Outside

by Michelle Mankin

  And then Patrick kissed me, his hot tongue spearing between my parted lips. The ten year age difference melted away. The only thing that mattered was the heat, the chemistry and the connection I had ignored but that I realized had always been there between us.

  Cell in my tight grip, I paced the length of the hotel suite that suddenly seemed way too small. She wasn’t returning my calls this morning. I had left one message, gone for a run along the waterfront, had breakfast, waited an hour then called again.

  Nothing.

  The silence was drowning my hope. I felt like a fish flopping around on the line not yet resigned to its fate. I had a sinking feeling that the longer I let this silence stretch on between us the further away she’d drift until I wouldn’t have a prayer of reaching her.

  I tagged my car keys from the coffee table and headed for the door.

  Fuck this.

  She would talk to me. An ocean of time had already passed. I wasn’t wasting any more of it.

  So I drove a little too fast. I made it from Shelter Island where I was staying to OB in half the time it should have taken. I slowed it down only when I hit the main drag, my eyes peeled for her surf shop.

  It was easy to find. Nothing fancy, just a wooden plaque with palm trees on either end and the nickname I had given her sandwiched between those two. Pride and something much more significant unfurled brightly within my chest knowing what it probably meant to her to have gone a different direction from what her old man had always wanted for her.

  I parked the jeep outside, clicked the locks and entered the shop holding open the door for a young woman leaving with her arms full of packages.

  I noticed a bell jingling softly over my head but mostly what I noticed was Simone and the wounded look in her eyes when she realized it was me.

  “You shouldn’t be here¸ Linc,” she said to her chest since her chin was tucked into it, a long wave of sun streaked hair spilling forward, a makeshift curtain to hide behind.

  “What does that even mean?” Who the hell knew with that very ambiguous statement? I shouldn’t be back in her life or maybe it was just about me being at the shop. She’d been noticeably vague when I had mentioned wanting to see it.

  She didn’t answer right away and I took advantage of her momentary lapse to look around. Instantly I knew why she hadn’t wanted me to come. It wasn’t the merchandise which was trendy and well selected. It was the photos, blown up and lining the walls of the shop. Pictures she had taken back when we had been a couple on that mini tour that had launched the band. Not pictures of us but of the beaches we had been on together. Seeing them and remembering rocked me back in my Vans.

  “I mean you shouldn’t have come back to OB,” she said her tone edged with weariness. “There’s nothing here for you anymore.”

  Shit. Tension stiffened my arms and my hands involuntarily curled into fists as if I could grab hold of those memories and relive them. Wishing I had done something, anything, to have changed the outcome back then.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I disagreed turning to face her. She had moved out from behind the counter that had been done up to look like a tropical bar.

  “No, Linc.” She shook her head. Her chin wasn’t down anymore. It was slightly lifted and her jaw was set into a determined line that I knew didn’t bode well for me and my plans.

  “Mona,” I protested reaching for her but she took a step backward. I swallowed gesturing around the shop at those photos. “You’re not over me anymore than I’m over you. How can you…” My voice broke and my eyes burned with determination as I took another step forward grabbing hold of her, my fingers curling around her upper arms, my grip not strong enough to hurt but strong enough that she couldn’t get away from me. Not this time. This time we were having the conversation I had been avoiding, the one I’d been dancing around because I had no idea how she’d respond.

  “How can you stand it?” My voice was husky when I started again. “Looking at them every day.” I had gotten rid of all but that one from Huntington Beach after I had made love to her the last time and she had bought me the ring I never wore anymore but still kept in my possession. “All those memories.” I pointed with my head keeping my grip firm on her. Were my eyes as glassy as hers? My expression as panic stricken?

  San Clemente. Newport Beach. Huntington Beach. Shorelines we had explored. Places where we had explored each other. “Doesn’t it hurt too much to look at them?”

  She shook her head and matching tears escaped from her golden hued eyes.

  “It hurts me,” I told her honestly. “Knowing how it was. How happy we were when you took those pictures makes the pain of what happened after seem a thousand times greater.”

  “At first maybe,” she admitted dropping her gaze. “But not after a while.” She licked her lips and swallowed. “Before I hung them in the shop I used to allow myself one picture and one memory a day. I would take the photos out as if each were a treasure and recreated the details in my mind. What we had been doing. How the air tasted. How you looked. How you sounded. Every word of our conversations. My feelings. Yours,” she whispered while I reeled from her admission.

  When she focused on me again her eyes were clear and no longer swimming in wetness. “Then I hung the best of them on the wall and put away the rest. To me they’re just two dimensional images now. They don’t have any power over me anymore and neither do you.” Something flittered across her gaze when she finished but before I could analyze she continued gutting me some more. “Go away, Lincoln. I have my life now. My life.” She struggled to loosen my grip but I held her firmly. She had taken her shot and I had absorbed it. I deserved worse probably. She deserved so much better than I had given her back then. This time I was going to man up and give it to her the way I should have before. “There’s no place for you with me anymore,” she whispered.

