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This was weird.
I slipped my hands into my pants pockets as Mr. Martin came down.
“If she wants to come home, you’ll bring her back right away?”
“Yeah.” Of course I would.
“Well, you look out for her. She’s my girl, and she’s all I’ve got.”
“Yeah, Mr. Martin.” He knew I’d been hanging around her a lot last fall; he knew we’d been friends for years. I bet he wondered why I’d stopped hanging around and why we hadn’t spoken for months. I was glad he didn’t know.
Lindy came hurrying back out of the house, her purse swinging in her hand.
“Did you say good-bye to Mom?” Her dad asked.
“Yeah.” She hugged him, firmly. He kissed her hair.
The guy had scared the hell out of me when I was kid, but now all his scariness looked hollow. Lindy had hurt him when she’d chosen to press the eject button. He looked in pain. That was a new look for Mr. Martin.
“You’ll call me if anything happens, Dad, won’t you? Don’t wait. I’d hate not to get back…”
What was it with getting back? We hadn’t even gone yet. I suppose her family must be cautious now, though. Maybe they didn’t trust her not to try it again. I’d have to watch her when we were away.
Her dad nodded. Tears shining in his eyes. Hell, I’d never thought I’d see that.
I turned away and got in the SUV. I didn’t think he’d welcome me watching him, but in the side mirror, I saw him give her a kiss on the cheek. Then he walked her to the passenger door, opened it and held it while she climbed in.
He shut it only after she’d settled and pulled her seatbelt over.
I pushed the button so the window went down and they could talk.
My abs gripped tight with nerves and my belly rumbled. I hadn’t eaten this morning. I was too nervous about how this was gonna go down. My forearm rested on the wheel, the leather braid hanging loose on my wrist. That thing was so much a part of who I was.
My fingers started tapping on the dashboard.
“Ready?” she asked.
I looked over at her. Her dad stepped back from the window as she looked at me.
Shit, she probably thought me tapping the dashboard had been telling her dad to hurry up. It wasn’t. It was just a habit.
My other hand gripped the gear shift.
I was ready, though. I wanted to get away from her house. There was a ton of bad energy coming from it. I could feel it everywhere in the air around her.
I smiled and slipped my arm off the wheel. “Yeah. Mr. Martin.”
She looked at him. “I’ll call you when we get there and I’ll call you every night. I promise. Don’t worry about me. You’ll make me feel guilty if you do. And tell Mom I love her… I’m really sorry.”
“Honey…” He came forward again and leaned in through the window to grip her hand. “Your mother understands. She’s not angry, or hurt, or anything. She just wants you to be okay.”
Lindy nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks.
No matter how nervous I was. Or how awkward it felt. This was right. She needed to get out of here for a while.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered. “But I feel selfish. Good-bye.” She leaned and kissed his cheek. Then her dad stepped back and finally we could go.
My heart started pumping on hyper-drive, as I slid the gear shift down and pulled away, super- cautious not to over rev the engine with her dad watching.
I glanced at her as I drove up the street. “Did you eat or are we stopping for breakfast?”
She looked at me, a broken heart in her eyes, tears tracking down her cheeks. She wiped them away with a sniff. “Sorry, I’m going to try and not be bad company. But I don’t want to eat. I’m not hungry. How long is it gonna take to get there?”
“A couple of hours.” I looked back at the road. “We can settle in, then get lunch.”
She laughed, a low half-choking sound that was almost a sob. “I forgot how hungry you get. You can stop for breakfast if you want…”
I threw her a smile. “Sorry, you’ll have to accommodate my appetite. I don’t eat like a bird like you do, but I can wait ‘til lunch.”
She’d fed me and Jason through most of our college years. In the shared apartment we’d had. The couple and the spare-part best friend––three had definitely been a crowd. But I’d still hung around them. I bet people had thought it weird.
I was weird.
Fucking crazy!
I’d always wondered if Jason knew. But he hadn’t said anything the other night when we’d got everything out in the open. I figured he’d have said something then if he’d known.
“I can’t believe you still wear that thing.” She leaned over and flicked the leather bracelet as my hand gripped the wheel.
How the hell did she not know?
I glanced at her, giving her a twisted, guilty smile, as something hard grabbed my heart. “Yeah.”
“I made you that years ago.”
“I’m just lazy, I can’t be bothered to cut it off.” I let a fake sound of amusement slip from my throat, acting as if it was nothing––like I had every other time she’d mentioned it.
She’d made it at high school. It had been the thing all the girls were doing at the time, braiding these silly leather bracelets and threading beads into them. It was before she’d been seeing Jason. We’d been fifteen.
Yeah, I had been wearing it that long. Pining over a girl that wasn’t mine.
