Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

  “Dude, it was like Coyote Ugly and Officer and A Gentleman all rolled into one,” Truck teased.

  “Of course you’d be naming chick flicks,” Mac ribbed him, giving me a moment to compose myself.

  “You like the chick flicks,” Truck said. “You never leave when I put them in.”

  “That’s just because I’m used to them being on. I grew up with three older sisters. What’s your excuse, asswipe?” Mac tossed out.

  He shrugged. “I have a mom.”

  Mac busted into loud laughter. “A mom. You’re telling me you sat in front of the TV watching those girlie-ass movies with your mom? What, we gotta call you Mama’s boy now instead of Truck?”

  Truck had had enough. He moved quickly and had Mac in a headlock so fast that Mac choked in surprise.

  Ava walked up with her purse, a portfolio, and her guitar case. “Boys, boys. You don’t have to fight over me. I’ve already told you: I’m not sleeping with any of you.”

  Truck exchanged a quick look with me and then let Mac go. Mac pushed his shoulder, and they playfully continued punching each other as we walked out of the bar into the muggy night air.

  I fished the rental keys out of my pocket and tossed them at Truck.

  “I’m driving Ava,” I said. They both smiled as if they knew what the hell I was about, but they didn’t. I had no desire to sleep with Ava and leave her.

  Except, shit, I did want that—to sleep with her. Make love to her. Make her moan and say my name. But I also didn’t. I was so royally screwed up.

  She unlocked the car, and I stopped her before she got in. “Let me drive?”

  She flashed me that smile. “I really haven’t been drinking. Couple sips from a beer.”

  We eyed each other for a moment, but she pushed past me into the driver’s seat. I had been drinking. More than her, it would seem, so I went around the car and sank down into the passenger seat, banging my knees on the dash and swearing.

  She laughed. “Sorry, Jenna is the only one that ever sits there, and she’s like an elf.”

  “Who’s Jenna?”

  “My best friend.”

  “And how does Jenna feel about you running away?”

  She was quiet. “We haven’t talked yet.”

  I watched her as she drove. She glanced over at me.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I thought girls told their best friends everything,” I said, looking for her reaction. It was there. Small, heartbreak.

  “I will. But I don’t want her to have to lie to my dad.”

  She hit the button to open the sunroof and threw one hand out into the night sky as if she could catch the air and tame it. Somehow, I believed that Ava might just be able to do that.

  “You have questions, just ask them. It’s so much better than pussyfooting around,” she said with a barely concealed smile.

  “I don’t pussyfoot.”

  “What do you call this?” She waved a hand between us.

  “I don’t know you. I don’t really have a right to ask.”

  “You put your number in my phone, you’re staying at my house, I kicked you out of the bed you chose, and I landed in your arms tonight, so I think we’ve crossed the line of know and don’t know,” she teased.

  “You didn’t kick me out. In fact, if I remember, you invited me into bed,” I responded to the one thing I could.

  Her smile got wider. “Did I? I don’t remember. I was pretty drunk.”

  “That was pretty stupid, and you don’t strike me as being stupid.”

  She nodded in agreement, not even a little upset.

  “It was, but to be fair, I was with Lacey, and she wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.”

  “Lacey?” I asked.

  “Andy and Lacey are the couple who own the bar you were just at.”

  “The guy who wanted to kill me when I had my hand on your boot?”

  She nodded.

  The humid night air filled her car. I couldn’t escape it this trip. I probably wouldn’t escape it until we were out to sea again in a few days. It didn’t bother me most days, but sometimes I just wanted to breathe without feeling like I was being dragged down.

  “Are you really nineteen?” I asked quietly.

  She nodded again.

  “It can’t really be running away, then. What’s your dad going to do?”

  She laughed, a bitter laugh. “You truly don’t know my dad very well, do you?”

