Meant For Me (9 page)

“Pfft,” was her response to that. “I don’t think that’s the issue.”

Since my conversation with Caitlyn was going nowhere and I was okay with that, I turned to Chloe and asked, “Want to go to lunch now instead? Are you hungry?”

She nodded.

“Cool.” I stood up and held my hand out for her. “Good to see you,” I told Caitlyn and I genuinely meant it. I was glad I was able to vanquish that demon. Seeing her wasn’t really as traumatic as I’d been making it out to be. It was obvious to me now that the attraction wasn’t there anymore. I looked at her and felt very removed, distant. That was liberating as hell. “Congrats on your marriage. I hope the wedding is awesome.”

“Thanks, Ethan.” Her expression was touched. Tender. “Take care of yourself.”

It was weird to know that we had been totally intimate with each other. That her mouth had been on my junk. That she’d cuddled with me in the shower, had lain on my chest naked. That we had meant something to each other and had intended to spend our lives together. I couldn’t picture it now. Definitely time to unload that ring resting in my backpack.

“You, too, Caitlyn.” I knew that on the island she went by the nickname Cat but she had introduced herself as Caitlyn to me and to everyone at UMaine. To me, she was Caitlyn. I’d never know Cat. Cat was a different person in a lot of ways.

Chloe waved to them.

“When are you coming back?” Aubrey asked.

“I’ll be in by dark, Mom, I swear.” I made a face at her.

“Dick,” was Aubrey’s opinion on that.

“You’re going to have to curb the potty mouth,” I said as Chloe and I walked to the front door. “Or Emma’s first word is going to be fuck and that just is not right.”

“You aren’t right.”

“Never said I was.” I hadn’t been right in a long time.

The door swung door behind us and I squinted in the sunlight.

Chloe squeezed my hand. Okay? She mouthed to me.

“Yes,” I said, touched. She knew that wasn’t going to be totally comfortable for me. I wondered if she had seen Caitlyn walking and had just decided to crash the party out of concern for me. Or maybe jealousy?

I guess I’d never know, because she wasn’t about to tell me. There was that irony again.

“I’m fine,” I added.

For the first time in a fucking long ass time, I truly meant that.

“Where do you want to eat?” I asked Chloe.

She shrugged.

“It’s your hood. You tell me.”

She mimicked eating something.

“Pizza?” That kind of looked like she was miming taking a bite of a slice.

Nod.

“Okay. I can always eat pizza. Lead the way.” As we started walking, I asked, “Were you swimming today?”

She nodded.

“That sounds fun. It’s hot as hell in Aubrey’s house.” I raised my eyebrows up and down. “And I have no idea what Aubrey was implying, by the way.”

Her look proved she didn’t entirely believe me. But I figured she wouldn’t want to address the issue of how we had been checking each other out and I was right.

“It wasn’t a big deal to see Caitlyn. I don’t know why it seemed like it would be. I guess I was just afraid it would be awkward. But it was fine and I am genuinely happy for her. She and Heath are a better fit than she and I were, truthfully, and the reality is, she was trying to be someone she really wasn’t. I cared about that someone. I didn’t really know her as well as I thought I did, so how can that be love, you know?”

Chloe nodded.

There it was again. The confessional conversation. I had no idea why I was doing that with her but I was blurting out every freaking thought that entered my head.

Silence unnerved me. I hadn’t really realized that before but it was clear that it did. I’d always thought of conversation as vital and I had used words to my advantage, actively participating in college classes, running for president of my fraternity, volunteering as a tutor. Words had been the way I had achieved all of my goals. Speaking up, speaking out. In the last year I had listened more than I had spoken and I wondered suddenly if that were part of the reason I was dipping lower and lower into a dark place. It wasn’t my nature to be the brooding bartender in the dark.

So I could talk, but hell, did I have to be treating Chloe like I was sitting in a shrink’s office?

