[COMPLETE]
When Hanna Haddad embarks on what's supposed to be another uneventful summer as a lifeguard on Cape Cod, a trip to the past comes as an unnerving surprise. The discovery of her estranged mother's journal opens up the world of tragedy and...
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A week after telling me about his girlfriend, my dad had surprised me with the news that she was coming over for dinner. Usually, this kind of material made for a good breakfast chat with Stella, always ready to bless me with her brash remarks and pragmatic solutions. The empty chair that greeted me again this morning was a friendly reminder that those days were over.
I threw my bag down on the seat and proceeded to set up the area around our chair, marking our territory. My back cracked as I rose from my hunched over position, and I shuddered at the noise.
"You okay?"
I straightened up and moved my eyes in the direction of that husky voice. Jesse ambled towards our chair, already shirtless on this humid late-June morning. It amused me how despite seeing him in this state nearly every day, I never failed to gawk at his toned stomach and brawny arms. His body was just shy of chiseled, like he'd spend years toning it but wanted no one to know.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I lied, twisting my upper body in both directions. For a brief second, I imagined what his manly hands would feel like massaging the knots out of my muscles. "Did anyone fill out the board yet?"
"Janelle's got it today," he said, placing his hands on his hips. "Have you heard the news?"
"Is it bad?"
"You could say. There was a shark sighting yesterday evening. Granted, it wasn't on our side of the Cape, but we still need to be extra vigilant today."
There weren't many things that scared me. Snakes I could do, spiders were a non-issue, I even liked heights. But sharks...sharks were another story.
"Hey, hey, what's wrong?" I froze in place, hypnotized by the ocean ahead of me. For a second, the calm swell of the water morphed into violent waves slicing through the shore. Jesse placed his hand in the middle of my back, palm cool against my warm skin. If I wasn't shaking from fear, I would have laughed at the fact I'd gotten exactly what I'd wanted. "You do know that likelihood of getting killed by a shark is basically zero?"
I snapped out of my trance and buried my face in hands, breathing through the gaps between my fingers. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm just—well, I'm still terrified of the thought."
"You don't have to apologize." He softened his tone and slipped his hand lower, his fingers dancing against my lower back. "Is there a specific reason why?"
I nodded, removing my hands from my face. "When I was six, we were at the beach on vacation, and I decided to wander off and swim by myself. I didn't realize I'd ventured off into a no-swim zone and thought the whistles I kept hearing were for someone else. Before I knew it, I was being pulled out of the water by a lifeguard. There had been a shark...only ten feet away from me."
At the last sentence, Jesse's eyes turned into saucers. "And you decided to become a lifeguard?"
"Let's just say I suppressed that memory for many, many years." I laughed, even though my heart still thudded erratically. "I figured I'd be less afraid now that I'm older but—uh, well—turns out trauma doesn't work like that."