  She was right. I didn’t know him well. I’d been lucky enough to avoid his classes until this last semester. I’d heard stories about what a prick he could be and warnings not to get on his bad side. Which is why, when I’d had no choice but to take his advanced military history class, I’d been sure to use extra sirs, turn everything in early, and stay under the radar. I’d bit my tongue when I disagreed with anything he said and just got the hell out. When he’d posted the offer to paint the house in lieu of a free week’s stay to everyone in the class, I’d seen it as a bonus to lasting a semester with him.

  When I didn’t respond, she continued. “For starters, let’s just say that he was probably pissed as hell when he showed up at graduation to find that I wasn’t in the chairs.”

  “Wait, you walked out on your own graduation?”

  She laughed, lighthearted. Free. It was her freedom that sucked me in.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Go ahead, ask it.”

  “What?”

  “Why are you nineteen and just graduating?”

  “Okay. Why are you nineteen and just graduating?”

  “Dad got angry when I purposely flunked history in sixth grade to spite him—the history professor. So, he held me back against all my teachers’ objections, moved me to a private school, and had weekly meetings with the faculty until I got to high school.”

  I took all of that in. It made me feel smothered, and I didn’t even live with him. My mom had always given me room to breathe. We might keep things from each other, to protect each other against more pain and hurt, but we still had a relationship that was full of love.

  Ava took in my silence, and then shrugged it off. “It kind of backfired on him, because I met Jenna that way, and I got to escape with her a lot.”

  “Escape. Running away. You act like he had you locked in a room,” I said, half joking, only to have that turn to terror inside me because you heard things like that all the time on the news. Girls locked up. “Wait. He didn’t have you locked in a room, right?”

  She shook her head in the negative but didn’t smile.

  “Why’d he let you go off with Jenna then?” I asked.

  She smiled weakly. “Now you’re getting closer. Jenna’s dad is one of our state representatives.”

  “So?”

  “Dad is addicted to anything close to power. You know Professor Slughorn?”

  “Who?”

  “Harry Potter, Professor Slughorn?”

  I tried to remember my Harry Potter books. I’d read them so long ago that they were a faint memory. I shrugged.

  “You’re hopeless,” she said, exasperated. “Professor Slughorn ‘collected’ all these students from powerful families or who were powerful themselves so that, later, he could get favors from them and rise in his own fame because of that association.”

  “And that’s your dad?”

  She nodded.

  “I feel slightly offended now that I’ve never been invited to any of his little soirées.”

  Ava laughed, filling the air with her huskiness.

  “I’d say you’ve escaped the guillotine.”

  “It’s well known that I want to join the Coast Guard, and that isn’t the way anyone makes a name for themself.”

  “The Coast Guard is pretty amazing,” Ava said.

  I nodded. I agreed. It just wasn’t a story I wanted to go into tonight—just how amazing they were. Because being with her threatened that very thing
.

  Instead, I said, “No one sees that as a power play, though. They consider the Coast Guard as a sellout or for people who couldn’t hack it in one of the other branches of military.”

  She considered that and didn’t respond.

  We pulled into the beach house, parking behind the two goons in the pickup. I waited by the car while she locked up and took the guitar from her hand as she walked up the stairs. She looked over at me with a smirk.

  “Don’t go all gentlemanly on me now, Mr. Grumpy. You’ve given up your right to claim half the bed.”

  I smiled at her in return. “I wouldn’t claim it back now, even if you begged.”

  We both knew it wasn’t true. We both knew that if she begged, I might just cave. But she wasn’t drunk tonight, and she was leaving. It was a fact that we both knew—the fact that we both needed her to leave and that seemed to put a damper on her own careless abandon. It made my chest ache. Because I kind of adored the careless abandon.

  Chapter Six

  Ava

  PERFECT DAY

  “What I'd give if I could find a way to stay

  Lost in this moment, now

  Ain't worried 'bout tomorrow

  When you're busy living in a perfect day.”

  —Performed by Lady Antebellum

  —Written by Flowers / Scott / Haywood / Kelley

  I woke with the sun in my face, the muggy air already filling the bedroom from the open French doors like cotton balls stuffed in a jar. I kicked off the covers and stared out the windows at the ocean.

