped everything in Sydney and taken a red-eye to South Africa was proof of that.

  She’d been a dog with a bone about having the meeting before I left for the next event, so despite the upgrade I’d arranged for your seat once again, I had no choice but to give up my own.

  I was busy, sitting in the hotel restaurant, having my breakfast, while Zoe proved once again why the two of us were a match made in hell.

  Her mouth was running a mile a minute. Mine was more concerned with eating my omelet.

  “I’m talking to our manufacturers to see if we can step up production. We’ve been exclusively working in the pro market for so long, I have to get all new contacts!”

  “Mm,” I mumbled, swallowing egg and bacon.

  “I don’t know what made you actually decide to work again, and to go in the direction you’ve been swearing up and down for years you’d never go, but hallelujah!”

  I nodded.

  “So I’ve got the line of boards running in box stores first—the new-to-surfing crowd tends to do most of their shopping there until they know better—but as we build more of a name in that sector, I’ll work on moving distribution to the local shops too.”

  I shrugged. Whatever. Zoe had been running all of this shit for so long,
I knew she knew it better than me. My purpose was to design the shit and then show up to meetings and nod.

  Until she said something that got my attention.

  “We’re running a line primarily for men first. The colors—”

  “What?” I interrupted. “Why?”

  She blinked at first, confused by my outburst, and then laughed. Silly Ollie, actually questioning Zoe.

  Of course, she didn’t know the reason I’d come up with this idea in the first place. No one did. So she had no idea that she’d accidentally gone against it.

  “Because the numbers say that’s the best move, Oll.”

  I was shaking my head before she even finished. The whole idea—the whole point—was to have a beginner board for a woman. Who the fuck cared if it sold or not? Certainly not me.

  She was thinking large scale, and I was thinking…you.

  “We have to run a women’s line from the beginning. I want a sample board, and I want it to be goddamn pink. And I need it by Tahiti,” I ordered like a madman. Zoe was confused. I couldn’t blame her. I was never like this—never had been.

  Then again, I’d never been in love either.

  “Think fashionista!” I went on, startling most of the restaurant with my volume.

  It was all Zoe could do to keep her eyes inside her head. Who the hell was this nutcase, and what had I done with her lazy boss?

  You’d changed him.

  [laughs]

  You’d changed me. She just didn’t know to ask.

  “Fine,” she muttered, glaring at me over the rim of her glass. I imagine she didn’t like having my input as much as she thought she would. “I’ll get you a pink sample board by Tahiti.”

  “For a fashionista.”

  “Whatever, yes. How the bloody hell you even know that word, I’ll never know. But I’ll get you a goddamn board for a fashionista.”