This Sky Read online

  AUTUMN DOUGHTON

  Autumn Doughton

  This Sky

  Copyright © 2014 Autumn Doughton

  [email protected]

  Kick-ass cover designed by Sarah Hansen at Okay Creations

  www.OkayCreations.com

  All rights reserved. This book may not be used or reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form without permission from the author except where permitted by law. All characters and storylines are the property of the author and your respect and cooperation are greatly appreciated. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692257494

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  For Dave

  Because, after all this time, when I asked you if you wanted Chinese or pizza for dinner, you said, “Why don’t we just get both?”

  This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings ~Hafez of Persia

  Beginning

  We said it from the beginning.

  No strings. No regrets.

  We lay, tangled in a web of sheets,

  Limbs and anemic light,

  And we passed promises back and forth like slippery stars.

  You told me you were recovering from

  A broken heart.

  I told you I was recovering from

  A broken life.

  Fair enough, we agreed and laughed.

  We wrote stories on our bodies.

  Middles and endings

  Etched onto our feet and the palms of our hands.

  Our hopes were lettered in black and silver

  On a background of stark white flesh.

  We traded words on our tongues like tiny drops of melted sugar.

  In the beginning, you said, there was only water.

  This is how you unraveled me.

  Thread by thread.

  Until I was bare,

  Wearing nothing but my skin

  And my bones

  And my blood.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Surf Life Magazine

  Where is Landon Young?

  Surfing fans have been asking themselves this question since Young was disqualified from the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour nearly two years ago and lost his five-year endorsement deal with surf wear giant, Hurley.

  Young had long been considered a front runner for the title position after being voted Rookie of the Year, winning numerous elite tour victories, claiming the third and second spot in tour rankings in consecutive years, and consistently wowing crowds and judges with his innovative aerial maneuvers and his reputation as a guy who would do anything to win.

  But, during his final season on the ASP World Tour, the surfing phenom’s behavior became increasingly erratic. He missed several scheduled events and was said to be losing his edge. Then, in a move that sent the surf world reeling, Young attacked a fan during the Hurley Pro at Trestles. One week later, he was arrested on an unrelated charge and was subsequently disqualified from surfing on the tour for a period of one year.

  So, where is Landon Young today? Insiders are reporting that after a trip to rehab and a twenty-month sabbatical, the superstar has been spotted on the beaches near his hometown of San Diego, California. Does this mean that Young is making an attempt to return to the competition life? The ASP is not commenting on whether or not they are in discussions with Young. One thing is for certain—supporters around the world are keeping their fingers crossed.

  Landon

  Early morning. Wednesday. The fiery tips of the sun are just starting to crest the horizon. With every passing second, new shots of light rocket upward, weaving thick flares of fumy gold and pink across the smoky landscape.

  I’m driving toward the beach with my board strapped to the top of the car. The music is cranked up to full-blast and the windows are down letting in a kick of salty air. It snaps the ends of my hair into my face and stings my lips and eyes. Fucking perfect.

  By the time I pull into an empty street spot and kill the ignition, the whole world is a blushing pink sky. I look out over the dark gravel and the rise of the pasty sand dunes to where the open water is glowing metallic like a bucket of copper coins.

  I start to reach into the backseat for my wetsuit but change my mind. It’s early November but the mild offshore winds are telling me that it’s still warm enough to go without it. Decision made, I strip down to a tight-fitting rash vest, remove my shoes, and tuck my car key into the small zippered pouch I keep tethered to my waist. Then I’m crossing to the beach and crunching my way through the hard-packed sand until I’m ankle-deep in the frothy swash of the Pacific where the incoming tide kisses the shore.

  I drop my squash tail and stroke out belly-down past the rolling whitewater and the shallow sandbar to where everyone is waiting. There are only six of us on the break this morning—a light crew for the dawn patrol, especially considering these conditions. The water is up and waves are pushing into the beach in the tight, glassy blue sets I like to see this time of year.

  I settle in and check out the lineup. Beneath me, the water lifts and falls until it becomes a familiar rhythm. Above me, the new sun is still pulling itself up, working through a milky screen of early morning clouds.

  The guys are going through the unspoken rotation—Brett, Quinn, Nico, Parsons, Toby, then me. But this isn’t a heat and I’m not out here to slit throats. I’m taking my sweet time, hanging back just beyond the shoulder, waving them on one by one.

  “You up?” Brett slings the question at me.

  “Not yet,” I shoot back. I’m waiting for that wave—the one with the perfect shape that’s going to suck me right into the slot and charge me toward shore.

  Right there.

  “You’ve got that one, Young!”

  I’ve got it.

