Page 48 of Running Home to You
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Dear Kate,
You haven’t lost anything yet. I’m excited to see you too. Keep breathing.
Love,
Abby
P.S. I know I could’ve texted this, but it felt right to end the summer with one last letter.
Senior Year
Abby windsurfed as revenge. With Kate a confusing stitch in her heart, she vigorously took to work, and when Lonnie, a sandy-haired windsurfer who flirted with her at the shop daily, offered her lessons, she accepted. She missed surfing, missed her teammates and Isla, missed sex, but most of all, missed Kate. So, she spent long afternoons and sunlit evenings when she didn’t have class or a shift with Lonnie on the river.
And then the first letter came.
Abby ditched Lonnie so abruptly that he showed up at the shop, certain something horrible had happened to her. When she shrugged, told him to relax, they were just having fun, he knocked over a rack of kayaks. One of the kayaks cracked a window, which would come out of her paycheck, but she didn’t care. She was too busy composing a letter to Kate in her head. Too busy debating whether to sign it withSincerely, AbbyorI miss youorLove, Abby.
She floated between correspondences, an eye on the gorge, the gap between state lines reflective of the valley in her chest. When she wrote Kate, she wrote it to the canyon and the water too, alluding to love and jealousy, uncertain if it would return. But it did. Kate saidlovefirst. She also saidfriendsandcan’tandBlake.
Abby rode the wind with abandon after that letter. She indulgedthe various tourists, offered pointers, agreed to give lessons to more than one attractive woman, agreed to drinks after, and sex next. It was better than her typical propensity for self-destruction. She preferred that Kate didn’t know. Preferred that she continued signing her letters with love, even if it didn’t include the ardor Abby wished for.
The week before Kate’s return to Insley, Abby couldn’t sleep. She anxiously considered what might be different between them. She worried she might have said too much, that Kate might keep distance from her after their conversations of wanting.
She soared across the water during her last work shift, leaning into the wind, muscles clenched against the sail, thighs and feet straining to balance. She cut across currents, picked up speed, launched off waves for a little air and a crash, just to climb up and do it again. She plowed water and splashed the windsurfers she recognized, rode until her legs and lungs burned.
Abby admired the view of Hood River’s tiny city center crawling up the hills as she coasted in and dismounted with a plunge. She lugged her board and sail through the shallow waves, when a shout echoed from the pebbled shore.
“Do they really pay you to play all day?”
Kate’s bare feet sank into the sand, chestnut tresses a flag in the wind, her eyes a glowing lighthouse from the breakers.
“What?” Abby fumbled her gear as she charged through the water, unable to move fast enough, like the end of a dream. “What are you doing here?”
Kate smiled. “I came a few days early. Mick told me you were at work and the shop told me you were here.”
Abby dropped her board and stood gaping in her wetsuit. “I’m so glad to see you.” She started for her, but then stopped. “I’d hug you, but I don’t want to get you wet.”
Kate flung herself into her arms anyway. Abby squeezed back, nestled into her shoulder, and fought the sting of tears.
“I missed you too,” Kate whispered into her neck.
They chuckled at nothing in particular when they released each other, just giddiness on Abby’s part, maybe the same on Kate’s. Abby studied her for the familiar and for the changes that naturally emerged during time apart. More freckles peppered Kate’s cheeks, her chestnut waves a little longer, face a little firmer. She could have sworn her cerulean gaze deepened in her absence, richer and gentler, but lively. Loving. Or maybe Abby had just missed her so much that she projected everything that long-awaited look made her feel.
“You cut your hair,” Kate said.
Abby snapped out of her trance and raked a hand through her drenched locks. “Oh yeah. I got tired of messing with it in the water.”
“I like it.” Kate cleared her throat. “Seems like a rough summer gig.”
“The worst.” Abby winked. She hefted up her board and sail and led Kate to the grassy slope bordering the waves. Her heart thundered, but it didn’t unsteady her. In fact, it jolted as if knocked back into place, as if the entire world was knocked back into place. The gorge became more gorgeous, the sherbet sunset sweeter, even the seagulls sang instead of squawked.
“You’re pretty good.” Kate nodded out at the water.
“I had a lot of time to practice.”
Abby unzipped her wetsuit, shimmied it down to her waist, and let the wind dry her in her bikini top. Kate’s eyes roved across her skin, pausing on her right shoulder blade. She traced the tattoo with a finger and Abby gasped, her shudder and raised skin surely noticeable to Kate, but she didn’t retreat. “I didn’t know you had this.”
