Size Matters

by Alison Bliss

  “Who, me?” Dad asked, feigning innocence.

  Sam chuckled. “Okay, okay. Fine. I get it. Family sticks together. But after I marry your daughter, there won’t be any more of this favoritism bullshit.”

  Laughter sounded around the table, which drowned out the sharp intake of Leah’s breath. Well, mostly. Sam was sitting right next to her, and his body stiffened. He closed his eyes and sighed, as if he hadn’t realized what he’d said until that moment, then glanced back at her with an apology looming in his eyes.

  Her throat tightened, but she managed to speak. “Why don’t we help clean up this mess and then we’ll go for a stroll down the jetty before the sun sets?”

  He stood, seemingly eager to get away from the others. “Yeah, I think that sounds good.”

  Grandma raised a hand to stop him. “Don’t worry about the dinner. There’s plenty of us to get this cleaned up. It’s going to be dark soon. You kids go have some fun.”

  “Are you sure?” Leah asked. “I mean, we don’t mind helping—”

  Grandma shooed them away from the table. “Scoot, you love birds.”

  * * *

  They strolled down the boardwalk in silence, and Sam noted a lone jack rabbit nibbling on a cactus pear in the weeds a few dozen yards ahead of them. As they approached, the clatter of Leah’s shoes against the wooden walkway alerted the hare to their presence, and the rabbit lit out over the sand dunes like its tail was on fire.

  Sam understood that feeling well.

  The night he’d met her, Sam had been perfectly content, relaxing in the backyard of his new single life, when Leah had encroached onto his territory too. Not that it was all her fault or anything. He’d left the damn gate wide open. But that knowledge didn’t make him any less skittish about her being on his property.

  “So what did you think of dinner?” Leah asked.

  “Overall, I would say it was pretty good. Especially considering the price and the quality of the food. And the staff. Man, they were great.”

  She laughed and played along. “Yeah, the place was pretty chill. They had a real laid-back atmosphere. Almost felt like I was in my grandma’s backyard.”

  He chuckled. “It did, didn’t it?”

  Smiling, Leah bumped her shoulder into his. “Come on, I’m serious. Did you really like it?”

  “Are you kidding? Fresh seafood and beer. I could marry you.” He grinned back at her, knowing damn well that conversation was bound to come up again anyway.

  “Well, technically you already are. Or so they all believe. You really sold them with that last comment.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Sam said, giving her an uncomfortable grin. “I don’t know why I said anything to your family about when we get married. I guess I got caught up in all the role-playing. I wasn’t thinking, and it sort of popped out before I could stop it.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not like I thought you meant it or anything.” She gave a noncommittal shrug and pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Besides, it actually worked out in our favor. None of them have a clue that we aren’t really engaged. God, I wouldn’t be able to face any of them if they ever found out. I’d look like such a loser.”

  His jaw tightened, and a muscle twitched in his neck. “No, actually you wouldn’t. But it doesn’t matter because they won’t ever find out. I promise I’ll take the secret to my grave with me.”

  She smiled shyly but didn’t look at him. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “I still need to make them hate me though. I’m just not sure how to do that without causing your mother to go into cardiac arrest. I damn near killed her and don’t want to have a repeat performance of that episode.”

  Leah giggled. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything else tonight. Save your energy. We’ll have all day tomorrow to come up with something. I’m sure an opportunity will present itself.”

  “And what if one doesn’t?”

  “Sam, we have to spend the entire day with my crazy-ass family. If you didn’t get enough of them today, trust me, you will be looking for a reason to have them send you packing for sure by tomorrow.”

  The corners of his mouth lifted, but his heart just wasn’t in it. After spending time with her family at this evening’s dinner, he didn’t think they were all that bad. No, actually, he’d gotten a kick out of them.

  Sure, there were some minor issues her family needed to work on, but what family doesn’t have problems? The members of Leah’s family weren’t nearly as horrible as he had originally believed. Dysfunctional, perhaps. But not bad people.

  At dinner, Leah’s grandparents had needled each other relentlessly, but it was obvious that the years Jack and Penny had spent together were the best years of their lives. And Bill, Leah’s father, had spent most of the meal making Sam laugh with his constant antics, while Ethan hadn’t been the pain in the ass she’d described. Even her mother, Nancy, had been on her best behavior, making it through the rest of dinner without a single shitty remark about her daughter’s weight. Maybe there was hope for the woman after all.

