True Devotion

by Liora Blake

  Moving through sun salutation a few more times, I stop when Simon emerges with a coffee cup in each hand, a plate with pastries balanced precariously on one of them. As he walks by, I reach out and take the plate, just in case he bobbles. That way we won’t lose any precious baked goods.

  At the far edge of the platform decking, a low-slung teak couch and coffee table sit in a prime spot for seeing every inch of the view. Simon tilts his head in that direction.

  When we settle in, I draw my legs up and tuck them under me, scooting so close to him that my shoulder bumps against his. I set the plate in my lap and start to pick up a morning bun, taking a huge bite before shoving it toward Simon’s mouth. He raises his eyebrows and grins before finally taking a bite. He was about three seconds away from my rescinding the offer of sharing, so it’s good he finally made a move.

  We eat and drink our coffee in near silence, with only a few sweet kisses to break up the quiet. Curling my fingers into the back of his hair, I let my nails scratch his scalp and he gives up a little groan when I find the perfect pressure he wants. As his eyes close, I want to interrupt his bliss by kissing every single spot on his face, but resist.

  After a bit, I shimmy down to lie across the couch and rest my temple against his thigh. His fingers find my hair, like they always do, and he sweeps it back off my face without moving his gaze from the ocean. Something heavy ticks inside his expression, staring at the ocean as if it might hold some answer he needs if he just looks long enough.

  Before whatever it is Simon is thinking about turns too grave, I decide to bring him back to me. I’m not quite ready for this unspoiled morning to go south. I want to live in the illusion of perfection for as long as we can.

  “It was nice of your dad to let us come here.”

  Simon hums something unintelligible, shifting to slouch down on the couch a bit. “He’s happy we’re using it. He doesn’t come here, so it sits empty unless I come up.”

  I turn my head to see him better. “Why doesn’t he come up here?”

  “He can’t handle being here without her. Too many memories.”

  Simon stills and manages to harden his gaze even further into the ocean, squinting his eyes and creasing his forehead. Turning my body, I lie on my back and adjust until my head is resting in his lap. When he looks down, I lock my eyes with his and try to ask him to tell me more without uttering a word. A soft smile crosses his lips and he leans down to put one small, dry kiss on the tip of my nose.

  “My dad bought this place as a surprise for their twentieth wedding anniversary. It was a brilliant, over-the-top, romantic plan. Except she got her diagnosis the week before.”

  “Did she ever get to see it?”

  He smiles, but it doesn’t resonate through to his eyes or his heart. Instead, he lets it drop as quickly as it came. “They came up here that weekend anyway. She loved it, of course. We actually spent a week here as a family just before she died.”

  He looks away for a moment, and even with his head turned slightly, I can see him close his eyes tightly.

  “God, the three of us crammed in that tiny house together. I was probably more of a little asshole than I should have been, but at the time I didn’t understand how fucking meaningful it was that we were all together. I slept on the beach a couple of nights, just so I wouldn’t have to listen to the way her breathing sounded so sketchy. It made me nuts, but I couldn’t say that to her, you know?”

  Whether it’s subconscious or not, I don’t know, but his hand twitches on the couch cushion until he finds my body, tugging up the bottom of my tank and sliding his hand to rest over my bare belly. Once his hand settles there, it goes still, pressing gently into my skin and rising with each breath I take. The warmth of his palm, heavy and insistent on my body, is about more than the physical touch, almost that he needs to weight my body to keep his own from being set adrift.

  “She would sit out here and look at the ocean for hours. Toward the end, she was always cold, so my dad would wrap her up in a big comforter he warmed up in the dryer for her. When she would doze off from the pain meds, my dad would just stare at her . . . like he was trying to memorize every freckle, every scar, every inch of her. Because he knew if he didn’t, he might forget some little amazing thing about her when she was gone.”

