by Laura DeLuca
Drew obliged, standing completely in the buff and providing a full moon that rivaled the crescent in the sky. He poured a few glasses, handing one to Lainey before coming back beside her with a tray of strawberries, crackers, and cheeses. As they nibbled on the food, they crawled under the satin comforter to combat the chilly evening air, but still made sure their naked flesh was skin to skin beneath the blankets.
“This reminds me of the day we met,” Drew said as he tossed a cracker in his mouth. “Remember how you had me lay on top of your car and stare at the stars? That night, you reminded me how important it is to appreciate the little things. Since then, you’ve taken it a step further and taught me when it comes right down to it, the little things are the biggest things of all.”
“But that doesn’t change the facts does it?” Lainey chugged her whole glass of champagne in one large gulp, wishing it could numb the sudden ache in her heart. “When are you leaving?”
Drew stared down at his glass, twirling the contents around before finally replying. “I have a meeting on the tenth ... something I really can’t shirk off.”
“The tenth of November?” Her heart ached when he nodded. “That’s only a few days away.”
Lainey willed herself not to cry. After all, she’d known this was coming since the very beginning. She’d never had any illusions, and Drew had never promised things wouldn’t change. It had been fun to pretend it wouldn’t happen, but the time for make-believe had passed. She had to face facts. Besides, it was no big deal. It was just a business trip. She could cope. She had to.
“It will only be for a couple of days this time around,” Drew soothed. “A week tops. I have a few things I have to take care of in Los Angeles and then I can come back for a while. I should even be able to stick around for the holidays, but come January, I’ll have to leave again ... this time for a lot longer.”
Lainey didn’t want to hear the answer, but she asked anyway. “How long?”
Her boyfriend released a heavy sigh that foreshadowed bad news. “I’m hoping it will be for three months tops, but it could turn out to be six or more. I have to be on location for this job in England and it’s—”
“England!” Lainey squeaked, swallowing hard.
Cross-country was bad enough. Now Drew would be flying off to a whole different continent for half a year? How were they supposed to survive that? Feeling overwhelmed, she grabbed the bottle of champagne, pouring herself a second glass and downing it instantly before refilling it again.
Drew’s lips turned into a concerned frown. “Do you want to slow down a little?”
Lainey shook her head and took another sip. “Not really.”
“Listen, Lainey.” Drew lifted their glasses along with the tray of food, and placed them on the ground before taking both her hands in his. “I promise it’s going to be fine. We’ll be able to call and chat on video-cam every day, and I may even be able to fly home on weekends once in a while. People in relationships have survived so much worse. Think about the soldiers that go on tour, sometimes for a year or more. The people they love have to deal with the distance, plus worry every day that they might not come home at all. At least you’ll know for a fact I’ll be coming home safe.”
“Will I?” Maybe it was the alcohol, but Lainey felt over-emotional and plain scared that she was about to lose the most amazing thing that ever happened to her. “How do I know you won’t fall in love with some fancy British debutante or some glamorous starlet in all those months you’re away? Waiting for your South Jersey redneck might not seem so appealing when you’re alone for months and have glamorous women throwing themselves at you.”
Drew tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. “There will never be anyone for me but you,” he swore. “You’ve grown on me, and so has this place. New Jersey is my home now. So rest assured, no matter what the future holds, I’ll be coming back to Cape May County ... and to you.”
Meeting that intense gaze, Lainey could read the sincerity as well as hear it in the tremor of his voice. And he was right. She was being silly. Couples survived much more harrowing separations. If they were truly meant to be, they would make it through this. But in the interim, she was definitely going to have to ask Elisa for a recommendation on a good vibrator. Feeling much better, she squeezed his hand.
“Okay then,” Lainey whispered. “I’ll wait for you. As long as it takes.”
“Thank you for understanding.” He kissed her forehead. “But there is one other thing I should tell you about before I go. Its—”
“Go!” Lainey covered her mouth and gasped before reaching for Drew’s wrist. She squinted in the candlelight to examine his watch. “Oh crap, I completely forgot and it’s almost seven already. I had no clue it was this late. We have to get going!”
