“It won’t work. Deirdre lives in town. She sees your face, she’ll remember it. What happens when she sees you out cavorting with other women? It would make me even more pathetic than I am now.”
“It’s only a month. I just won’t date anyone until I have to leave.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is simple, Kami. I got you into this mess. Let me help you out of it.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’m not the jackass you think I am.”
“I don’t think—” I started. He gave me The Look. That would be, the no-bullcrap look. “No, you’re right. I’ve pretty much thought of you as a donkey’s butt since the first day I showed up to jump.”
The funny thing was he laughed and didn’t look at all offended.
Deirdre predictably texted back: Boyfriend? What boyfriend?
“Ready?” my new fake boyfriend asked. “Our first official selfie as a couple.”
Before I even had the chance to check for puffy eyes or fix my hair, he tugged my chair closer to his, draped his arm around my shoulder, angled his body to achieve maximum torso contact as he leaned his head in to look more intimate than friendly, and used his other hand to take our picture with my phone.
“Wow, I’m quite the photographer,” he said, then flipped the phone around for me to see, laughing outright at my reaction.
Because my eyes, in fact, looked puffy, although my hair looked okay. He typed in the caption: Len bought me skydiving lessons to help me get over my fears.
He sent it. Then he powered off my phone and handed it back.
“Why’d you shut it off?” My mind still tried to reconcile the total one-eighty he’d pulled from the man who’d sat down maybe fifteen minutes ago to the man sitting there now.
Len shrugged. “She’s going to have a lot of questions, which it’ll kill you to ignore. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“What do you know about my fears?”
“Nothing, but what you’ve said, what I’ve observed. The ex said you were boring, wouldn’t go on adventures, and you’ve tried four different times to dive but backed out. Not to mention, you keep calling yourself a coward. Doesn’t take a genius.”
Well, since he’d been so forthcoming with his other answers, I decided to ask a more personal question. One that a girlfriend would know, one that I’d wondered about since I’d first met him six weeks ago. “Why Lenin? Was your mom a fan of the Bolsheviks?”
He’d been laughing at me here and there since first sitting down at my table, so this one shouldn’t have affected me any differently, but as it sounded totally different from the others, it did. A deep, rumbling laugh sounding like it rose up from the pit of his belly. “Lennon, not Lenin. My mother was and remains a fan of The Beatles.”
“It’s nice. A strong, handsome name. It fits you.”
“Why, Kami, did you just pay me a compliment?”
“Seemed like the girlfriend thing to do, if we want to be convincing. Where are you going at the end of the month?”
“Iceland.”
“Iceland?”
He nodded. “My clients have a destination wedding to attend. Aside from the skydiving, I work on an eighteenth-century replica schooner cruise ship. Rich folk pay big bucks for the experience.”
“Wow… you are pretty much my antithesis, with your jumping out of planes and big water cruising.”
“I climb mountains, too.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“What about you, girlfriend? Where do you work?”
“Oh, I’m a hairdresser at Affinity Salon.”
“That’s the expensive place uptown, right?” Lennon took another sip of his drink, watching as I shook my head yes, as if my answer held the secrets to the universe. Though his reaction was far less intense. “Impressive.”
Not compared to skydiving, schooner cruising, and mountain climbing, but I enjoyed the work and told him as much.
Two:
I woke up on Lennon’s couch, well into the next morning, after he’d plied me with more gin and tonics yesterday, so I wasn’t allowed to drive myself home.
That was my last memory.
The only reason I knew I woke on Lennon’s couch was because it wasn’t my couch and pictures of him with various people hung in frames on the walls around the room.
Somehow, I’d lost my pants during the night and my mouth tasted like unwashed butt.
And as I sat up, way too fast for the amount of alcohol I’d consumed last night, my head might have literally split open from my forehead to the base of my skull. At least it felt that way.
Shifting my feet to the floor, I rested my elbows to my knees, head in my hands, palms pressed to my eyes. Most times adding exterior pressure to counteract the internal pressure helped. Today it didn’t help.
