I'll Be Waiting (San Juan Island Stories Book 6)

  I’LL BE WAITING

  For five years Skylar has awaited this moment--the return of her high school crush from his tour of duty in Afghanistan and the opportunity to learn if the sweet, silent and serious helicopter pilot shares her dream of the future.

  I’LL BE WAITING

  Wendy Lynn Clark

  www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.

  I’LL BE WAITING

  Copyright © 2014 Wendy Lynn Clark

  All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.

  Digital edition created by Maureen Cutajar

  www.gopublished.com

  ISBN 978-1-941260-42-5

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  I’LL BE WAITING

  Author Bio

  I’LL BE WAITING

  Skylar Robinson knocked on the darkened marina office window, ignoring the business hours printed on the glass. This was too important. Warm June air ruffled the new highlights in her hair and her mother-of-pearl faced wristwatch confirmed what she already knew: The cruise ship was supposed to have arrived over half an hour ago.

  Well, ships were late sometimes.

  Except, the port was so empty. Empty of five-year reunion cruises, and empty of her former high school classmates. She just knew she had screwed up. Again.

  She dug into her messenger bag for the invitation, jamming her pink polished nails against spiral notebooks, a box of crayons, an emergency lesson plan and glitter-glue. The bag, holding her shiny new laptop, weighed heavily on her thin shoulder.

  The computer was a gift from her store manager boyfriend for completing her teacher’s certificate. Teaching was not the exotic career she’d once dreamed for herself but a practical one she’d thought out carefully in a change from her usual live-for-today-not-for-tomorrow outlook. Her boyfriend had hinted he planned to give her something “even more important” during a “very, very important celebratory dinner” with both their families. She had postponed the party. The reason she had put him off was waiting for her at this reunion. Waiting for her like the one-line emails that unfolded in her inbox, beguiling Skylar into her computer chair every day and every night, filling her with aching dreams.

  Congratulate me - today I finished basic.

  Afghanistan is hot except where it’s cold.

  Your cookies taste like home.

  Meet me on the boat if you remember our promise.

  She did remember her promise. For a few hours before he had to go back, Luke would be home. For a few hours today, she could see him. She could see them together. And just, well, see.

  So, the boat had to be here. It had to be here.

  Ah. Finally her fingers found the smooth cardstock. She yanked the invitation out of her bag. WELCOME, CLASS OF THE MILLENNIUM, the invitation card read, BOARD AT SLIP NUMBER 4-04. Skylar looked up at the posting area. She was standing at slip number 40-4.

  Oh. She was off by 36 slips.

  But, wait. She stood in the middle of the abandoned Anacortes ferry terminal. The instructions clearly directed her to Bellingham’s Fairhaven Marina.

  Her stomach dropped. Forty miles away? No. Impossible. Her invitation began to tremble. By now the cruise ship must have lifted its anchor in Bellingham. It was already gone. He was already gone. She was too late. Five years of promises curled up into a ball and—

  No. She couldn’t be too late.

  Skylar ran for her old Hyundai and shoved the keys in the engine, killing her car twice before she calmed enough to stomp down the clutch and squeal out of the private lot. She had to reach him. He couldn’t give up on her. She could still reach him somehow. He wouldn’t disappear, not even if five years ago they had sworn that if one of them didn’t arrive, their love wasn’t meant to be.

  Oh, why had this happened? She was different now. She paid attention. She’d planned this drive out so carefully, arrived early, raced from her graduation ceremony and please-please-please let there still be time to keep her promise. Because she had kept it, a secret ember burning within her closed heart, for five long years.

  As she drove she let her thoughts drift back five years to the day her attention had wandered away from volleyball practice and across the high school gym to where the hot seniors were wrestling. She’d turned as her teammate screamed, “SKYEEE!” in the horrified way you scream at someone who is about to be a big, fat idiot.

  The volleyball smacked her right in the face.

  Hard leather slapped her nose and cheeks with the same sound as the distracting wrestler on the opposite side of the gym slamming his opponent into the mat. Skylar fell backwards and landed on the hard gym floor, on her butt. Her cheeks stung and her nose throbbed and her eyes watered, but the shock made her burst out laughing.

  Relief washed across her teammates’ faces on both sides of the net as her outside hitters helped her up. The JVs launched into their favorite chant. “Skylar! Skylar! Look to the Skyyyyy-lar!”

  The chant sounded so sweet in a hard-fought practice match as she stepped into her famous float serve, but so bitter when her teammates wiggled their hands in the air because she had been a dummy.

  She laughed anyway. Only a jerk would get mad over a little teasing.

  “Robinson, eyes on this side of the gym.” Her coach’s face burned nuclear red.

  “They are.” She tried for an innocent look.

  “I mean it, Robinson.”

  “I promise they are.” She smiled hopefully, even though her face was still throbbing. Jeez, did the wrestlers on the other side of the gym see her spectacular fail? Or, specifically, did the one wrestler who mattered see it? She glanced over for just a second to see if Luke had witnessed her screw-up.

