Hard Beat

Colton’s analogy rings in my ears but brings a smile to my lips as I make the drive home down the coastline. My mood is the best it’s been in a while, so I’m glad I took the offer of a day on the water to get away from my doldrums right now. After the guy talk, I feel like my head is back on straighter than it has been in the last month, an affirmation that I need to hold on to the anger a little tighter and let go of the want a little more, because what I need to do is forget all about her.

My cell rings through the Bluetooth as I exit the freeway, and for the first time in two weeks I decide to pick up Rafe’s call.

“You’re finally talking to me again?” he asks with a chuckle, and I feel the smile tug at the corners of my mouth.

“I’m slowly forgiving you.”

“For what? Saving your ass? Thank you is what you should be saying.”

I sigh into the line. “Don’t press your luck.”

“Regardless, you sound good.”

“I feel good,” I answer as I try to figure out where he’s going with this.

“Feel good enough to head back into action?” he asks, which stuns the hell out of me so much that I miss my own street.

“What do you mean?” There is a cautious tone to my voice, and I’m not sure exactly where it’s coming from. Maybe getting back on assignment is just what I need to distract me from the temptation of seeing her again.

“You haven’t seen the news today, have you?”

“What do you mean?” I ask as I turn down my street, noticing William finally moved his beast of a car because I can actually see my house when I turn on the road. Thank God. At least some other neighbor was the asshole and told him to move it before I did.

“The U.S. embassy was bombed. On your old stomping grounds. An ambassador and an agent lost. Figured you’d want a chance to report —”

“When?” Immediately I’m sitting taller in my seat because it’s been a long time since this has happened; it’s usually a precursor to a military campaign of some kind. And a military campaign means I have something to occupy me overseas to avoid the temptation of knowing where she is and that she doesn’t want me. Somehow distance seems like it will help.

“A few hours ago. There’s a briefing first thing in the morning in D.C. with intelligence officials to explain the objective of the mission, make sure it is spelled out and not misrepresented,” he says.

“So basically the government’s inviting the press to handle the image we’ll portray in regard to what’s happening,” I say, discouraged and frustrated all at the same time, but I know my reputation precedes me. If Rafe’s calling me, he knows the story he’ll get from me, that I won’t bow to the pretty wrapping of the package they are trying to tie up for me. “I’ll go. No one is going to tell me what I can and can’t report, though.”

Rafe chuckles. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you were going to say. You know my rules – report the truth; I’ll worry about the rest. When can you leave?”

For the first time ever in my life, I hesitate before answering him. And that I don’t know why makes it even worse. Is it because I’ve gotten the longest taste of normal life that I’ve had in forever? Or is it because a small part of me is still hanging on to the hope that regardless of how much I tell myself that whatever was between Beaux and me is dead, I still have the slimmest margins of hope that she’ll call?

And that thought alone spurs me to respond immediately.

“I’m turning down my street. Give me two hours tops to pack my shit and take care of a few things, then I’ll head to the airport. I’ll start making calls with my sources on location while I’m waiting for my flight. See what I can dig up to get ahead of the story,” I say as I turn into my driveway.

I hang up the phone, my thoughts running faster than my mind can process as I grab the bag of stuff Rylee gave Colton to give me, get out of my 1976 restored Bronco, and pull my surfboard from the open back. I quickly hang my wet suit up in the garage and rinse my board off, acting as if I won’t be coming back for a while.

The funny thing is, I’m going through the motions of things I’ve done so many times in my life, and yet they seem so halfhearted compared to normal. There is no urgency, no hurried movements, just more a quiet resignation that I’ve never felt before. My mind travels to thoughts of clapboard houses on quiet streets and teaching a little girl with long dark hair and amethyst eyes how to ride a bike without training wheels. Shit, I never thought it would happen until much later in life, but for the first time ever, I find myself wondering how much I’m missing, how many memories I’m missing out on making, because of my career choices.

Sure, the rush of getting the story first is such a fucking high, so then why don’t I feel anything close to that right now? Why isn’t my blood humming and my mind already back in the dirt and dust of a foreign country that doesn’t seem inviting right now?

I enter the house from the door in the garage and toss my shit on the table, cursing when the bag from Rylee falls on its side, the contents spilling out. A card, as well as some random get-well presents from the boys that they made me after the blast that are so sweet they make me smile, tug on those heartstrings a tad more, but it’s the bottle of bubbles that rolls to the edge of the table and falls to the floor that causes my bittersweet smile.

As soon as I pick them up, memories of Rylee using them to work out her life’s disappointments and then the laughs Beaux and I shared on the rooftop that last night when everything seemed so crystal clear assault me. Too bad I didn’t know it was all murky as fuck. Without thinking of the bags I have to pack, the phone calls I have to make, the task of emptying my refrigerator so that nothing spoils in case I’m gone more than a couple of days, I open the bubbles and blow a few into the empty space of my living room. Perfectly round, they float in a mix of colors, before they pop, each memory, good and bad, disappearing with them.