  “So you say, but I’m here to say you’re wrong. You say those memories are just photos to you now. I say that’s a lie, Mona. I was there. I remember. I think you do, too. How could you ever forget? The passion we shared. The longing that won’t go away. The ache. The sense of completion we found with each other.” I slid my hands to her arms going slowly, holding her gaze, making my intention clear because I wanted her surrender and she needed to know she was giving it freely to me.

  Stepping closer my thighs brushing the shapely tanned legs her cutoffs left bare, my metal belt buckle to her stomach, her tantalizing breasts in that thin top seeming to swell where they pressed against my chest.

  I tunneled my fingers deep into her silky hair swearing I could feel her nipples becoming erect points even through her shirt and mine. “I’m going to kiss you, Mona. Afterward you can tell me if you still think it’s over.”

  She slowly blinked, her eyes no longer bright honey but darkened with that passion she tried to deny. I lowered my head gaze dropping to her lips waiting until she wet them for me. “Thank you, babe. That’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

  Then I brushed my mouth over hers and a bolt of desire I didn’t try to deny made my body shudder. I wanted to savor the feel of her soft satiny lips but I couldn’t. I dipped her backward over my arm slanting my mouth hungrily over hers, my tongue between her lips, the desire I always felt with her becoming a roaring blaze within me. Once things got this far with her I never had any control. It was all about taking her, having her and making her mine.

  Again.

  I was lying when I told him that the past no longer held any power over me. Still potent Lincoln wielded that power expertly as he kissed me. My memories paled in comparison to the reality. My heart pounded, my knees weakened and I clutched handfuls of his cotton t-shirt in order to stay upright. The passion. The longing. The ache. He was right. They were all still there and they crashed over me like a will crushing wave.

  “Linc,” I moaned the moment he tore his mouth from mine, not to beg him to end his ravenous assault but to plead for him to continue it. I arched my neck to the side t
o give him better access for the torrent of hot open mouthed kisses that followed. My restless fingers were as active as his were, his shaping my breasts and molding them to his hands while mine reclaimed the hard masculine contours of his chest.

  “Mona,” he breathed my name with eyes that were on fire before his lips crashed onto mine again. Heat erupted between us followed by a flurry of mutually desperate movements.

  Shirts were hastily discarded. I’d never been more grateful for a built in bra in my life. Going up on my toes, I gripped his taut biceps for balance and pressed my swollen aching breasts to his bare chest my nipples tightening to points that I rubbed shamelessly against his hot skin. He traced the contours of my spine pressing me closer to help but still I wanted more and needed to be closer.

  “Mona.” He lifted my chin so I had to look at him and the hard lines of his passion ravaged face. “I love you.” I froze. “I need you to know.” His hands returned to my forearms fingers tightening around them as if he sensed my immediate unease. “I never stopped. I wouldn’t even know how to.”

  “Let go of me,” I spat harshly while twisting to get free.

  “Babe,” he cautioned as if I were one of his groupies he needed to calm down when he’d given her the ‘Hey, hit the highway’ speech.

  “Don’t babe me, Lincoln Savage.” I yanked one arm free and then the other, immediately crossing them over my breasts, furious with myself that I still ached for his touch, my seesawing breath a telling reminder of how dangerously close I had come to succumbing.

  “How could you do this to me?”

  “Do what exactly?” His expression changed from indulgence to anger.

  “Come back here.” I shook my head to express my irritation since I couldn’t use my arms to gesticulate wildly to match the way I felt inside. “Mess around with me. Throw around words like those like I’m supposed to believe them.”

  “Maybe because they are the truth.” Each word was clipped.

  “Then you must have forgotten everything you said you remembered.” I shook my head dismissively. The pressure to cry was there but I refused to release the flood. “So many times we talked about what love meant to us. What we meant to each other. And you think you can just come back here after all this time, after taking the heart I gave you and ripping it to shreds and then leaving me to pick up the pieces.” I backed away from him as if he were a physical threat, hugging my arms tighter around my torso trying to ward off the outer chill and the inner one that was spreading inside of me.

  His own arms folded over his chest, he stood in front of me in just his dark indigo jeans and all those lean sexy muscles that played havoc with my senses. He stared at me in shock, as if I had somehow wounded him.

  “I want you to get out.” I pointed with my eyes toward the door. Swallowing nervously as I realized that anybody could have come in and could still come in while I stood there in the middle of my shop half naked and completely vulnerable.

  Frowning he tagged his shirt from the floor and shrugged it on. I hastily retrieved and replaced my own feeling marginally better to at least have those barriers back in place between us.

  Gaze hardening, he took a purposeful step toward me. Unlike before I stood my ground.

  He needed to know this ended now.

  “I’m leaving,” he announced dipping his chin before his eyes lifted to regard me. I felt a hurtful tug in my chest but quashed it. There was a steady resolve in his gaze that frightened me almost as much as that kiss had. “But I’m not going far. I’m sticking around for as long as it takes.” He took a couple of steps toward the door turning to face me again just as I was beginning to dissect those words. “You’re wrong. I haven’t forgotten. I can’t forget any of it.”

  After Linc left, I closed up the shop early. I needed to clear my head. I had been in a man drought for years then suddenly I’d been kissed by two on the same day. One sexy like an easy Pacific breeze, the other a gale force blown in from my past on some ill karmic wind.