For a minute I just lapsed into silence, looking around us as we walked. Then I started talking again. “When I was a kid I wanted to sail around the world, starting right here, off the coast of Maine. I had navigation charts and clippings of articles on guys who had done it. Boats torn out of magazines. I was serious about it, creating a checklist of supplies and charting my course. When I would depart. All of that.” I hadn’t thought about that in a long time but seeing all the boats in the water had jogged the memory. “I wonder when I forgot about that.” I couldn’t really remember. Middle school maybe. “Maybe when I discovered girls.” I shot a glance at Chloe. “Girls are distracting.”

She gave a soft laugh and pointed to me.

“Boys are a distraction too?” I asked, amused. “Or just me?”

Her laughter died and she nodded, gazing up at me.

“Which one?” I murmured.

Chloe’s hand rose and her finger lightly jabbed me in the chest.

“So it’s me.” I shouldn’t be so glad to hear that but I was.

We were almost to town, about to descend the hill. There was a soft breeze kicking up Chloe’s hair and the air smelled warm, salty. The temptation to kiss her was greater than I could resist. She looked so beautiful, so trusting. There was nothing calculating or manipulative in the way she stared up at me. Her eyes spoke to me and I had to answer.

For a split second, I reminded myself that it was a bad idea to start something I couldn’t finish, but it didn’t stop me. Covering her finger with my own much bigger hand, I held tight so she couldn’t retreat away from me. She knew what I was going to do. She leaned in closer, let her lips part softly in anticipation.

Tipping my head down, I watched her until the very last second when I let them drift half closed. Then I took her lips with mine, my other hand on the back of her head.

Chloe had the softest lips I had ever kissed and our mouths were a perfect fit for each other. I had expected it to be sweet, a quick brush. But she kissed me back with a seductive and aggressive enthusiasm I wasn’t expecting. I could hear her breathing, feel her finger scraping across my chest, her body nestling as close to me as she could with our arms trapped between our chests. It felt necessary, required, to tease her lips further open with my tongue so I could dip inside and take the kiss hotter, deeper.

She tasted better than I could have possibly imagined. Sweet and tangy and eager and I started to lose my control, burying my fingers further in her hair, holding her tighter. For a second I broke off and listened to the sound of our mutual ragged breathing, studying her face. Then she tilted her head in such an obvious invitation to take more that I couldn’t stop myself. I kissed her hard, sweeping my tongue over her bottom lip, feeling an animalistic satisfaction when she gave a low groan in the back of her throat. This was one way to make her speak, and it was obvious what she was saying. She liked it as much as I did.

I had expected Chloe to be shy, fumbling. But she wasn’t. It was like her mouth was meant for me.

“You feel so good,” I murmured into her ear.

I let go of her hand and when both our arms dropped she moved into the circle of my arms. Her breasts pushed against me and suddenly I wanted to yank her clothes off and take her with an urgency that almost overwhelmed me. It felt like it had been years since I’d had sex, my cock throbbing against her thigh.

“Chloe,” I said, even as I kissed down the graceful slope of her neck and across the top of her breast. “I need to stop.” My hands had somehow ended up on her ass and it was a small tight ass that was doing dangerous things to my control. I wanted to pick her up by that perfect backside and set her down onto my cock so I could destroy both of us with passion.

But Chloe couldn’t tell me that yes, I should stop. Nor did she step away. Instead she cupped my face in her delicate hands when I lifted my head and kissed me again.

“You’re killing me.” Covering her hand with mine, I squeezed it hard and took a deep breath and stepped away from her sexy body and those eyes that seemed to offer me anything I could possibly want.

I would have thought that my words would confuse her or she would look apologetic.

Wrong. I was so wrong. She looked satisfied, like she had done her job well.

Which was even sexier.

I narrowed my eyes. “We are going to start walking before I do things I shouldn’t and regret.”

A small smile danced across her lips.

I suddenly found myself jealous of these mysterious guys she had online dated. I didn’t want to think that anyone else had brought Chloe pleasure. That she might have come at the hands of some tool, or rolled her eyes back in ecstasy as she took a cock that wasn’t mine.

Those thoughts scared me. What the fuck business was it of mine?

I was leaving the day after tomorrow. That would be the end of my interaction with Chloe.

Her hand slipped into mine and she smiled up at me.

Yeah. I was full of shit if I thought I wasn’t going to keep texting with her after I left. It couldn’t be anything, but since when had that stopped me?

