Sin With Me

38

Grace narrows her eyes at me. They were a nice dove gray a second ago, soft as a cashmere sweater, but now they’re stormy. “So you have no secrets.”

Stay cool, Brody. Don’t blink. Don’t look away. What happened to you has nothing to do with what happened to her. You’ve already realized there’s no need for a confession.

I spread my hands in the air. “I mean, I guess technically speaking, how many times a day I masturbate to the thought of you is a secret.”

Now her eyes narrow to slits. A hurricane is brewing.

She asks, “Are your parents related by blood?”

I blink in surprise. “What?”

“Are you actually a woman?”

That one makes me laugh out loud. “I wish! I’d spend all day fondling myself! By the way, you’re lucky I’m secure in my manhood because that little doozy could really f**k a guy up.”

“I’m being serious, Brody. Are you bankrupt?”

“No.”

“Do you have twelve illegitimate children?”

“Twelve? Why, thank you! Such confidence in my fertility! No. And before you ask, I don’t even have one.”

“Are you addicted to porn?”

“Define ‘addicted.’” When she glares at me, I laugh again, shaking my head. “That would also be a no, Slick.”

“To drugs?”

“No.”

“To the shopping network?”

“No.”

“Food? Alcohol? s*x with anonymous strangers you met on Snapchat?”

“No, no, and no. This is getting a little depressing, by the way.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her toe against the floor. “I’m trying to discover your awful, dark, hidden side! Help me out!”

My dark, hidden side taps me on my shoulder, but I push him back and plaster a fake grin on my face.

“I’m normal,” I insist, my arms now wrapped around her. “I mean, as normal as a guy who plays guitar for one of the most famous rock bands on the planet could possibly be.”

She gives me a really wicked stinky side-eye. “You don’t seem very normal.”

“Are you calling me abnormal?”

“Abby Normal,” she quips drily.

“Oh my God, did you just make a Young Frankenstein reference?”

“Maybe. Why?”

“Why? Because it’s only, like, my all-time favorite f*****g movie, that’s why!”

“Really?” she asks, blinking rapidly. “That’s my all-time favorite movie! I think Mel Brooks is a—”

“Genius!” I finish before she can. “Me, too!”

After we stare at each other for a while, starry-eyed and breathless, Grace laughs. “I think we should probably go do something else before my twins turn into triplets.”

I give her a quick, hard kiss. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve already got quintuplets goin’ on up in that bun factory.”

She grimaces. “Bun factory? Jesus. How do you ever get a date?”

I whisper into her ear, “Those thirty seconds are legendary.”

Grace laughs, pulls away, and smacks me on the arm. “Yeah, I bet. Let’s hope this church of yours is as legendary or this affair will be over before it’s even started.”

Affair.

Be still my f*****g beating heart.

How have I achieved the ripe old age of twenty-nine without ever feeling this alive?

GRACE

As it turns out, Brody was right. This church of his is amazing.

Straddling a longboard bobbing gently up and down with each swell headed for shore, I’ve got my legs dangling in the ocean, my face turned to the sun, and my ears filled with the sharp, lonesome cries of seagulls. Waves crash onto wet sand far behind me. The fresh sea breeze teases my hair into floating tendrils around my face. The sun is warm, the water is cold, my heart is as wide open as the endless blue horizon. I don’t even feel hungover anymore. I feel . . .

Peaceful.

For the first time in a long time, I feel totally at ease.

“I could really get used to this,” I say, smiling. “I wonder if I should prescribe water therapy for my patients?”

Brody chuckles. “Any time you want to tell me what a genius I am, I’m all ears.”

He’s straddling his own board a few feet away and grinning at me.

A water baby for sure, he’s as confident on his surfboard as he is on dry land. He showed me how to paddle out through the breakers, how to balance my body, trusting the buoyancy of the board to keep me afloat without fighting it, how to cut through the top of a cresting wave by throwing all my weight forward onto my chest. He even showed me how to leap onto my feet in one swift motion so I could try to catch a wave, but I ended up nose-diving into the water every time, so we took a break from that.

Now we’re out past the “takeoff zone,” floating peacefully. I’m learning the rhythm of the ocean, its sets and lulls, the restless motion of it beneath me, vast and beautiful and dangerous. I could be riding the back of an enormous dragon, gliding through the air.

“How long have you been doing this?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Ever since I moved here. I’ve been obsessed with the ocean since the first time I saw it. Topeka, Kansas, is about as far away from any ocean as you can get.”

“Homegrown in a fly-over state, hmm?”

He cuts a sharp gaze to me. “Are you serious? I can’t believe you haven’t Googled me! We’ve been eye-f*****g each other for two years!”