  I could hear the paint gun running and the yammering back and forth that had to be Mac Truck. Eli didn’t talk that much. Except last night, when he’d talked a lot—or asked a lot—in the car on the way home from the bar.

  When he’d shown up at the Salty Dog last night, I’d been surprised. Not many people had the ability to surprise me, and he had several times. My body’s reaction to him was a surprise. His control and constraint at twenty-two was a surprise. The way he’d been able to command acquiescence from me, so that I’d stepped down off the bar into his arms, was a surprise. Because I didn’t spend time in anyone’s arms…ever.

  This strange song that Eli and I were dancing to was the reason I was staying when I needed to leave. Selfishly, I wanted to explore the feelings and reactions I’d never had a bit more, even though I knew it was threatening us all the longer I remained with them.

  All my plans seemed more muddled than they had the day I’d left Galveston. I missed Jenna. I wanted to talk to her about all of it. The emotions. The boy. The escape.

  I reached for my phone and, with fingers shaking because I knew she’d be pissed, texted her.

  ME: Girlie, it’s me. You alone?

  Her response was so fast that it shocked me.

  GIRLIE: Jesus Christ! Are you okay? Did some serial killer steal you and cut you up into pieces? Do I have to come get you? Where are you?

  ME: I’m sorry.

  GIRLIE: You could have at least told me you were going.

  ME: This way you didn’t have to lie to anyone.

  GIRLIE: My dad barely stopped Ethan from forcing an APB being put out on you.

  Jenna had always called my dad by his first name. She was one of the few people who did. I honestly thought it was because she didn’t want to show him more respect than she felt he deserved.

  ME: How’d he stop him?

  GIRLIE: The cops told him you were nineteen and had to be missing for longer than a couple hours, and when he kicked up a fuss, Dad took him outside to cool off. I think Dad suspected you’d flown the coop on your own.

  ME: I can’t believe he actually called the cops!

  GIRLIE: He’d rather you be a serial killer’s chop bait than have the truth be that you chose to leave him in the stands at your own graduation…with a whole party planned.

  ME: You’re right.

  GIRLIE: Where are you, really?

  ME: I can’t tell you. I still don’t want you to lie.

  GIRLIE: I can’t tell them you texted me, anyway. They’ll just want me to show them the texts, and then they’ll get your location off the GPS or some stupid random location device on our phones.

  ME: I have all my GPS locked down tight on this new one.

  GIRLIE: You know they’d find a way.

  ME: **pic of Eli

  GIRLIE: Holy Hottie! Is this why you left now? He’s gorgeous. And so much more my type than yours. How is this even fair?

  ME: **laugh emoji. Don’t let Colby hear you say that.

  ME: He isn’t why I left. He was a pleasant surprise.

  GIRLIE: How pleasant? Like finally lost your v-card pleasant? Like spent the night moaning his name pleasant? Wait. What is his name?

  ME: Can’t tell you that either.

  GIRLIE: Excuse me? BFF here.

  ME: I’d be putting him at risk.

  GIRLIE: WTF. He’s one of your dad’s collections?

  ME: Not in his collection but at the academy.

  GIRLIE: You are just full of random surprises today.

  ME: How was graduation?

  GIRLIE: Exactly what you said it would be. People crying because they’d never see me again when they’d hardly spoken to me all year. Best thing was the car Mom and Dad bought me and taking it parking with Colby.

  ME: YOU GOT A NEW CAR!!!

  GIRLIE: ** pic of Audi convertible

  ME: Damn. How did you “park” in that?

  GIRLIE: We were very, very creative.

  ME: I miss you.

  GIRLIE: I miss you, too. I wish you could come back. But I know you can’t.

  ME: Once I’m set up, you can come see me. There won’t be anything he can do then.

  GIRLIE: There’s not really anything he can do now either.

  ME: I know, but he could take it out on the “surprises” that I found.