Drew looked confused. “Where are we going?”
Smacking herself in the forehead, Lainey realized, in all the excitement of his big reveal, she’d completely forgotten to tell him she’d already made plans for the night. Plans that included him. “We’re meeting the girls down on the beach, along with a few other locals I’m sure you’ll love.” Lainey flashed him a smile. “It’s the last outdoor drum circle of the season.”
Chapter Twenty
“Are you sure you want to leave?” Drew couldn’t resist trailing her neck with kisses. “I thought we were having a pretty good time here.”
The way she shuddered with pleasure, Drew hoped perhaps his tactics worked and her willpower was dwindling, but Lainey was always firm when it came to her friends. “I know you went to a lot of trouble to set all this up, but I promised everyone I’d be there. I swear we won’t be more than a few hours at most. All this...” She gestured to the flowers and candles with a sweep of her arm. “All this will still be waiting when we get back. We’ll have all night to play around under the sheets.”
“I suppose I can agree to that,” Drew relented. “As long as you promise to pick things up exactly where we left off.”
“It’s a promise and a guarantee.” Lainey leaned over to kiss him on the cheek before searching for her discarded clothes amongst the pile of pillows and blankets. “I knew you’d understand!”
Drew studied her as she stood, stretching her naked form to reach for her sweater. Seeing her in the buff made him wish he could reconsider his options. Her skin, which was still sun-kissed thanks to her Italian heritage, glowed in the candlelight. The outline of her firm buttocks and supple breasts were enough to get him hard all over again, but he supposed his body deserved a break after going two rounds back to back. Still, it was both breathtaking and somewhat depressing to watch her cover up the masterpiece that was her body.
Drew understood and respected the loyalty Lainey showed her friends, but he really wished he’d been able to finish their conversation before she’d remembered her prior engagement. He’d managed to get halfway through the speech he’d planned and rehearsed for days, but he’d still only gotten to the part about him leaving. The biggest revelation of all had once again been pushed to the sidelines. Between the purchase of the house and the large donation, he was amazed Lainey hadn’t guessed his secret, especially since her friends had pointed out how much he resembled Andy Palmer the first time they met. Perhaps a part of her already knew and wanted to delay the inevitable as long as possible, the same way he was.
“Where are we heading for this drum circle of yours?” Drew glanced at his watch as he tugged on his jeans. “I hope it’s not too far if it started at seven.”
Already fully clothed, Lainey helped extinguish the candles while she explained. “No, it’s down the road at a little spot called Higby’s Beach, right here in Cape May Point. We could walk if we weren’t running late already.”
Once all the fire hazards were taken care of, they covered up the snacks which they’d barely touched since they were so busy nibbling on each other. Before long they had everything in order and were on their way. Lainey took a look around the grounds while Drew punched in the
security code for the alarm and turned the deadbolt on his new home for the first time. He was about to shove the keys into his back pocket, but they slipped through his fingers, landing with a clatter against the pebbled walkway.
“Apparently some of my clumsiness is rubbing off on you.” Lainey giggled as she bent down to retrieve the keys. She handed them up to him, but stayed in a crouched position for a moment, bending to study the ground as though something interesting had caught her eye.
“What are you doing down there?” Drew teased. “I thought we’d agreed not to get back on our knees until after the drum circle.”
“You’re such a typical piggish man.” Lainey smacked his rump playfully before allowing him to help her to her feet. “I was going to show you what I found, but now I’m not sure you deserve to see it.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Drew apologized, curious as to what artifacts could possibly be lurking in the dirt by his veranda. He offered her his most pathetic, puppy dog stare. “I promise to be on my best behavior. Let me see what you’ve got.”
Wearing a huge grin of accomplishment, Lainey lifted her prize. “What do you think?”
