by Meli Raine
My turn to raise my eyebrows.
“It’s complicated,” Marissa mutters.
“Sounds like he likes you and you’re pushing him away.”
“When did you become Dr. Phil?” she asks with great sarcasm.
I pull back the hair on my brow and show the nasty road rash. “When I spent the past couple of days trying to get away from Jeff and Chase saved me.”
Chase and Morty return bearing coffee. “Cream for you,” Chase says as he hands off the steaming mug to me.
Marissa’s is black.
“This was supposed to be fun!” she wails.
“Coffee is fun...” Morty says slowly, with great deliberation.
“Not the coffee!” she shouts, whacking him across the chest. A thick line of oil covers the back of her hand and she grimaces.
“Sorry,” he says. “Occupational hazard.” He gently wipes her hand off with his kilt, lifting it in the process. I can’t help myself. I look.
G-string.
Chase sees me looking and scowls. I hide my face in my coffee cup and bury a smile. He’s so jealous. He’s so protective.
He’s so...Chase.
Morty takes a sip of his coffee. He’s standing there, casual and relaxed. It’s as if he isn’t this guy who looks like a redwood tree wearing a plaid skirt and covered in baby oil. He’s just a dude drinking coffee in his apartment, chatting with friends.
I feel like my entire life has turned upside down.
Chase takes a deep breath and closes his eyes as he puts his face down, drinking his coffee. His eyes meet mine and he smiles, taking me in.
“You can still have fun,” Morty reminds Marissa. “Just without me. I have to go work.” He looks at the clock over the stove and gulps his coffee. After putting the mug in the sink he gives Marissa a quick kiss on the cheek and waves to us all as he dashes out the front door.
“You live with two guys? Morty and Arlen?” Chase asks Marissa. There’s no judgment in his voice. Just curiosity.
“When Arlen’s here his girlfriend’s around sometimes. But yes—I’m stuck with two guys.”
Chase just says, “Cool.”
“And when Allie moves in,” she continues, “we can—”
“You’re not living with two guys,” Chase says to me, then takes a sip of coffee. His voice is even. Matter of fact.
Firm.
“You can’t tell her what to do,” Marissa argues.
“I’m not telling her what to do,” Chase says with great patience. “I’m telling her what we’re doing.”
“We’re—what?” I ask, confused. All of the conversations we’ve had since we arrived at Marissa’s feel like we’re speaking English but the words are out of order.
“You aren’t living with two guys,” he says simply.
“But where am I going to live? Marissa offered to help me move in and I’ll share a room with her and pay rent, and—”
“You’ll live with one guy.”
“Huh?”
“Me,” Chase says, finishing his coffee. He walks away from me, sets his mug in the sink, and walks back, hips swaying, his jeans tight around the calves. My eyes land on that belt buckle. It’s the same one he wore the day I met him.
“You—what—me—one guy—what?”
“You forget how to speak?” Chase asks softly, a smile tickling his lips.
“Yes,” I say, throwing my hands up in the air in defeat. “Is this your way of saying you want us to live together?”
He just nods, one eyebrow arched in a question. The ball is my court, I see.
“We barely know each other! I planned to move out here and share a room with Marissa. It’s cheaper that way, and I still need to go home, get my stuff, then come back and find a job.” I take a deep breath to continue talking.
“Allie,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “It’s decided. I’ll pay the rent. I make enough. You don’t have to worry.”
“You make enough?” Marissa says. “Enough to support Allie here in Los Angeles? What do you do? Deal drugs?” she jokes.
Bad joke. Bad, bad joke.
Chase’s eye go cold and dead. He takes a deep breath and his chest expands, arms tight and tense. He looks like a cobra readying to strike. It’s menacing and scary. For the first time since I’ve known him a cord of fear shoots through me.
Aimed at him.
“Don’t deal drugs. Don’t make drug money. Haven’t accepted money from Atlas for nearly a year now. So you can take your stereotypes and shove them where the sun don’t shine. Which, in L.A., doesn’t give you many options,” he says to Marissa.