  GIRLIE: Wait. There’s more than one? Picture please.

  ME: ** pic of Mac Truck at beach

  GIRLIE: Dammmmmmnnnnn girl, when you go off the cliff, you really go OFF THE CLIFF!

  ME: LOL. They’re all perfectly harmless.

  GIRLIE: Then you’re doing it wrong.

  ME: I’m only here for a couple days. I have to get going. No reason to go burning the midnight oil with any of them.

  GIRLIE: According to you, that would be the perfect reason to burn the midnight oil. There’d be no time to build an attachment.

  No attachment… I wasn’t sure I could say that. And according to Eli, I’d invited him into bed with me. I didn’t really remember it. Getting drunk had been as stupid as he’d said. Thank God Lacey had put me in a Lyft and sent me home.

  A knock on the bedroom door startled me out of my thoughts.

  ME: No comment. But I gotta go.

  GIRLIE: Please don’t EVER go two days without texting me again. I need to know you’re okay.

  ME: It’s a deal. Take care of you.

  GIRLIE: Take care of you.

  Jenna and I had started saying “take care of you” to each other after she’d made me watch all the classic romance movies with her in middle school. Pretty Woman was at the top of her list. The main characters were two friends looking out for each other, and that was us also. The words were extra meaningful now that I was leaving her just like Julia Roberts had left Laura San Giacomo.

  Another knock.

  “Yep?” I hollered out.

  Eli’s head appeared around the door hesitantly, as if he was afraid I’d be naked or something. Or maybe hoping I was naked? Or maybe that was just me. Hoping that he was hoping.

  “Morning,” I said with a smile. I was cross-legged on the bed in a T-shirt and panties. It covered more than my bikini had the day before, so I wasn’t really worried about it. Besides, there was nothing on my body that he hadn’t seen on a million other girls, I was sure.

  I was never one to get hung up on my body. It was what it was. I
wasn’t going to hide it or flaunt it. It was just part of what made me me. I looked way more like my mom than my dad—not that I ever knew my mom since she’d died when I was six months old in a plane crash that took her and both my grandparents. But I looked like the pictures of her that I’d seen, and my dad threw it in my face all the time that I looked and acted like her. He always said it as if it was the worst thing I could have ever done. Be like her.

  Eli, however, didn’t look like he thought my minimal apparel was nothing. His eyes raked over me and then darted back out the window. It was cute and so unlike the image that he portrayed to the world. Authority. Command. Control. With me, I could see the pieces of him that would come undone if he let go. It made me wonder why he held on so tight.

  It made me want to stay and find out. Which really was the reason I needed to go. If I had anything to say about it, my dad would be the only man to ever have had any control over me.

  “I just wanted to get some clothes and go shower in the guys’ bathroom.”

  “Are you guys already done painting for the day?” I asked.

  “Already? It’s eleven o’clock,” he said.

  I looked down at the time on my phone, surprised once more. I hadn’t slept that late in my whole life. Dad would never have allowed it, and my body was trained now to his hours. It seemed like the last few weeks had taken a bigger toll on me than I had thought.

  “Wow, I guess it is. You don’t have to shower in there, though. Use this one. I’m just gonna change and hit the beach.”

  I stood up, and I caught him glancing at my legs and where the T-shirt barely covered my butt cheeks. It made my heart hammer louder that he looked. His gaze shifted away when he realized I knew he was watching me.

  I grabbed another bikini from my bag and then stood, waiting for him to move in one direction or the other. His eyes caught mine. He looked down at the turquois strips of fabric I held and then back to my eyes, his all squinty.

  “What is it now, Dad?” I knew my calling him Dad would jerk him out of whatever awkward mood he was in, and it did. He didn’t like me calling him Dad. Truth be told, I didn’t either, because he was nothing like my dad. I should have started calling him an old man instead. It was more accurate.

  “Nothing,” he said as he crossed to the dresser he’d commandeered the use of. He took out some clothes and glanced at me one more time.