Down 'N' Derby (24 page)

             
“You can touch me anywhere you want, anytime you want.  But I warn you, I’m gonna react.”  That made her snicker. 

             
“Ok, now that I’ve got you in a daze, what do you want to do today?  Truth.”

             
“I really want to skate.  But I can go by myself if you don’t want to.  I also need to pick up my paycheck and pay some bills.”

             
“I need to get some laundry done today anyway.  So we’ll split up and get our stuff handled.  You can call me if you want to meet up for dinner or whatever.”

             
“Sounds good.”  We finished packing up and left the hotel.  We drove back to Venice and she dropped me off at the motel.  I piled my dirty clothes into the Rover and took off towards a Laundromat.  I got it all done and brought it back to the motel.  I called everyone in the family and checked in.  Owen said he was a little pissed because I called Falcon before him but he quickly got over it.  I asked Reed and Falcon about the wedding but they both dodged my questions.  I wondered if something had happened.  Owen probably knocked out the preacher or something. 

             
I decided to go back to the beach where I met her.  I was gonna miss the beach even though I’d only experienced it a handful of times.  I hadn’t noticed before how many people there were here in the middle of the day.  And not just young people on summer break.  Older people, families with children, they were all beach bums.  I went into a little more depth with Reed about Storey in our conversation that day.  I told her everything I knew about her.  But both of us avoided the touchy subject.  She didn’t ask and I was happy to let it be a surprise to her.  I also couldn’t wait to try it out on them.  I could touch Storey all day long but I wanted to see if I could actually hug my mom without the twitch.  I hoped I could. 

             
I swam in the ocean for hours.  I swam out past the breakers and found a spot where the water was calm. I floated there for a while and then decided to go in.  By the time I got back to the Rover it was well past four in the afternoon.  I’d been there longer than I thought.  I had a missed text message from Storey. 

             
Just wanted you to know that I miss you.  Call me when you get your stuff done.

             
I called her right back.

             
“Hey!  You feel like dinner,” she asked.

             
“I’m actually starving.  I’ve been swimming all afternoon.”

             
“Good, because I skated for like three hours.  I could eat a horse.  Where?”

             
I shrugged even though she couldn’t see me.  “I don’t know.  I have to go back and shower first,”

             
She cleared her throat, “Well, speaking of showers, I was thinking instead of spending all that money staying at the hotel every night—why don’t you just stay here for the rest of the summer?” 

             
I sat, dumbfounded for a few seconds. 

             
“Are you sure?” I asked her.  I wanted her to be sure about something like this. 

             
“Absolutely.  So just go get your stuff and then come straight over.  I ordered pizza!” Damn, she had me on a hook with pizza and her bed.  How could I possibly turn that down?

             
“I’ll be there in fifteen.” I answered her and hung up. 

             
I put the Rover in gear and headed to the motel.  I’d been paying every night so all I had to do was check out.  I gathered all my stuff, packed it up and looked back one more time before leaving. 

             
I got to her house a little while later, I went up by myself at first, just in case she’d changed her mind.  I knocked on the door and she looked around. 

             
“What,” I asked her.

             
“Where’s your stuff?  Unless you changed your mind.  If you did, that’s fine.  I mean, I get it.  We’ve only been together a few weeks.  I shouldn’t have asked.  I’m so sorry.”  I just let her go.  She was incredibly cute when she was flustered.  Even after she stopped blabbering, I waited for her to work through it herself.  She turned her eyes up at me, her long eyelashes nearly touching her eyebrows.

             
“Your stuff’s in the car.  You just weren’t gonna bring it up yet,” It wasn’t a question.  It was her figuring out how silly she’d been.  I tucked in a smile, my lips between my teeth.

             
She rolled her eyes, grabbed my hand and dragged me in. 

             
“You could’ve stopped me.  I just went on and on.”

             
“Why would I stop you? It was kinda cute.  Plus, it’s the first time I’ve rattled you.  It was a nice change of pace.”  I laughed to make sure she knew I was kidding.

             
“I wouldn’t have bought you pizza if I knew you were going to pick on me all night.”

             
“One—one time I picked on you.  What kind of pizza did you buy?”

             
“Well, since you have only had the carnivore and the one with everything I got you two new ones—the Margherita pizza and the breakfast pizza.”

             
“Yeah, but what are you gonna eat?” I had to admit, it sounded just like Owen. 
What’s happening to me?

             
“I got the Honey Bee pizza.  You can have a slice, but don’t get any ideas about more than that.  It’s all mine.”

             
“What, does it have honey on it?”

             
She smiled and put the box behind her, as if that would stop me, “Yes, bacon, ham, mozzarella and honey and it’s mine.”

             
“We’ll see.” I taunted and picked up my boxes.

             
We sat at her table and ate until we were both sated.  She cleaned up while I went down to get my stuff.  I went down for one more bag and she’d moved all my stuff into her room. 

             
“Do you want to go to the beach?  I mean, I know you just were there, but the beach at night is a whole other experience.”

             
“Yeah, I need to change.”  I grabbed my shorts from the bag at my feet and went into the bathroom and she turned and went into her room. 