  Anticipating how the wave will move, I squint, my eyelids splitting the light, and I give myself a straight count.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Each number hits with a heavy thump behind my ribs.

  Four.

  Five.

  Wait for it, Landon. Wait for it.

  My arms start working fast, propelling my board forward through the churning water into the takeoff. The wave rises, the momentum almost dragging me back into the trough and under the opening blue-green face of the wave. But I tighten my abdomen and flatten my palms on the deck. The muscles in my legs are clenched in anticipation.

  That’s when it happens.

  The catch.

  All at once, I snap up. My feet are anchored. My body is centered. Beneath the board, the lip of the wave caves, forcing me to dig in with my toes, whip my head around and pull my weight tight and fast to one side. My pulse quakes fiercely. My right hand grips the rail of my board for control. I lower my body to the left, my fingers tickling the silky surface, kicking up a spray of salt.

  I am t
he air

  I am the wave.

  I am the ocean.

  Everything is blurry with sunlight and briny foam, but I can still make out the crystalline edge of the beach. The top of the wave curls under and the world around me goes liquid and blue. For a quick second I am free. This, I think. This is it. The moment I crave. It’s a kind of magic—the only kind I know of that exists anymore. This is my body coming apart, coming alive—breaking into thousands of droplets of glistening water.

  This is me.

  On the Down Low

  BREAK-UP ALERT!

  We have just learned that Ren Parkhurst, your favorite Howl werewolf, and his longtime girlfriend, Gemma Sayers, are calling it quits. A source close to the couple is spilling the beans and saying that the pair has been on shaky ground since this summer. The source claims twenty-one-year-old Sayers has moved all of her things out of the Los Angeles home she shared with Parkhurst and is staying at an undisclosed location.

  This should come as no surprise to those of you who have seen the NSFW(not safe for work) video of Parkhurst and a still unnamed woman that was leaked last week.

  We have contacted reps for both Parkhurst and Sayers but were told that no statements are being made at this time.

  Gemma

  The first thing I’m going to make clear is that this isn’t a story about my past.

  You won’t need to memorize the list of my childhood fears or hear the specifics of the time I spewed chunks in a movie theater when I was six. It was humiliating and smelly. I’m over it. The end.

  I’m not going to waste your time articulating all the reasons I moved to L.A. in the first place. Was it the siren’s call of fame? Stupidity? Residual grief over Andrew? Some strange form of rebellion against my hippie, earth-spirit parents?

  Does it matter, really?

  And considering the circumstances, I’m not going to chronicle the last two and a half years of my life. You don’t need to know about the rejections, the failed auditions or the crappy apartment on Lorena Street where the water ran dirty brown and I was lulled to sleep every night by the angry music of souped-up cars and the arguments of my on-again, off-again roommates.

  I’m not going to relive my first encounter with Ren or tell you how things were in the beginning. I’m not going to explain why I thought our relationship was something golden and tangible I could tuck inside my pocket and guard forever because frankly, I don’t want you to laugh at my naivety.

  Most importantly, this isn’t an exclusive tell-all or a three-hundred-dollar-an-hour therapy session so the particulars of the incident, our fight, and subsequent breakup are off-limits.

  Agreed?

  Okay then.

  What you do need to know is this: Time moves differently when you’re getting over something big. For me, it slows—limping along on creaky wheels until the rusty engine blows and I’m here, stranded with nothing but a masking tape colored sky to look at.

  It feels like a century has passed when, in reality, it’s been five days.

  Five messy, awful days.

  I’m on my back lying on a scratchy polyester blend bedspread with a flat pillow under my head and another propped under my feet. My earbuds are in and a song, melancholy as a lonely moon, swells in my head. My eyes are wide and I’m staring up at the water-stained ceiling in an attempt to hypnotize myself with the dusty wooden blades of the fan.

  When the track fades out and a new one starts, I yank the earbuds from my ears and roll to my side. My arm shoots out to the bedside table, knocking over an empty water bottle in the process. With my fingers curled up like crab legs, I feel around for the black remote I know is buried somewhere beneath a disgusting mound of candy wrappers and balled-up tissue paper.

  Ah-ha!

  It takes a second for the TV to come alive, and when it does, I see that a new segment on the Home Shopping Network has just started. Perfecto. In this installment they’re selling an at-home massage chair with a built-in sound system, eight pressure settings, a seat warmer, and two drink holders.

  A seat warmer?

  Well, color me intrigued.

  Ignoring the nausea swimming in my gut and the unpleasant taste of soggy cardboard burning up the back of my throat, I sit up and press myself into the cool wood of the headboard. My eyes focus on the small screen where the host is sinking slowly into a black leather chair. With a loud sigh, he raises his feet and closes his eyes in satisfaction.