Her mouth forms an O of shock. My cheeks fill in with a rush of blood. I’m paralyzed. The two people I love most in the world are fighting in front of me on the best day of my life. It’s like watching a car that’s about to crash into another car and having no control. No ability to stop the inevitable.
“That was a joke,” she gasps.
“Then it wasn’t a funny one,” he says. His eyes are clouded with anger and closed off when he looks at me.
“Chase, Marissa didn’t mean anything nasty when she said that,” I choke out.
“I have ears, Allie. I know what she said. She knows I’m in a motorcycle gang. She assumed.”
“I...what?” Marissa stammers. “I don’t care how you make your money, dude. I was joking around about how expensive rent is here in L.A. Guys don’t exactly fall all over themselves to offer to pay rent for girls in this city. When you said that, it was like something out of a rescue fantasy.”
The steady inhale and exhale of our breath is the only sound for a few seconds.
A sense of despair fills my bones. An hour ago we were on the Ferris wheel, my whole life pinpointed into three little words.
And now my sister, who I’ve missed like crazy, is standing in front of me facing off against my boyfriend?
Life went from awesome to suckage in six seconds.
“Can we start over?” I plead with them both. Marissa won’t even look at me or Chase, and Chase is looking at me under hooded eyes. He’s withdrawn and negative. They’re both so tense I could scream.
“You two,” I continue, “are the most important people in the entire world to me. You’re all I have,” I confess, setting my coffee cup down and slumping onto the couch.
“And now you’re fighting and acting like you can’t stand each other. I’m barely recovered from my bike accident and Chase said he loves me and I touched the ocean today and damn it you two will like each other! You will!” I sound like a five year old having a tantrum.
I don’t care.
Marissa’s lip twitches and her eyes soften. She turns to me and says, “I’m sorry, Allie. This isn’t exactly how I imagined seeing you again would be, either.”
I look at Chase. He lifts his eyes from some fascinating thing he’s staring at on the carpet and catches my eye. “I’m sorry, too. I never meant to upset you.”
That’s better. Not perfect. Not enough. But better.
“I accept your apologies. Now, you two apologize to each other.”
They both glare at me.
“I don’t have anything to—”
“She’s the one who—”
“Bullshit! I didn’t say anything—”
“Barge in here like you—”
Their arguing washes over me like, well...waves in the ocean. They’re ruining everything. Tears fill my eyes.
This isn’t how any of this was supposed to be.
Chase’s phone buzzes in his pocket.
“Would you answer that?” I shout above their voices. He reaches into his back pocket and presses the power key, hard. The phone makes a little sound that indicates it’s powering down.
“Fucking texts,” he mumbles. “They can’t bother me now.”
“Who’s been texting?” I ask. Marissa storms out of the room into the kitchen, where it sounds like she’s getting something from the fridge.
“My dad.”
/> I frown. “Everything okay?”
He runs a shaking hand through his hair and gives me a jaded grin. “No. But it’s not important. He’s just being a control freak.”
“Like father, like son,” I joke.
Damn. Apparently, I got the bad joke gene from my sister, because the look Chase gives me tells me I crossed a line, too.
“I’m sorry,” I hurry up and say. “I just...this sucks. I want to go back to the Ferris wheel and live on it forever.”
He bites his lip and seems to be trying to calm down. Tucking his phone back in his pocket, Chase sits next to me, looping an arm around my shoulders. “Yeah. It sucks. I’m sorry for my part.”
Marissa emerges from the kitchen with three bottles of beer. She hands one to me and one to Chase. They’re all open, with lime wedges tucked into the tops.
“Look,” she says to us both. “Let’s really start from the beginning. Reboot. And maybe loosening up with a few beers will make us more civil.”
