True Devotion

by Liora Blake

  My hand has just grasped the door handle when he jostles his body between the two. Cocking his head, he lifts his sunglasses up and raises one eyebrow.

  “Really? You didn’t sound bored last night.” With the ghost of a smirk starting to form on his lips, he leans into my ear and whispers in a high-pitched voice, “Oh God, Simon, more. Please, please, more.”

  Even though he’s clearly making fun of me and I should be pissed, hearing his voice in my ear throwing my own words back at me, I’m not. Trying my best not to smile or, God forbid, kiss him, I set my lips in a hard line and shake my head.

  “Hush, it’s better when you don’t talk.”

  “Did I get it wrong? I want to use direct quotes for effect. Hold on, let me think, maybe it was something else.”

  He looks up aimlessly and taps his index finger against his lips. Then he leans toward me again, letting a couple of girly moans leave his pretty mouth, the tone surprisingly accurate. “Don’t stop, baby. Harder. Oh, fuck, so good. Uhhnn, Simon.”

  Dammit. Now, I’m all turned on. Über-annoying how he does that.

  The Twizzler I have out is trembling in my pathetic hand, weaving a tiny drunken invisible pattern in the air. I grip it harder just as he raises his head from near my ear and cranes his face in front of mine. He leans forward and chomps down on the Twizzler, wiggling his eyebrows as he chews. Swallowing, he pulls his hands around my waist, the one holding his cold energy drink pressing firmly against a sliver of bare skin just below the back hem of my shirt.

  With a rough tug, he pulls me into his chest.

  “There’s only you, sunshine. You know that, right?”

  I answer him with my mouth, but there aren’t any words. It’s easier that way.

  Because the universe is apparently in perfect alignment today, the bakery I’ve loved from afar turns out to be everything I thought it would be. There isn’t one thing about my personal mecca that disappoints. Inside the humble corner building, the loud din of a space bursting with patrons is the only distraction from my private Xanadu. Simon is staring at me as I gawk about, a soft smile on his face, then he snakes his hand under my hair and rests it against my neck.

  “OK, sunshine, what do you want to get?”

  Fuck. I have to decide? Choose? I suppose answering his question by throwing my arms wide and then shaking my hands toward the entire display case might be a tad unreasonable. My eyes must have widened at the prospect of narrowing down a rabid desire for one of everything, because he laughs and gently squeezes my neck.

  “Get whatever you want. Go crazy.”

  “We can’t eat it all.”

  “Just get everything you want. We’ll take it to the house with us.”

  While spending a night in the city might make more sense, Simon is insistent about staying at his parents’ place in Big Sur. Even if I’d seriously consider just sleeping here on the floor of this bakery, drunk on the scent alone; the way his voice softens when he talks about their place means taking me there is about more than convenience, so I’ve said nothing about the possibility of staying anywhere else.

  Scanning the cases and shelves while watching the line tick forward, I start impolitely pointing at things like McKenna would.

  “Country bread, obviously. Olive bread. Umm, morning buns, without question.” I crane my head around the cycling spandex–clad man in front of me. “One of each kind of croissant. Oh, damn. Éclairs. Gougères.” With the last few words, I wrap my arms around his waist and tuck my head into his shoulder.

  Simon chuckles again and places a kiss to my forehead, his lips brushing so lightly it leaves the skin there wanting more. When he said he would bring me here, it sounded like a platitude, the kind of thing people newly screwing say to each other. Oh, I’d take you anywhere, babe. I’ll give you the moon and the stars. Name it and claim it, darlin’.

  Things no one means because you’re just hoping to get naked together again and soon. Instead, we’re actually here, and he’s holding on to me as if I belong to him, without making me feel even one ounce less than because of it. When the line moves forward and we start to order, the dreadlocked girl behind the counter stops about halfway through and walks away to the back. Returning with a large white pastry box, she patiently fills the box as we point to things. Once the box is full, I decide that has to be it, because we’re only two people.

