Before the Storm

I screamed and screamed, startled by the volume of my own voice but unable to stop. I struggled to open my door without success, because the motorcycle was propped against it. By the time I escaped through the passenger door, the biker was getting to his feet. He was huge pillar of a man, and if I’d been thinking straight, I might have been afraid to approach him. What if he was a Hells Angel? But all I could think about was that I’d hurt someone. I could have killed him.

“Oh my God!” I ran toward him, moving on sheer adrenaline. The man stood with his side to me, rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms as if checking to see that everything still worked. I stopped a few feet short of him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you. Are you all right?”

A few people circled around us, hanging back as if waiting to see what would happen.

“I think I’ll live.” The Hells Angel unstrapped his white helmet and took it off, and a tumble of dark hair fell to his shoulders. He studied a wide black scrape that ran along the side of the helmet. “Man,” he said. “I’ve got to send a testimonial to this manufacturer. D’you believe this? It’s not even dented.” He held the helmet in front of me, but all I saw was that the leather on his right sleeve was torn to shreds.

“I checked my mirror, but I was looking for a car,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I somehow missed seeing you.”

“You need to watch for cyclists!” A woman shouted from the sidewalk. “That could have been my son on his bike!”

“I know! I know!” I hugged my arms. “It was my fault.”

The Hells Angel looked at the woman. “You don’t need to rag on her,” he said. “She won’t make the same mistake twice.” Then, more quietly, he spoke to me. “Will you?”

I shook my head. I thought I might throw up.

“Let’s, uh—” he surveyed the scene “—let me check out my bike, and you back your car up to the curb and we can get each other’s insurance info, all right?” His accent was pure Wilmington, unlike mine.

I nodded. “Okay.”

He lifted his motorcycle from in front of my door, which was dented and scraped but opened with only a little difficulty, and I got in. I had to concentrate on turning the key in the ignition, shifting to Reverse, giving the car some gas, as if I’d suddenly forgotten how to drive. I felt about fourteen years old by the time I managed to move the car three feet back into its parking space. I fumbled in the glove compartment for my crumpled insurance card and got out.

The Hells Angel parked his motorcycle a couple of spaces up the street from my car.

“Does it run okay?” I asked, hugging my arms again as I approached. It wasn’t cold, but my body was trembling all over.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Your car took the brunt of it.”

“No, you did.” I looked again at the shredded leather on his arm. “I wish you’d…yell at me or something. You’re way too calm.”

He laughed. “Did you cut me off on purpose?”

“No.”

“I can tell you already feel like crap about it,” he said. “Why should I make you feel worse?” He looked past me to the shops along the street. “Let’s get a cup of coffee while we do the insurance bit,” he said, pointing to the café down the block. “You’re in no shape to drive right now, anyway.”

He was right. I was still shivering as I stood next to him in line at the coffee shop. My knees buckled, and I leaned heavily against the counter as we ordered.

“Decaf for you.” He grinned. He was a good ten inches taller than me. At least six-three. “Find us a table, why don’t you?”

I sat down at a table near the window. My heart still pounded against my rib cage, but I was filled with relief. My car was basically okay, I hadn’t killed anyone, and the Hells Angel was the forgiving type. I’d really lucked out. I put my insurance card on the table and smoothed it with my fingers.

I studied the width of the Angel’s shoulders beneath the expanse of leather as he picked up our mugs of coffee. His body reminded me of a well-padded football player, but when he took off his jacket, draping it over the spare chair at our table, I saw that his size had nothing to do with padding. He wore a navy-blue T-shirt that read Topsail Island across the front in white, and while he was not fat, he was not particularly toned either. Burly. Robust. The words floated through my mind and, although I was a virgin, having miserably plodded my way through high school as a social loser, I wondered what it would be like to have sex with him. Could he hold his weight off me?

“Are you doin’ all right?” Curiosity filled his brown eyes, and I wondered if the fantasy was written on my face. I felt my cheeks burn.

“I’m better,” I said. “Still a little shaky.”

“Your first accident?”

“My last, too, I hope. You’ve had others?”

“Just a couple. But I’ve got a few years on you.”

