by Mia Kerick
Mom’s constant, aggressive interference in my life ruined me. Her narcissistic behavior shaped me into a solitary, untrusting man. And Bodie deserves better.
The ache in my sides and the throbbing in my head is too much to deal with awake. I close my eyes and sleep comes quickly.
“No!”
I sit up too fast and groan at the ravaging pain. But it’s not what woke me.
“Don’t wanna!”
What roused me from sleep is the racket coming from across the hall.
“Get offa me, you oaf!”
I slide out of bed and creep from my bedroom to the hallway. Hugo is sitting in front of Bodie’s closed bedroom door, whining softly. “It’s okay, boy.” I pat his head.
“Get ya filthy paws offa me, Wilkins. Ya hear?”
Bodie is obviously wrapped up in a nightmare. Instead of knocking, I push open the door and stand beside Hugo in the doorway. “Bodie, you’re having a bad dream.” I speak just loud enough for him to hear me.
“Gonna tell Mom…” The light from the hallway reveals that he’s punching into the air. His curls are damp and stuck to his head.
“Bodie, wake up.”
“Who—who’s there?” He sits up quickly, startled.
“It’s me… Oliver.”
“Ollie?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s happenin’? You okay?” If possible, he sounds more distressed than before.
“Me?” I walk to his bed and sit gingerly on the edge. “I’m fine. But you were talking in your sleep.”
“Oh, shit. Sorry ’bout that. Ain’t happened in a long time.” His head falls into his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry.” I place my hand lightly on his head, and he nearly lurches off the bed. But once it sinks in that it’s me touching him, he pushes his head into my open palm, like a cat seeking comfort. I run my fingers through his hair. The ringlets spring between my fingers, almost making me want to smile because they’re so unique to Bodie. “Want to tell me about your dream?”
“I don’t remember it.”
“You were shouting for someone to get off you.”
“Oh.”
“You really don’t remember?” I can’t help being skeptical.
“Nah. But I don’t need to remember. Had my share of that same dream.” Bodie coughs a couple times. “He was my mother’s boyfriend.”
“The guy you told me about?”
“The guy who did those things to me.”
That must have been hard to say aloud.
“What fucked me up so bad is that she chose him.”
“How did she choose him?”
“After I told her what he did to me, she saw me as some kind of a threat, I guess. Mom pawned me off on her sister and moved in with the asshole. Never came back for me.”
I’m not sure what to say, but I think I know what to do. “Move over. I’m coming in.”
Bodie slides to the far side of the bed to make room for me. I expect to find a harder, colder Bodie in bed, since he just dreamed of a hard, cold man forcing God knows what on him. But this isn’t the case. Bodie’s skin is warm, and he’s yielding. He wraps himself around me as never before.
“Thank you for coming to me,” he whispers.
“Of course. I could tell that you needed…” I swallow hard with the sure knowledge of what I’m about to say. “You needed me.”
Does this statement break the rules of indifference that we’ve until now held to?
He embraces me so tightly it almost hurts. Like I’ve given him the best gift he’s ever received. “I did…And I do.”
“Me too. I need you too.” I don’t know how it happened, but Bodie has become essential to me. A part of my life I don’t want to lose. But Bodie told me himself—he’s born for leaving. I can’t let myself forget this. Because I can’t afford to get my heart broken again.
Chapter 12
Bodie and I haven’t had the same day off for weeks, which is likely by design. Jack’s desire to prevent us from enjoying an evening together as a couple dictates that we aren’t able to share a common evening off work. He’s also intent upon showering too much unwanted attention on each of us, individually. His most time-consuming activity at Surf’s Up isn’t actually working; it’s cornering one of us in the employee lounge or storage room, slithering uncomfortably close, and laying out the complete playlist of what he’d do if he got us naked and alone.
I’m really not sure if it’s Bodie or me or both of us he wants to take to his bed…or to the employee lounge couch. It’s possible that either one of us will do, but both of us would be preferred.