CHAPTER TEN
Chase lets a sly smile slip through. “Sounds good to me,” he says, squeezing the lime into the neck of his beer bottle and shoving it in. A few bubbles fizz up and he licks them away, his tongue purposeful and sexy as hell. I have to hold back a little noise that threatens to come out of my throat.
Marissa’s face breaks into a relaxed smile. “That’s more like it.” She and I squeeze our limes into the beers and shove them in. Then she holds hers up and says, “A toast. To new beginnings!”
We clink beer bottles and chug a few gulps. I’ve had beer here and there before, but never an entire bottle. After the coffee, it feels good. Cold and smooth, with a tangy taste.
Chase narrows his eyes and looks at Marissa. “To starting off on the right foot.” They clink beer bottles and I hold back, letting them bond. They really need to like each other. If they don’t, my life won’t work very well.
Notes from a funky blues song drift in through the open window. Someone in the apartment building is playing a bass, plugged in to an amp. The tone is muted, and a piano joins in. They don’t play a song. Just fits and starts, a little line here and there.
“Musicians,” Marissa says, holding back a burp. She fails and excuses herself. “They live upstairs. They’ll fiddle around for a while and then we’ll get an hour of really amazing blues and jazz.”
Chase’s shoulder relaxes against mine. He finishes his beer and I finish mine. My legs feel less tight. My skin is warm and loosening.
“Want another?” Marissa asks. We nod. I take Chase’s empty bottle and he smiles, putting his feet up on an ottoman, kicking off his boots. Good. This means we’re staying.
Whew.
I know beer isn’t cheap, so I follow her into the kitchen and whisper, “We’ll buy groceries and more beer in the morning. I know money’s tight.”
She reddens and reaches into the fridge for three more bottles. “Actually, it’s not so bad. Last week Morty got twice as many nights stripping, so we’re fine.”
“‘We’? I thought he was just a fuckbuddy.”
“Allie!”
“What?”
“You don’t swear like that!”
“I do now,” I say, giggling.
She leans in and asks in a conspirator’s voice. “Are you and Chase fuckbuddies?”
“Not yet,” I say. That giggle reappears. I can’t seem to control it. Twisting my smile into a neutral line, I try to look serious. “But you’re changing the subject.”
She pulls a baggie with a cut-up lime in it from the fridge and proceeds to slice three pieces. “Morty and I, well....” She takes care of the beers. I grab two by the necks and Marissa gives me a perplexed look. “He really likes me. A lot. And he’s great. Seriously. It’s just hard to trust a guy with my heart, you know?”
“You trust him with your body.” I say it without judgment, but she still flinches.
“Ouch.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re telling the truth. It’s my problem if it hurts.” She doesn’t toast this time. Instead, she guzzles half her beer and pauses.
“The truth only hurts if it’s...true.” My head feels light and swimmy. I like it. But making my mouth say exactly what I am thinking is a little difficult. Mimicking Marissa, I drink half my beer and we smile at each other. We’re kind of silly.
That’s way better than being tense.
Chase looks so comfortable on the couch when I walk back into the living room and hand him his beer. I like seeing him like this. We feel domestic here, like a real couple. I can imagine us in the future in our own place, cuddling on the couch and watching movies. Or he can help me run lines in a script. I know I have to get crap jobs before I can start to try to get acting jobs, and I don’t mind. I’ll waitress or clean hotel rooms to have time to do what I need to do when it comes to auditions.
And then I’ll come home to Chase.
At the end of the day, as long as we’re together, then our separate dreams in L.A. can combine. We can be together and pursue our passions. He can do stunts, I’ll try to land commercial and walk-on roles, and within a few years we can both break out.
We can really work for our dreams to come true.
And support each other all along.
“Thanks for the beer, babe,” he says as I settle down next to him.
Marissa plops down on the floor in front of us and says, “I never thought I’d see my little sister with a boyfriend.”
“You always teased me about David,” I say. Chase’s body tightens for a second.
Marissa laughs. “Until you told me...you know.”
“You know what?” Chase asks, eyes alert.
“He’s gay,” Marissa says.