“How old are you?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t a rude question.

“Twenty-three. And you’re about eighteen, I figure.”

I nodded.

“Freshman at UNC?”

“Yes.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking I must have frosh written on my forehead.

He sipped his coffee, then nudged my untouched mug an inch closer to me. “Have a major yet?” he asked.

“Nursing.” My mother had been a nurse. I wanted to follow in her footsteps, even though she would never know it. “What about you?” I opened a packet of sugar and stirred it into my coffee. “Are you a Hells Angel?”

“Hell, no!” He laughed. “I’m a carpenter, although I did graduate from UNC a few years ago with a completely worthless degree in Religious Studies.”

“Why is it worthless?” I asked, though I probably should have changed the subject. I hoped he wasn’t going to try to save me, preaching the way some religious people did. I was beholden to him and would have had to listen, at least for a while.

“Well, I thought I’d go to seminary,” he said. “Become a minister. But the more I studied theology, the less I liked the idea of being tied to one religion like it’s the only way. So I’m still playing with what I want to be when I grow up.” He reached toward the seat next to him, his hand diving into the pocket of his leather jacket and coming out with a pen and his insurance card. On his biceps, I saw a tattooed banner, the word empathy written inside it. As sexually excited as I’d felt five minutes ago, now I felt his fingertips touch my heart, hold it gently in his hand.

“Listen,” he said, his eyes on the card. “Your car runs okay, right? It’s mostly cosmetic?”

I nodded.

“Don’t go through your insurance company, then. It’ll just cost you in the long run. Get an estimate and I’ll take care of it for you.”

“You can’t do that!” I said. “It was my fault.”

“It was an easy mistake to make.”

“I was careless.” I stared at him. “And I don’t understand why you’re not angry about it. I almost killed you.”

“Oh, I was angry at first. I said lots of cuss words while I was flying through the air.” He smiled. “Anger’s poison, though. I don’t want it in me. When I changed the focus from how I was feeling to how you were feeling, it went away.”

“The tattoo…” I pointed to his arm.

“I put it there to remind me,” he said. “It’s not always that easy to remember.”

He turned the insurance card over and clicked the pen.

“I don’t even know your name,” he said.

“Laurel Patrick.”

“Nice name.” He wrote it down, then reached across the table to shake my hand. “I’m Jamie Lockwood.”

We started going out together, to events on campus or the movies and once, on a picnic. I felt young with him, but never patronized. I was drawn to his kindness and the warmth of his eyes. He told me that he was initially attracted to my looks, proving that he was not a completely atypical guy after all.

“You were so pretty when you got out of your car that day,” he said. “Your cheeks were red and your little pointed chin trembled and your long black hair was kind of messy and sexy.” He coiled a lock of my stick-straight hair around his finger. “I thought the accident must have been fate.”

Later, he said, it was my sweetness that attracted him. My innocence.

We kissed often during the first couple of weeks we saw one another, but nothing more than that. I experienced my first ever orgasm with him, even though he was not touching me at the time. We were on his bike and he shifted into a gear that suddenly lit a fire between my legs. I barely knew what was happening. It was startling, quick and stunning. I tightened my arms around him as the spasms coursed through my body, and he patted my hands with one of his, as though he thought I might be afraid of how fast we were going. It would be a while before I told him that I would always think of his bike as my first lover.

We talked about our families. I’d lived in North Carolina until I was twelve, when my parents died. Then I went to Ohio to live with my social-climbing aunt and uncle who were ill-prepared to take on a child of any sort, much less a griefstricken preadolescent. There’d been a “Southerners are dumb” sort of prejudice among my classmates and a couple of my teachers. I fed right into that prejudice in the beginning, unable to focus on my studies and backsliding in every subject. I missed my parents and cried in bed every night until I figured out how to keep from thinking about them as I struggled to fall asleep: I’d count backward from one thousand, picturing the numbers on a hillside, like the Hollywood sign. It worked. I started sleeping better, which led to studying better. My teachers had to revise their “dumb Southerner” assessment of me as my grades picked up. Even my aunt and uncle seemed surprised. When it came time to apply to colleges, though, I picked all Southern schools, hungry to return to my roots.