  At a small table, Simon throws open the box lid and arranges our bowls of coffee so I don’t knock anything over in the process of lunging like a lunatic. I sit on my hands, waiting for him to issue some sort of green light that indicates I can go for it. He nods toward the box and smiles, then it’s as if he shouted the word “release” to a well-trained German shepherd. I grab out a morning bun and take a huge bite.

  When the crisp sugar and the buttered edges hit my tongue, it’s over. The spiced, citrusy taste lingers for just the right amount of time, leaving nothing but delight behind. I stifle the urge to shove the rest in my mouth and choke on it, and instead I set it down gently. Like a lady would. Taking a sip of my coffee, I gesture toward the pastry and nod at Simon.

  “Try it.”

  “Hell, no. I’d like to keep my all fingers, thank you very much; they’re essential to the work I do. Once you’re passed out from a carb-induced coma later, I might see what crumbs I can scavenge.”

  He winks, lifts his coffee to his lips, and takes a sip. Suddenly, his head tips up and a full smile crosses his face. I swear, if he’s seducing another coed behind me with his eyes, I may not think it’s as cute at this moment.

  Simon stands up and steps around the table, reaching forward to someone I can’t see.

  “Hey, Dad. Glad you made it.”

  I suck in a bit of my coffee and stop just short of having it choke me. Still holding the coffee up to my face, my body goes stiff, all except my eyes, which begin to dart around. My gaze lands on the floor to a pair of beat-up gray hiking boots and tan pants. Maybe if I don’t look up, the boot-wearer will move along. The boots wiggle a bit but don’t move. No such luck, I guess.

  “Dev? You OK?”

  The amount of giddy sarcasm in Simon’s voice is appalling. Fucking indecent, really. If I weren’t having so much trouble swallowing my coffee, a hundred different colorful words would have already been launched in his direction.

  “Hmm?” With as much lilting charm as I can possibly muster, I raise my face and smile from behind the coffee cup now doubling as a shield. “Hi. Hello . . . hey there.”

  Snorting, Simon points toward his father. “Devon, this is my dad, Paul.”

  When Simon’s father holds his hand out, he grins, and all I can see are his teeth. Those straight, white, gorgeous teeth, apparently a genetic trait. Next, his eyes. They’re almost the same as Simon’s, only a few shades lighter, nearly pearlescent. No wonder the boy ended up the way he did. Paul has gray hair, round thin-rimmed glasses, and he’s wearing a wrinkled and misshapen polo shirt, but other than that, he’s just Simon, all grown-up.

  I slowly lower the coffee and try to act like less of a stuttering ditz. These are educated, refined rich folk after all. I can’t imagine that Paul here, who can see a good deal of my tattoos because of the halter top I’m wearing, had me in mind when he conjured up the idea of an appropriate girlfriend for his son.

  Grasping my hand in both of his, Paul shakes mine vigorously. “Devon! I’m so glad you made it up this way with Simon. I’ve heard so much about you. I can finally put a face with all the other details.”

  All I can manage is a stupid grin while bobbing my head up and down. Dropping my hand, he points toward the barista behind the bar. “I’m going to grab an Americano. Anything else for you two?”

  After waving him off, Simon turns slowly to face me.

  “You are so dead. It isn’t even funny how unbelievably dead you are.”

  He at least has the decency to appear the slightest bit guilty and sheepish now, but he covers it by looking away and scratching the back of his head
to avoid my glare.

  “I thought if I asked you to meet my dad, you would have said no. I used mecca as bait. Plus, I need to get the keys to the house from him.”

  Lowering my voice to a hiss, I jut my head toward him. “I’m wearing a halter top! I look exactly like a girl who got two hours of sleep because she was getting it from a guy all night and then sat in a car for six hours eating Twizzlers and Cheetos. I’m sure I’m making a spectacular impression on your father right now.”

  “Not to mention the little bit of sugar on the end of your nose.”

  I shove my hand up and groan when my fingers touch the grains of morning-bun sugar there. Simon laughs and bends over with a snort. Once he composes himself, he grabs my hand under the table and squeezes. I jerk my own back out, combined with a pointed scowl so he understands exactly how not cool this surprise attack is. His face falls.

