Another longer chapter.
Because it would.
Not.
End.
Anyways…
American fact of the chapter: American school goes like this: Preschool is age 4, Kindergarten is age 5, Elementary school is grades 1-5, Middle School (or Junior High in some places) is grades 6-8, High School is grades 9-12. College is 18 years and up. My school day ran from 8:45AM until about 3:30PM. Elementary was 7:30AM until 2:30 PM due to the bus schedule. And they tend to be Monday-Friday.
Heath sat slouched down into the couch in the lounge, turning his camera over in his hands. What should he do now? What could he do now? In some corner of his mind he registered the sounds of Bec and Fly in the kitchen, helping everyone get ready for school. He had gotten up, gone through their training with them, but his mind was more or less consumed by what he had seen on the tape.
He ran a hand through his hair and stood up. Only one thing left to do. And maybe it was the right thing to do. If he ignored it, it would definitely be like dumping a bucket of weed killer on the plant, but what he was about to do, would probably only prolong the plant's death for a little while.
Or maybe not.
Only one way to find out.
"Fly." At the sound of her name, all six kids, Bec, and Fly looked up at Heath, who stood at the bottom of the stairs holding up his camera for her to see. "We need to talk."
She visibly froze. He could see her face pale a bit right then. It was like a kid getting caught with their hand in the jar. And Heath had caught her red handed. She nodded shortly and averted her eyes. She took her bowl and spoon to the sink soundlessly and then followed him up the stairs.
XXX
Several Hours Ago...
"Heath, I know I agreed to keep things less than friendly with you, but I also know you probably won't watch this tape until after we've all left the house again. By then, who knows how I'll feel." There was a pause and Heath sat back down onto the couch in disbelief. "When you sent me that e-mail I just...You know me—I can't express my feelings the way I probably should." She tilted her head back and her hair fell out of her face, displaying her blushing cheeks.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she spoke again. "Heath. We were best friends. Immediately after meeting. It wasn't a coincidence that we met that day during finals. It was something else."She paused again and then let out a trill of a laugh. "I don't even know what to say."
"Me either," he mumbled to himself in response.
"Remember..." She seemed to grab onto a thought. "Remember Jane?" Who? "Well, I do. You probably don't. I think you were infatuated with her for, like, three days." She scratched the back of her head. "Anyways, I remember telling you after that whole ordeal, that even my dad let the cattle dogs make one mistake, but if they did it a second time, he shot them."
"Oh," Heath sighed, remembering. "That."
"I think that's why I've held a grudge for so long, because I got stuck in that whole 'you only get one second chance' way of thinking." Fly bit her lip and the camera bounced around for a second before she steadied it. "No matter how hard I try, I think I'm permanently stuck in this immaturity circle. I couldn't tell you that I liked you. A lot. I couldn't even keep in touch when you told me you'd moved on. So what do I do? I pulled a high school move-I held a grudge and acted like a brat. But then, a few years ago, I shattered my wrist on a rock."
She paused and suddenly her voice was higher and it broke several times when she said, "I didn't quit the circuit voluntarily. I was forced to quit because I couldn't even get myself up onto my board, let alone paddle out." She stopped to wipe a stray tear from her faced quickly. Heath suddenly wanted nothing more than to comfort her, to hold her. Pro surfing was literally her life, and now she was forced out of it? So the whole "I got bored" thing was just an excuse.
"But as I was lying in the hospital thinking about how I'd ended up at that point in my life, I remembered when I knocked my tooth out just after we met. I started my career in the hospital, and now I was ending it there. And before I knew it, I was calling you." Heath's heart dropped. "You answered and you sounded so happy that I just couldn't bear the thought of tearing you away from that, so I hung up." No, no, no.
Heath was tempted to fast forward. There had to be a point to this. Why did she decide to record this right after telling him she didn't even want to be friends? Why tell him all of this if she wanted nothing to do with him anymore?
"I'm rambling," she muttered before looking dead into the camera. Suddenly, the confident Fly was back, the familiar spark in her eye that he loved. "What I really wanted to say was that I do still want to be friends. And I'm sorry. I just can't help feeling this intense regret. I wish I could have been brave enough to keep in touch with you, to make it clear that I liked you." Heath didn't miss the way she referred to her feelings in the past tense. "But I know I'll regret it more if I let everything we ever had drift away."
