Back Where We Belong (A Second Chances New Adult Romance) (2 page)

“Yes, for the summer. We have a
house along the beach.”

“I live along there too,” she
says.

We chat for a while. Her name is
Jill and the toddler is Ben.

“If ever you need a babysitting
job, let me know,” she says. “He's a handful, and I could do with a break
sometime.”

We swap numbers and she takes Ben
for his afternoon nap. I'm happy I made a friend and I have a job. My parents
give me an allowance, so I'm not short of money, and I don't spend much here at
the beach, but it's nice to make my own money, not to rely on them so much,
especially with the way I feel about them right now.

I sit happily enough for a while,
but as it gets later and later, I know Luke is not going to show up. It's well
past the time he interrupted my gloomy thoughts yesterday and most people have
left the beach by now.

Why did he let me think he wanted
to see me again? And why would he even want to? A guy like him must have his
pick of girls on vacation. I thought that kiss meant something yesterday, but
now I'm not so sure. Now, it's like I was just target practice for his pick-up
techniques. I know I should just admit defeat and go back to the beach house. I
wasted my time sitting there waiting for him (like I had anything else to do
anyway). I get up and trudge along the sand. What else did I expect? I should
have known I wouldn't mean anything to a guy like Luke.

***

“Hey, Madison.”

I hear him shouting across the
sand and I turn round, my heart leaping.

“I thought you weren't coming.”
There I go again, saying exactly what I'm thinking. I have to stop doing that.

He catches up with me. “It was
crazy at the restaurant this afternoon. I thought I missed you when you weren't
where I saw you yesterday.”

He looks at me as if he's
expecting me to be angry with him for being so late. But I'm not angry. I
wasn't angry with him even when I thought he had stood me up. Just
disappointed.

“Hello again,” he says, smiling,
and he kisses me softly once, his lips just brushing mine, and when I don't
protest, a little more firmly and I get that wonderful heady Luke scent and
aftershave combination, without the chocolate ice cream this time, the tip of
his tongue just teasing mine. My heart does a somersault.

“I've been looking forward to
that all day,” he says when we break apart.

Smiling, I resist saying “me
too”, but then half the time I was thinking he wouldn't show up.

“I don't have long,” he says. “I
have to get back. I came to ask if you wanted to go out later. It will be much
later though. I don't get off until eleven.”

Eleven will be fine. More than
fine. I can sneak out and it will spare me all the comments from my mother if
she sees Luke driving his beat up old car when he comes to pick me up.

I give him my address, and he
kisses me again in the sun, a deep searching kiss on the beach in broad
daylight, as if he's proud to be with me.

I don't know what it is about
Madison. She's different than all the girls around here, the ones hanging
around the trattoria, flaunting their curves in my direction.

I'm no saint. I don't always
resist. Who am I kidding? I hardly ever resist. When it's laid out on a plate,
who can? Not me.

But if they start to get serious,
I'm out of there. I don't lead them on. I don't care whether they are local or
just looking for a bit of excitement on vacation, I'm always upfront with them.
I make sure they know the score. I tell them I don't want to get involved. I
tell them I'm not looking for anything serious right now. I tell them I'm gay.
Well, not the last one. That one isn't true. But I use the other excuses
because that's how it is.

I don't want to get tied down. I
want to get on with my life without being lumbered with some girl. But sex,
that's okay. More than okay. Some of those women will do anything to make me
like them. It's as if I rule their world when I'm with them. I'm just finding
out how much I like that—being the one in control, telling them what to do to
please me. But whatever they do, it's not enough to make me stick around.

But there's something about
Madison I can't put my finger on. She looked lost when I first saw her on the
beach yesterday. Even when she realized I was looking at her, she didn't start
primping and preening, fidgeting with her hair or anything. Her eyes lit up a
little when she saw me. I get that a lot, but I thought she might take off like
a nervous colt rather than talk to me. I could see she didn't quite trust me,
her eyes mirroring her confusion.

She doesn't know how attractive
she is with her pale skin and the little freckles on her nose, nothing like the
beach crowd who spend hours toasting themselves. And when she looked at me with
her big eyes that are not quite blue and not quite green and blushed, I felt my
protective side coming out.

Every time I kiss Madison, I hope
she doesn't take flight. I can't imagine her trying to get into my jeans while
I kiss her like some of the girls do. I want to see her again tonight, but fuck
only knows why. I'm not going to get anywhere with her.

I have a friend in Jill, a job
and a date for tonight. This is a good day. At least it is until I get back to
the beach house. Slamming doors, screeching, shouting, crying (from my mother),
exasperation (from my father.) They don't notice me come in, and I slip to my
room.

I put on my headphones to block
them out. I want to think. I want to think about Luke and relive the feeling of
his lips on mine and how warm that made me feel inside, but it's hard with the
pair of them raging downstairs.

I don't know what they have to be
so upset about. Why can't they just get along?

But I guess my mother was never
going to be an easy woman to live with. I should know. I bear the brunt of her
rages and spite often enough, when she notices me at all. She is so wrapped up
in herself and stupid stuff like what her friends think of her or what they
think of Dad or me, as if it has anything to do with them what we do.

I hope there's some kind of truce
between my parents before dinner because I can already feel my stomach churning
thinking of the atmosphere around the table. I've had enough dinners where
everyone is civil on the surface but undercurrents of hate are passed around
like a dish of mashed potatoes. I think I'd rather starve than suffer another
meal like that. But I won't be allowed to miss dinner. Apparently, in my
mother's world families have to eat together around a properly set table or
it’s the end of civilization as we know it. Whereas I think it's more important
whether the people at the table actually like each other or hate each other's
guts.

But perhaps that's going a bit
far. I don't hate my parents. Not really. At least, not all the time. They are
the only parents I have. I just wish they were different.