  As Sam and Leah approached the sandy trail that snaked through the dunes, their steps grew softer. Large mounds of sand blocked the view of the ocean ahead of them, but the dull roar of the distant waves rolling onto the unseen shore registered in Sam’s ears. His mind painted a serene image of gentle, blue-green tides washing up on undisturbed shores. But when the boardwalk ended and they stepped out of the protection of the dunes, he realized how wrong he had been.

  The murky ocean was nothing short of violence and turmoil. Gray barrels of saltwater rose high in the air before somersaulting forward as the choppy swells and wicked whitecaps raced toward the shoreline. A line of white pelicans swam against the fast-moving currents, though they made little progress. Sandpipers foraged along the water’s edge, dodging the inflated man-o’-wars and ugly brown patches of seaweed littering the beach.

  A fierce wind kicked sand up in its wake, the grit scratching Sam’s eyes and temporarily blinding him. He managed to wipe it away in time to see Leah’s hair whip wildly around her head, then violate her face with no remorse.

  “Damn,” Sam said. “I didn’t realize the wind would be so bad out here closer to the water.”

  But this apparently wasn’t Leah’s first rodeo. She pulled an elastic hair band from her front pocket and tied her dark locks into a quick, uneven ponytail. “I think we’re supposed to have a few storms come in over the weekend. It’s usually windy, but not always this bad.”

  With the ferocious wind at their backs, they continued on their way. Only minutes from the beach house, they neared a huge wooden fishing pier. It rose at least fifteen feet above the ground with DANGER and KEEP OUT signs posted above the barricaded entrance.

  Leah started to walk under it, but Sam grasped her arm to stop her, eyeing the structure for hazards. “Should we be walking beneath it?”

  She grinned, as if he was being silly worrying about her safety. “This section is okay to walk under. They closed the entrance because the storm that swept through about eight years ago damaged the end where most people fished.” She pointed out into the ocean.

  Sam’s gaze followed the pier out over the water until it reached the end. Sure enough, a huge section with sagging boards and missing poles had sunk into the sea below it. “Did you ever fish on that thing?”

  They started walking beneath the pier together. “Once or twice, but my grandpa used to fish from it all the time. Ever since they closed it, he fishes from the jetty or occasionally from the shore on calmer days.”

  “Does he ever catch anything decent?”

  “Sure. Lots of flounder, drum, and even a few sharks.”

  “Sharks, huh? Big ones or little ones?” he asked as they exited out from the other side of the pier.

  “Does it really matter?” She continued walking beside him but stared blankly at him. “A shark is a freaking shark, if you ask me.”

  Sam chuckled at her high-pi
tched tone. “So I guess that’s your way of saying we aren’t going skinny-dipping while we’re here on vacation.”

  She cringed, as if the thought horrified her. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Oh, come on. I wouldn’t let a shark get you.”

  “Who’s worried about that? There’s no way I’d get naked in public. Nosiree. Not happening.”

  “Ya know, it’s not like anyone would be around to see you after dark. Besides, the water would hide everything you don’t want seen.”

  “Oh, sure. Let’s go at feeding time so a shark can kill me and drag me out into open water. Then my naked remains can get caught in a shrimper’s net and be hoisted on board by the time the sun comes up. Jesus. You’re nuts. I’d die of embarrassment.”

  His eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch.

  Leah grinned. “Okay, so it wouldn’t really matter since I would already be dead. But still…”

  Sam didn’t push the issue. Obviously, she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being naked in front of him, and he had no doubt she would have made him promise not to look. And he would have, but hell, it would have been a lie. Because if Leah ever planned to take off her clothes and strip down to nothing, he damn sure wanted a front row seat.

  Probably good that wasn’t going to happen. The last thing he needed was the two of them naked together in an intimate setting without some kind of barrier—distance, clothing, or even her family—separating them. Unfortunately, the only kind of barrier he wanted between them was a condom.

  Get your mind out of the gutter, dumbass.

  They wandered down the beach in silence, avoiding the seagulls circling overhead. A pod of porpoises amused themselves in the distance, gliding along the surface of the ocean and then darting through the intermittent barrels produced by the forceful waves.

  Within minutes, Sam and Leah arrived at the jetty. The manmade formation consisted of slabs of marbled rock, uniformly placed in a straight line that extended from the shoreline out into the ocean. As they carefully made their way over the damp, jagged rocks, breakers crashed against the outside boulders, spraying a fine, salty mist into the air around them.

  When they made it to the end of the jetty, Leah climbed onto a boulder, kicked a clump of seaweed aside, and sat on top of the large rock with her legs crossed. “Maybe one of us should start an argument.”

  Sam plopped down next to her and dangled his legs over the edge. Though the tide surged beneath the block structure, his feet were high enough to keep from getting wet. “You want to argue with me?” he asked with a grin.