I would just have to be careful.

Because I couldn’t hurt Chloe. That would be the worst crime on my lengthy rap sheet.

While we ate pizza I told Chloe about law school and my failure to do what needed to be done. Mostly she just listened but once she typed on her phone as I was berating myself.

I glanced down at her phone as she slid it across the table to me.

Stop it. So you didn’t want to be a lawyer. Who cares?

The words were like a slap and I sat back hard in my chair. I guess she was right. Who the fucking hell cared what one Ethan Walsh was doing with the rest of his life? Sure, I was disappointing my parents and myself but no one else cared. I was nothing.

I knew that wasn’t the way Chloe meant it, but I couldn’t help but feel that impact of irrelevance. All my high school and college years had been spent striving for success. For relevance. What did any of it matter?

“I care,” I said in a tight voice.

Contrition crossed her face and I felt bad then for making her feel bad. She was just trying to help.

“I’m sorry, that sounded rude,” I told her, reaching across the table to brush my fingers over the back of her hand. “But I actually do still want to be a lawyer.”

I did. I realized that fully now. “But I’m afraid I’m missing something I used to have and that I will fail.”

There it was. The thing I’d been unable to admit for a year. I was afraid that I was going to fail. That life had knocked some of the naïve confidence out of me and I would try and not be successful and I would have wasted all this time and everyone would know. This way, I had walked away and look like some sort of rebellious bad boy, not just a fucking loser.

The drinking needed to stop. That definitely felt like the strongest choice I’d made in a long time.

Not trying is failure
.

She was right.

“What do you want to be?” I asked.

Chloe mimicked typing on a keyboard.

“A writer?”

She nodded. It made sense. There couldn’t be a lot of career options available to someone who didn’t speak. “I bet you have a lot to say.”

She laughed, the soft, almost soundless laugh that was unique to her. I wondered what it would be like if suddenly Chloe just started talking a mile a minute and her voice was some random grating high-pitched voice. Or if she would have a Russian accent. I had created sound for her in my own head. When I read her words I gave her a voice that seemed like it would fit her appearance, her personality. What if I was totally wrong? That would be weird as hell.

But I would likely never know.

We lapsed into my silence and it wasn’t uncomfortable or awkward. Chloe ate and I ate and she communicated with her eyebrows, her hands, her eyes, her mouth. I felt oddly at peace and I watched her, feeling a whole new appreciation for body language. Every thing she did was intentional, thought out, and I wondered if she were this aware of what her hands, her mouth, her body could do, what would she be like in bed? Amazing, I had no doubt. Intuitive as hell. I wondered if she was a virgin. It seemed like she led a pretty isolated life, but hell, people found a way to bang everywhere.

After we ate, we walked along the docks and watched the fishermen and other boats moving in and out of the harbor. We held hands, which just struck me as truly hilarious. It was like bit by bit Chloe was peeling the layers of badass back on me and turning me into a guy who actually was capable of being a decent boyfriend. Maybe I wasn’t totally busted after all.

It was the kind of day that had no purpose, was just a lazy stroll around and do whatever the hell you feel like, but after an hour, I realized that I really needed to spend time with my sister. That was the real reason I was in Vinalhaven. “I need to hang out with Aubrey and Emma,” I told Chloe. “But I’ll text you later. And we’re going to the bonfire tonight, though, right?”

She nodded.

I gave her a kiss, this one soft and brief, not wanting to get carried away. Which I would if she did that thing with her tongue to me again.

“I’ll come and get you at nine. Your dad isn’t going to freak out, is he?”

She shook her head.

After I walked Chloe home, I went to Aubrey’s and had the entertaining experience of changing Emma’s diaper. “Is this normal?” I asked Aubrey as she monitored my attempt at wiping up her daughter’s butt. “This looks like someone dumped a cup of Christmas Ale in her pants.”

Aubrey shook her head. “Gross. Yes, it’s normal. She doesn’t eat solid food so her poop isn’t solid either.”

Interesting. “Makes total sense though it never would have occurred to me. How did you know anything about what the hell you were doing? We’ve never really been around kids. I’d be calling the doctor every day.”