William looked at me thoughtfully, and then reviewed the bracelet on his wrist. “Thank you. This means a lot.”
Had I not known it was a gift that cost less than a dollar and an hour to make, the depth of sincerity in his voice would have led me to believe it was the best thing he’d ever been given.
He removed his wrist from my hands, and backed out of the parking space. “That is one sweet car,” he said as we drove down the long row where my car laid in wait—smirking at the rest of the cars that looked tame as kittens beside it. I could hear her whine as I left her behind on our beach outing.
“She turns a lot of heads,” I said, recalling the countless hours dad and I spent tinkering on her until she was perfect.
“Like mother like daughter.”
I smiled at him, despite wanting to roll my eyes, and took a sip of the strong coffee, contemplating why I felt such a gravitational pulling to the man at my left, whose mere presence filled in the cracks of my disheveled life with a mortar that was both quick-setting and permanent.
The highway from Corvallis to Newport was two-lane, serpentine, picturesque, and dotted with four to five word responses from William. He drilled me without mercy as to my own life, and seemed intrigued by every commonplace detail I gave him. I was now positive William wasn’t being unintentionally evasive. “So, where are you from?” I asked, expecting his brief answer, followed by one of his own for me. Since we’d drudged through the heavy stuff first, now seemed like a good time to go over the basics.
“I was born in North Carolina, but I’ve moved around a lot,” he said, selecting each word with great care.
This was the most verbose response I’d been given regarding his own life. “Do you like all the moving around and travelling?” I asked, hoping to break through the clam shell of mystery.
“I do, very much. I enjoy seeing new places and experiencing new things. What about you—do you like to travel?”
“I love it. I could live my life roaming from place to place,” I admitted, desperate to keep the conversation flowing. “And not just the popular, touristy places either . . . I want to see it all.”
For some reason, his face became peaceful, as if a great burden had been lifted from my admission. I didn’t understand it—maybe he was just dreaming about the far away places he’d been.
He stayed quiet though, as was normal, so I continued, “Starting every summer after my sophomore year of high school, I went with a group of students and teachers for a month or two on a humanitarian mission to a location that was in need of volunteers. We’d do whatever we could—nothing glamorous—but those few summers were some of the best experiences of my life.”
“Where did you go on your last trip?” he asked.
“That was a couple years ago after my senior year, and we went to Java after an earthquake devastated the island—” My speech came to a halt, due to the expression covering his face. It was one of shock.
“You were there that summer . . . nearly two years back?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“Yeah . . . why?”
He blinked a couple of times and shook his head before answering, “I was there as well that summer.”
“No you weren’t,” I said, awed. “You couldn’t have been.” It didn’t seem possible I could have missed him. Despite the mass of people and chaos, I was certain he would have stood out.
He nodded. “Yes, I was also there volunteering. Providing medical assistance in Yogyakarta—”
“That’s where I was stationed at too,” I said, two notes below a shout.
He looked over at me, not minding the highway in front of us. “It’s amazing. You were there all along.”
“Yeah, I guess the universe wasn’t ready for us to meet just then,” I said, trying to shake the feeling that his intensity and perspective on the topic at hand was far more advanced than mine.
“I guess not,” he said, turning his eyes back to the road and staring absently out the windshield.
“Or maybe it was trying to keep us apart,” I said in my super-sleuth voice. “It never thought the same two people would willingly choose Corvallis Oregon to end up in two years later. Its plan wasn’t so perfect,” I said, overjoyed that whatever or however we’d been brought together, it had happened.
“I suppose we outsmarted it,” he said, and despite his face looking forward, the smile that burst made my already clenched fists, clench even tighter to the nail indentation phase.
“What kind of medical assistance were you providing?”
“Nothing too fancy—rolling gauze, stocking med carts,” he said, looking oddly amused. “That kind of thing.”
“Sounds ten times better than what I was doing.”
He looked over at me with raised brows.
“Emptying bed pans.”
This caused him to laugh, as it had all my friends that fall when I’d returned to school and told them what I’d spent my summer doing. “Yes, I suppose my menial duties were slightly better than that.”
“I can’t believe you were there.” I shook my head, still stupefied, and let my mind drift back to those six weeks. “There was this great doctor the locals kept talking about—some kind of miracle worker they called him. I guess he just kind of showed up out of thin air, and disappeared in the same way. Did you ever get a chance to meet him?”
The amusement on his face was no longer slight—it was radiating from him. “I did,” he said, looking over at me. “I don’t know about the miracle worker thing, but I took a liking to him.”