  I might need that chair.

  The camera pans over the set and zooms in on the face of an audience member. Predictably, he’s invited to the stage to test the chair and everyone starts to clap. As he trots up the steps, I start to wonder if he’s a plant. Perfectly parted hair, close-shaven goatee and suburban-dad clothes. Most likely a faker. I mean, who in their right mind irons jeans to go sit in a studio audience?

  “I think he’s a plant,” I murmur, glancing in Weebit’s direction. “What do you think? Real or fake?”

  He doesn’t respond because… well, chinchillas are known to be phlegmatic and slightly aloof like that.

  Onscreen, the host is asking the chosen audience member questions—where he’s from, what his profession is, wife, kids and all that jazz. There’s a lot of head nodding and polite laughing going on. Then a girl in a slinky white dress and too much stage makeup shows up to turn on the massage chair.

  Now, the camera artfully zooms in on the audience member’s face. Jesus. I don’t care if he is a plant because there’s no way he’s faking that blissed-out expression. His eyes are rolling toward the back of his head and he’s grinning like someone is giving him the best handjob of his miserable, buttoned-up life.

  I really need that chair.

  Five minutes later and eight hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents plus tax poorer, I hang up the hotel phone, arch my back and check the time on the digital clock next to the bed. Though you wouldn’t know it by the malignant veil of darkness and the sickly scent of old liquor cloaking this hotel room, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.

  Folks, welcome to Heartbreak City. Last week, I was elected Mayor.

  With a slushy exhalation, I scoop my laptop from the floor to look through my email account. It’s jammed with blah, blah, blah bullshit and a few panicked messages from Julie. You haven’t been answering your texts. Where are you? Are you alive? Gemma, I’m stroking out here!

  She’s worried about me and I get that. Except for an embarrassing visit to my doctor’s office to get checked out for a bevy of deceptively melodic sounding diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea and syphilis, and a few trips to the hotel vending machine, I haven’t left this room all week and Julie knows it.

  According to her latest email, if I don’t let her know within the next hour that I’m still breathing, she’s sending out a search party. With my recent luck, the search party will turn into an FBI raid and I’ll wind up on one of those badly-produced crime-stopper shows that air on basic cable in the middle of the night.

  I pull in a breath and tap out a quick response, hoping my best friend will appreciate the sickness of my humor.

  I spent the morning wandering the streets of L.A. in my bathrobe, shuffling my feet and asking strangers if they know how to get out of the matrix. The good news is that I’ve only thought about drowning myself in the toilet bowl three times today. I’m calling it progress.

  Next up, I sort through a bunch of spam and at least a dozen inquiries from reporters who managed to get ahold of my email address.

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Delete.

  Not surprisingly, there’s nothing new from my parents. On Monday they sent me an email encouraging me to use this time as an opportunity to explore the “essence of my individuality” and work on my heart chakra.

  Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather scribble bad breakup lyrics on every single bathroom stall in Los Angeles.

  I figure that’s the last I’ll hear from Mom and Dad for a while. They’ll be in Africa u
ntil mid-February and as far as I know, they have no running water or electricity in the village where they’re living. I’ll just assume that keeping up-to-date on the Hollywood gossip sites for news of their daughter tends to fall low on the list of things to do when they do manage to get online.

  My eyes move over the next subject line and my stomach twists. Termination documents attached. It’s a message from my boss at Ever After, the fairytale-themed amusement park just northeast of the city where I have worked for the past year.

  As per yesterday’s phone conversation, your final paycheck will be direct deposited on November 7th. If you have any further questions, please direct them to Sarah Ridley in Human Resources.

  My days as Princess Penelope—the most popular royal at Ever After—are officially over. Yesterday, the higher ups decided “thoroughly devastated” was not a sufficient excuse for missing four consecutive days of work.

  “I can’t say that I blame them,” I mutter to Weebit.

  Just as I’m about to close out the account, my laptop pings to notify me that I have an incoming email. I cringe when I see that it’s from another reporter.

  It starts: It’s been five days…

  Five days.

  Five days since my world imploded.

  Five days since I stumbled upon my boyfriend screwing our waitress in the bathroom of the restaurant where we were having dinner.

  Five days.

  And, still, every time I picture the sight of their heaving bodies smashed up against the marble wall as they panted greedily and moaned into each other’s mouths, my stomach lurches like I’ve just downed liverwurst dipped in bile and seasoned with batshit.

  Did it help that one of Ren’s fangirls was in the next stall filming the whole thing on her camera phone?