Drew raised one eyebrow. The small gray stone Lainey clutched was exactly the same as the thousands of others lining the driveway. “All right, I give up. What’s so special about that rock?”
“It’s not just any rock,” Lainey revealed. “It’s a holy stone. Don’t you see? It has a perfect, naturally-formed opening right through the center.”
Drew stepped closer to her, squinting to get a better view. Upon closer inspection he realized she was correct. But he still wasn’t sure why that was such a big deal. Drew scratched his head, wondering if he’d missed something. “So when you said holy, you meant a literal hole, as opposed to something that’s sacred.”
“You could sort of say it’s holy in both the literal and figurative sense of the word,” Lainey explained. “They’ve also been called hag stones or adder stones. For thousands of years, people believed they could ward off evil. My grandmother used to tell me in Italy they believed larger holy stones were gateways to the fairy world. It’s also been said that looking through one could show you someone’s true face. Sort of like a window to the soul.”
As if to prove her theory, Lainey raised the stone up against one eye, squeezing the other shut in the process. Her lips puckered in concentration as she examined Drew, and he shifted his weight nervously from side to side. For some reason, the folklore made him uneasy. Legend or no, he didn’t like the idea of a rock being able to strip away his carefully guarded secrets. Of course, he’d seem paranoid if he didn’t play along, so he forced a grin and waited what felt like an eternity for his girlfriend to lower the stone.
“So, what did you see?” Drew wondered if she heard the slight quiver in his voice. “Or would I rather not know.”
Lainey shrugged, perplexed. “It was really odd. I swear it looked like you were wearing a tux with a bunch of camera flashes going off all around you. But I guess a tux is better than devil’s horns.” She giggled. “Or a pig snout. Weird though, isn’t it? The moonlight must be playing tricks on me.”
“Either that or you had too much champagne.” She obviously found the whole thing humorous, but there was a sudden tightness in Drew’s chest that was close to panic. He wanted to change the subject as soon as possible, but he forced a chuckle past his rebellious lips and reached out to grab her hand. “Come on. We should forget about magic rocks and head over to the beach before we miss the whole show.”
“You’re right.” Lainey leaned in to graze his lips, and she slipped something into his jean pocket. “But you have to hold onto this for me. I left my handbag back at the office, and I don’t have any pockets in this getup. This rock is a great find and I don’t want to lose it.”
Drew felt as though the tiny stone weighed him down. Lainey was closer to the truth than she realized. But with her hurrying him along the walkway, it wasn’t the time for anymore profound talks. They piled into the car and pulled out of the driveway, slipping down the deserted roads without seeing more than two or three other vehicles the whole trip. It didn’t take long to arrive at the beach, which Lainey revealed was an out of the way spot used mostly by locals. They found a decent parking space about a block away and set off on foot.
Even before they turned the corner and the dunes came into view, Drew guessed they were close to their destination. He could hear the steady thump of drums in the distance. The smell of the bonfire reached his nostrils even before he noticed the tendrils of smoke snaking across the dark sky above the ocean, merging with the sea mist in faint twirls of tide-born phosphorescence. They hadn’t passed a single soul along the way, but down by the shoreline he could see people dancing and setting up their instruments. Apparently, they were just warming up because everyone was still a little disorganized.
“At least we aren’t the only ones who’re running late,” Drew observed.
“Hippies and pagans have never been known for their punctuality.” Lainey snickered and pulled off her flip-flops. Drew couldn’t believe she still wore them the first day of November. Her toes had to be freezing. Yet, she stared down at his boots as though he was the crazy one. “Aren’t you going to take off your shoes?”
“Umm, I wasn’t planning on it.” Drew tugged his jacket tighter around his shoulders. “I wouldn’t want to get frostbite or anything.”
“There you go with the frostbite again.” Lainey rolled her eyes. “Come on. It’s almost sixty degrees tonight. Besides, you need to feel the thrumming of mother earth as she moves in time with the drumbeat. It’s an amazing sensation.”