I wish my mother was the kind of
mother who gave hugs and baked apple pie that didn't have to be perfectly
formed, just taste good.

And I wish my father was the kind
who doted on his daughter and thought her the prettiest little girl in the
world even when she obviously isn't, a father who has time for his daughter no
matter how busy he is.

But they aren't like that. I see
my friends back home with their parents. Mine are nothing like that. I envy my
friends, but I can't change the parents I have.

I sometimes think they don't care
about me at all. But that's only when I'm feeling really down.

And today I'm not feeling so bad.
Luke kissed me. I can get through dinner no matter how awful it is because I
know I'll see him later.

***

When I look out my bedroom window
at ten to eleven, I see Luke's old wreck of a car pull up. My heart jolts
seeing him there, but I have to act fast. I have to get out without anyone
seeing me. My parents are watching TV, not speaking at all. I don't need their
questions, my mother's interference, her turning up her nose at Luke's car. I
don't need any comments from them. I need to get out before Luke rings the
doorbell. I should have told him not to come to the door. I’d planned to be
outside on the porch before he arrived, but it's too late for that now.

It's not hard to open my window
and get out onto the garage roof. It looks a long way down to the ground from
there though. Why didn't I think of that?

“What are you doing up there?”
Luke has noticed me and come over while I'm contemplating the probability of
breaking an ankle and weighing up the pain of that against the idea of going
inside and dealing with my parents.

“Ssh! I don't want them to see
me.”

He shrugs his shoulders as if he
thinks it’s normal for a girl to appear on her garage roof to avoid being seen.

“Wait a minute.” He ferrets
around and pulls over an old trash can that seems to be stable and high enough
so that I can slip down onto it from the roof. He catches me in case I fall and
kisses me quickly on the lips. I'll never get tired of his lips on mine.

“I was expecting you to come out
of a door. That's the conventional way to leave a house,” he says.

“Parents,” I say, “an evil best
avoided.”

“That bad, eh?”

“Yes, that bad.”

He opens the car door for me.
It's really not as much of a wreck as it looks on the outside. The inside is
clean and the thing actually goes.

“I thought we'd go to Thistle
Beach,” he says.

It's only three miles down the
coast. Despite outside appearances, I'm sure the car will make it there and back
now that I'm in it.

“You hungry?” he asks on the way.

“No, I ate dinner.” Even if I
hadn't, seeing Luke has taken my breath away, never mind my appetite.

“We'll just drop into The Shack
then,” he says.

***

The Shack is hot and crowded, the
music pounding. We have to squeeze through the throng to get anywhere near the
bar.

“You ever been here?” he asks. He
has to shout in my ear above the heavy thud of the music.

I shake my head. No one ever
invited me here, and my parents wouldn't go to a place like this. I'm pretty
sure there's no one over twenty-five here. I recognize a few of the crowd and
nod to them. My mother is always hoping I'll be friends with the sons or
daughters of her tennis club cronies. The parties she drags me to so that I can
“meet other young people” are always agony.

I can see their eyes widen when
they see me with Luke, but I feel like a fish out of water. I'm wearing jeans
and a t-shirt, but I'm not dressed right for this place. The girls show a lot
more flesh and wear a lot more make-up than me.

A few women say “hello” to Luke
and look right through me as if I don't even exist. One even puts her arms
around his neck and he says something to her I can't catch as he takes her
hands away. She turns away in a mood and disappears into the throng.

“Who was that?” I ask.

“Sam, one of the waitresses from
the restaurant. It's her day off. One too many margaritas I think.”

Luke gets some drinks. I feel as
if he must be regretting asking me out. He has to see I'm not like the other
girls here. It's obvious, I don't fit in. I don't fit in anywhere. Not at home.
Not here.

I feel a lump forming in my
throat. Luke has women in high-heels and make-up throwing their arms around his
neck, happy to see him. What does he get with me? An eighteen-year-old in jeans
and t-shirt who he caught escaping out of a window like a kid out on an
adventure. I sip my root beer and try not to cry.

“Let's get out of here,” Luke
says.

He's taking me home already,
because I’m such a let-down as a date. I know it. I find a gap in the bar to
put my bottle down, and he leads me through the crowd.

How fucking stupid am I? I should
have known the Shack wasn't the right kind of place for Madison. I could have
taken any of my other dates there and pressed up to them real close on the
dance floor, bought them a drink and fucked them half an hour later at their
place, or failing that, somewhere on the beach. But not Madison.

I could see she wasn't
comfortable as soon as we went in. I want to make it up to her, but I'm not
sure I can. There's no place I can take her around here this time of night, not
where they wouldn't take one look at me in my jeans and kick me out.

“It was crowded tonight,” I say,
though I know it's always like that in there.

She smiles at me faintly, but at
least it's a smile.

I hold out my hand and wonder if
she'll take it. That's a first, caring if a girl will hold my hand or not.
Jeez, usually I'm wondering about getting into a girl's panties on the first
encounter, never mind wondering about holding hands on the third. I'll be
turning into a real pussy here if I'm not careful.

We get back in the car. I even
hold the door open for her (again!). Mom taught me some nice manners. I don't
always use them, but I imagine they are just what a girl like Madison expects.

“Are you taking me home?” she
asks.

“Yes.”

This isn't working at all. What
else can I do with her? I know what I'd like to do to her or have her do to me,
but it's not going to happen. She's not the kind I can wind around my finger
and have dance to my tune. She isn't even on the same wavelength.

She gives a kind of sob. I hope
she's not going to cry. I can't stand tears. They're usually because some woman
I fucked didn't listen when I said I wasn't looking for anything long term.

I grab her hand. I don't want her
to cry. Before I know it, I'm holding and kissing her, like I care whether she
cries or not. What the fuck?