  Then it becomes my turn to look away. Because if I don’t, if I look up into Simon’s eyes, I will absolutely lose it. To avoid weeping like a ninny, I shut my eyes tightly.

  “How did they meet?”

  A laugh rumbles out of Simon’s chest, more pronounced than I expected. Once he stops laughing, he lets out a deep sigh.

  “They met here. In Big Sur. You’ll love this story. I know exactly what you’re going to say when I tell you.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. I’m wildly unpredictable.”

  He shakes his head and grins, and this time it’s real. “My dad was finishing his senior year at Cal Poly. He couldn’t afford to go home for spring break, but he’s not exactly a shot-drinking, go-nuts-in-Mexico kind of guy, so he loaded up his car and decided to drive the coast for a few days. The first night he ended up at this little dumpy hole-in-the-wall diner, and his waitress was a knockout brunette who, after she took his order, ended up listening to him talk about particle physics for an hour. He never made it any farther up the coast, and he ate every meal for the next six days at that diner. Then he came back every weekend for the next two months. She always said she wasn’t sure if he was crazy, in love, or both.”

  “Apparently stalking runs in the family.”

  Simon lets out a bellowing laugh and uses one hand to point squarely in my face.

  “Ta-da! That’s exactly what I knew you would say.”

  His body relaxes again, freed from the weight of talking solely about losing a woman who sounds a bit more like me than I would have guessed. A regular woman working in a diner meets a dorky genius and can’t seem to help listening to him talk incessantly. There’s a familiar ring in there, that’s for sure.

  Craning his neck, Simon urges me up off his lap and points up the hillside at something.

  “See the last cliff side that’s visible on the south edge? You see those mint-green cabins?”

  Rising up to my knees, I squint in that direction and scan until I find what he is pointing at. A row of 1960s-esque, motel-style cabins sits perched on the cliff, their dated and weather-beaten façades visible even from here. I nod my head and he slides his arm around my waist. When he does, his head comes to rest against my belly, his hair brushing against the bare strip of skin above the waist of my shorts.

  “My dad used to stay there when he came up to see her. He proposed three months after they met, and six weeks after that, they got married at city hall in Monterey. They spent their honeymoon in that shitty motel. My dad tried to buy the place for their twentieth, but the guy wouldn’t sell, so he figured this would be the next best thing since they could see it from here.”

  Slinking back down to rest on my heels, I watch him continue to gaze at the cliff side. Finally, he turns back and draws his arm over my shoulders.

  “Not to sound completely corny, but my parents had all that stuff you read about. They were first love, one love, true love. You can’t manufacture that kind of devotion. Love like that finds you, not the other way around.”

  Resting against his shoulder, I turn to face the ocean again, saving us both from having to look each other in the eye when he was talking about love.

  “Tell me something about your mom.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Something about what made your dad crazy for her.”

  “Well, she was beautiful, so I’m sure that was the first thing.” He whistles softly as he thinks. “When my mom would have a conversation with someone, it was like nothing else existed except the two of you. She never drifted; she was always right there, you know? She had these really pale green eyes, and she would fix those eyes on you and hang on every word you said. That was
her superpower. She listened with her whole heart.”

  My hand wanders onto his thigh, and I let my fingernails draw over his jeans in small swirling circles. “That’s what you do.”

  “Hmm? What?” Simon’s memories pull him away for a moment, but when I speak, he turns his gaze to mine and lets his dark eyes find me again.

  “You have the same superpower. I always thought it was just you flirting, but it’s not. Sometimes you look at me like I’m about to say something really awesome and you can’t wait to hear it.”

  Simon laughs gently, then shakes his head a little, conceding to what I said with a sheepish flicker of his eyes.

  “Well, that’s because it’s true with you. I can’t wait to hear every dirty, hilarious, sweet, amazing thing that comes out of your mouth. When you talk, I absolutely listen with my whole heart.”

  He tugs me over so I straddle his legs and then slips his hands up the front of my tank until they cover my breasts. “Usually, my dick is also listening. Just in case you say something that demands a response.”