Drew was still speculative, but he loved when she talked like that. “All right, but if I lose a toe, I’m blaming you.”
Lainey waited impatiently for him to untie his laces and pull off his boots and socks. Then he flung them over his shoulder and followed her along the shoreline. Feeling his toes sink into the sand was a pleasant sensation. It wasn’t nearly as cold as he expected. The beach held the lingering warmth of the sun in its core, though trudging through it made their process slower. There were more pebbles mingled in with this sand here than there were on the beach in Wildwood. It didn’t glide through his toes in quite the same way, and he thought it was strange how two strips could be so different when they were less than half an hour’s drive apart.
“It’s about time.” Drew glanced up and saw Elisa had met them half way. “I was beginning to think you were going to ditch us.”
“Never,” Lainey promised. “I wouldn’t miss this night for anything.”
Drew didn’t normally pay much attention to women’s clothing, aside from when he was taking it off. However, he couldn’t help but notice the skirt Elisa wore. First of all, it was a lot different than her normal tight fitting jeans and low cut tops. It was the first time he’d seen her without a hint of one of her many tattoos peeking through her neckline. But the thing that really caught his attention was the similarities between her attire and Lainey’s. While Lainey’s skirt was a soft yellow and Elisa’s a boisterous red, the patterns and designs on both were exactly the same. Long, flowing, with black stars dabbled along the full length. It was a strange coincidence they would wear something so similar when their tastes in clothing were normally so different.
“Happy was asking about you.” Elisa went on as they approached the band. “Run over and say hello before you come sit down with us.”
“Happy?” Drew raised an eyebrow for at least the third time that evening once Elisa ran back to her spot in the sand. “Are the other six dwarves here too?”
Lainey snickered, but Drew soon learned how appropriate his joke was. There were at least two dozen people spread out around the huge bonfire, men and women of all ages from a gangly teenage boy with a dozen facial piercings to a woman with solid white hair in a rainbow colored muumuu. The heavy blaze blurred the faces, but Drew made out Sharon and Erin waving at them.
Even through
the haze, Drew had no trouble picking Happy out of the crowd. The long white beard was the first clue, but the middle-aged man was also in the very center of the circle, banging a sheepskin drum far larger and more elaborate than any of the others. There were a plethora of other instruments surrounding him, mostly percussion items like cowbells, shakers, and tambourines, but there was also a guitar and a few wooden flutes on standby. Along with a pair of worn jeans and an old T-shirt, the man adorned a well-used baseball cap and sunglasses even though it was the middle of the night—a habit Drew had finally broken, though he doubted this guy had the same excuse for the camouflage.
“That’s Happy. He organizes the drum circles,” Lainey explained. “And he can keep a beat like nobody’s business.”
There was no doubt about that. Even as they spoke, Happy pounded a solid rhythm. He swayed in time to the music, yelling out tribal chants when the mood struck him, completely oblivious to anyone around him, even the people who had joined in with the music. Drew didn’t think anything could break him from his trance, but then, as though he sensed them approaching, Happy completed one last thunderous drumroll before leaping to his feet to greet them—or at least to greet Lainey.
“Lainey!” Happy wrapped her in such a tight hug Drew felt a momentary twinge of jealousy. “Finally, all my elemental spirits have arrived. Got my earth, fire, and water chicks over there. Wouldn’t have been the same if we was missing the air girl.”
“You know we never miss a Happy Circle,” Lainey teased, giving the older man a kiss on his scruffy cheek. “I can’t believe this is already the last one of the year.”
“Gotta head south for the winter months, you know,” Happy said with a light shrug. “Not much for the cold, but I’ll be back this way come spring. Anyway, are you gonna introduce me to your friend here. Looks worried I might be moving in on his territory.”
Both Lainey and Happy got a good laugh out of that which made Drew feel a little better. Even with the long beard, Happy was an attractive guy, with an impressive physique and a docile smile. A lot of women liked older men, and Drew was sure this guy could get his pick of the attendees that night if the moony stares he received were any indication.