  Leaning forward, he drops his voice into a near whisper. “Are you pissed? Like, honest-to-God pissed?”

  I try to match his whisper-talk but barely manage to keep the screech out of my voice. “Of course I’m pissed! What don’t you understand about not wanting to feel like an idiot the first time you meet your boyfriend’s dad? Did you want me to look like an ass in front of him? If so, well fucking done.”

  Simon’s eyes widen. “Shit, no, I wasn’t trying to . . . I mean, he’s a sixty-two-year-old computer engineer who drives a VW Vanagon and reads Milton Friedman for fun. So I was pretty sure my rough-and-tumble Devon could handle him. It never crossed my mind that you would feel all fucking affronted over it. That wasn’t what I was trying to do.”

  “But he’s your dad,” I moan, letting my shoulders slump a bit for effect.

  “So?”

  “So? It’s all significant and shit. A heads-up would have been nice. That way I could have practiced being the kind of girl you should be dating. You know, a girl without exposed tattoos, endless cussing, and a crazysauce attitude.”

  “He already knows everything about you, crazysauce included. I’ve basically talked nonstop about you for two years, so he’s just geeked about finally being able to meet you in person.”

  Simon reaches under the table for my hand again, and I loosely return the grasp. Paul passes by on his way to the coffee condiment station, where he dumps in the same amount of sugar Simon also seems to prefer. While his dad’s back is turned to swirl in all that sugar, Simon tilts his head at me. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be pissed.”

  When Paul settles into a chair at our table, I decide that killing Simon can wait until later. A time and place where there are fewer witnesses milling about. And not in my mecca. Sullying this nirvana would be too much to take.

  Sitting across from these two is like watching a preposterously entertaining documentary about incredibly handsome nerds. If they aren’t chuckling at their own dumb jokes, they’re talking about things I don’t understand. One minute it’s something about their foundation, the next it’s five minutes about a radio show with a guy named Ira, followed by another ten minutes about Paul visiting some fancy physics lab in Switzerland. Occasionally, they both stop and look at me, Simon tilting his head and winking, while Paul just takes a good long look as if he’s making sure I’m not a nutty mirage. Despite how almost all of what they say goes over my head, there isn’t an iota of arrogance in any of it. They both love to talk, so they speak over each other sometimes, but that doesn’t give them the slightest pause. Somehow, they still hear every word the other says.

  After an hour or so, Paul looks at his watch and then taps the face. “You two need to get a move on.”

  Standing, he pulls out a set of keys from his pocket and hands them to Simon. Paul puts his arm around Simon’s shoulders as we turn to leave and gives him an awkward hug, which causes Simon to fidget and look at the ground like a thirteen-year-old. Just before we make it out the door of the café, Paul calls out to us from across the room.

  “Drive safe. Don’t rush.”

  Whether it’s the caffeine and carbs talking or not, when Paul looks at us holding hands, I can see years of hollow loneliness in his expression. The look of a man who lost his wife far too soon and never found a way to ease the heartache that vacancy created. If he envies seeing the way we are, or delights in it, I can’t quite tell.

  20

  Three hours later, we pull into the driveway in the dark and stumble our way down a rocky pathway to the house. It’s late and we’re exhausted from sitting in a car for nearly ten hours. Inside, all I notice is a stone fireplace in the corner and that the walls and floors are all redwood planks, finished naturally with barely a hint of sheen. The entire place smells like the inside of a hope chest, full of history and dreams and longing.

  When Simon walks us through the front door and I can see every corner from the entryway, I understand then that it is a very small house. On the drive, he said as much, claiming I might be disappointed if I was expecting something lavish. I didn’t care, but didn’t believe him, either, assuming it had to be the distorted worldview of a trust-funder talking, because he also said they own the ten acres surrounding the house. If I’ve learned anything from five years in LA and a few years being siblings with a rock star, it’s that “modest” by California real estate standards means “mansion” to the rest of us. Guaranteed, nobody with a family foundation puts a shack on ten acres of prime Big Sur dirt.

