Touch of Heartache

by Joy Penny

  “I’m sorry if I said anything to worry you,” said Gyu-ri. “I just… wanted you to be on your guard around Earl.” Too late for that, thought Lilac. Gyu-ri gave Lilac a faltering smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

  Is that what everyone thought about all those other women in the job before me? Lilac raged then, both at people like Gyu-ri—as nice as she seemed to be trying to be—and even at the people in her own position before her. Why hadn’t they said anything? Why was it up to Lilac? Didn’t they know how scary it felt to face this alone, to not have anyone to back up her story—to go up against a man who’d been in a position of power at her employer for years, if not decades?

  “I’m just saying you can talk to me if you need to,” said Gyu-ri.

  “Thanks,” muttered Lilac. “I’ll email you with my proposal for dates and goals to meet along the way.” She shuffled all her papers together, not once meeting Gyu-ri’s eyes as she made her way to the door.

  She didn’t know if she would have cried or screamed if she’d looked at her again just then.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nolan spent almost all of his classes Friday with his mind focused elsewhere. He’d barely seen Lilac all week. Sure, she’d exchanged a few flirtatious texts with him over the past few days, but after that photo op on Tuesday, he hadn’t seen her more often than when he’d caught her racing though the halls on occasion. He was usually in his Silly suit and couldn’t say anything—though he made sure to wave when he did catch her eye—but he’d never gone to find her when on break or out of the suit. For one thing, she was sure to be in the proximity of Earl, with whom Nolan, like most anyone at Tent Tildy, preferred not to share the same air space. Even from their limited interactions, he knew he didn’t like the guy, and he was in no mood to remind the man of what Nolan had said to him the week before. Besides that, she always seemed too busy and he hadn’t wanted to get her in trouble. Assuming his well-intentioned confrontation with the boss hadn’t already done just that.

  Or maybe he’d just been chicken. But how do you flirt with a girl with your sleazy boss, potentially your little brother, and a bunch of cartoon animals around?

  Today, though, he wasn’t anywhere near that tapir. And one of his classes had been canceled—which meant that he’d have plenty of time to drive down to Cocoa Beach, have dinner, enjoy some sun, and drive the hour back home before his dad really missed him. A once-weekly babysitter picked up Landon from Tildy’s Tots on Fridays after Willow got out of school and stayed with them until their dad got home.

  It was now or fucking never and if she said no, so what? He’d still have the beach to look forward to. She couldn’t be the only fish in the sea.

  Still, as his sweaty palms reached for his phone—despite the lecture he was supposed to be paying attention to—he knew that was something he was just telling himself. He’d force himself to enjoy the beach regardless—it’d been too long since he’d last gone—but it just wasn’t going to be the same without her.

  Have plans for tonight? he typed. What do you think about heading to the beach?

  Nolan paced back and forth on the spot he’d claimed with a beach towel from the back of his trunk that had seen better days. He regretted remembering to pack swim trunks this morning—he had a hankering to go swimming somewhere, even before he knew class was canceled—while forgetting to pack a better towel. There was no way he was going to stop home after class, though, in case he got caught up with the kids. He’d never leave in time.

  He had a good view of the parking lot he’d told Lilac to use; he’d offered to pick her up but didn’t blame her at all for wanting to take her own car. She didn’t know him well, and they’d never been on an official date.

  Before this evening.

  If this even counted as an official date.

  He’d have to clarify that at some point.

  His nerves were getting the better of him now. Cocoa Beach was only an hour east of Orlando proper, pretty much straight down SR 528. Most people had GPS. There was no way she’d get lost, but if it was her first time driving there alone…

  He stopped, gazing over the ocean, and took a deep breath. He wasn’t her keeper. She was probably fine.

  He still didn’t know the full story behind last Sunday, but according to both Gavin and Frankie, it had been an oddity. Hell, he could understand feeling sad or angry enough to let loose like that. He had on occasion, before he’d turned twenty-one even—when the heartache of his mother’s passing had been too much to bear. But he’d soon seen that he had people who relied on him and he didn’t have time to dwell on heartache often. Not in such a potentially destructive way.

