I looked at the ground. “I tried not to think too far into the future.”
“Because that’s all I ever thought about. That we’d be together. But you never let me talk about it. You’d never even let me tell you that I loved you.”
My gaze met his. “So, what’s up with your adoring public?”
“I called it off with them.”
“Really? When?”
“When I knew that you and Eugene needed me.”
And then he told me where he got the twenty grand.
“But Jax, how are you going to pay her back?”
“I’ve got plans. There’s a fifty-grand prize for the big wave Ride of the Year.”
“But that’s a gamble, right?”
“Of course it is. But there is one other place I can get the money.” And he told me about the house in Twentynine Palms that Tyler had left him after his death. “I’m not ready to deal with selling it, but if I have to I will. I’ve got you and Eugene to take care of.” He held my hands. I squeezed tight.
“What happened to all the money you made from those women?”
Jax sat next to me and folded his hands in his lap, his eyes downcast. “I’ve got a little left, but I spent most of it on travel. I have to train on big waves if I want to compete.”
I met his eyes. “Will you answer a question?”
“What’s that?”
“Did you ever have a live-in girlfriend? Were you ever engaged?”
His eyes became sad, his gaze falling to my knees. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because, Rosalyn, I was in love with you.”
“Me? I mean … A lot of years passed.”
“Maybe. But it was just like yesterday every time I thought of you. If you want the truth, I compared every woman I met to you. And none of them came close.” He held my hands. “Are you mad at me?”
The earth collapsed from underneath me. I was the one who should be sorry. I had left Jax when I was pregnant; I’d denied Jax and Eugene the ability to know each other all these years; I’d lied to Lydia and never had the chance to apologize to her. I had lied about a lot of things.
I gently removed my hands and folded my arms across my chest. “I’m mad at myself. I really screwed things up. For everybody. For you, for Eugene.”
“Don’t say that. You can’t be mad at yourself. You did what you thought was right.”
“I messed things up so bad. And now … now.” I had hurt Jax so badly that the poor guy had turned to prostitution. “My health—”
“Rosalyn. Look at me. Things are going to be okay. We’re together again. We’ve got Eugene. We need to put the past behind us. I’m here now.” He took a deep breath and held my hands. “I love you.”
Jax had been a prostitute, and I blamed myself. But if I only had six months left to live, there was no time for luxuries like regret. I had to make things right between Jax and me, to somehow give him the love and pleasure I’d robbed him of, and to give back to Jax all that he’d given me. But, how was I going to do that in six months? Six months that would either end in more heartbreak for Jax and Eugene, or … Well, I just had to find the humor in life. I forced a smile. “Will you tell me some juicy stories about the male escort business?”
He hugged me so hard that I thought I was going to break. “Rosalyn, all I’ve ever wanted was you.”
“But you’ll tell me some of those stories? In bed?”
He grinned. “Only if you’ve got money.”
“Will you take a blow job as payment?”
“Hmm. I’m going to have to think about that. Are you any good?”
“Guess you’re going to have to audition me.”
After we made love that night, I stared at Jax sleeping peacefully. I stood up, selected the amethyst crystal from my dresser and clutched it to my chest. I looked out the window and prayed to the Universe, a plea to whatever or whoever had the power to reverse what was happening in my body.
Heal my body. And, please don’t separate us again.
Jax
Before we left Santa Cruz, Rosalyn noticed me checking my surf apps and pulled me aside. “There’s a swell, isn’t there?”
I smiled sheepishly and told her. “Todos Santos might be breaking soon.”
“That’s off the coast of Ensenada, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well, bring your board.”
“What are you talking about? Really? I can’t leave you.”
“You’re not going to leave me. Let’s just get down there, you get ahold of one of your boards and then we see how I feel.”
Rosalyn knew surfing made me happy and understood that big wave surfing was more than a sport to me: it was a passion. If we were right there and Todos Santos was breaking, well, I probably wouldn’t sleep the whole time.
She said, “Can you get a board?”
That’s when we made the plan to have Butch meet us at the airport. He would’ve gone to Todos himself, but he told me that he had to watch the store and that Summer may be coming for a visit over the next couple of weeks. I wondered if what had happened spooked him so that he didn’t want to be in big waves for a while. I felt protective over the people I loved, wanting to keep them out of harm’s way, but when it came to myself, well, if Todos was breaking, it would be epic. And it was only twelve miles off the coast of Ensenada, which was right next to Tijuana. From there, you took a boat to the island and the big wave spot known as Killers. And of course, if I surfed really well, there was the fifty thousand dollars for the Ride of the Year.
I called Gary and asked him if he could take care of Blue-ee a bit longer.
“When we gonna surf again?” he said.
“Don’t know, kiddo. Butch’ll be stopping by to pick up a couple of my boards, so let him in. Heading out to Mexico.”
“Mexico! You surfing Todos?”
“Not sure. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Well, Blue-ee misses you.”
“Take care of my little guy.”
“You want me to ask my mom if I can bring him to our place?”
“Think she’ll let you? Have you been behaving?”