Jamie was struck by the loss of my parents.

“Both your parents died when you were twelve?” he asked, incredulous. “At the same time?”

“Yes, but I don’t think about it much.”

“Maybe you should think about it,” he said.

“It’s all in the past.” I’d healed from that loss and saw no point in revisiting it.

“Things like that can come back to bite you later,” he said. “Were they in an accident?”

“You’re awfully pushy.” I laughed, but he didn’t crack a smile.

“Seriously,” he said.

I sighed then and told him about the fire on the cruise ship that killed fifty-two people, my parents included.

“Fire on a cruise ship.” He shook his head. “Rock and a hard place.”

“Some people jumped.”

“Your parents?”

“No. I wish they had.” Before I’d perfected my counting-backward-from-one-thousand technique, vivid fiery images of my parents had filled my head whenever I tried to go to sleep.

Jamie read my mind. “The smoke got them first, you can bet on it,” he said. “They were probably unconscious before the fire reached them.”

Although I hadn’t wanted to talk about it, I still took comfort from that thought. Jamie knew about fire, since he was a volunteer firefighter in Wilmington. For days after he’d fight a fire, I could smell smoke on him. He’d shower and scrub his long hair and still the smell would linger, seeping out of his pores. It was a smell I began to equate with him, a smell I began to like.

He took me to meet his family after we’d been seeing each other for three weeks. Even though they lived in Wilmington, I was to meet them at their beach cottage on Topsail Island where they spent most weekends. I’d probably been to Topsail as a child, but had no memory of it. Jamie teased me that my mispronunciation of the island—I said Topsale instead of Topsul—was a dead giveaway.

By that time, he’d bought me my own black leather jacket and white helmet, and I was accustomed to riding with him. My arms were wrapped around him as we started across the high-rise bridge. Far below us, I saw a huge maze of tiny rectangular islands.

“What is that down there?” I shouted.

Jamie steered the bike to the side of the bridge, even though ours was the only vehicle on the road. I climbed off and peered over the railing. The grid of little islands ran along the shoreline of the Intracoastal Waterway for as far as I could see. Miniature fir trees and other vegetation grew on the irregular rectangles of land, the afternoon sun lighting the water between them with a golden glow. “It looks like a little village for elves,” I said.

Jamie stood next to me, our arms touching through layers of leather. “It’s marshland,” he said, “but it does have a mystical quality to it, especially this time of day.”

We studied the marshland a while longer, then got back on the bike.

I knew Jamie’s parents owned a lot of land on the island, especially in the northernmost area called West Onslow Beach. After World War II, his father had worked in a secret missile testing program on Topsail Island called Operation Bumblebee. He’d fallen in love with the area and used what money he had to buy land that mushroomed in value over the decades. As we rode along the beach road, Jamie pointed out property after property belonging to his family. Many parcels had mobile homes parked on them, some of the trailers old and rusting, though the parcels themselves were worth plenty. There were several well-kept houses with rental signs in front of them and even a couple of the old flat-roofed, three-story concrete viewing towers that had been used during Operation Bumblebee. I was staggered to realize the wealth Jamie had grown up with.

“We don’t live rich, though,” Jamie had said when he told me about his father’s smart investments. “Daddy says that the whole point of having a lot of money is to give you the freedom to live like you don’t need it.”

I admired that. My aunt and uncle were exactly the opposite.

All the Lockwood houses had names burned into signs hanging above their front doors. The Loggerhead and Osprey Oasis and Hurricane Haven. We came to the last row of houses on the Island and I began to perspire inside the leather jacket. I knew one of them belonged to his family and that I’d meet them in a few minutes. Jamie drove slowly past the cottages.

“Daddy actually owns these last five houses,” he said, turning his head so I could hear him.

“Terrier?” I read the name above one of the doors.

“Right, that’s where we’re headed, but I’m taking us on a little detour first. The next house is Talos. Terrier and Talos were the names of the first supersonic missiles tested here.”

Those two houses were mirror images of each other: tall, narrow two-story cottages sitting high on stilts to protect them from the sea.