  But he’d binged at friends’ houses. Poor Lilac had done it alone. If she wasn’t interested in dating him, he at least wanted her to know he would be her friend. She wouldn’t need to get to that point again—do something like that without calling someone first—not here in Orlando.

  If she wanted to get drunk and shirk off stress and heartache, she could call him and he’d be there for her.

  He didn’t care if his dad expected him at home.

  Nolan realized that was the first time he’d allowed himself to think that since the accident. If his dad had asked him to give up his Sunday me-time, he would have.

  But if he’d asked him to give up time with Lilac… Maybe he wouldn’t have.

  “Hi! So… Wow. This is nice.”

  Nolan spun around. Lost in his thoughts, Nolan hadn’t even noticed Lilac approach him from behind.

  She stood there and Nolan’s eyes first darted to the golden bikini barely covering the most scandalous parts of her body before he snapped back into the moment and realized she was struggling with a tote bag on one arm and her other arm wrapped around an oversized umbrella. “I’m sorry I’m a little later than I expected. I stopped to get this.”

  Chuckling, Nolan scrambled forward to take the umbrella from her, pointing to the almost-setting sun. “You won’t need that for long tonight.”

  “I know,” said Lilac, pulling a bottle of sunscreen out of her tote, “but you can never be too careful.” Nolan stuck the umbrella in the sand, struggling a little to open it as Lilac sat down on his pre-arranged beach towel. She squirted some of the lotion onto her delicate hand and started rubbing it on her arm. Nolan leaned on the umbrella stand and grinned. He knew sunscreen was important, but he hadn’t bothered bringing any. It wasn’t going to be sunny for much longer and a little tan wasn’t too risky on occasion. Especially since he spent most of his day indoors and under several layers anyway.

  Lilac moved on to her legs and Nolan found himself sliding down the umbrella stand, practically slipping into the sand. He recovered, whistling casually, sure Lilac hadn’t seen.

  She was staring right up at him and grinning, one pink-manicured hand resting on one of her thighs. She held the bottle out toward him. “Can you get my back?”

  “Sure,” said Nolan, stumbling forward to grab the bottle from her. She turned over and folded her arms to cradle her chin, revealing the most perfectly-shaped ass cheeks known to man and a long, slender arched back. Down, boy, he thought. Inhaling deeply, Nolan slathered his palms with sunscreen before diving into the space between her bikini top and her bikini bottom.

  “Ah!” said Lilac, shuddering a bit. “Your hands are cold.”

  Nolan wondered if they were clammy because his heartbeat was drowning out all normal sensation. His hands tingled and his barely-covered nether regions throbbed.

  He’d left his condoms in the car—and he was going to be sure to get them out before his brother or sister played around in the glove compartment and asked what kind of balloons those were. But he’d told himself to stash them there just as a backup because it was never going to happen.

  But obviously, a small part of him hoped something was going to happen.

  “You take sun care seriously,” said Nolan, for want of anything else better to talk about. He finished on the small of her back and he wen
t to move his hands up above her bikini top, but as he trailed his palms upward, she arched a little and let out a small moan.

  He stopped.

  “Sorry,” said Lilac, grinning even with her eyes closed. “I’m just ticklish. Keep going.” He did, applying pressure to her shoulders but going gentle on her neck, stopping only to refill his hands with the goo.

  “My grandpa had melanoma,” said Lilac, and Nolan’s hands stopped moving.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. He removed his hands, his job done, though he ached when the touch between them severed.

  “Oh, he’s okay,” she said. “They caught it in time, but he has to be extra careful and get checked every few months.” She rolled her eyes as she turned over. “And yet the idiot still gets tanned. He hates how he looks pale, he says. Well, I’d hate how he’d look dead, I tell him.”

  Nolan snapped the cover back on the sunscreen, a smile faltering on his face. Any mention of death and his thoughts inevitably strayed toward his mom, even though it’d been just about three years.