“Well, not really. That’s boring. But I’ll ask her. She’s been in a good mood.”
“Thanks, man. I owe you a surf.”
After getting Eugene settled at Nelson’s house, Rosalyn and I flew to San Diego and rented a truck. The plan was for Butch to meet us with two of my big wave guns.
I texted Butch when we landed and made plans to meet at a local taqueria. California has some of the world’s best Mexican food, but the closer you get to the border, the better it gets.
When we entered the small restaurant where Mexican women were making homemade tortillas in the window, we spotted Butch at one of the laminate plastic tables. He stood up and with a huge grin said, “You must be Rosalyn!” He cradled her in a big hug, practically crushing the poor thing. Then he slapped me five. “Jax, buddy. You staying out of trouble?”
Butch and I ordered and dug into gooey quesadillas, the grease practically running off our elbows, tacos al carbon, and cold Dos Equis beers. Rosalyn ordered rice and beans with a bottled water. “Hey,” I said, elbowing her, “last chance for junk food.”
She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Vegan lifestyle, here I come.” Butch couldn’t take his eyes off Rosalyn. She was the first woman he’d met who had actually captured my heart. Rosalyn turned to Butch. “Jax tells me you two met back in Point Loma.”
He snapped to attention. “Yep, guess we were around nineteen. Kind of became one of the three musketeers with Tyler and Jax. When they’d let me, that is.”
I said, “I miss Point Loma.” Rosalyn’s eye caught mine. “Great memories there.”
Butch looked from my face to Rosalyn’s and back again. “Santa Cruz is pretty awesome too. Surfer heaven.”
“So, what’s going on with Dr. Bryant?” I said.
A faraway look came over his face. “Ah, Summer. She�
�s trying to get a few days off and make a trip down here.”
“That’s moving fast,” I said.
“We’ve been talking every day. Rosalyn, you know what we did one night? We spent a solid six hours on the phone.”
“Really? What did you talk about for that long?”
“I don’t know. I just know I could listen to her voice forever.”
I smiled at my friend. “You’ve got it bad.”
Butch said, “Well, it beats what I was planning on doing that night.”
Rosalyn said, “What where you planning?”
“A threesome.”
Rosalyn squeezed my hand and smiled politely. Then Butch said, “Only problem is, I was short two people.”
I covered my face with my hands. “Oh, Jesus.”
Butch set his quesadilla down, and like a kid in love, stared into Rosalyn’s eyes. “But enough jokes. Rosalyn, are you really planning on becoming vegetarian?”
Rosalyn smiled. “That’s the plan.”
Butch said, “Because if you run into a vegetarian vampire, I’ve got the cure.” With his fork, he speared a hunk of carne asada and held the fork aloft. “A steak to the heart.” I groaned.
Butch sat up straight. “Wait, wait, I’ve got one more.” Butch had about a thousand more, all of them equally awful. “Do you know how to make holy water?”
Rosalyn was all ears, and I touched her arm. “Please don’t encourage him.”
Butch said, “You boil the hell out of it.” He slapped his thigh.
Rosalyn smiled that brilliant smile of hers. “I like your jokes.”
Butch thrust his chest out and punched me in the arm. “See, I told you they were good.”
After lunch, we loaded my big wave guns into the rental truck and the three of us said our goodbyes. Rosalyn hugged Butch. “It was so nice meeting you.” She surveyed Butch, her eyes shining. “I’m happy to see Jax has a great friend like you.”
When Butch drew me into a bear hug, he whispered, “Lucky she’s the open-minded kind. Not many girlfriends eager to have a paid stud in their beds.”
“You, my man, are the only person who can get away with saying that.”
He smiled at Rosalyn and said, “Make sure this man takes good care of you.”
My phone rang and when I removed it from my pocket, it was Sandy. I cleared the call. We’d be in Mexico within the next thirty minutes. I would deal with Sandy when we returned to California.
Rosalyn
My stay at the Trinity clinic was a whirlwind of coffee enemas, broccoli juice, meditation, and lounging next to a refreshing swimming pool surrounded by Astroturf.
I kept an open mind about the idea of drinking juices made from twenty(!) pounds of fruits and vegetables every day, but my thoughts were more like, where is my bong when I need it? “Please, somebody, bring me my poppy seed tea,” I wanted to scream. The days would consist of juices, coffee enemas, a vegetarian diet, various supplements, like potassium, vitamin B-12, pancreatic enzymes, thyroid hormone, and a special iodine solution.
The whole idea behind the treatment was to eliminate toxins from the body and enhance immune function so that my body could fight off cancer. It had to be better than my crystals, which had done nothing to save me.
The Trinity clinic was the end of the line for us unfortunate souls who’d fallen prey to everything from cancer to auto immune disorders.
Jax and I settled in to our room, which included two bed-of-nails twin-sized beds, and my treatment began; one glass of fresh juice every hour, up to thirteen times a day. Some were tasty, others, like the juices including chard, made me want to gag. How can I describe the coffee enemas? I thought that after all my practice with, ahem, certain types of sex toys, I’d be prepared for the delights of the coffee enema. But I was wrong.