Luckily, my stomach felt fine. A fact I was even more thankful for when I saw the ibuprofen and full bottle of water sitting on the coffee table across from where my head had laid.
I unscrewed the cap, took a long swig, and downed the pills. Then because I heard rustling around in the kitchen, I stood up. My blood pressure dropped suddenly, probably from my massive headache. I got dizzy and fell back, my bottom to the cushion again.
Hand to forehead, I tried to shake away the dizzy spell and stood once more, this time much slower, and managed to stay upright.
The T-shirt I had on, not the one I’d worn to the jump yesterday, fell to skim my thighs just below my bottom and crotch area. My lack of clothing had me feeling a bit exposed, but when I looked (slowly again, not wanting to chance another dizzy spell) around the room to locate them, it appeared my pants had up and walked away.
Okay, so he’d seen my undies? I could hide out here for no real reason. I mean, I put on a fresh pair every day. Or I could follow the smell of bacon and maple syrup wafting from the direction of the kitchen. I followed the bacon. Because everyone knew unless you physically couldn’t keep food down, bacon was really the only way to ease the stress of a hangover.
Lennon stood at the stove finishing the smoky, salty, meaty goodness. Puffy silver dollar pancakes topped with eggs and cheese waited for the bacon.
“Mornin’, glory.” He greeted me, using a spatula to expertly flip the perfectly crisped bacon onto a plate lined with a paper towel to drain.
This surprised me. The man didn’t much look like he spent any amount of time in the bacon section of the super market, unless you counted that ultra-low-fat turkey “bacon.” And let’s face it, ugh! No one counted turkey bacon.
I groaned. “You’re far too chipper for this time of morning.”
Then he laughed that beautiful laugh at me again. “It’s almost eleven.”
“My point.”
Finally looking up at me, Lennon jutted his chin in the direction of my water bottle. “Drink up. You don’t finish, you don’t get fed. And this is one of the breakfasts I’ve perfected. Trust me. You want this.”
Challenge accepted, seeing as my head hurt too much to argue. I lifted the bottle to my mouth and sucked down the entire rest of the water without coming up for air. I sucked so hard, the sides of the bottle collapsed in on themselves.
“Jesus,” he whispered. I looked up in time to see him swallow hard. What I saw in his eyes, well, I couldn’t describe it exactly. Except to say he looked surprised, dare I say, a good surprised.
Though I thought it safer to avoid his look and comment altogether. “Feed me,” I ordered.
He stared at my mouth one beat, two beats, three beats more before he honestly jolted, then began to finish the assembly of our—what turned out to be—pancake breakfast sandwiches and walked them out to the dining table.
I followed and sat at the place he left open for me. At the first bite, I could have sung hallelujah. When he’d said he could make them well, the man hadn’t been exaggerating.
Still chewing because I was that classy and don’t forget, hungover, I asked, “Where’d my p
ants go?”
Sandwich aside, he actually swallowed his bite before he answered. “Wondered how long it would take you to ask. Your clothes are in the dryer. They should be done by now. Last night at the bar—”
“Did I puke?” I cut him off. Again, because I was a class act.
“Um… no.” A smirk played at the corners of his mouth. He wanted to laugh at whatever picture, memory, danced through his head. Good choice not to laugh because I had my fist balled to punch him. Delicious food or not, hungover me was not as friendly as she could be. Or in this case, should be, as Lennon just kept surprising me. He wasn’t the arrogant, impatient jump instructor I’d first met weeks ago.
“Then what’d I do?” I demanded snidely.
“You turned a mud slick into a slip-n-slide.”
“I did what?”
He shrugged, as if drunk women did this in his company all the time. “There was a sloping mud slick, runoff from the bar’s gutters. We’d just had all that rain. You saw it, shouted, ‘I’m not boring’ and belly-flopped onto the mud. You did it like four times before I could stop you.”
“Four times?”