But shit I can still remember the feel of her gentle fingers touching me as she’d tied it off, and it had done stuff to my cock. I’d liked her before, but that was the day she’d got me. It was like her fingers had touched my heart too. I’d had this burning need for her ever since.
I should cut the thing off.
I glanced over at her. Her hands were in her lap and she stared ahead. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was too anxious to hold a meaningless conversation and I didn’t want to quiz her, ‘cause I was taking her away to forget all the stuff that made her feel bad.
I said a few things and she answered, but then I couldn’t think of anything to add. She said some things and I nodded, not knowing what to say back.
In the end we were quiet most of the drive.
I was relieved when I finally pulled up in the apartments’ parking lot on the coast.
“Wow, this is nice.”
The ocean rolled up onto the miles of beach before the parking lot. This place just calmed me. I’d come here the summer we’d left high school and it had been the best therapy. This beach and the ocean was my psychiatrist. I’d come back every summer since.
I hoped it was gonna work for her too.
I freed the door and as it opened the sound of the ocean swept into the SUV.
I looked at Lindy.
She was wide-eyed, watching the beach.
“Let’s go get our keys. I’ll get our stuff later.”
She looked at me, uncertainty creeping into her eyes, but she nodded.
I wanted to grip her hand as we walked across the parking lot. There was a whole minefield of protective energy bubbling around inside me. But it had blown up in my face before. I was steering clear of too much touching.
The thing with Lindy was she was so tiny it made me want to just put my arms around her and wrap her up. She was like a precious, breakable doll, five-two, to my six-one.
I glanced over at her. The ocean breeze flicked her wavy blonde hair against the curve of her cheek.
Her fingers tucked her hair behind her ear.
I’d wanted to do that for her. There was a hard need to touch her in my belly. But I’d spent years ignoring that instinct. That was nothing new.
She didn’t look at me. She looked ahead at the apartment block.
She’d won beauty pageants as a kid. Her Mom had been into all that shit, driving her to loads of contests and Lindy did have the look for that sort of thing, perfect symmetry.
At high school she’d been full of confidence. At college that had died for some reason.
She glanced at me, her blue eyes seeming bluer under the clear sky.
“I’ve ordered adjacent places, is that okay? I can ask them to change them if you want?”
“No, that’s okay.” She nodded.
The apartments were stacked and set out in rows spread along the edge of the beach. The guy at the desk said ours were on the top floor. The place was something between a hotel, a motel and cabins, and the rooms ‘slash’ apartments were accessed via a long hallway, with stairs at either end of the block.
When we got up there, I slid the card key through the lock, then stepped back and shoved the door open for her to go in. “You can have this one.”
It had a small kitchen and a sofa that turned into a bed. But most importantly, at the end of the room was a big window that looked out on the ocean. It had a balcony too.
“I’ll go get your stuff.” I left her in her room. But before I went back down to the SUV, I went into mine.
Shit. I combed a hand through my hair, then realized I’d fucked it up, and rubbed it so it spiked again.
It was going to be a hell of a couple of weeks.
I walked over and slid the glass door to the balcony back, letting in the soothing sound of the ocean. It pulled me outside.
Lindy stood out there, on her balcony, gripping the wooden rail and looking at the ocean. I turned my back on it and rested my butt against the rail. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just taking in the air.”
“Look, Lind––”
“I’m not in the mood to talk.”
Well, there was probably nothing I could say that would make anything better anyway. “I’ll go get our things.”
I dumped mine in my room, then went round to her door and knocked. She opened it, but stood there, stopping me from going in.
“Here you are.” I dropped her case and backpack just inside the door. “Are you ready for something to eat? We could walk downtown and then walk along the beach if you want?” I leaned against the door jamb, watching her, waiting on her answer.
I’d spent hours in this position, on the border to Lindy’s and Jason’s bedroom at college, talking to one or the other.
“Yeah, I can unpack later.” She turned away, knocking the door open wider, before walking back into her room.
I stayed where I was. “Did you call your dad to say we got here okay?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s okay with it?”
She turned, her eyes flashing impatience, a little of the real Lindy shining through the dark clouds hanging over her. Like a beam of intense sunlight catching me off-guard and blinding me.
“He may be a cop, but he doesn’t order me about. I’m twenty-two. I can do whatever.”
Yep, she could. When she was herself, she always did whatever she wanted, with a just-deal-with-it attitude. That attitude had made Jason go silent. He’d always let her have her way.
I lifted my weight off the door frame.
“You ready to go then?”
“Yeah.”
When she came out of the room, my hand hovered behind her. I had no need to touch her; it would have been strange to do it and yet it felt strange walking down the hall not touching her.
Lindy barely came to my shoulder.
I’d picked her up once or twice, messing around, and she was as light as anything. So frickin’ tiny.
Her thick blond hair flowed in waves about her shoulders as she moved. My hand itched to touch that. Literally.