  “That’s it. You’re on cleanup.” Her coach shook her head.

  “Aw!”

  But as she rolled up the net after practice she realized luck had once again bestowed its golden kiss, because Luke had apparently been designated to clean up his side of the gym too. Solid in his skintight uniform, every muscle from his calves to his buns tightened as he lifted the heavy mat. Skylar traced the puckers and bulges as she dragged the net down the hall after him to storage, drawn like a kitten to her first catnip.

  He held the door for her and flipped on the light. She unpeeled her gaze and thanked him with a smile.

  He avoided eye contact. “Sure.”

  His voice, directed at her for only the second time in her entire life, teased her with its subtle charms: quiet, distinct, and oh so delectable.

  She put her net with the others, and he put his mat with the others, and she kind of smiled at him as he finessed all of the mats into perfect alignment. Then suddenly the storage room door swung shut. Locking her and Luke in the storage clo
set together.

  Luke pushed the door. No handle on the inside. “We’re stuck.”

  His voice sounded distant. Not thrilled to be spending time alone with her, but not really angry either. She hoped he wasn’t furious. Because despite what had happened only yesterday, the truth of whether he liked her or like-liked her or hated her remained an unsolved mystery.

  “Sorry. One of my JVs is a huge practical joker.”

  He rubbed his forehead and stepped back from the door, resigned. “We could be stuck in here all night.”

  Skylar plopped on the mats and lounged against the wall. “I’ve got Renee’s car keys in my locker. She’ll definitely find us. And who cares, right? This is like an adventure.”

  “We’ve got a position paper due in English tomorrow.”

  “Oh, seriously? Oopsie.”

  He glanced at her. Brown eyes sharp, he was assessing her repose. Then his gaze flickered to the floor and he seemed to consider her words and how to respond. “You don’t care about your grades.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “My mom says I can learn my whole life, but I’ll only be seventeen once.” She had a really cool mom.

  His lips twisted to the side. “That’s pretty carefree.”

  “I guess.” It wasn’t like one paper mattered—or even one grade, or even one semester. She was moving to San Francisco with Renee to become a flight attendant, and for that she just had to graduate or get her GED, whichever was easier. She’d never need a good GPA, and she’d already passed most of high school without studying. But for Luke “More Studious than Hermione Granger” Zemackis, a night stuck in a closet probably rated the same as the Titanic disaster.

  Skylar bit her lip. “Are you going to pull an all-nighter?”

  “I’m done. I was just thinking…” He glanced at her and away.

  “Thinking what?” she asked.

  His hard cheeks very slightly reddened. “It’s nothing.”

  An enthralling quiet settled over them.

  Honestly, she had barely paid attention in English class today. According to twenty-two very reliable witnesses, the teacher had apparently called her name for practically a minute, making the entire rest of the class hold their breaths. Luke, his cheeks red, had finally glanced in her direction, leaned over, and told her that the teacher was calling her. Which caused her to jerk forward and the class to explode with laughter like a burst balloon. But it was Luke’s fault. The only reason she’d kept staring at him was because of what he himself had done.

  The day before, she had been walking back to the gym office freezer to get a new icepack for Renee, who had turned her ankle doing a dive for a bad off-side. On the way she’d seen Ellie, one of the bubbly JV opposites, peering into the weight room from behind a Bowflex like a creeper. Since the JVs were all supposed to be out running laps around the crisp-cool track, Skylar snuck up behind her, tickling fingers poised for punishment, but Ellie turned and stopped her with a low desperate shush, and inside the weight room Skylar heard the conversation that would change her life.

  “I’d say Ellie’s hot,” a track guy said, leaning on an elliptical. “What about Audrina?”

  “Pretty hot,” a wrestler said, resting between sets.

  Luke silently curled weights. His chiseled profile had made Skylar feel strange in the pit of her stomach, like she wanted to throw something at him, or better yet, throw herself at him. He was one of the gorgeous, uninterested guys in her class that had never so much as smiled at her. And he probably never would, either.

  “I like blondes,” the track guy said. “What about Renee? I say no.”

  The other guys shook their heads, mirroring his gesture. “No, no. Too serious. I wouldn’t do her.”

  Ooh, well, what jerks. Skylar started forward to give them heck, but Ellie manacled her arm against the Bowflex, pressing her into one of the tension lines on the machine.

  Luke suddenly spoke. “I like Skylar.”

  Her whole body popped in surprise, like she’d been hit in the chest with a Taser. Everything felt kind of hot and tingly.

  The other guys nodded and said sure, whatever, they would do her.

  One wrestler said, “She’s kind of an airhead.”

  Luke shrugged, like he didn’t think so. “She’s easygoing and nice to everyone.”