“I wish I could have met him, too,” I said, ignoring his curious amusement on the topic.
“I’d wager my soul he would have wished so as well,” he said, looking like he was choking back a fit of laughter.
He pulled into the public parking lot in Newport a few minutes later, and the burning question I’d kept to myself the entire trip suddenly seemed impossible to keep locked inside me. It was as if my soul superseded my brain and forced my mouth to open. “Who are you William—really? I’ve been patient. Time for answers.”
I cursed myself the moment the words were out. Who asks that kind of a question? Sure he’d been evasive in answering just about every question I’d asked him, and yes, he was more the thing of fantasy that Oregonian college boy, but here was the scary thing: I didn’t care.
I didn’t care that he’d showed up out of nowhere to save me from a couple of suit wearing thugs in a way I guessed a comic book hero would, or that he knew what kind of coffee I drank, or that when he looked at me, I would have sworn he was looking at the most precious thing he’d ever seen. I also knew this should have scared me—how much power he had over me so soon—but it didn’t. It felt as natural and unforced as the expansion and contraction of my lungs.
He put the Bronco in park and killed the engine. He gazed in front of him, looking as if his thoughts were greyer than the swirling clouds dancing in the sky. “There are some things I can’t fully explain to you right now. They wouldn’t make sense, and would only further frustrate your inquisitive mind. I promise though,” he vowed, turning and staring into my eyes, “that I will, one day soon, answer any question you have for me. But today,”—his eyes shifted to the swelling ocean waves beckoning in front of us—“let’s enjoy the surf, okay?”
“You said that two days ago,” I reminded him.
“I promised to tell you when the time was right,” he said.
“You promise, you’ll answer any question I have for you?” I asked, not letting him off the hook right away. “With more than yes or no answers?”
He tried to control his smile, but lost. “I swear it.”
Something about the way he said the words made me believe him without another thought. “Well . . . what are we waiting for?”
He grinned in response. “Nothing—we’re not waiting for anything anymore.”
CHAPTER SIX
MYSTERIES
“I can’t believe how fast today went by,” I said, as William cut the ignition in front of my dorm a little past midnight.
“There’s always tomorrow,” he said, holding out his hand for me as I exited the cab.
“And the day after that,” I added, still not sure where the day had gone. In the matter of a mere sixteen or so hours, I’d officially become a surfer (according to William, although I had my doubts), I’d gleaned more tidbits about the man of mystery (he circumnavigated the globe by boat with one of his brothers a few years back, is a die hard Pink Floyd fan, could eat grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches everyday, and loathes reality TV), and added even more fuel to the fire that William is not your everyday twenty-two year old male when he managed to leap from his board to mine every time I’d been about to topple into the water.
“Thank you for . . .”—his eyes stared unheedingly at me. The look in them made me dizzy—“the best day ever.”
“Ditto that,” I replied, sure I was smiling and blushing unabashedly.
He curled his fingers around my hand and led me up the sidewalk.
“Good evening, William.”
One moment I was beside him, holding his hand, and the next, I was behind him, as he struck a defensive position in front of me. The voice was different, but I was sure it would be a foreboding male dressed in a suit with a penchant for beating me bloody.
“It was,” William seethed through a clenched jaw, while I reeled to take in the transaction taking place around us.
Two men, goliath in size, stepped out from behind the shrubbery at the dorm entrance. Tall as I was, my head only came up to William’s nose; but these men were easily a head taller than the man that stood like a fortress in front of me.
I was not frightened, though. It was irrational (little had been rational since he’d entered my life), but I felt safe. The only reason the nervous hitching pummeled in my stomach was because I was fearful for him—my own safety . . . my own life, meant very little to me.
“Dante, Thomas.” William’s voice was cool and menacing. “What are you doing here?”
The man on the right that looked like a cross between a gorilla and a gladiator chuckled. “You know why.”
The other man beside him had dark, flawless skin—his eyes were a familiar shade of blue. “You also know who sent us and what course of action we will have to take if you choose not to follow the rules. Ben and Troy let you off easy.”—William’s growl of response was fierce.—“No more freebies.”
The men exchanged a knowing look, before their gleaming smiles turned back to us—eyeing me as if in answer. “It’s time to say goodnight, William,” the hybrid gorilla said.
William didn’t reply, and I didn’t move. We were obviously both at a loss for words and action.
“Come now, don’t make our job difficult,” the man with the beautiful skin encouraged. “She doesn’t look as sturdy as you.”