“He is?” Chase replies, drinking more beer. “Huh.”
“No,” I correct her. “He’s not gay. He’s gender fluid.”
Chase frowns. “You mean, like intersexed?” I’d expect a strong, dominant man like Chase to be more judgmental than this. Riding with Atlas must mean he sees constant harassment and jokes, stereotypes and bigotry on the road, right? Yet he’s having a perfectly civil conversation about David’s unconventional sexuality like it’s no big deal.
A part of me falls for Chase a little bit more.
“Not intersexed. More like he doesn’t identify as male or female. He’s exploring who he is.”
“Then why do you call him a he?” Chase asks. “Is that how he identifies?”
Marissa and I give him equally surprised looks.
“What?” Chase asks.
“I’m just...surprised by how open-minded you are,” I explain.
“We have a transgendered dude in Atlas,” he says with a shrug. “Whatever. I’m not judging who people are. If your outsides don’t match your insides, you should do what you gotta do to feel comfortable in the world.”
Marissa openly stares at him, jaw practically on the floor.
“Um, okay,” I answer, completely flummoxed. “David’s still going by he right now. It’s a small town. When he heads off to college in a few weeks, he’ll decide how he wants to be referred to. I don’t know, though. It’s more like David’s kind of androgynous. Pansexual, even.”
Marissa’s turn to look confused. “Pansexual? That’s a word I haven’t heard before, and I’ve been in L.A. for a while,” she says with a laugh.
“Does that mean having sex with your sauté pan?” Chase asks.
I smack him. “Don’t make fun.” But he and Marissa are giggling. Chase is literally giggling, the sound like a little boy overcome with fun. It’s adorable. Freaking adorable, and contagious, too. I laugh with them and soon we’re doing that hard-to-breathe goofy choking gigglefest that makes my ab muscles hurt.
“Sorry, Allie. Can’t help it.” Marissa clinks beer bottles with Chase and the two finish off their second beers. I follow, the cold, bubbly beer stinging my throat as it goes down.
“More power to David,” Chase says. “People should love who
they love and that’s all that matters. The hard part is finding the right person.” He gives me a warm, searching look.
“Round three?” Marissa asks as her phone buzzes, interrupting the mood.
“I’ll get them,” Chase declares, collecting our empties and walking into the kitchen. My eyes can’t break away from watching his ass as he leaves.
“You are a goner,” Marissa whispers as she checks her phone.
“Yes,” is all I can say as I lean my head back against the couch and take a deep breath. My muscles feel soft and loose for the first time in days. All the tiny aches and pains are gone. Suddenly, every thought I have is so deep. Everything Marissa says is witty. Each look from Chase has a rich meaning that makes the world so much better.
And it’s hot in here. I want to be naked. In bed. With Chase.
Now.
His eyes meet mine and his mouth opens slightly, as if he’s about to say something. But he doesn’t. He just stands there, the look more intense as seconds tick by. Marissa’s reading texts on her phone and doesn’t notice that the temperature in the room just increased by about ten degrees.
Boy, do I need that nice, cold beer right now.
The brush of Chase’s fingers against mine as he hands me the bottle nearly makes me moan. As he sits next to me we touch from shoulder to ankle and I want to melt entirely into his body. I want to stop existing as a separate human being. I want Chase to take me into him completely. He needs to enter into me in full. Chase can possess me in a way no man ever has.
And no one else ever will.
It’s not polite, though, to strip naked in front of your sister and go at it on her living room floor, so instead I drink my beer. Fast. Too fast.
I let a burp come out of my mouth that would make a frat boy proud. I think I triggered a small earthquake here in California from the vibrations.
Chase bursts into laughter.
So much for romance.
My skin turns pink. I can actually see it, the forearms a lovely shade from blushing. My entire body feels like it’s going to spontaneously combust from embarrassment.
“It’s no big deal, Allie,” Chase says. Marissa ignores us. I feel so gross. So vulgar. So—