IV. Light In Your Eyes

I spent almost an hour just listening to Skye talk. She had unique accent to her voice. I couldn’t place it at all but I just sat there with my head following everything she said.
“Where you from?”
“Georgia,” she replied as she adjusted her shirt. At that time we were sitting next to each other like we had been friends for years.
“Nice place.”
“Not like this. I know you’re from Memphis.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been there, rode on a riverboat.”
“Haven’t done that.”
“Been to Graceland?”
“No, can’t say I have.”
“I thought everyone in Memphis got a free pass to the jungle room at birth.”
“I sold my on eBay.”
“Skye!”
I looked up to see an older girl, well, maybe someone in her twenties, standing over us. She has short hair and several tattoos on her arms and legs. She probably had others on her back and chest, but she had a towel draped over her shoulders and her her arms were crossed over her chest like she wasn’t happy to see me.
“It’s like ten and you’re still reading? We’re at the beach. Come on!”

Skye grabbed her book, jumped up and stood next to the new person.
“Oh. My. God, Katie! Do you know who this is?”
“”Should I?”
She had a point.
Skye looked at me and moved her hands back and forth. “This is Kate, my older sister.”
“Hello,” I replied, not sure if I had to apologize.
“And?” Katie asked her sister.
“And. Look at the picture on the back. Of. This. Book.” Skye shoved the tome in front of her sister’s face. Katie looked like she was ready to either slap the book away or Skye.
“Are you reading this again? It’s like what, the eight time?”
“Ninth, but who’s counting?”
“You are. You-“ Katie looked at me and then at the back of the book. “So he looks like the guy on the back of the book?”
“He is,” Skye moved towards me, slapped her hands on my face, like I was a mound of Playdoh, “the guy on the back of the book.”
“You’re embarrassing us.”
“No I’m not. He’s used to me by now.”
Katie rolled her eyes and scoffed. “So why aren’t you in New York or LA? Hooking up and laughing all the way to the bank?”
“I’ve never been to New York or LA.”
“Seriously? I mean, you’ve been on TV and the internet and magazines and in pictures on-,” Katie stated and Skye’s face turned a darker shade of red with each phrase.
“Katie, he gets the point!”
““I’m sure he’s not the only one. Put the book down, bring him, and get in the water.”
“Care to swim?”
I nodded in reply as I followed the sisters. They whispered in low tones and Katie sprinted into the ocean. Skye slowed her walk down to match with me.

“Kate loves the water. Actually, no she loves the way she looks in the water. And out of it. In a bikini or whatever. She went topless once. I could go topless, but I don’t think people would notice me if we stood side by side.”
I didn’t say anything—for as much as I wanted to it was best to just let her do the talking.
“There I go, blabbing everything.”
“No, feel free to tell me anything you want.”
“I don’t think I should tell you too much about my life. That would ruin the utopian new adult mommy porn empire you got going.”
“I’m always up for new ideas.”
We stepped into water and wave breaks threatened to knock us down.
“Really? I assumed that it was all up there,” she pointed at my head.
“Nope. It’s all in the eyes, looking at the crazy and the beauty in life.”
“Do you see crazy or beauty right now?”
“We’re a little bit of both.”
“Good answer,” she replied with a wink.

She wore the t-shirt into the water and it clung to her body. I would be lying if I said I didn’t notice. She reminded me of everything other than characters I had in my stories or the people I met at book parties. She was more like the people who came to the small town book signings: the ones who weren’t out there to impress anyone, much less try to impress me. Of course, I never just walked up to any of them-they would walk up to me and yes, a few left their phone numbers but I never got to see them as someone from the publisher would gather them up and then, out of sight, out of mind.
I still wonder how many people must think I’m stuck up or something.
Hopefully, they would assume I was just an idiot who wouldn’t know what to do if I actually contacted one of them.
I was trying my best to be the good guy in all of this.
The clueless good guy
The “please, don’t let her think I’m a ‘that’ kind of person ” good guy.
“You don’t talk to your fans much, do you?”
“I try at signings, but there’s only so much time and the lines are long.”
“So you would talk to them for as long as they wanted ?”
“I’d go to a local coffee bar and sit with them if they wanted.”
“There’s one down the street. We should go. Like a kind of date thing, you think?”
“Yes,” I said with no amount of filter in my voice or my face. Skye threw back a laugh as she dove into the water.

We swam out to the deeper water where our feet barely touched the sand. In that particular moment I thought about where my sisters were and who they were with. It was difficult see with the waves crashing through every five seconds.
I could barely see them on the shoreline, several feet from the beach chairs. It looked like there was only four of them.
Good.
Not that I cared too much if they met people and talked to them.
Asking them to move in with us would be a different story.
Insisting that they share our condo and maybe the rest of our lives, that was too much to ask for.
But maybe there was a chance at that, one day.
“Have you ever been on a jet ski?”