Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) (31 page)

Nodding, he turned the key in the ignition. The Black Beauty—I’d named it already—purred to life, and the speakers started pumping out—

“Whitesnake?”
I laughed.

David Coverdale crooned the ’80s hit “Is This Love” with cheesy romanticism. And Phil was blushing. He reached for the skip button, but I smacked his hand away.

“Don’t you dare, lover boy!”

I proceeded to croon along with Coverdale, and Phil’s lips twitched. Saying nothing, he put the Black Beauty in reverse, and we were off for our first ever lunch date.

When the song faded out, I turned down the volume. “Where are we going?”

Phil brightened. “I’ve been dyin’ for some fried alligator. My favorite is from this out-of-the-way place where my dad used to take me and my sister when we were kids. I haven’t been there since…shit, like seven or eight years. I hope it’s still there.”

There was only one place that had fried alligator that was
that
good and could be considered out of the way, and that was Otis’s Crab Shack.

“It’s still there,” I told him.

He looked at me and smiled. “You know where I’m talkin’ about?”

“Ramshackle place, looks like it’s going to sink into the river? Best seafood ever? And mango—”

“Iced tea,” he finished, his face splitting into The Lady Killer.

Yeah, he might not be waiting long at all to be inside me.

“Barracuda” by Heart came out of the sound system, and I cranked the volume, badly singing along with Ann Wilson. I couldn’t care less though. I was so stupidly happy right at that very minute, and some horrible singing wasn’t going to bring me down. Besides, the music itself was loud enough to drown out my caterwauling.

He placed his hot hand on my thigh, his fingertips brushing awfully close to my crotch, and the skin-to-skin contact had me melting like hot butter between my legs.

I had the feeling that he was just as happy as I was right at this moment. Naturally confident and sure of himself, I found it incredibly sexy.
Everything
about him was sexy.

After a twenty-minute ride, we pulled into the nearly empty dirt parking lot.

Otis’s Crab Shack had been here forever. Otis had been running this place since my mom was a kid, and his father had run it before that. Otis had to be somewhere between sixty and one hundred years old, black Creole, with an accent so hardcore that it was pretty much its own language. He would tone it down for us whities because I’d heard him speak with other Creoles, and it wasn’t how he spoke to me. They would know what he was saying, and they’d respond in kind.

“Kenna, is dat you?” Otis called out, his bald hazelnut head popping out of the kitchen window. “It
is
you!”

“Hi, Otis!” I called back and waved. “Are you busy?”

The place was empty, except for a few old fishermen occupying a table in a corner overlooking the river.

“Not evah too busy fo’ you! It been too long, girl!” He pulled his head back in and disappeared, only to emerge from the door beside the stairs. His face was all smiles and wrinkles.

Phil took my hand, lacing our fingers.

“An’
you
!” Otis’s eyes got all big, and he pointed at Phil. “I remember you, boy! Whoowee! You got e’en biggah!”

Phil smiled sweetly. “Hey, Otis.”

“I tol’ you, it’s all the gatah you be eatin’. Turned you intuh uh giant, it did!”

“It sure did, sir.”

“She what eats thuh gatah, too,” he said, winking at me. “You two t’gethuh, den?”

Phil looked at me and smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“Whoowee! You’s a sucka fo’ ’er!”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Follow me. Table up top?”

“That’d be great,” I replied.

We sat next to the railing overlooking the Mississippi River. Mangrove trees grew in wild profusion along the edge of the river, providing a truly primitive aspect to the place. It felt like we’d really left civilization behind for a while.

“Mango teas?” Otis asked. “An’ fried gatah?”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Phil, smiling until his dimples popped.

Otis pointed to me. “Raw oystahs?”

“Yes, please. Thank you.”

“Make it a double on the oysters,” Phil said.

Otis cackled, “Is like dat den? Comin’ righ’ uhp!”

For an older dude, Otis spritely hopped down the stairs.

Phil cocked his eyebrow at me. “What was that all about?”

Blushing hard, I cleared my throat. “Oysters are a natural, um…aphrodisiac.”

Both eyebrows rose. “Oh. Maybe we should quadruple it then.”

I cracked up, and he smiled, his eyes sparkling with warmth.

“I love your laugh, Kenna. I think it’s the best sound I’ve ever heard.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “It totally enchanted me that night.”

Otis returned with the iced teas and quickly scampered off.

“So, tell me how it feels, being back,” I demanded before taking a sip of tea.

His eyes burned into mine, making me feel like I was being stripped bare.

“It’s weird,” he said, tearing away his gaze and looking out over the water. “A lot seems to have changed, but it’s the same, you know?”

“I suppose. I’ve been through all the changes, so I guess I don’t see it the same way.”

Otis dropped off two orders of raw oysters, and we dug in.

“So, you’ve been here your whole life?” he asked.

“Um, no. Alys and I grew up on a compound outside of Pensacola,” I replied.

Then, I ended up telling him all about the hippie commune, the cultlike transformation, and our move to LaPlace. I avoided telling him exactly where I lived.

“What about you? What was your childhood like?” I asked.

Otis dropped off the alligator bites with a spicy cream sauce.

“It was pretty good,” Phil replied before popping a piece into his mouth. He closed his eyes and grunted with bliss. “Fuck, I love this shit.”

He reached for another bite, dipped it into the sauce, and held it up to my lips. I took it and the tip of his cream-sauced thumb into my mouth. Nostrils flaring, his breath caught in his chest, and I saw his pupils grow wide.

“I want you so bad, Baby Girl.” His voice was pitched low and husky.

“I want you, too,” I told him, smiling. “But I thought we wanted to do this right.”

“What could possibly be so
wrong
about us fuckin’?” he demanded, sounding a little pissy.