Thanks to Mika’s limited availability over the coming weekend, though, Jack has been forced to allow us a mutual night off. I plan to make excellent use of it. And although it’s Thursday, tonight is designated as date night.
“Where are you taking me?” he asks as we board the island shuttle.
“We’re going to the place I wish I worked.” I show him to two empty seats near the front of the bus.
“Why don’t you work there?” An excellent question.
“They already have a mixologist.”
“A mixologist?”
“Someone devoted to the study and creation of cocktails.”
“Different than a bartender?” Bodie tilts his head with interest.
“Very much so.” I proceed to describe my study of cocktail creation at All Stirred Up School of Mixology outside of Boston.
“We’re here.” Bodie and I step off the bus and stare at the rustic three-story white building that sits close to the edge of the sidewalk.
“Ivory Tower? Cool sign.”
It is a cool sign. Hand painted on a section of old wooden fence is a tall white brick tower, suitable for the locking away of a fairy tale princess. The words “Ivory Tower,” in vertical Old English Font, are painted in the vibrant blue sky beside the building.
“This is a different kind of bar. Where the drink, not the drinker, is the focus.” It’s the best I can do in terms of explanation. Bodie’s senses will fill in the blanks.
I lead him inside and we sit at the table for two I reserved earlier today. Bodie stares at his quaint surroundings, clearly charmed by the building’s primitive wooden interior. Baskets of wildflowers hang haphazardly from antique beams, and illuminated stained glass windows, along with beeswax candles placed strategically on a number of tables, allow for a dim, but shimmering light. There’s no seating at the bar.
“This place looks so…” He can’t find the right word and I can’t blame him. It’s visually overwhelming with its seemingly arbitrary detail. “And the smell is…” A fragmented thought regarding the chaotic blend of scent—clove and cinnamon and coffee and mint. Concoctions yet to be blended. Bodie’s jaw drops, just slightly, but enough to indicate that I may have already blown his mind with Ivory Tower’s eclectic environment. And he hasn’t even sampled a beverage.
“This is a bar where the drinks are all one of a kind. Created by mixologists, who do nothing but mix the cocktails. They don’t interact with the public at all. They mix the drinks; the servers serve them.”
“And you dream of working here?”
I nod. “The owners are mixologists—a married couple—but they hired another mixologist just before I bought the cottage. She’s all the help they need.” Bodie is studying my face across the candlelit table, intent on my every word. “I was once offered a job as a server here, which would have allowed the owners to get to know me and see me as more than a name on a paper application for a mixologist position. But I make more money bartending at Surf’s Up.”
A female server—it says Rosa on her nametag—approaches the table. She refrains from ogling Bodie, which I’ve become accustomed to when people first set eyes on him. I’m appreciative of her restraint.
“Good evening, gentlemen. What can I interest you in tonight?” Rosa proceeds to question us about preferred flavors, consistencies, as well as
those we avoid. Then she asks about us. “The intent of your evening together seems to be aimed at open, flowing conversation. And I also sense that tonight is somewhat celebratory. Am I right?” Rosa smiles, but not patronizingly. More in the knowing manner of a fortune teller. And she doesn’t wait for a reply. “I’ll inform Raymond of what we discussed, and we’ll see what he comes up with.”
“It’s a novel idea for a bar, wouldn’t you say?” I ask Bodie, who is rather quiet.
“Celebratory,” he repeats, apparently stuck on Rosa’s last conclusion. “She’s right.”
“A celebration that, thanks to Mika, we seem to have cheated Jack an opportunity to prevent date night?” I query with a smirk.
Bodie shakes his head but doesn’t offer an alternative reason. I’m left wondering.
“For so long, I’ve wanted to stand behind that bar.” I glance at the couple who is hard at work behind a freestanding antique oak bar at one side of the room. “Faced with an individual’s specific desire for the perfect beverage and armed with the most superior ingredients.” It’s an admission I’ve offered no one until tonight.
“This is your dream?”
“Yes. But so was buying the cottage. And so is purchasing the VW convertible. And feeding Hugo. Money is the critical factor—so I keep my job at Surf’s Up.”