  21

  “I’d like to propose a plan for the rest of the day.”

  Even though hearing Simon use the word “propose” when he’s talking to me makes my skin flush in panic, I’m able to lift my head up off the sand and shade my eyes to see his. He’s flopped in the sand next to me, wearing only a pair of black board shorts and leaning back onto his outstretched arms with his hat tugged down low.

  Once he has my attention, he starts to tick things off, extending his fingers one at a time to emphasize each item. “First, we go back up to the house and screw around a little until you end up bent over the back of the couch. Second, I take a shower while I watch you soak in that copper bathtub. Third, I make dinner for us. Fourth, we go to bed early but don’t go to sleep until late. Any objections?”

  Dropping my head back to the sand, I let my arm cover my eyes. “Yes. I have a major objection.”

  “Seriously? What could you possibly find wrong with my plan? It’s an excellent plan. I gave it a great deal of thought, especially the part about you bent over the couch.”

  “Item number three won’t work. You making dinner? I really don’t want cereal for dinner.”

  Simon topples his body over mine and pulls the top of my shirt down a bit so he can nibble the swell of flesh above my bikini top.

  “I know I’m just a worthless excuse of a man, but even I can grill a steak, slice that leftover bread, and toss some lettuce and junk in a bowl for a salad. I can also twist the top off some salad dressing and open a bottle of wine. Dinner. Done. Not a bit of cereal involved.”

  When I eventually emerge from the bath he drew for me, the kitchen is dark, which I take as a very bad sign. I take a moment to prepare myself to smile when he inevitably offers me a choice of Trix or Frosted Flakes. This would fall under the it’s-the-thought-that-counts column, because his obviously failed attempt at making anything other than cereal or toast is looming outside, I can feel it.

  Color me fucking floored when I peek around the deck and discover him pulling steaks off the grill before leaning down to shut the propane off. At the far north side of the deck, a mass of glowing tea lights covers a small round teakwood table, with our dinner plates arranged around them.

  “Hey, sunshine.” Simon raises his brows at me and then lets his eyes travel over my body, taking full inspection of the very short, flowy white cotton dress I threw on. Honestly, since it’s supposed to be a beach cover-up, the material is particularly sheer, so I’m sure he can see the outline of every curve on my body. Before I succumb to the sudden desire to cover myself, he turns to walk toward the table.

  When I sit down in the chair he gestures at, I must look a little stunned, because he starts to stammer out a bunch of things that sound like apologies. As he babbles, I keep staring at the way he has taken a small glass bowl and filled it with water, then floated some little white flowers in it. I didn’t think boys in real life did this kind of stuff. I thought things like flowers floating in shallow glass bowls surrounded by a tabletop of tea lights with a dinner he cooked just for you was only for mindless romantic comedies. The part of the movie where she realizes that he’s the one for her, even though all along she thought they were so wrong for each other.

  Oh God. Cue the saccharine love theme, because I want to kiss him so hard he forgets how to form a sentence.

  “I thought there were real candles somewhere in the house, but this was all I could find. I hope the wine is OK. You’ll drink merlot, right? The salad dressing I found had been in the pantry for approximately a decade, so I scrapped it. I hope you like an undressed salad—just think of it like a cleanse diet. Except you wouldn’t eat a rib eye if you were doing a cleanse. Or the carbs. Oh, and the wine probably—”

  “Shut up, Simon,” I whisper. “You’re ruining it.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him clamp his jaw shut and his eyes widen.

  “Ruining what?”

  I continue to stare at the tabletop and let my fingers graze over the edge of the flower-filled glass bowl. “This perfect dinner. Don’t you dare say one more thing that sounds like you think anything about it is less than amazing or I will punch you.”

  He settles in across from me and when I finally raise my eyes, the pleased expression on his face is one I haven’t seen before. That I made him feel like he got it right tonight and he doesn’t need anything else but that.