“I love that one!” I pointed to the last house in the row, next to Talos. The one-story cottage was round. Like all the other houses, it was built on stilts. The sign above its front door read The Sea Tender.

“An incredible panoramic view from that one.” Jamie turned onto a narrow road away from the houses. “I want to show you my favorite spot,” he said over his shoulder. We followed the road a short distance until it turned to sand; then we got off the bike and began walking. I tugged my jacket tighter. The October air wasn’t cold, but the wind had a definite nip to it and Jamie put his arm around me.

We walked a short distance onto a spit of white sand nearly surrounded by water. The ocean was on our right, the New River Inlet ahead of us and somewhere to our left, although we couldn’t see it from our vantage point, was the Intracoastal Waterway. The falling sun had turned the sky pink. I felt as though we were standing on the edge of an isolated continent.

“My favorite place,” Jamie said.

“I can see why.”

“It’s always changing.” He pointed toward the ocean. “The sea eats the sand there, then spits it back over there,” he moved his arm to the left of us, “and what’s my favorite place today may be completely different next week.”

“Does that bother you?” I asked.

“Not at all. Whatever nature does here, it stays beautiful.” Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then Jamie broke the silence. “Can I tell you something?” For the first time since we met, he sounded unsure of himself. A little shy.

His arm was still around me and I raised mine until it circled his waist. “Of course,” I said.

“I’ve never told anyone this and you might think I’m crazy.”

“Tell me.”

“What I’d really like to do one day is create my own church,” he said. “A place where people can believe whatever they want but still belong to a community, you know?”

I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what he meant, but one thing I’d learned about Jamie was that there was a light inside him most people didn’t have. Sometimes I saw it flash in his eyes when he spoke.

“Can you picture it?” he asked. “A little chapel right here, full of windows so you can see the water all around you. People could come and worship however they chose.” He looked toward the ocean and let out a sigh. “Pie in the sky, right?”

I did think he was a little crazy, but I opened my mind to the idea and imagined a little white church with a tall steeple standing right where we stood. “Would you be allowed to build something here?” I asked.

“Daddy owns the land. He owns every grain of sand north of those houses. Would nature let me build it? That’s the thing. Nature’s got her own mind when it comes to this spot. She’s got her own mind when it comes to the whole island.”

The aroma of baking greeted us when we walked into Terrier. Jamie introduced his parents Southern style as Miss Emma and Mr. Andrew, but his father immediately insisted I call him Daddy L. Miss Emma had contributed the gene for Jamie’s full head of wavy dark hair, although hers was cut in a short, uncomplicated style. Daddy L was responsible for Jamie’s huge, round brown eyes. They each greeted their son with bear hugs as if they hadn’t seen him in months instead of a day or so. Miss Emma even gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, then held my hands and studied me.

“She’s just precious!” she said, letting go of my hands. I caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Jamie said to his mother as he helped me out of my leather jacket.

“I hope you’re hungry.” Daddy L leaned against the doorjamb. “Mama’s cooked up a storm this afternoon.”

“It smells wonderful,” I said.

“That’s the meringue on my banana pudding you’re smelling,” Miss Emma said.

“Where’s Marcus?” Jamie asked.

I hadn’t met him yet, but I knew Jamie’s fifteen-year-old brother was something of a bad boy. Eight years younger than Jamie, he’d been a surprise to parents who’d adjusted to the idea of an only child.

“Lord only knows.” Miss Emma stirred a big bowl of potato salad. “He was surfing. Who knows what he’s doing now. I told him dinner is at six-thirty, but the day he’s on time is the day I’ll keel over from the shock.”

Jamie gave his mama’s shoulders a squeeze. “Well, let’s hope he’s not on time, then,” he said.

An hour later, we settled around a table laden with fried chicken, potato salad and corn bread. Marcus was not with us. We were near one of the broad oceanside windows and I imagined the view was spectacular in the daylight.

“So, tell me about your people, darlin’,” Miss Emma said as she handed me the bowl of potato salad for a second helping.

I explained that my mother grew up in Raleigh and my father in Greensboro, but that I lost them on the cruise ship and was raised by my aunt and uncle in Ohio.