“You have my summer rent.”
“For a down payment toward the car, yes, the rent is important.” But Bodie has turned into so much more than a mere renter and a means to a mercenary end. “I’d let you stay for no rent at all, you know.”
Bodie’s mind is elsewhere. “You can feel the wind in your hair on my bike too,” he offers, and at long last, I see the sideways smile.
“True.”
Rosa places two cocktails on the rustic butterfly table between us. “For you, sir, what Randall referred to as a Spitfire Sangria.” She slides my drink, a mason jar full of plum red liquid garnished with fresh fruit toward my waiting hand. “Granny Smith apples and blood oranges soaked in Fireball kick our not so basic sangria up a notch. You’re gonna want to write home to Mama about it.”
“Not sure about the Mama part, but it’s exactly what I’m in the mood for.”
“And for you,” she glances at Bodie, “we have concocted a beer cocktail. Maple syrup and Woodford Reserve, a blend of citrus juices, with a pale ale.”
“Sounds great.” Bodie lifts the Stetson from his head and places it on the empty chair beside him. I can finally see his entire face. By candlelight, a blush is undetectable, but by the way he’s bowing his head, I can tell he’s honored to have a drink made with him alone in mind.
As soon as Rosa heads back to the bar, I lift my glass. “To conversation and celebration.” He holds up his glass. “And to date night,” I add. “May this be the first of many.” We touch our drinks together and sip. And for the first time this evening, I take him in.
I saw him prior to this moment—but now I absorb the masculine beauty of the man before me. Bodie is dressed as formally as I’ve ever seen him. In his typical fashion, he wears the brown leather harness boots and a well-worn pair of Levi’s, but tonight, instead of a T-shirt, he’s clad in a long-sleeved black button down. It clings to his defined chest and biceps, though it doesn’t give the impression that he’s bursting out. Bodie is stunning and sophisticated—handsome doesn’t even begin to describe him. In a T-shirt and jeans, I’ve never seen a better-looking man. Tonight, dressed in his best and focused only on me, he’s intoxicating. Even without the drinks.
Bodie seems almost shy in the face of my direct attention. “Never had a drink like this,” he murmurs and sucks down a good portion. “Never had a night like this, Ollie.”
“We both deserve a night out on the town.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling up to it. I was worried about you.”
I was worried about me too. But just over a week after the assault, my ribs no longer throb so badly when I lift a bin of ice at work. My eye isn’t swollen, and the skin surrounding it doesn’t hurt as much to look at. And I’m starting to believe that Dale is gone for good. “You helped me survive it, Bodie.”
“Did you ever report what happened to the cops?”
I shake my head. “I decided it wouldn’t have done any good.”
He shrugs. “I can’t make that decision for you. To be real, I’m not sure what I’d have done in your place.”
I appreciate his honesty. We finish off our first drinks rather quickly. The instant they’re empty, Rosa retrieves the glasses and says she’ll be back with “another something to blow your minds and taste buds.” Within five minutes, she returns with two very potent rhubarb martinis. Halfway through, we start grinning, and as embarrassing as it may be, giggling.
The rhubarb martinis are a huge hit. After our second, conversation starts to flow without inhibition.
“Born for leaving, you once told me.” I introduce the topic that’s been weighing on my mind.
“Some folks say it about me,” he admits.
“Why don’t you settle somewhere, once and for all? Why always leave?”
Bodie grasps my hand from the tabletop. “Mom didn’t want me. Aunt Linda didn’t want me. It sucks to get booted out of one home after another.”
Rosa deposits our next beverages on the small table between us. We don’t ask about the drinks’ details, and she doesn’t offer any. We just pick up the glasses, click them together, and down they go in a flurry of cinnamon and spiced rum.
“So anyhow, I figure, why wait around ’til folks make me leave? Why not just plan to hit the road, ya know, after a certain amount of time passes? That way, nobody has to go to the trouble of kicking me out, and I don’t have to get my heart stomped on.”