  “Are you okay?” asked Lilac as she sat up beside him. “I’m sorry, that was insensitive of me. Maybe you lost your grandfather—”

  “I did,” said Nolan, cradling his legs against his chest. “Both of them—so long ago, I don’t even remember them. One of my grandmas, too. And the other one lives in Nevada, so I hardly ever see her.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lilac, all joy drained from her voice. Nolan hated that he was responsible for that in her. Her joy was so wonderful, so contagious.

  But he decided it was time to lay it all on the table. That way, they could just remain friends if that was what she wanted, which was how he expected it to be. “It wasn’t that, it’s… My mom died. Three years ago.”

  “Oh,” said Lilac, sitting straighter. “I… I’m sorry.”

  That’s what everyone said when he told them. That’s all he expected anyone to say. What could you say to someone who’d experienced loss? Words were never enough.

  “She was our family’s everything,” he said, taking a deep breath. “She kept it all together. And then—bam—one night she was gone.” He checked to see if he was totally bumming Lilac out, but she was gazing at him, concern etched on her features. “An idiot driving the wrong way down a highway.”

  Gasping slightly, Lilac rested a hand above her breast. “I don’t know how you can drive after that.” She shivered. “I—I’d keep thinking about it every time I got behind the wheel.”

  Nolan laughed dryly. “Orlando doesn’t exactly have the greatest public transit system. It’s drive or get nowhere—and if you opt for the latter, you can’t even stay in your house for long because you can’t get to a job and you run out of money and can no longer pay for it.”

  Lilac ran a finger in a circle in the sand just beyond the edge of the frayed towel. “You’re right. I’m sorry I said that.”

  Nolan turned, laying a hand atop hers—hesitatingly at first to make sure she was okay with it. She didn’t flinch. “Don’t be. I just… Well, I apparently like to bum everyone out by talking about it.” He tried to smile, but he could feel it didn’t quite reach his lips right.

  She locked her eyes with his. “You didn’t bum me out. It’s sad… I…” She sighed and shook her head. “I’m really messing up what to say.”

  “No,” he said, sitting straighter but not letting go of her hand. “It’s… I mean, how do you talk about it? Even if it’s colored everything about my life since then, I can’t… It’s hard to talk about.”

  “You really step up with the kids,” said Lilac. It was more an observation than a question.

  Nolan’s hand slipped off hers. “Dad isn’t—he’s not a bad dad. He’s just easily overwhelmed. And he has his plate full working one full-time job and one part-time job to try to make ends meet. We need my salary, too—it helps with the costs of raising two kids.”

  “But you’re a kid, too!”

  Nolan felt an invisible punch to the gut at that. Of course, this beautiful, mature woman thought he was a kid. “Well, I’m twenty-one now,” he said, and sure enough, he saw something like disappointment flicker across her eyes. “I was eighteen when it happened. I was planning to go to college out of state and then… Well. I settled on community college for a computer science degree.”

  “But that’s not right. I meant that you’re his kid. You’re a kid in the family. I’m sure that’s not what your mom would have wanted!”

  “I’m sure not,” said Nolan, pushing back the bit of rage floating to the top of his brain. He knew it was unreasonable, but it wasn’t the first time he’d felt like this. “But it doesn’t matter.”

  “But can’t your dad just hire someone?” she asked.

  That elicited a double-take. Nolan actually stared at her to see if she was kidding, but she seemed nothing but earnest. He laughed. “With what? We needed Mom’s income. She didn’t have much of a life insurance policy—it paid for the funeral and that was about it—and the only reason we can even afford a babysitter for a few hours a week is because I can take Landon to Tildy’s Tots for free since I work at Tildy World full-time. Willow usually has to suffer through after-school programs. We just have a sitter on Fridays when I’m busy with school. And then there was tuition. How were we going to afford that? And don’t say loans—I wasn’t saddling myself with over a hundred grand in loans.”

