Before the Storm Page 5

  He nodded. “I talked to one of the medics. They induced a medical coma on the beach.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Laurel’s hand shook. I wanted to hang on to my anger at her, but that trembling hand did me in.

  “That I don’t know,” the guy said. “Sorry.” His beeper sounded from his waistband, and he spun away from us, taking off at a run.

  “Is his mother with—” Laurel called after him, but he was already halfway down the hall.

  Laurel pressed those shaky hands to her eyes. “Poor Sara.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just thankful Andy’s okay.”

  “Oh, Marcus.” She looked at me. Right at me. More than a half second this time. “I was so scared,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  I wanted to wrap my arms around her. I needed the comfort as much as I needed to comfort her. I knew better, though. She’d stiffen. Pull away. So I settled for resting my hand on her back again as we headed toward the treatment area and Andy’s bed.

  Chapter Five

  Laurel

  1984

  JAMIE LOCKWOOD CHANGED ME. For one thing, I could never again look at a man on a motorcycle without wondering what lay deep inside him. The tougher the exterior, the greater the number of tattoos, the thicker the leather, the more I’d speculate about his soul. But Jamie also taught me about love and passion and, without ever meaning to, about guilt and grief. They were lessons I’d never be able to forget.

  I was eighteen and starting my freshman year at the University of North Carolina when I met him. I was pulling out of a parking space on a Wilmington street in my three-month-old Honda Civic. The red Civic was a graduation present from my aunt and uncle—technically my adoptive parents—who made up for their emotional parsimony through their generosity in tangible goods. I checked my side mirror—all clear—turned my steering wheel to the left, and gave the car some gas. I felt a sudden thwack against my door and a meteor of black leather and blue denim streaked through the air next to my window.

  I screamed and screamed, startled by the volume of my own voice but unable to stop. I struggled to open my door without success, because the motorcycle was propped against it. By the time I escaped through the passenger door, the biker was getting to his feet. He was huge pillar of a man, and if I’d been thinking straight, I might have been afraid to approach him. What if he was a Hells Angel? But all I could think about was that I’d hurt someone. I could have killed him.

  “Oh my God!” I ran toward him, moving on sheer adrenaline. The man stood with his side to me, rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms as if checking to see that everything still worked. I stopped a few feet short of him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you. Are you all right?”

  A few people circled around us, hanging back as if waiting to see what would happen.

  “I think I’ll live.” The Hells Angel unstrapped his white helmet and took it off, and a tumble of dark hair fell to his shoulders. He studied a wide black scrape that ran along the side of the helmet. “Man,” he said. “I’ve got to send a testimonial to this manufacturer. D’you believe this? It’s not even dented.” He held the helmet in front of me, but all I saw was that the leather on his right sleeve was torn to shreds.

  “I checked my mirror, but I was looking for a car,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I somehow missed seeing you.”

  “You need to watch for cyclists!” A woman shouted from the sidewalk. “That could have been my son on his bike!”

  “I know! I know!” I hugged my arms. “It was my fault.”

  The Hells Angel looked at the woman. “You don’t need to rag on her,” he said. “She won’t make the same mistake twice.” Then, more quietly, he spoke to me. “Will you?”

  I shook my head. I thought I might throw up.

  “Let’s, uh—” he surveyed the scene “—let me check out my bike, and you back your car up to the curb and we can get each other’s insurance info, all right?” His accent was pure Wilmington, unlike mine.

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  He lifted his motorcycle from in front of my door, which was dented and scraped but opened with only a little difficulty, and I got in. I had to concentrate on turning the key in the ignition, shifting to Reverse, giving the car some gas, as if I’d suddenly forgotten how to drive. I felt about fourteen years old by the time I managed to move the car three feet back into its parking space. I fumbled in the glove compartment for my crumpled insurance card and got out.

  The Hells Angel parked his motorcycle a couple of spaces up the street from my car.

  “Does it run okay?” I asked, hugging my arms again as I approached. It wasn’t cold, but my body was trembling all over.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Your car took the brunt of it.”

  “No, you did.” I looked again at the shredded leather on his arm. “I wish you’d…yell at me or something. You’re way too calm.”

  He laughed. “Did you cut me off on purpose?”

  “No.”

  “I can tell you already feel like crap about it,” he said. “Why should I make you feel worse?” He looked past me to the shops along the street. “Let’s get a cup of coffee while we do the insurance bit,” he said, pointing to the café down the block. “You’re in no shape to drive right now, anyway.”

  He was right. I was still shivering as I stood next to him in line at the coffee shop. My knees buckled, and I leaned heavily against the counter as we ordered.

  “Decaf for you.” He grinned. He was a good ten inches taller than me. At least six-three. “Find us a table, why don’t you?”

  I sat down at a table near the window. My heart still pounded against my rib cage, but I was filled with relief. My car was basically okay, I hadn’t killed anyone, and the Hells Angel was the forgiving type. I’d really lucked out. I put my insurance card on the table and smoothed it with my fingers.