“I think I need to keep this in my bag of secret weapons on the Big Wave World Tour,” Jax told me as we both sipped fresh juice by the pool one warm Tijuana afternoon. “What’s in this thing anyway?” He held his nose and took another sip.
“Stop making fun of it. You love chard.”
“I love you. Especially when your kisses taste like chard. Can’t we have one with apple and strawberry juices?”
“Let me summon room service, Prince Charming.”
“They did tell us our twenty-grand included all the broccoli juice I could drink, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.”
At mealtime we’d sit around the communal dining table with the rest of the patients. One young woman had twin baby girls waiting at home with her husband. She was dealing with leukemia. Another, who must’ve been seventy-five, said this was her last shot at curing lung cancer. Jax would hand me tissues to blot the tears he saw forming in my eyes as we listened to their stories. There was a kid who was only eighteen and had lymphoma. He was full of wide-eyed curiosity about Jax’s big wave surfing. His enthusiasm made me feel he was going to beat his disease.
Jax told the boy, “Once you and I bust out of this joint, we’re going to In-N-Out Burger.”
I kicked him under the table. “Shut up and eat your cauliflower with carrot sauce.”
One day, after I’d had a coffee enema treatment, I felt like I was going to throw up. I was told it was due to the toxins working their way out of my system. “You’ve got to rid your body of those poisonous chemotherapy drugs,” the practitioner had said as I lay on the table with the hose up my butt. But anything was better than the chemo clinic where the nurses wheeled the bag of chemo drugs on a metal pole to my waiting arm. I must’ve been desperate, putting something into my system that had a red skull and crossbones on the label. The nurses wore masks and heavy gloves to prohibit the deadly chemicals from touching them.
I crawled back to our room where Jax waited for me, lying on his bed, reading the latest issue of Surfer magazine.
“You don’t look so hot.” He rushed to my side and put his arm around me. “Sit down.”
“I thought you said I was hot.”
“Well, yeah, but what you really need is a session with the male escort of the year.”
“Shut up, you.” I fell back on the hard bed, and Jax lay next to me, smoothing the hair back from my sweaty face and kissing my forehead. “I can’t wait until I start feeling good enough to have a male escort on top of me. You know of any?”
“When we get out of here, I need to take you on vacation to some romantic sun-soaked spot. But maybe we can start with a candlelit dinner at your kitchen table then move on to your bedroom.”
“Will you make me a vegetarian soup and bring me my bong?”
“No bong!” The Trinity practitioners forbade me from taking drugs of any kind, at least for now, to allow my body to heal itself.
“I’m just so tired.”
“Then close your eyes.”
I was tired physically, from the healing reactions like headaches and burning pain when I peed, but mostly mentally. Tired from dealing with cancer treatments and from worrying about Eugene and Jax. Sometimes it was too much.
I leaned in to Jax. “But you make me feel safe.”
“You are safe.”
He stroked my hair and gazed at me as though trying to memorize my features.
Then he jumped up and said, “I’ve got something to make you feel better.” He opened the closet, removed a package, and sat on the bed next to me. “Sit up. This is for you.”
I struggled to a sitting position. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
The present was wrapped in brown butcher paper secured with twine fashioned in a festive bow. When I unwrapped the package, my hand flew to my mouth. “It’s a shadow box! Just like the ones your mom used to make.”
The box was the size of a small corkboard and had six sections in which mementos were placed behind glass.
Jax’s eager face was radiant. “Do you like it?”
“Oh, my God, where did you get all this?”
“I put Butch to work running all over Point Loma.”
We sat side by side as Jax pointed out each item.
“This is a piece of the rope from Sunset Cliffs; these are shells from the beach; these are pebbles straight off the first beach we surfed together; these are rose pedals from that bush by your apartment where you used to steal roses; these are ticket stubs to Tyler’s concerts we went to together; and this … well, you know what this is.” He pointed to the photo placed in the center of the shadow box, a photo of the two of us standing side by side in front of Ol’ Betsy after we’d painted her. Jax wore a pair of faded jeans, his tanned chest bare, and I looked like a hippie chick with my yoga outfit and wild tangle of curls. Both of us wore huge smiles, and Jax’s arm rested casually over my shoulder.
I wiped away a tear. “Jax, this is the sweetest present anyone’s ever given me.”
“You like it?”
“I love it.” My fingers ran across the glass, the memories of our time together as sweet as the rose pedals. “Is this really a piece of the rope from Sunset Cliffs?”
“Yep.”
Jax looked at me with those crazy blue eyes, and then his warm mouth was on mine, a kiss that started out gently and ended urgently, our hands all over each other’s bodies.
“Rosalyn, I love you.”
“Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Jax, thank you. Thank you so much for everything.”
“You, my princess, need to get some sleep.”
“Princess. I like that. Oh honey, thank you for the present. Can’t believe you got all that stuff.”
I was exhausted and had a hard time keeping my eyes open. The last thing I remembered before I slipped into sleep was Jax’s vibrant body next to mine, his blue gaze caressing me.
Waves of Desire: Pleasure Point Series Book Three Page 16