  However, as with so many other things I’ve gotten wrong about Simon, I walk into a rustic one-bedroom cabin that, although fully restored, has probably been here since the fifties. I can hear the ocean outside, so loud it sounds like we are just feet away. There is no moon in the sky, so all I can do is assume we’re close to the water. In the morning, I’ll see what is beyond these walls, but sleep calls us to do nothing but drop our bags and shuffle toward a flat surface.

  We tumble into bed, find each other in the dark, and give in. It happens because our bodies demand it and our hearts don’t know how to rest without feeling each other first. Afterward, we collapse into each other and sleep.

  The heavy smell of saline and honeysuckle drifts into the room after sunrise. Despite how much I want to savor the way Simon is snoring gently while his hand twitches over the sensitive skin just under my breast, I’m wide-awake. Before I leave the bed, I lie there staring at the ceiling awhile, enjoying how his wonderfully callused fingers feel, even when he isn’t trying.

  Once it seems I’ve gotten my fill, I slither out of the sheets and crouch at the foot of the bed to unzip my bag quietly. After pulling a tank over my shoulders and sliding on a pair of yoga shorts, I survey the room in the daylight.

  Peeking through a doorway at the opposite end of the room, I find a modest-sized bathroom covered in soapstone from the floors to the shower, the only exception being a round copper soaker tub that, unfortunately, doesn’t look quite big enough for two. Then I hear Simon rustling in the sheets, and turn back into the bedroom to watch his hand pat my side of the bed for a second before sleep takes over again and he nestles into the pillow. The bed is massive; heavy knotted timber covered with deep scars and wormholes, dressed in white bedcoverings without a speck of color or pattern, only the bright pristine sheen of nothing. Beyond the bed and two nightstands, the room is empty, too small for much else.

  Once I’m sure Simon is asleep again, I pad out into the living room.

  Well, hello there, piano. I evidently missed that last night, which is surprising given that the grand piano takes up most of the tiny room. In the bright sunlight, a skim of fine dust covers the top, dimming the shine of the glossy black finish. When I head toward it, what I note in my periphery actually forces me to do one of those stop-and-back-up moves.

  Holy shit.

  Outside the living room, just beyond the piano, lies an unhindered stretch of oceanfront that would leave even the most cynical of people wonderstruck. The thundering noise of the ocean last night makes sense now, because we’re sitting on top of the damn thing.

  Floor-to-cei
ling windows line the west walls, and the far edge of the room has a set of barn-style sliding doors for access to the deck. Once I get the sliding doors open and stumble out onto the weathered platform deck, the expanse of it is almost overwhelming. The house sits up on a craggy hillside, and below, where the ocean assaults the beach, there isn’t a soul in sight.

  When the enormity of its seclusion and beauty hits me, I pull my hands through my hair and let out a heavy exhale, just so that I can memorize this snippet of time. The sunlight is on the cusp of being a touch too warm, but the emptiness of the location and the cool breeze rolling off the ocean temper it.

  My plan when I crawled out from bed was to find coffee and warm some of our leftover pastries for breakfast. In the quiet of the morning, here in a veritable paradise, instead I decide that at least a few yoga poses are called for. If I’m here, in a place where contemplative focus should surely come easily, it would be sacrilege to waste my morning.

  Ten minutes in, I can feel him behind me. When I settle into cobra, I smile and close my eyes. Downward dog is next. Perfect for a rapt audience of one special pervert.

  “I know you’re watching me. I can practically hear the lewd thoughts rattling around in your brain right now.”

  “Bent over like that in those shorts, you can’t expect me not to think really filthy things.”

  As I round out the last few poses, I notice him shift from the opening of the sliding door where he is leaning and turn back into the house.

  “You want coffee, sunshine?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Through the open doorway, I hear him rustling packages and opening cabinets. The sound of him in there, doing something as simple as making coffee for us, sends a hiss of happiness rushing through my rib cage. An air of too-good-to-be-true is swirling around us, and when Simon does things like that, my brain screams “caution” so loudly I can’t drown it out. I want it all to be true so badly it sets my teeth on edge, but if it is this straightforward, it can’t be. Two people can’t enjoy this kind of contentment without a corresponding shit storm looming.