  I studied the width of the Angel’s shoulders beneath the expanse of leather as he picked up our mugs of coffee. His body reminded me of a well-padded football player, but when he took off his jacket, draping it over the spare chair at our table, I saw that his size had nothing to do with padding. He wore a navy-blue T-shirt that read Topsail Island across the front in white, and while he was not fat, he was not particularly toned either. Burly. Robust. The words floated through my mind and, although I was a virgin, having miserably plodded my way through high school as a social loser, I wondered what it would be like to have sex with him. Could he hold his weight off me?

  “Are you doin’ all right?” Curiosity filled his brown eyes, and I wondered if the fantasy was written on my face. I felt my cheeks burn.

  “I’m better,” I said. “Still a little shaky.”

  “Your first accident?”

  “My last, too, I hope. You’ve had others?”

  “Just a couple. But I’ve got a few years on you.”

  “How old are you?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a rude question.

  “Twenty-three. And you’re about eighteen, I figure.”

  I nodded.

  “Freshman at UNC?”

  “Yes.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking I must have frosh written on my forehead.

  He sipped his coffee, then nudged my untouched mug an inch closer to me. “Have a major yet?” he asked.

  “Nursing.” My mother had been a nurse. I wanted to follow in her footsteps, even though she would never know it. “What about you?” I opened a packet of sugar and stirred it into my coffee. “Are you a Hells Angel?”

  “Hell, no!” He laughed. “I’m a carpenter, although I did graduate from UNC a few years ago with a completely worthless degree in Religious Studies.”

  “Why is it worthless?” I asked, though I probably should have changed the subject. I hoped he wasn’t going to try to save me, preaching the way some religious people did. I was beholden to him and would have had to listen, at least for a while.

  “Well, I thought I’d go to seminary,” he said. “Become a minister.
But the more I studied theology, the less I liked the idea of being tied to one religion like it’s the only way. So I’m still playing with what I want to be when I grow up.” He reached toward the seat next to him, his hand diving into the pocket of his leather jacket and coming out with a pen and his insurance card. On his biceps, I saw a tattooed banner, the word empathy written inside it. As sexually excited as I’d felt five minutes ago, now I felt his fingertips touch my heart, hold it gently in his hand.

  “Listen,” he said, his eyes on the card. “Your car runs okay, right? It’s mostly cosmetic?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t go through your insurance company, then. It’ll just cost you in the long run. Get an estimate and I’ll take care of it for you.”

  “You can’t do that!” I said. “It was my fault.”

  “It was an easy mistake to make.”

  “I was careless.” I stared at him. “And I don’t understand why you’re not angry about it. I almost killed you.”

  “Oh, I was angry at first. I said lots of cuss words while I was flying through the air.” He smiled. “Anger’s poison, though. I don’t want it in me. When I changed the focus from how I was feeling to how you were feeling, it went away.”

  “The tattoo…” I pointed to his arm.

  “I put it there to remind me,” he said. “It’s not always that easy to remember.”

  He turned the insurance card over and clicked the pen.

  “I don’t even know your name,” he said.

  “Laurel Patrick.”

  “Nice name.” He wrote it down, then reached across the table to shake my hand. “I’m Jamie Lockwood.”

  We started going out together, to events on campus or the movies and once, on a picnic. I felt young with him, but never patronized. I was drawn to his kindness and the warmth of his eyes. He told me that he was initially attracted to my looks, proving that he was not a completely atypical guy after all.

  “You were so pretty when you got out of your car that day,” he said. “Your cheeks were red and your little pointed chin trembled and your long black hair was kind of messy and sexy.” He coiled a lock of my stick-straight hair around his finger. “I thought the accident must have been fate.”

  Later, he said, it was my sweetness that attracted him. My innocence.

  We kissed often during the first couple of weeks we saw one another, but nothing more than that. I experienced my first ever orgasm with him, even though he was not touching me at the time. We were on his bike and he shifted into a gear that suddenly lit a fire between my legs. I barely knew what was happening. It was startling, quick and stunning. I tightened my arms around him as the spasms coursed through my body, and he patted my hands with one of his, as though he thought I might be afraid of how fast we were going. It would be a while before I told him that I would always think of his bike as my first lover.

  We talked about our families. I’d lived in North Carolina until I was twelve, when my parents died. Then I went to Ohio to live with my social-climbing aunt and uncle who were ill-prepared to take on a child of any sort, much less a grief-stricken preadolescent. There’d been a “Southerners are dumb” sort of prejudice among my classmates and a couple of my teachers. I fed right into that prejudice in the beginning, unable to focus on my studies and backsliding in every subject. I missed my parents and cried in bed every night until I figured out how to keep from thinking about them as I struggled to fall asleep: I’d count backward from one thousand, picturing the numbers on a hillside, like the Hollywood sign. It worked. I started sleeping better, which led to studying better. My teachers had to revise their “dumb Southerner” assessment of me as my grades picked up. Even my aunt and uncle seemed surprised. When it came time to apply to colleges, though, I picked all Southern schools, hungry to return to my roots.

  Jamie was struck by the loss of my parents.

  “Both your parents died when you were twelve?” he asked, incredulous. “At the same time?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think about it much.”

  “Maybe you should think about it,” he said.

