Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [29]
Last night, Ty had called and told me that I should get out of the room. “You need something to eat, and c’mon, you can’t work all night,” he said.
I laughed. I wanted to say, “Tell that to the people at my firm,” but he was right. I was famished, and the text of Caroline’s letters had begun to swim and merge in front of my eyes. I wanted an excuse to escape.
“Great,” Ty said when I accepted. “We’ll get you something to eat, and we’ll have a few beers.”
But a few beers had turned into six. Or seven. Okay, possibly eight. I lost count. What I did remember was Ty shaking his head at some point, saying, “You don’t need another one,” and me grabbing the beer out of his hand, saying, “I sure as hell do.”
I rarely get drunk, and if I do, it’s with Maddy, someone I can let down my guard with, no one else. But it turned out that I felt I could relax with Ty. It was something about the kind eyes that watched my face as I talked, the way he held the barstool out for me, the way he tried to get me to slow down on the alcohol. And he had danced with me to “Brown Eyed Girl” when I’d played it on the jukebox, even though there was no dance floor, even though some guys he knew jeered at us.
I found some ibuprofen in my bag and took two. Then another one for good measure. I lay down again, waiting for the drug to take the edge off. I buried my head under the pillow, but still the light from the beach forced its way into the room.
That’s what I should do, I realized, go running on the beach. I wanted to get back to the letters, but more than anything, I wanted to sweat out some of the alcohol.
I changed into running shorts and a T-shirt, trying to ignore my parched throat and the throbbing blood vessel in my temple. I trod lightly down the back stairs and out onto the beach, wanting to avoid Ty for the moment. I was sure I looked like absolute hell, and I was embarrassed about my drunken conduct last night. As I stepped onto the sand, the sunlight pierced my eyes like a thousand needles, almost making me turn around and scrap the run. Then a thought struck me—had I kissed Ty last night? Some slobbering attempt at comfort? Mentally, I scrolled through the end of the night. He had walked me to my room, letting me lean on his shoulder after I stumbled twice on the stairs. Finally, he’d unlocked the door with my key, which he gave back to me, and told me he’d had a good time, that he would see me tomorrow. Then he left. Thank God. Thank God I hadn’t made an even bigger ass of myself.
I made my feet move over the sand, down toward the water where the sand would be packed and firm. I turned right and walked for the first few minutes, letting my muscles and my brain warm up. No clouds hid the absurd brightness of the sun, which had brought all types onto the beach for the first taste of summer—parents with armies of little kids, a few teenage girls in bikinis, their towels angled away from the lake but toward the sun.
This side of the beach housed the larger, grander homes, and they seemed to grow with each step. From Mediterranean villas to Cape Cod clapboard houses, there was no set style requirement except for jaw-droppingly big. I forced my reluctant feet into a run. Every jolt of my heel sent an equally jolting clang to my head, but eventually, I found my running void. I watched the sand, the water, the homes, but I didn’t process much anymore.
I ran like that for at least twenty minutes before I made a wide turn and headed back. As I did, something familiar shook me out of my zone. An odd feeling like the