  I swung by the groomer on my way home to pick up Chulo. Without all the extra fur he was half his regular size. I smothered him with kisses but my heart wasn’t into it. He was as sullen and withdrawn as I was. I knew from experience he would perk up by tomorrow. Whether or not I would was still in question.

  Usually when I felt this way I would head down to the ocean seeking its solace but not today. I wasn’t ready to face Patrick. Instead I stayed on the straight and narrow following the sidewalk home.

  Inside the two story place where I had grown up, I stepped out of my flip flops leaving them in the entryway. Chulo trotted off in front of me, less bounce in his paws than usual on his way to the laundry room and the solitude of his kennel.

  I padded across the hardwood floors and entered the nineteen forties kitchen that had never been completely redone. It was a hodge podge of eras. The new stainless steel refrigerator I had purchased after inheriting the house looked out of place alongside the old porcelain sink and a refurbished mint green oven and stovetop.

  Unable to summon the energy to whip up anything fancy, I popped open a Longfin Lager and grabbed a pre-packaged salad mix. Balancing my bounty I relocated back into the living room I had passed through a moment earlier. Perched on the edge of my tired old sofa, I set down my beer and started in on the greens, flipping through the channels with the remote as I ate but nothing could hold my attention. Before I realized it my dinner was gone but my thoughts were still completely unsettled.

  I took my empties back to the kitchen, throwing the beer bottle into the recycling bin and washing out my bowl before setting it on the drying rack next to the sink. I stared out the window watching Mrs. Kowalski’s grandchildren bouncing on the trampoline in her backyard, a sharp pang piercing my heart.

  Mrs. Kowalski had been my mother’s only friend. Before my mom got sick I would listen to them in this same kitchen drinking tea together and dreaming about the day when they’d both have grandkids to spoil. Well that dream never came true for my mother. I missed her despite the issues that had strained our relationship. We had grown to understand each other after I had come back home the second time. We had never been close enough for her to give me advice until near the end, but I could have used some of her wisdom right now.

  I knew Patrick had said a lot of things that were spot on this morning. I was letting my life pass me by. I had missed several opportunities to move on with other interested guys over the years. None had measured up, not even coming close to the standard Lincoln had set, so I had just given up dating. One year faded into the next until here I was fifteen years later with a failing surf shop and a bunch of broken dreams.

  I touched my fingers to my lips remembering Patrick’s kiss. There was a definite spark between us even though he was ten years younger. But if I was going to venture outside my comfort zone was he the guy I wanted to take a chance on?

  And what about Linc? The ghost had returned. No longer haunting my thoughts but trying to possess me completely.

  His kiss hit more than just a spark. It reignited the blazing fire of our past with soul consuming flames.

  I took a long bubble bath upstairs soaking in the water until it turned cold. I allowed myself one glass of white wine. I needed my thoughts clear of alcohol’s persuasive haze.

  Patrick’s honest observations and Linc’s passionate revelations were all tangled up inside my head, but with one common thread. Withdrawing as long as I had wasn’t normal. The time had come for me to let go of the past. But to move forward I would have to make peace with it first.

  After donning a comfortable pair of capri sweats and a ‘Surfing is my Life’ top, I dropped down onto the center of my white ruffled, quilt covered bed inside a room that sadly had changed as little as I had over the past fifteen years, though at least I had removed the original Dirt Dog’s band posters from my pegboard.

  I ran my fingers reverentially over the outside of the worn picture album that I had retrieved from the trunk at the head of
my bed where it had sat barely touched for years.

  Cracking it open made my heart race.

  There was more than just images of Lincoln and me within its pages.

  “He’s gonna be really mad,” Karen said, a look of concern clouding her pretty features. “You sure you’re gonna be ok?” Her sundress swirled softly around her slender calves in the ocean breeze.

  “Yeah. I just wanna watch the sunrise then I’ll go home and face his wrath.”

  Chewing on the end of her blonde French braid, Karen focused her hazel eyes on the Pacific, its surface nearly completely flat in the grey predawn, only making a gentle gurgle where it capped against the rocks at the shore. The tropical storm had temporarily calmed the usual swells after it had blown through the night before.

  When she glanced back at me, her expression remained uncertain. “I could stay and then go with you. Your dad…”

  “I’ll be alright.” Dealing with him was my burden to bear. I had become accustomed to it and it was embarrassing to me to have others witnessing the way he treated me. As a hostess at the restaurant Karen had seen his abuse firsthand before she went off to college. She had gotten a full scholarship to a prestigious college on the east coast. Something my father never failed to point out. My grades had only been good enough to gain admission to SDSU a dozen miles up the road.

  “Ok, Simone.” She grabbed my hand from my slack arm and squeezed it. “Good luck then. Call me later and let me know how it went.”

  “Sure,” I replied dully, but I knew that I probably wouldn’t. We both had difficult fathers who didn’t understand us but the tight bond that had developed between us hadn’t survived the first semester given the physical distance and the heavy course demands of our freshman years. Coming back home for the summer after having been away was proving to be more difficult than I had thought it would be for many reasons.