             
I came out and she was already dressed.  I could see her packing up towels and bottles of water.  She had a long white dress over her suit.  Her hair was knotted up again. 

             
“Ready,” I asked.

             
“Yes,” she responded as she grabbed another pair of flip flops with hearts on the top. 

             
I grabbed the bag from her and she grabbed my hand.  We walked out onto the beach and straightaway I could tell that she was dead on.  The beach was a whole different scene at night.  There were just as many people but most of them now had torches lit next to them or lanterns instead of the daytime umbrellas.  Couples were cuddled up watching the night waves roll in.  There were very few children out, and the ones I saw were curled up with their mothers, asleep.

             
We picked out a spot just out of the reach of the waves and she spread out a couple of towels.  She waggled her eyebrows at me and I loved it.  What a lucky bastard I was. 

Storey

I tried to play it off as nothing, but I was nervous as shit to meet his biological father. 

             
I did it on purpose.  I wanted to lay there on the beach with him at night, just once.  That way I could hold on to that memory, even if I never came back here again.  He sat down on the towel and I sat in front of him.  He pulled me flush against him and leaned his chin in the crook of my neck.  He said something but the only thing I could concentrate on was his breath in my ear.  It did things to me.

             
“What—what did you say,” I asked him.

             
“I said, the ocean’s really pretty at night.  Where were you, in space?” A laugh rumbled through his chest behind me.

             
“No, but it’s kinda hard to concentrate with you breathing in my ear.” He backed off, my words having the opposite effect than I wanted them to. 

             
“A good distraction or a bad one?  Give it to me straight Storey, I’m new to all this.”

             
I tightened his arms around my torso, “A very, very good distraction.”

             
“Noted,” that was the same thing he’d said about me liking dancing.  Hopefully there would be more of that too.

             
I relaxed against him.  I realized that I had quit comparing him to Simon a while ago, even in my head—because there was no comparison.  Simon didn’t even qualify enough to occupy space in my head. 

             
We sat there, cuddled close, listening to the lullaby of the ocean until we were the only ones on the beach.  I turned to face him and whispered, “We’re the only ones here.  What should we do?”

             
“Build a sand castle?” He asked and then did that thing where he tried not to smile.  Instead of my fingertips, I used my lips to worship his dimple. 

             
“Really?  A sand castle?”

             
“Nah, I have a better idea.”  He closed in on me and I was finally getting what I brought him out here for, his mouth on mine.  He was so close, I could smell the basil and tomato on his breath.  His hands trailed a blazing path from my knees to my thighs.  Then he pecked me quick and hard.  He jumped off of the towel and ran into the water.  If I didn’t love him, I would beat him into the ground for taunting me.

             
“Come on Storey, I haven’t gotten to swim with you.  Don’t deny me a memory.”

             
He was right.  We needed to make memories while we were here.  Later on we would be able to tell our children about them.
Where in the name of ovaries did that come from?  I’ve got to stop before I say something like that out loud. 

             
Then I remembered that I had one more trick up my sleeve.  I had one bikini that I’d never worn in front of anyone.  It wasn’t vintage and it showed more skin than a dermatologist’s office.  So I stripped off my dress and made a move towards him.  He was busy looking at the ocean and then he turned, hollering at me to swim again. “Come on Storey, don’t make me wai…”

             
His mouth stayed agape while he looked at me entering the water. I used my Missy Hellcat walk to escalate my intentions. Then he stalked towards me and took my mouth before I could stop him—not that I would.  With our mouths connected he pulled us into the water, deeper and deeper until I had to hang onto him for gravity’s sake, purely for gravity’s sake.  He could still stand and after what seemed like an eternity in heaven we broke our mouths free. 

             
“I’m so freakin’ glad it’s dark out.  I’m gonna sound like a pig here, but I don’t want
anyone
seeing you in this but me—ever.”

             
“I’ve never worn it before. You have nothing to worry about.”

             
“Thank God.” He hugged me close to him.  He finally loosened his hold.  I took the opportunity to look him in the eyes, intending to tell him how much I loved him again.  But I was caught off guard by his irises.  The green one reflected me.  I saw myself reflected in his eyes and it almost brought me to tears.  His brown colored eye was so bright under this moon, more like dark ale than coffee tonight. 

             
“You always do that,” he crinkled his nose in confusion.

             
“What,” I asked.

             
“You always look at the green one and then to the brown one and then back to the green one.  Why?”

             
I stayed silent for a minute, thinking about how to word my answer. “Well, they both show me different things.”

             
He squinted his eyes at me and shifted in the water, “Like what?”  Always curious Maddox—forever needed to know the whys. 

             
“Well, like right now I can see the reflection of my face in your green one.  And right before you’re about to kiss me, your brown one gets a little darker brown.  The green one sometimes gets lighter.  It makes it look like a marble.”

             
“Huh,” he said.  When he did he pouted his lower lip a little and it made his dimple appear.

             
We stayed there for a while, letting the saline waves ripple around us.  Mad suggested we go back inside and get some sleep since tomorrow might be a trying day.  I showered first and while I could still hear his water running I fell asleep.  But I felt it when he got into bed and lay behind me, and I regained slumber again, this time with his fingers in my hair.