  Lilac bit her lip, then smiled, bringing up a handful of sand. “This is busy with school?”

  Nolan grinned despite himself. “One class got canceled today, and okay, a couple of nights a week, I do stuff by myself.” His scalp itched and he ran a hand through his hair. “Dad’s home most evenings because he starts early. Like way early. And there’s the babysitter on Fridays.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” said Lilac, letting go of her sand and sliding in closer to him. He stiffened as she leaned across him, her beautiful, full lips less than an inch from his chest, but then she straightened, her bottle of sunscreen in one hand. “Did you put any on?”

  Chuckling, he pointed toward the western sky and the parking lots and hotels and restaurants behind him. “It’ll be twilight before too long.”

  Lilac popped the top and slathered her hands together. “But it’s not nighttime yet.” She nodded at him. “Turn around. I’ll get your back.”

  Nolan wasn’t going to object to that. He flinched but then relaxed as her small, soft hands worked up and down his bare back. “Thanks for coming,” he said then, sure he wouldn’t have her beside him for much longer.

  “Thanks for inviting me.” Lilac’s fingers made their way up to his shoulders now, her digits doing little movements to melt the tension right out of his body. He was glad he’d clenched his legs to his chest to hide the stiffness in his trunks.

  “I don’t get to hang out with people much,” said Nolan truthfully. “Outside work. Life is… kids at Tildy World and kids at home.”

  Lilac took a break then, filling her hands with more sunscreen. He didn’t object when she started rubbing one of his arms, peeling it away from his knees.

  He cleared his throat. “Tildy World seems like a place where dreams come true when you’re a kid.” Lilac’s hands froze on his bicep. “But when you work there a while, it just becomes a stressful, hectic work day just like any other place—only glamoured a bit with fantasy and make-believe. I don’t hate it there, but it’s certainly lost its charm.”

  She didn’t say anything to that, filling her hands again and going to work on the other arm. Nolan had to shift his legs just right so she wouldn’t notice the bulge. He took a deep breath and tried to calm his mind as her soft touch went to work on his skin. “How’s it going?” he asked quietly, sure her bender on Sunday had something to do with the job. “How do you like Florida so far?”

  “I love Florida,” she said, almost too concisely. She stared at him then and poked his chest lightly. “Lie down. I’ll get your chest and legs.”

  Nolan had nev
er heard of anyone asking for help getting those easier-to-reach places, but he didn’t object. He squeezed his legs together as his head hit the towel, fighting his hard-on, which had just been quieting down. She started down at his legs, filling her hands with sunscreen and then massaging his calf and working her way up to his thigh. Clenching his fists together, he tried to focus on what he’d been trying to do. Get her to talk. Let her know she doesn’t need to cope with stress in an unhealthy way.

  “A lot of people think it’s too hot here,” he said, knowing full well that Orlando weather wasn’t what had set her on course to Thommy’s.

  Lilac snorted. “I guess the heat can be a bit brutal. Spanish summers and beaches probably have a leg up on Orlando ones, but after countless Midwestern winters, Orlando will do.”

  “You’ve been to Spain?” asked Nolan as Lilac crawled around him to start work on the other leg. The way her arms pressed against the bottom of her breasts as she crawled, hands and knees, up toward him framed her cleavage even more, like that needed more of a highlight. He squeezed his fists tight again and clenched his eyes for good measure this time, though he could feel his throbbing member down below.

  She saw it, too, he was sure of it, because she chuckled, but still, she began work on his leg. “I spent a semester abroad,” she said, “but I’ve been there for a few weeks in the summer, too. A few years back.”

  “Wow,” said Nolan, genuinely impressed. He didn’t even have a passport. He’d had no need. The most global traveling he’d done was to head over to Disney’s Epcot Center and walk from one country’s pavilion to the next. If seeing the world was anything like making your way through small, square plots of the country’s most famous cultural icons and stereotypes, then he was sure to impress.

  He laughed at his own joke.

  “What?” asked Lilac, her hands digging soothingly into the muscles above his knee.