Heath smirked.
"You were right in that aspect," she muttered, looking away from the camera. "There was something—we never put a name to it or a label, but there was something." Again, past tense. "So I decided just now when you went back to surf that I would record this on here. I just hope you don't see it any time soon because I just want to make sure this is what's good for us." The camera clicked off before restarting, this time inside the house, where he followed the kids. He shut it down and sat it on the table in front of him.
A spark of anger rose in his chest. Who was she to decide what was right for them? He felt like their whole relationship hinged on her and her decisions. He felt a bit powerless.
XXX
Fly followed Heath up the stairs and into the empty bedroom she was staying in. She sat down on one of the two beds and waited for Heath to shut the door, her heart pounding in her ears.
Heath crossed his arms. His body language was tense, but otherwise neutral. She couldn't decide if he was angry or hurt or just upset.
"Do you want to start or should I?"
She shook her head, an automatic denial slipping from her lips. "I don't know—"
"The video," he told her calmly. "Tell me about it."
"I didn't think you'd see it this soon," she whispered, her eyes sticking to him. Confident Fly was still there somewhere.
"Please, explain something to me," he started, leaning up against the wall and sliding down until he was sitting.
"I thought I was pretty clear in the video." She gestured to the camera in his hands.
"No," he shook his head, "explain to me what you would have done if I hadn't seen this." She remained silent. "I just don't understand what you would have wanted me to do if I had seen this weeks after we'd all parted."
"What would you have done?" she asked curiously. "Because in all honesty, I don't know where that came from."
"From you, obviously—and I'm not sure what I would have done," he sighed, running a hand through his hair.
"I like it, by the way." He looked up at her, confused. "Your hair."
He stood up and placed the camera on the desk before joining her on the bed. "What did I do wrong, really?" She stared up at him, blond eyebrows pulled together. "Wha did I do that was so bad that you never wanted to speak to me again, that you couldn't even come and tell me you still wanted to be friends." The word "friend" was bitter in his mouth, but he forced it out anyways. Maybe being friends was better than nothing.
She stood up abruptly and paced the room in front of him, suddenly speaking a mile a minute. "See, the thing about it is, it's not even about you—it's me. And I know most people say that but it's really just about me. I was unsure, I was changing and…" She threw her hands up in the air with a groan. "I don't even know how to explain this correctly."
"Fly…"
She spun on him and continued. "It's like this—you were always there for me, this unchanging, unmoving rock that I always knew would be there. I took that for granted. I never told you what was going on in my head so you didn't know." He stood up and forced her to stop pacing by grabbing her shoulders, but she continued to speak. "And then your e-mail just caught me off guard because in my head you were my boyfriend, but it was never said out loud, so I really had no right to be angry."
"Have you been talking to Bec or Matt?" he accused. "Be angry if you want. I'm not going to tell you that you don't have the right. But what I need you to do is start telling people what you want. Do you want—"
"I want to be friends," she blurted out.
He let out a small smile, a small fragment of the happiness that swelled inside him. "Well, I think that can be arranged." She grinned back. His hands slid down her shoulders and wrested on her wrists. "There's still one other thing that needs to be discussed." He flipped her hands over and brought them closer to his face. Sure enough, her left hand was covered in pink shiny scars.
Fly jerked it out of his grasp a littler rougher than she intended to. "I really shouldn't have mentioned that."
"But…you did."
She inhaled and shut her eyes tight. "I can't surf professionally anymore," she whispered. "I tried for a year, but I just couldn't catch back up with it. The sponsor dropped me a few months ago."
"But you said—" A sobbed wracked through her body and suddenly what she had said didn't matter anymore. "Next time you call, don't hang up," he told her, reaching out and gathering her into his arms. She wrapped her own arms around his waist. Heath could feel her digging her nails into his back.
Heath was at a loss. This wasn't the Fly he knew. She was crying, nearly hysterical, in his arms.
"I can't—I won't—" she stuttered, pulling away from him and wiping at her face.
"I've been watching you surf for the last several days, Fly," he told her, gripping her shoulders and leaning down to look her in the eye. "You're still the best among us. You won't let this keep you down for long. We may not have had contact in the last seven years, but I know how you are. You'll find a way. It's what I like about you."
Heath blinked in surprise when she suddenly lurched forward, her lips meeting his.