She (TakashiMorinozukaxOC)

Chapter 15: How She Was

"But Jenni-chan--" 

"Mitsukuni," Takashi said lowly, "let's go. Jenni-chan has plans." 

Honey looked dissatisfied, but nodded once in acknowledgement. They left the room with a subtle "have a nice day". Jenni said the same and closed the door behind them. 

In the hall, muffled, she heard Honey ask, "What's a Hooter's?"

Her face red, she looked down at her unfortunate selection in sleep shirts and huffed.

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The sand beneath her feet was warm. It gave away beneath her feet and bag, creating small footprints and impressions in the near-white terrain. The sand beneath her feet was familiar; the sand beneath her feet felt like home.

"What can I get you, young lady?" 

Jenni almost gasped, lost in thought. She smiled apologetically at the man at the rental stand and said, "I'd like to rent a board for the afternoon, please." 

She paid for the afternoon and took the board under her arm. Freshly waxed and brand new, the board felt familiar in her hold. She trapsed through the sand and to where she had set her bag to remove her large shirt. Shortly, she turned to the ocean, smiling as she entered its cool embrace.

"You ready, Sea Monkey?" 

Jenni's bright eyes smiled at her dad-- a forest-like glimmer in the shining sun. She nodded at her dad and took his outstretched hand. He lifted her and started to walk her towards the shore line. 

"Mommy, are you coming?" she asked her mother, still sitting on the shore. 

Her father shushed her, "Mommy likes the sand, sweetie." 

"Oh," she replied quietly. While she was upset for a moment. she soon got used to her mother's distaste of the sea. The woman was adamant of her distaste to the waves and water-- she preferred the shore. Jenni wasn't sure if Brooke, her mother, could not swim or if something had happened that made her afraid of the water. It did, however, establish a sort of distance between the mother and daughter. 

Brooke had always been a watcher, an observer. At night, she'd hear her mother arguing with her father. 

"You spend so much time with her--" 

"--She's our daughter, Brooke!"

Jenni would cover her ears and hide under the blankets. She felt guilty, somehow, and while she tried to get her mother to have a good time with her father and her, nothing ever seemed to work. Her younger self never understood why. 

Under the waves, everything seemed clear. Water rushed over her long, blonde hair and swirled her senses until she resurfaced. Even when she rolled over the sandy bottom and the line on the board tugged her ankle, she felt a sort of calm that she could only find in the embrace of a rocking wave. 

She resurfaced and flipped her hair out of her face. The salty water in her eyes stung, but almost sweetly. Once she was back on her board, she started paddling out to the surf once more, trying to recall anything she could about her father. Anything besides that day. The blood and the yelling. 

Anything but her loneliness since. 

In the distance, an outline of a boat sailed across the water. 

"My dad made this boat, you know," her father pulled her into his lap. The waves rocked the boat ever so slightly. On the shore, her mother paced back and forth on a phone call.