“You couldn’t get in my truck covered in mud, so I had to strip you down in the parking lot.” Before I could screech my mortification at him, he held up his hands, patting the air in that placating “hold on a minute” way people try to do to calm down a crazy person. “Nobody else was around. I made sure of it. And the parking lot was dark.”
“How’d you get me into your apartment?” The crazy was leaving me, replaced by a healthy dose of shame.
“I pulled my T-shirt off and slipped it on you before we got out. So you were covered. Between my board shorts and you in the tee, which looked like a cover-up, if anyone saw us, they’d have assumed we’d been swimming.”
It was at that moment something began to unfurl in the pit of my belly. Something not good—because it was very good. I recognized that something in the pit of my belly. A big, screaming crush. Yes, I had a screaming crush on the guy. In one night he’d managed to go from arrogant donkey’s butt to this… this awesome representative of the male persuasion. I couldn’t let him be my pretend boyfriend anymore, not with a screaming crush. I knew myself; it would get real awkward to the point he’d become super uncomfortable.
I knew it would happen because it happened once before, and not with Brian. What Brian and I had developed over time. I hadn’t even been particularly attracted to him when he’d asked me out, but knew how hard it could be to summon up the courage to put yourself out there. So, what the heck, right? And I’d said sure.
No, the guy I’d gotten the screaming crush on happened to be my brother’s best friend, Harrison. He was beautiful, had these crystal blue eyes, similar to Lennon’s. But five years my senior, he wouldn’t have anything to do with my sixteen-year-old self. Still, because my brother and I were close, they tried their best to include me until my stupid crush culminated with me making a pass at Harrison.
We’d been in the backyard of the house my brother and Harrison rented. It was located on a large property on the outskirts of town. They liked to ride four wheelers and snow mobiles, so the place made sense.
I’d thought we were alone outside at the bonfire we’d thrown to welcome Harrison’s brother, Leo, for the summer. Leo was a year older than me and lived with his mother—their parents were divorced—in a different city so he could go to some smart school. We were waiting for him to arrive before commencing with the festivities.
Yeah, we weren’t alone. My brother and Leo appeared from the shadows through the side gate of the house just in time to witness the humiliation of Harrison shoving me off his lips after I’d surprise attack-kissed him. I barely glimpsed either my brother or Leo but saw enough of them to know they’d seen all of my idiotic interaction. And heard Harrison go on to tell me that even if I weren’t his best friend’s sister, I was just a kid and he didn’t get off on kids.
He wasn’t mean when he’d said it, although his rejection sliced over every inch of me as if he’d fended me off with a butcher knife instead of the truth. His words stung like he’d poured lemon juice over those exposed cuts, because although not mean, he’d left no room for misunderstanding.
Right then, I packed up my stuff—purse, keys and jacket—and got the heck out of there, never to be in Harrison’s presence ever again. It wasn’t long after “the incident,” as I’d come to call it, that he and my brother joined the Air Force together. And then it wasn’t long after that that they decided to see if they had the stuff to become PJs. Pararescuers for the rest of us. Formerly known as parajumpers, hence the PJ, or the guys with medic training who fly into dangerous situations to extract the wounded, try to stabilize them midflight, usually under fire, and get them to hospital.
Neither Lennon nor I needed my crush to complicate the situation. Apparently, I’d been staring at him this whole time lost in thought, and I only became aware of my staring because he asked a playful yet defensive, “What?”
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Do I have something on my face?” he asked. Yes. A delicious smirk and dreamy blue eyes. The tiniest scar above his right eye, which gave a hint of ruggedness to his already-sexy model features. Though I couldn’t exactly tell him all that.
“What? No.”
“Then why are you staring?” This came with a corresponding chuckle, as if he read my thoughts. Could see into my mind.
“Quick, say something rude to me.”
“I’m not going to say something rude to you. I like us getting along. You’re… fun. Besides, a boyfriend wouldn’t be rude. Consistency and all.”