In my inebriated state, this makes perfect sense. “I see what you’re saying.”
“And so, what I do is only take short term jobs. That way, nobody’s got expectations for more.”
“Seems simple enough.” I suck down the balance of my fourth drink. “But still, it kind of sucks.”
Bodie downs the remainder of his drink too. “How’s that?”
“I gotta spell it out for you?”
“Would ya mind so much?”
I lean across the table, ignoring the twinges in my side. “I’d miss you if you left. Is that a fucking crime?” I plant a kiss on his lips and drop back into my chair.
“Hey, you, come back here…” Bodie teases. He bends over the table and returns the kiss.
And then I take a chance. “Maybe you’ll stay this time.”
Bodie blinks once, very deliberately, and then he gazes across the table at me. His eyes are a pale golden-brown in the candlelight, and I honestly wouldn’t look away from them if somebody offered to pay off my school loans to do it. And after an excruciatingly long moment, he replies, “Maybe I will.”
We find ourselves stretched out on my bed less than an hour after we finish our fourth drinks.
“My sides don’t ache anymore,” I offer brightly, alerting Bodie to my current relatively pain-free status.
“We drank so much, I don’t think anything could possibly ache on either of us, Ollie.”
Tonight’s goal was never intoxication, but it certainly helps with what I have in mind. “Take your clothes off.” Spoken in a whisper, and a hopeful one at that.
His eyes widen and then narrow into wary slits. Maybe he’s not as drunk as I am. Or as ready for what typically comes next on date night.
“I want to see all of you.”
Bodie pushes himself up to sit rigidly on the edge of the bed. His wide shoulders curl inward, as if to hide from me. It hurts to see such a strong and fearless man so distressed by the mere thought of an act I’m fairly sure he wants as much as I do. Based on the haste with which he paid the bill, escorted me from the bar, summoned an Uber instead of waiting for the beach shuttle, and whisked me into the bedroom the moment we returned to the cottage, my assumption was that we were on the same page—that it was time
for physical intimacy. So I press on, hoping he’ll decide that he can trust me with his body.
“There’s…there’s something…I want to do…to you.” Unfortunately, my courtly date night behavior has slipped away. I’ve morphed into a horny sixteen-year-old boy.
Bodie stiffens in a way that reminds me of the first time I wrapped my arms around him on the back of his Harley.
“And you said I could do it when I wasn’t in so much pain…and now I’m not.” My plea is literally whined. Could I be more artless if I tried?
Apparently not, seeing as Bodie is still frozen.
“If you don’t like it, I promise I’ll stop.” I’m utterly clueless in matters of romance.
But he allows a drawn-out exhalation. A sign of frustration? Or a simple release of stress?
“Trust me, Bodie. Because, honest to God, I’m starting to trust you.” A most difficult admission.
My declaration seems to reconnect us. Gradually, his wide shoulders relax. Gaze fixed on the wall, Bodie reaches up to the top button on his shirt and unbuttons it. Then, with shaky fingers, he undoes each one. When his shirt hangs loosely open, I sit up behind him, draw it back from his wide shoulders, and kiss the side of his neck. Immediately, he gasps and braces himself on the edge of the bed. Too much, too soon.
I need to take this slowly, so rather than working my way south, I focus on his strapping back. A worthwhile target of my attention. I devote long minutes to running my fingertips up and down its broad expanse, kissing away his shivers.
“Ollie, what y-you do to me,” he utters. The trembling in his voice is a bittersweet reminder of my predicament. Is it something wonderful I do to Bodie? Or do I scare the living crap out of him? Maybe it’s a bit of both.
As if he’s made of glass, I press Bodie onto his back on the bed, and instead of crushing him with my weight, I lie beside him and go to work on the buttons of his jeans. He moans softly in anticipation as I open the waist and then coax them down his long legs. Left only in his briefs, Bodie hurries to cover his bulge with his hand, but I move it aside and nuzzle his groin through the soft, white cotton. His resulting low growl is a cross between pleasure and pain. Again, I’m at a loss.