“Well, first off, I certainly don’t want our first time to be fucking. I’ve waited just as long as you have, and I want something more than a
fuck
.”

He leaned back in his chair, his jaw clenching. “It would be.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“How many people have you fucked, Phil?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Even though I’d held no accusation in my tone, this question seemed to piss him off.

“What does it matter?”

“Honestly, it doesn’t. Just curious.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “A lot.”

“How many of them meant something to you?”

“Very few—if any, really. What’s the point you’re tryin’ to make?”

“Are you uncomfortable discussing this with me?”

“Yes!” he hissed.

“Why’s that?”

“Because…I don’t know. You’re makin’ me feel…”

“What?”

He looked over the water for a few minutes, trying to figure out what it was he wanted to say.

“It’s not like it would be like that between us,” he stated finally. “It would mean something. It would mean
everything.
”

“I’m just trying to make sure of that,” I said softly. “We’ve found each other. There’s no rush. I want to enjoy this time with you, get to know you, so when it does finally happen, it’s because there’s more backing it up.”

He looked at me again, his eyes brightly feverish. “I get that. I want that, too. It’s just…”

He didn’t elaborate, and honestly, I was chickenshit to ask whatever he was about to say.

“How many people have you been with?” he asked, his voice low and soft.

“I’m a virgin,” I chirped. I just wanted to see his reaction.

“The
fuck
you are! Seriously?” He looked at me with an incredulous expression.

“No,” I chuckled.

“That ain’t funny!” he grumped before shoving another piece of food into his mouth.

“I beg to differ. That was priceless. You looked like you’d won the lotto, but you were terrified of collecting the money.”

He blinked at me. “You’re diabolical.”

“To my black soul,” I agreed with cheekiness.

He grinned. “Seriously though.”

“I’ll tell you if you give me an estimated number of yours.”

Scowling at me, he said, “I really have no idea.”

“Are we speaking, like, over a hundred?”

His lips compressed, and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Damn. I’ll take that as a yes then.”

“And you?”
he stressed.

“Two.”

“Two?”

“Two,” I repeated.

“Oh. Before we met?”

I shook my head. “Just my high school boyfriend, Jaime.”

“There was someone after.”

“Yes. I had a six-month relationship with a very nice man. I’d gotten tired of being alone.”

“I felt that,” he told me, his voice hushed. “I knew I was losin’ you before I even had the chance to get to know you.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “It was pretty recent, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“Did you love him?”

“Not enough,” I replied.

I could see that he didn’t know how to take that. He was pissed, but he wanted to be understanding. After all, here I was, sitting with him on this fine Saturday afternoon.

“What made you end it?” he asked quietly.

“You,” I replied truthfully. “I couldn’t commit to him, and he deserved more. The whole time I was with him, I was holding back. He knew that I had feelings for someone else, but he hoped that I would forget about you over time. For a while there, I tried to.”

“What—”

“I saw the clip of ‘Louisiana Baby’ in Rio,” I told him. “You told me you were coming home. So, I ended it. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

“When was that?”

“About four weeks ago.”

He was thinking hard. “You weren’t with anyone else?”

“I was celibate for six years, Phil. I’d had enough. Can you blame me?”

“No, I’m just…how the hell did you go six years without getting laid?”

“School and work helped,” I replied while thinking,
You weren’t here.

He looked stunned, and I got the feeling he was severely disappointed in himself. All this time, I had truly waited for him, and he had gone away and stuck his cock into anything that moved.

“Phil?”

“Yeah, Baby Girl.”

“It doesn’t bother me—your past. It’s where it stays, right? I mean, you
can
commit. You can be faithful to me?”

His eyes were burning again when he turned them on me. “Yes. That’ll never be an issue between us. I
promise.
”

I nodded. “Then, that’s settled. Would you mind getting tested?”

“I’m clean. In any case, Sheri makes us get tested every month. We all got our results when we came home. I haven’t done anythin’ with anyone in a while, and I’ve never had sex without protection—ever.”

“Really?”

“Really. From my very first time.”

“I never have either.”

“Have you been tested?”

“Yes. I got a clean bill last week.”

He nodded. “Yeah, so I guess that it is settled then.”

“You still want to do this?”

He gave me a hard glare. “What do you mean?”

“Us.”

“Kenna, let me make somethin’ perfectly clear to you.
Nothin’
will ever take you away from me and vice versa. If you ever decide to end it, I’ll need to be locked up for the rest of my life because I will never, ever leave you alone. From here on out, it’s you and me. Got it?”

No, that’s not creepy at all.

It was so creepy that it made me smile huge, and I felt stupidly happy again. “Got it.”

After we had plowed through the appetizers, Otis returned to take our lunch order and whisk our empty dishes away.

Phil ordered a bowl of gumbo, fried catfish with potatoes and okra, a side of grits, bacon-wrapped scallops, and collard greens. No lie, the man could probably eat everything in the restaurant and then go for ice cream afterward. I decided to eat my own meal extremely slow to give him time to demolish the mad amount of food.

“So, tell me about your childhood,” I said before taking a bite of my blackened snapper salad.

“Well, I grew up in LaPlace until I was six. My parents raised me and Danielle—that’s my sister—in the house I’m living in now. My mom used to raise chickens, and we had a donkey—I remember him—and a couple of dogs. But after she died, I guess it was hard on my dad to be there anymore. She died in the house, and it was just a bad reminder for him. So, he moved us to New Orleans.”

“Did you enjoy living in the city more?”

“Not at first. I missed…I guess I missed my home. I met X when I started school, and that helped. He had this piece-of-shit acoustic guitar, and I fell in love with it. Then, we started takin’ lessons together.”