  We start to eat. And, who knew, but the man can cook a steak. From the perfect char that graces the edges, to the way the center is pink but warm, I decide it’s the best steak I have ever eaten. He even managed to take what remained of the olive country loaf and reheat it without drying it out, then generously dished a heap of butter into a bowl for us to slather on it.

  As we finish eating, the ocean crashes wildly but faintly in the distance, and if a shooting star careened across the damn sky, I wouldn’t have been a bit surprised, because that’s how idyllic it all seems. I’m calm in the way I am after a good yoga class, but more so. Honestly, it seems I haven’t felt this settled since I moved to California, or maybe ever.

  “You look like you’re solving the world’s problems over there, Dev. What’s cruising through that amazing brain of yours?”

  Simon has pushed back from the table a bit, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, the stemless wineglass he is drinking from perched on his chest in both hands.

  I drop my head back and stare straight up at the dark night sky. “Just how California’s never quite felt like home to me. I’ve been here for years, but sometimes I still think it won’t be forever.”

  Craning my head forward again, I catch the last moments of Simon frowning, before he looks down into his wineglass. “What made you come out here in the first place? You missed your family?”

  In a split second, I go from utterly relaxed, enjoying the way my body is heady from the wine and Simon, to stiffly adjusting my limbs to stave off a sudden discomfort. “I needed a change of scenery. No big story behind it.”

  Simon’s eyes narrow. “Don’t bullshit me. Not tonight.”

  “What? I just told you, no big story.”

  “There’s obviously a big story; I can hear it in your voice. You just don’t want to tell me. And you wouldn’t make a point of saying the opposite if there weren’t a story there.”

  I let a stony silence fall between us, hoping he will move on and let us get back to the part of the night where I only want to kiss him until his lips are raw. That I can do. Kissing and dirty talk. This? The part where he is digging around in the parts of me I prefer to keep buried? That I can’t handle. If he pushes too hard, I’ll walk. To where, I don’t know. Maybe I can get a cabin at the place his parents fell in love. That wouldn’t be miserable at all, holed up in a dingy motel that reeks of the Cole family’s ability to love so deeply it transcends the grief of a decade.

  Simon stands up suddenly and starts to stack plates haphazardly on top of
one another. Once he piles them all together, he stomps off into the house, and I can hear him letting flatware clash against the bottom of the metal sink as water rushes over them. I rise up slowly from my chair and blow all of the candles out, hating every moment that passes as each little flame disappears.

  Inside the house, he’s turned on one light, a table lamp that barely shines bright enough to illuminate the kitchen. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the taut rise of the muscles there inching toward his ears.

  “What do you want from me, Simon?”

  He shuts the tap off and waits there for a moment, with his back to me.

  “I want you to tell me something real for once. I’ve been trying to be patient with you, and not push, but we can’t grow this thing if you don’t let me in. I just want you to give me something—fuck, anything.”

  I let my voice go flat. “Translation: You want me to gut myself in front of you. That way you know every pain point to exploit when it’s convenient.”

  A loud, guttural growl emerges from him, then he turns slightly and begins to knock his forehead gently against an adjacent cabinet. “Jesus. Fucking. Christ. No. I don’t want that. I want to know you, Devon.”

  He faces me, stopping to wipe his hands dry with a dish towel on the counter.

  “I don’t particularly like talking about my mom. I really don’t enjoy talking about her dying. I especially don’t love talking about how my dad lost the one person that made him happy. But if I didn’t tell you that shit, you wouldn’t know me. You wouldn’t understand why I came home from that annual meeting so twisted up in knots I couldn’t unravel them without touching you. You wouldn’t know why this place, this tiny old house, is true love and heartache to me. I’m not stupid, Devon. I know you could use all of it as ammunition someday. You could destroy me in a million different ways, but I’d still rather take the risk, just so that it felt like you knew me.”