Forever Innocent

A few seagulls circled, then flapped away as a cluster of loud teen boys jostled each other on the path through the brush, then turned to walk along the beach.

“Tell me again how she called out your name, ‘Arnold, Arnold!’” A guy in a Chargers jersey shoved his friend, presumably Arnold, so hard that he stumbled into the foam.

“Damn it, now I’m wet. Asshole.” Arnold leaped back onto the packed sand. “I’m totally going to interrupt your next hookup.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time for your revenge, my friend, a long time,” said a third guy. Then their conversation was lost to distance and the crash of the waves.

Bud hadn’t said a word when I took off early to meet Je

I stared at the waves and the blue-gray of the Pacific. The sand crunched behind me, and Je

“So here’s the rules,” she said. “I stay, but I go over there.” She pointed at a rock near the edge of the underbrush. “You make her cry, you die. You get upset, you die. You do anything but show her love and understanding and unconditional lifelong groveling, you die. Are we clear?”

The girl knew how to make a point. “Clear.”

She scrambled back up, and over my head she said, “Man-meat’s all yours.”

I turned to Corabelle, standing slightly behind me. Once again I thought of a fragile doll, sad and beautiful, every feature perfectly detailed on her face.

“Would you rather walk?” I asked.

She shook her head and sat beside me. Her arms were crossed tightly over her midsection as she huddled in an olive wool coat. Her hands were bare, pink, and looked cold. I wanted to hold them, to warm them up, but I suppressed the urge to reach for her.

“How did the doctor visit go?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have the blood work back, but he seemed to think I was fine.”

“Good. Do you feel better?”

“I guess so.”

The seagulls returned, circling over the water in front of us. She seemed content to just sit without talking, but my anxiety rose. I wanted this bad part over, so we could get back to where we’d been.

“Corabelle, I’m sorry you found out about — the other girls, the paid girls, the way you did. I should have told you.”

She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs. “That would have been an awkward conversation.”

“It was past, so I left it in the past. But I should have known they’d write me eventually. It’s their business.”

“A business,” she repeated, and I realized I was screwing up.

“I’ll change my number. They won’t bother me anymore. I don’t want them anymore. I want you.”

Her dark eyes watched me with measured calm. “You sure about that? You sure there isn’t something I could do or say to change your mind?”

“No way.” I gave up on resisting and moved closer, putting my arm around her shoulders.

She closed her eyes a moment. “I got arrested in New Mexico. That’s why I left school.”

A wave of shock coursed through me, but I kept my voice steady. “What happened?”

“I hit my professor. She was pregnant.”

Damn. I squeezed her shoulders. Had she been jealous? Bitter? Regret washed away the shock. I should have been there. “Did they expel you?”

“No. I had a really good relationship with the university since I worked in the main office. They let me leave quietly.”

I wanted to ask her why she’d done it, but just held on to her. She would say what she needed to say.

Corabelle looked out over the water. “She was smoking a joint behind a building on campus. I knocked it out of her mouth.”

Now this made sense. “You were protecting her baby.”

“Yes, but —” She silenced, her eyes following the flight of the gulls.

I waited, flirting with the idea of bringing up the line in the sand again. But that speech was self-serving. I didn’t want to tell her my past, but clearly she needed to tell me hers.

“I blew up because I felt like I knew the consequences of smoking pot. People say — doctors say — it’s not related, but it’s hard to separate what you’ve done with the end result when you know you shouldn’t have done it.”

My arm loosened its grip on her shoulders. “Are you saying you smoked pot? With Fi

“Katie thought it would help me on the SAT. I had no idea I was pregnant.”

I felt Je

She was shaking so hard now that I could feel the movement through her coat. I withdrew my arm. “You never told me you were smoking pot. I thought we shared everything back then.”

Something sparked in her, an electric charge so palpable that I could almost feel it flash through her body. “You know what, this is never going to work.” She stood up. “We’re both way more fucked up than we knew.”

I scrambled up after her. “Obviously. You never told me any of this. Not even when he was in the hospital. Did you at least tell the doctors? Maybe they could have done something!”

“They were never going to do anything!” Corabelle’s voice raised to a shriek, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Je

“You don’t know that!” I dragged my hands through my hair. “Thank God I can’t have kids anymore. This is way too fucked up.”

Her face bloomed red. “What are you talking about?”

Now I had her attention. I loomed over her, my fury peaking so hard I could barely see her through the haze. “I had a vasectomy. So no more of my kids can get fucked up.”

“Okay, that’s enough.” Je

“Why did you do that?” Corabelle’s doll features contorted into something so tragic, it almost made me calm down, but hell no. She’d fucked up big time. The biggest way possible.

My fists clenched. “Because I always thought it was my fault Fi

Je

But I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. Hell, all this guilt and I wasn’t the one guilty. “All these years I’ve been fucked up over this, and it was always YOU.” My body leaned toward her, and suddenly my father flashed before me, the same pose, and now Corabelle was the young version of me, cowed, bending down to escape.

Corabelle sank back into the sand like a paper lantern collapsing. Je

Smaller birds scattered from an abandoned picnic as Je

“Our kid is dead,” I said, feeling the freeze come off my words.

“She didn’t kill it,” Je

“Then why the hell is she bringing it up?” I ran my hands through my hair and glanced down the beach. Corabelle was still huddled in the sand, rocking back and forth. I’d never seen her like that. Instantly, I wanted to go back and gather her up, hold her close, kiss it away. Damn it.