Fall Guy (33 page)

I've never been a slacker in bed. I've always kept the girls I was with satisfied. But it usually took me longer than ten minutes
after sex
to go rock hard
again
and feel
this kind of complete, total need to get a
girl
back in bed
.

The sex was amazing.

For me.

I kiss Evan and taste the salty brine of the pool water on her lips, and it occurs to me that
maybe I'm the only one who found it all so damn amazing. Maybe she wasn't as turned on, wasn't as impressed.

I told her before that it didn't matter to me how many guys she'd been with before me, and that stands. But I never considered the fact that I might not measure up.

It occurs to me that I said the forbidden fucking word when we were done. The one I never got around to saying to
Lala
. The one I was pretty convinced I'd only truly feel for my family and maybe my wife after years and kids and all the things that grow that feeling in you for someone.

Evan sure as hell didn't say it back.

"You had a good time?" I fish.

Evan's smile is impish.
"Beyond good."

She wraps her long legs around me and I hold her, weightless in the water, her dark hair wet and tangled on my skin and hers.

"As good as
you’ve had with
anyone else you've been with?"

The question buzzes quietly in the night air between us. She unwinds her legs from around my body
and swims away from me, her feet
kicking together under the water like a mermaid's tail. I watch her dive, and when she comes back up, she's smiling.

But it's not a smile I completely believe in.

"Do you want to race me? I bet you're slow in the water. Like a manatee." She winks at me.

I am a slow swimmer. I learned to swim in the ocean where it made sense to always
take my time, d
o things at a speed that ensured
I wo
uld
n't wind up in the middle of a rip-tide, half-drowned with no way back to shore.

"You
wanna
answer my question?"

"Don't."

The one word weighs heavily between us.

I try to let it go. It's just
that
this one night we have right now
rocked me to my core
, and
even though
we've made a silent pact to live in this moment
, I want to know there are
going to be more
.
Many more.

I shouldn't be asking for anythin
g more from her
.
But it doesn’t stop me from wanting
more than I deserve and more than I have a right to. I want it all
with Evan
.

"Why not?"

I swim after her, slow an
d steady, and manage to catch up
even though she darts around fast, because Evan ricochets in seven different directions while I keep one
focused
course.

"You said you wouldn't. This isn't the time. I don't want to talk about it. You said it didn't matter, and if it doesn't, seriously, you wouldn't be asking."

All her reasons tumble out as she trails her fingers through the water, leaving ripples that will eventually touch me.

"Are we doing this all wrong?"

My words make her lift her eyes, wide and light with shock.

"Are we?" She leans back, and her naked, wet body stops every thought that was previously making the rounds in my head. She cranes her neck to look at the smattering of stars in the night sky. "When I was in middle school, I used to play this game with myself. It was called Never, Always, Sometimes."

She tilts her head back, and her dark, silky hair pools on top of the water in twisted circles.

I let my body float closer to hers.

"Did this game have rules?"

"Yep.
I would choose three things I really wanted. And then I would force myself to put
each thing into one catego
ry." She dips her face down until the water is
right underneath her nose, and her eyes reflect the lights shining from the walls of the pool. She pulls back up. "
Wanna
play?"

"Probably not."
I reach out for her, but she backs away.
"Alright.
How do we play?"

"We'll each pick three things for each other. Then we just put them in the right slot. Ready?"

I nod, but I'm so far from ready, it's unreal. I have a feeling this is going to end very badly. The expression on her face is apologetic for a flash,
then
it goes hard with grim determination.

"Three things you love." She holds up three fingers, then folds down her middle and ring finger, leaving up her index finger.
"Your family."
My heart picks up its pace. She's playing with fire and she knows it. She raises her
middle finger
.
"Church."
I wonder if that one's my freebie, and hold my breath, waiting for the next option. Her ring finger goes up. She opens her mouth, blinks slowly and says, "Friends."

I know it's just a reprieve, and I know the point of givi
ng me the
se three options is to prove just how hard it is even when it's down to three relatively easy choices.

"Family is my 'always,'" I say, and I catch the tight jerk of her head as she nods, lies on her back, and floats in the water. The way the little droplets run from her nipples down the heavy swell of her tits makes my mouth water. "Uh, friends is my 'sometimes.' And, don't you dare tell my grandmother, but, church would be my 'never.'"

I run one finger from the top of her big
toe, down the bottom of her heel,
and she gives a shiver.

"You just give up on God like that?" She pulls her fo
ot back with a splash, bobs
to a vertical position, and swims a few feet away from me, asking over her
wet
shoulder, "
Never?
You would never set foot in church again? This game only works if you
really
think hard
about what never
means
. Could you go your whole life
never
going to church?
Christmas, Easter, nothing.
Not when someone you love dies
and there’s a big funeral, not for your daughter’s
wedding.
Never."