“Lord have mercy!” Miss Emma’s hand flew to her chest. She looked at Jamie. “No wonder you two found each other.”

I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Jamie smiled at me and I figured I could ask him later.

“That explains your accent.” Daddy L looked at his wife and she nodded. “We were trying to peg it.”

Daddy L helped himself to a crisp chicken thigh. He glanced at his watch, then at the empty chair next to Jamie. “Maybe you could talk to Marcus about his grades, Jamie,” he said.

“What about them?”

“We just got his interim report, and he’s fixin’ to flunk out if he doesn’t buckle down,” Miss Emma said quietly, as if Marcus could overhear us. “Mostly D’s. And it’s his junior year. I don’t think he knows how important this year is for getting into college.” She looked at me. “Jamie’s Daddy and I never made it to college, and I want my boys to get an education.”

“I love going to UNC,” I said, although I was really thinking that she and Daddy L had done quite well for themselves without a college degree.

“I’ll talk to him,” Jamie said.

“He spends all the time he’s not in school on that surf-board,” Miss Emma said, “and then is off with his friends on the weekends, no matter what we say.”

“Boy’s out of control,” Daddy L added.

I’d been in the house only an hour, but already the primary Lockwood family dynamic was apparent: Jamie, despite the long hair and the tattoo and the motorcycle, was the favored son. Marcus was the black sheep. I hadn’t even met him and I already felt sympathy for him.

We were nearly finished when we heard the downstairs door open and close. “I’m home!” a male voice called.

“And your dinner’s cold as ice!” Miss Emma called back.

I heard him on the stairs. He came into the dining room barefooted, wearing a full-length wet suit, the top unzipped nearly to his navel. He had a lanky, slender build that would never fill out to Jamie’s bulk, even though Jamie had eight years on him. A gold cross hanging from his neck glittered against the tan that must have been left over from summer, and his hair was a short, curly cap of sun-streaked brown. He had Miss Emma’s eyes—blue, shot through with summer sky.

“Hey.” He grinned at me, pulling out the chair next to Jamie.

“Go put some clothes on,” Daddy L said.

“This is Laurel,” Jamie said. “And this is Marcus.”

“Hi, Marcus,” I said.

“You’re a sandy mess,” Miss Emma said. “Get dressed and I’ll heat you a plate in the microwave.”

“Not hungry,” Marcus said.

“You still need to change your clothes if you’re going to sit here with us,” said his father.

“I’m going, I’m going.” Marcus got up with a dramatic sigh and padded toward the bedrooms.

In a few minutes, I heard the music of an electric piano. The tune was halting and unfamiliar.

Jamie laughed. “He brought the piano with him?”

“If you can call it that,” Miss Emma said.

Daddy L looked at me. “He wants to play in a rock-and-roll band,” he explained. “For years, we offered to buy him a piano so he could take proper lessons, but he said you can’t play a piano in a band.”

“So he bought a used electric piano and is trying to teach himself how to play it,” Miss Emma said. “It makes me ill, listening to that thing.”

“Ah, Mama,” Jamie said. “It keeps him off the streets.”

After we’d eaten the most fabulous banana pudding I’d ever tasted, I wandered down the hall to use the bathroom. I could hear Marcus playing a song by The Police. When I left the bathroom, I knocked on his open bedroom door.

“Your mother said you’re teaching yourself how to play.”

He looked up, his fingers still on the keys. He’d changed into shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt. “By ear,” he said. “I can’t read music.”

“You could learn how to read music.” I leaned against the doorjamb.

“I’m dyslexic,” he said. “I’d rather have all my teeth pulled.”

“Play some more,” I said. “It sounded good.”

“Could you recognize it?”

“That song by The Police,” I said. “‘Every Breath You Take’?”

“Awesome!” His grin was cocky and he had the prettiest blue eyes. I bet he was considered a catch by girls his age. “I’m better than I thought,” he said. “How about this one?”

He bent over the keys with supreme concentration, the cocky kid gone and in his place a boy unsure of himself. The back of his neck looked slender and vulnerable. He grimaced with every wrong note. I struggled to recognize the song, to let him have that success. It took a few minutes, but then it came to me.