No, no, no. He had to be rude so I wouldn’t like him any longer. The only way for him to be my fake boyfriend was for him to be rude to me. How could he not comprehend that, albeit without me actually explaining the situation, because um… no way.
And I think with the way he lifted that last bit of sandwich to his mouth, slowly biting, seductively chewing, he did it simply to annoy me. Okay, maybe he didn’t purposely chew seductively. Gah! I threw my hands over my eyes and turned away. See? Awkward. Already.
He had to pick up on my awkwardness, yet he continued to disregard it. “So, here’s what’s on our itinerary today. We go skinny-dipping.”
My eyes bugged. “Excuse me? We are not going skinny-dipping.”
“We have to. I figure to work you up to the bigger challenges, like skydiving, we have to start off small. That’s where you were going wrong. Starting too big.”
“I’m not getting naked in front of you.”
It was as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Finish your food. Then you can shower and dress. After, we’ll head down to the lake for some skinny-dipping. It’ll be fun, liberating. You’ll love it.”
The first part of his plan, me finishing up my breakfast, I did without complaint. I was still intent to shut down any ideas about him and me skinny-dipping when I saw my phone sitting on his kitchen cupboard. I picked up my plate and walked over to the sink to load it into the dishwasher, powering back on my phone the moment I finished.
My phone pinged with several texts in succession. About five from Deirdre from last night, the others, though, came from our other mutual friends. It appeared Deirdre had been busy spreading the word about my relationship status. All of them wanting to know, who was the guy? I could deal with them. Until I got to the final text message. From Brian. What. The. Heck.
Brian: He’s going to help you overcome your fears?
At least six months he’d cheated on me. What right did he have to even text, let alone leave a comment like that? I didn’t owe him any explanation. He cheated. He left. I did neither. And standing in Lennon’s kitchen, squeezing the life out of my stupid phone, I realized only one option remained open and viable to me. Or to us.
Lennon and I were going skinny-dipping.
Three:
“Turn around!” I yelled at the infuriating man as he stood waist-deep in lake water. Wet hair
slicked back, droplets glistened off his olive skin, while he laughed like any of this was funny.
“I’m not turning around. And you’re not a coward, remember? You aren’t boring.”
Well, I’d been trying not to be boring. But if the difference between being boring or not rested on whether I got naked on a beach in front of Mr. Super-Sexy, then maybe it could be good to stay boring.
My clothing he’d left folded and just-pulled-from-the-dryer warm on the closed toilet seat lid for the end of my shower, which had me thinking, this fake boyfriend stuff wasn’t so bad. My real boyfriend never left warm-from-the-dryer, folded clothing for me. Although I’d done it for him plenty of times.
Then we left the apartment.
I begged him—down on my knees, hands clasped with fists full of his red cotton Nike T-shirt—begged him to stop off at my apartment to grab my swimsuit.
“No suits in skinny-dipping.” That, and turning in the opposite direction from my home, was his answer.
“What about my car? I need my car. We can’t just leave it at a bar,” I said in protest and a healthy dose of fear.
“Taken care of. I have a friend who’s bringing it back here. It’ll be parked in my spot when we get back.” Grr… he had an answer for everything.
Wait. The thought hit me, “I have the keys. How’s he going to move my car without the keys? Hmm?” I smiled as I threw out that last indignant, hmm.
Yeah, I smiled too soon.
“He owns a flatbed,” Len answered. Oh, I could see the smirk creeping over his lips as he stared straight ahead. The jerkface.
All hope was not lost. We passed a superstore. Superstores sold groceries, housewares, pharmaceuticals… and swimsuits.
“Please. It’ll only take me a minute. I won’t even try it on. Grab it. Buy it. Out.”
“No suits in skinny-dipping.” He repeated his earlier sentiment. Who said no swimsuits? He couldn’t be the absolute authority on skinny-dipping.
It took us another half an hour to drive to the lake he wanted to take me to, one private enough to go au naturel and not scar small children for life.
Skydiving, Skinny-Dipping Page 2