I watch her curves under the clear blue water and try to think about,
really
think about...church.
Right.
Thinking about church.
I swallow hard and swim after her.

Church is a big part of my life, despite the fact that I'm not necessarily the most devout guy. I believe in fate. I believe in a higher power. And, even when I'm sweating my ass off, I like those hours of quiet in the shadowy interior of the church. Plus, I'd be excommunicated if my family even caught me thinking I could skip a mass, let alone a funeral. It would never happen.

"You thought this game up when you were in middle school? This is a pretty depressing game for a middle school kid."

She doesn't seem to mind that I skirted her church point, I know because she's probably packing something heavier in her bag of tricks.

Her shrug lifts one slim,
tan shoulder out of the water, then back down into it. She bobs by the pool ladder.

"I was a troubled kid. Lousy parents, lousy supervision, into things no kid my age should have been into. You can fill in the blanks."

Her jaw is stuck out
far,
the way it gets when she's making a point that she'll claw your eyes out to defend. I'm not about to be
on the receiving end of her
temper.

"Do you want me to give you three?" I ask to change the direction of this conversation.

She dips her face low in the water again and nods slightly. She's drifting away, away from the hot, close place we were locked in when our arms were around each other, when I was deep inside of her, when she was wrapped around me and moaning my name. I want that back, but I don't know if I can have it.

"Okay." I squint at her, willing a smile, a laugh, anything, but she gives me nothing.
"Outfits."

A frown tugs down on her lips and she paddles a tiny bit closer.
"Outfits?
Like clothes?"

"Yeah."
I can feel the wicked grin on my face. "So the first option is clothes. If 'clothes' is your 'never,' you
gotta
make do with one outfit, clean and all, but no changing.
Ever."

"What about for my wedding?" She narrows her eyes at me, her dark hair stuck to her cheeks.

I wish she'd let me closer, but she keeps a constant two foot radius around herself at all times, circling me out.

"Weddings, parties, community service, school.
One outfit."

The smile I crack her way is meant to loosen whatever went tight between us, but she repels from me, despite smiling back.

I don't know if we're going forward or backward.

"What if it means I'd get kicked out of school? You can't just show up without a uniform at my school."

She bites at the side of her mouth, willing a second smile away, and I get my first surge of pure hope for better.

I shrug. "Sorry. A year's worth of detentions for you. One outfit only."

I float a little, tryin
g to focus on being happy to just hang
out in a pool with the girl I love
, no matter how complicated it might be
,
and I let the worries about my family life take
a welcome backseat in my brain
for once
.

She takes a deep breath and lets out a sigh. "What are my other two?"

"Hamburgers."
I watch her lips pull tight.
"Your parents."

Her eyebrows press down, dark and furious over her light eyes, and I feel a grip in
my
chest. She looks like she might pull herself up out of the pool

"It's fair," she finally gripes.
"Except mine don't exist without each other."

"No one's choices exist without each other. That's the point." We're still lobbing softballs at each other. We haven't even moved on to
hardball,
and this whole thing already stings. I open the escape hatch. "It's a game, Evan."

"It is," she agrees. "And it isn't." She starts to dip her face down into the cool liquid of the pool water,
then
lifts it
back out, the defiant line of her jaw dotted with droplets of water.
"My parents?
Never.
Hamburgers?
Sometimes.
Outfits?
Always."

"If you never had your father to worry about, you wouldn't need hamburgers, right?" I don't respond to the obviously shocking anti-parental aspect of her list.

She leans back, her hair billowing behind her. Stretched long, her foot reaches out and brushes against my leg. That single second of touch shocks her vertical.

"That night we went out for hamburgers? I needed one because of you."

I shut up. I shut up and will this stupid game to stop with my cool, carefully-managed disinterest. We're at the point where anything we say is just another barb in the wire going up fast between us. I'm not even positive why we're at a point where we're fenced off from each other, but it brings all my defense mechanisms to the forefront. I go icy.

"Fair enough.
At least
hamburgers is
a 'sometimes' for you. So that means I get to hang around you once in a while, right? I mean, I'm cool with not being an 'always' in your life."

Evan's eyes go wide for a split second with a quick stab of hurt before she shrugs. "'Sometimes' is all we really have anyway, right? Nothing is 'always.'"

She looks up at me, smiling with her mouth, but jabbing at my heart with her eyes. 

She brought this on. She pushed me away and aske
d me to play a game that amounts
to emotional Russian roulette, she asked me not to talk to her about her h
istory or our present. I refuse
to accept the blame for this crash and burn.

"You're right,” I agree, even though I don’t agree at all.
“
That's why we should enjoy tonight.
Right?
Cause maybe that's all we're
gonna
have."

There's no sound but the lapping of the pool water. And I feel like an idiot. Here I am, naked with this girl who I love, but who doesn't love me back, and I feel like I should get the hell out of this pool, get my damn clothes on, go home where I know my place, and stop going along with all my crazy feelings.