  The jolt came again, harder this time, and tingled like stardust all the way down to Skylar’s toes. Ellie let go of her arm and released the pressure on the line, and the Bowflex threw them both forward into the weight room.

  Skylar toppled, flat on the ground, and Ellie landed on her with an, “Oof.”

  The boys stared at them, eyes wide.

  Caught! Skylar burst out laughing. What else could she do?

  The boys reddened.

  Ellie giggled and waved. “Hi there! We heard everything.”

  The track guy threw down his towel and lunged at them, roaring. The girls scrambled to their feet and shrieked down the hall to the girls’ changing room, but for the rest of practice and the rest of the day, Skylar could not get Luke’s confession out of her head. Had he ever really looked at her before? They shared English, but he sat across the room, a singular “normal guy” amidst a nerd herd, his plain T-shirt and jeans swimming in a sea of camo, trench coats, arrogance and acne.

  She’d noticed him long ago, on the weight bench as his pectorals flexed and his nostrils flared and his jaw gritted with every endurance-straining rep. Why had they never talked? He was truly a fine specimen of a human boy.

  And he was still a fine specimen, locked in the gym storage closet with her.

  She tucked her legs up under her. “Are you really friends with those camo guys you sit next to?”

  He paused. A swift, dark glance. Unreadable.

  Her heart thumped. She twisted a long strand of brown hair around her finger. “I’m just asking. They’re always talking, but you only listen.”

  His mouth relaxed into a mute grin. He leaned back, hand around the back of his neck. “Yeah, we’re friends. They’re helping me memorize helicopter specifications.”

  “Oh,” Skylar said. “My cousin works on helicopters.”

  Luke dropped his hand. “He’s a pilot?”

  “He repairs them in the army. It’s a super-good job. His family has to move every couple years, but their living expenses are all subsidized, so even though they’ve got four kids they’re always going on tropical vacations and buying new cars. He’s crazy smart.”

  Luke picked a piece of lint off his striped tube socks. His calves, covered in fine dark hair, flexed by muscle group. “Some people tried to talk me out of a military career.”

  She felt his words as though “some people” had attacked her cousin, and she straightened and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “My grandfather was a veteran. I think the military is an honorable career.”

  He fixed his impenetrable gaze on her again but said nothing.

  “I mean, you might kill people, but not because you want to. You’re serving your country. So, it’s noble. You know.”

  He nodded.

  She liked that he didn’t fill the conversation with chatter about himself. She liked that he listened to her as if she had something important to say. She liked his studious aura, like he weighed out every thought before speaking. She wanted to believe if Luke said he liked a person, it wasn’t a helter-skelter feeling. It meant something.

  An unasked question knotted up her tongue, but no one had ever accused Skylar Robinson of being a coward. “Um, so, about what you said yesterday—”

  The doors rattled and swung open. Renee, Ellie, the track guy and the coach stood outside, all looking harassed.

  Skylar slid off the mat. “You saved us!”

  “Robinson,” the coach said with a rising inflection.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she protested. “The door shut by itself or something.”

  The coach just shook her head and headed back to her office. Ellie hung on Renee’s arm and whispe
red secrets in her ear.

  The track guy stepped forward and set his feet in front of Skylar. “You want to come see a movie with us tonight?”

  She felt her heart rise. “Who’s us?”

  He glanced at Luke. “Just some of the guys. Plus, you know.” He jerked his chin at Ellie and Renee.

  Ooh, so, another chance with Luke? “Um, sure.”

  The track guy listed off the time and place to meet as Luke trudged off to the boys’ changing room, and Skylar’s heart dropped at about the same rate until he disappeared from her sight.

  The track guy snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “So, see you there?”

  “Yeah.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “What was your name again?”

  He reddened. “Brendan.”

  “Right.” She took a step back. “Brendan. See you guys.”

  Brendan trotted off after Luke, whistling and pumping his fist at the ceiling, and Ellie glommed on to Skylar and loudly whispered, “So, did you guys do it?”

  Skylar laughed—because she felt great. “In ten minutes?”

  “That’s long enough.”

  “As if you even know.”

  “I totally know.”

  Ellie skipped down the hall while Skylar and Renee rolled their one-year-older-and-way-more-mature eyes at each other. Then Ellie turned back. “And, just so you know, I think he likes you, too.”

  Skylar laughed with the other girls because maybe Luke did like her; and maybe, just maybe, she liked him back.

  Except, Luke stayed home from the movie. Skylar enjoyed herself anyway, and afterwards, at the soda shop, Brendan asked her to Winter Formal. Well, first he asked her to the Friday Dance and then he asked her to Winter Fling, but she already had dates to those, so she said yes to Winter Formal unless she got a boyfriend. The answer seemed to make him both happy and bummed at the same time, but she was honest and always warned boys about the promises she might have to break.

  She presented herself at Luke’s desk in English class the next day, and Luke looked up expectantly. Skylar clenched an origami heart folded from her nicest pink notepaper.