  “It’s all in the past.” I’d healed from that loss and saw no point in revisiting it.

  “Things like that can come back to bite you later,” he said. “Were they in an accident?”

  “You’re awfully pushy.” I laughed, but he didn’t crack a smile.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  I sighed then and told him about the fire on the cruise ship that killed fifty-two people, my parents included.

  “Fire on a cruise ship.” He shook his head. “Rock and a hard place.”

  “Some people jumped.”

  “Your parents?”

  “No. I wish they had.” Before I’d perfected my counting-backward-from-one-thousand technique, vivid fiery images of my parents had filled my head whenever I tried to go to sleep.

  Jamie read my mind. “The smoke got them first, you can bet on it,” he said. “They were probably unconscious before the fire reached them.”

  Although I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, I still took comfort from that thought. Jamie knew about fire, since he was a volunteer firefighter in Wilmington. For days after he’d fight a fire, I could smell smoke on him. He’d shower and scrub his long hair and still the smell would linger, seeping out of his pores. It was a smell I began to equate with him, a smell I began to like.

  He took me to meet his family after we’d been seeing each other for three weeks. Even though they lived in Wilmington, I was to meet them at their beach cottage on Topsail Island where they spent most weekends. I’d probably been to Topsail as a child, but had no memory of it. Jamie teased me that my mispronunciation of the island—I said Topsale instead of Topsul—was a dead giveaway.

  By that time, he’d bought me my own black leather jacket and white helmet, and I was accustomed to riding with him. My arms were wrapped around him as we started across the high-rise bridge. Far below us, I saw a huge maze of tiny rectangular islands.

  “What is that down there?” I shouted.

  Jamie steered the bike to the side of the bridge, even though ours was the only vehicle on the road. I climbed off and peered over the railing. The grid of little islands ran along the shoreline of the Intracoastal Waterway for as far as I could see. Miniature fir trees and other vegetation grew on the irregular rectangles of land, the afternoon sun lighting the water between them with a golden glow. “It looks like a little village for elves,” I said.

  Jamie stood next to me, our arms touching through layers of leather. “It’s marshland,” he said, “but it does have a mystical quality to it, especially this time of day.”

  We studied the marshland a while longer, then got back on the bike.

  I knew Jamie’s parents owned a lot of land on the island, especially in the northernmost area called West Onslow Beach. After World War II, his father had worked in a secret missile testing program on Topsail Island called Operation Bumblebee. He’d fallen in love with the area and used what money he had to buy land that mushroomed in value over the decades. As we rode along the beach road, Jamie pointed out property after property belonging to his family. Many parcels had mobile homes parked on them, some of the trailers old and rusting, though the parcels themselves were worth plenty. There were several well-kept houses with rental signs in front of them and even a couple of the old flat-roofed, three-story concrete viewing towers that had been used during Operation Bumblebee. I was staggered to realize the wealth Jamie had grown up with.

  “We don’t live rich, though,” Jamie had said when he told me about his father’s smart investments. “Daddy says that the whole point of having a lot of money is to give you the freedom to live like you don’t need it.”

  I admired that. My aunt and uncle were exactly the opposite.

  All the Lockwood houses had names burned into signs hanging above their front doors. The Loggerhead and Osprey Oasis and Hurricane Haven. We came to the last row of houses on the Island and I bega
n to perspire inside the leather jacket. I knew one of them belonged to his family and that I’d meet them in a few minutes. Jamie drove slowly past the cottages.

  “Daddy actually owns these last five houses,” he said, turning his head so I could hear him.

  “Terrier?” I read the name above one of the doors.

  “Right, that’s where we’re headed, but I’m taking us on a little detour first. The next house is Talos. Terrier and Talos were the names of the first supersonic missiles tested here.”

  Those two houses were mirror images of each other: tall, narrow two-story cottages sitting high on stilts to protect them from the sea.

  “I love that one!” I pointed to the last house in the row, next to Talos. The one-story cottage was round. Like all the other houses, it was built on stilts. The sign above its front door read The Sea Tender.

  “An incredible panoramic view from that one.” Jamie turned onto a narrow road away from the houses. “I want to show you my favorite spot,” he said over his shoulder. We followed the road a short distance until it turned to sand; then we got off the bike and began walking. I tugged my jacket tighter. The October air wasn’t cold, but the wind had a definite nip to it and Jamie put his arm around me.

  We walked a short distance onto a spit of white sand nearly surrounded by water. The ocean was on our right, the New River Inlet ahead of us and somewhere to our left, although we couldn’t see it from our vantage point, was the Intracoastal Waterway. The falling sun had turned the sky pink. I felt as though we were standing on the edge of an isolated continent.

  “My favorite place,” Jamie said.

  “I can see why.”

  “It’s always changing.” He pointed toward the ocean. “The sea eats the sand there, then spits it back over there,” he moved his arm to the left of us, “and what’s my favorite place today may be completely different next week.”

  “Does that bother you?” I asked.

  “Not at all. Whatever nature does here, it stays beautiful.” Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then Jamie broke the silence. “Can I tell you something?” For the first time since we met, he sounded unsure of himself. A little shy.