  “I mean, in front of my family.”

  Oh yeah. That. He shrugged lightly. “Might work.”

  “Well, I was thinking that, if they witnessed the whole breakup themselves, then I wouldn’t have anything I’d have to explain later. I know that’s me being a coward, but I really hate the thought of having a conversation where I have to tell them you dumped me. Basically, I’d rather feel like a coward than a loser.”

  He rubbed a frustrated hand over his face. “Look, if it makes it any easier, you can break up with me. Even in front of them, if you want. I don’t mind.”

  Leah sat there quietly, as if she were contemplating the idea.

  The ocean gushed between the rocks, washing over the sea anemones, urchins, and barnacles clinging to the base. A school of minnows swam freely in the shallow pools left behind as the flooding withdrew.

  Finally, she said, “I don’t think it’s going to matter who breaks up with whom. In the end, no matter what happens, my mom will still figure out a way of somehow blaming me for screwing up the relationship. She did the same thing when Gavin broke it off with me.”

  Sam’s jaw tightened, and he gritted his teeth. “You should really tell her to back the hell off. What your mom is doing doesn’t even qualify as overstepping her boundaries. She’s just flat out ignoring them.”

  “Yeah, but she is my mother.”

  “So?”

  “So I can’t tell her to stop.”

  “Sure you can,” he said, nodding. “You just say, ‘Mom, knock it the fuck off.’”

  Though he said it playfully in hopes she would laugh and he would get his point across, Leah scowled and shook her head. “Sam, I can’t tell her that without hurting her feelings and…well, I don’t really want to do that.”

  His eyes widened in disbelief. “Yet she doesn’t seem to mind hurting your feelings.”

  “I…I know she doesn’t mean to.”

  He rolled his eyes. “That’s the excuse you’ve told yourself for so long that you’ve actually come to accept it as the truth. But it’s not good enough, Leah. No one should hurt someone they care about…for any reason. Whether they mean to or not.”

  Leah shifted uncomfortably, then rose to her feet. “We should probably head back now. It’s going to be dark soon, and there aren’t any lights on the jetty.”

  Sam climbed to his feet, noting the sun resting on the horizon while casting an orange reflection over the water. “Okay, fine. But at least think about what I said, okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Ladies first,” he said, sweeping his arm out from his side.

  Leah treaded lightly as Sam followed closely behind her. With the sunlight fading rapidly behind them, the wet surface of the moss-covered boulders became more slippery, more treacherous. They didn’t even make it halfway down the jetty when Leah’s foot slipped off a ledge, and Sam reached for her. Although he managed to grasp her in time to keep her from falling and becoming wedged in between the sharp rocks, her sandal didn’t have the same luck.

  She cursed under her breath and started to climb down in between the slabs to get it, but Sam grasped her arm and stopped her. “No. You stay there and let me get it.” But before he was able to get down far enough to reach it, the tide rushed in and washed the floating shoe out to sea. “Um, actually, never mind. The shoe is gone and will probably wind up as shark bait.”

  “Damn it. That was my favorite one.”

  Sam gave her a strange look. “Your right shoe was your favorite?”

  She chuckled and pulled off her left sandal. “No, I mean the pair. They were the most comfortable shoes I own. I bought them on sale last summer, but I doubt I’ll be able to find another pair just like them.” She glanced out to sea and gazed at the sun dipping into the ocean as the light faded even more. “Just great. We need to hurry and get off these rocks before we’re stranded out here after dark. Unfortunately, this is going to slow me down a lot. Maybe you should go on ahead of me.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” When she didn’t answer him, he glared at her, pissed that she planned to walk across the rocks with no shoes on her feet. “I hate to tell you this, but you aren’t walking barefoot. If the sharp-ass rocks don’t cut your feet, the rusty fishing hooks or broken glass will. And who knows what kind of bacteria you could pick up.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Well, it’s not like I can stay out here all damn night.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  Leah rolled her eyes. “You’re not carrying me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m too heavy.”

  Sam pinched the bridge of his nose and breathed out hard. “You know, you really piss me off when you say things like that about yourself. You’re not too fucking heavy. I should know. This isn’t the first time I’ve carried you, remember?” He turned to face away from her and knelt down. “Now hop on my back, and I’ll piggyback you the rest of the way.”

  Leah put her hands on his shoulders but hesitated to jump on. “Maybe you could just let me borrow your shoes, and I’ll give you a piggyback ride instead.”

  He glared at her over his shoulder.

  She grinned. “Okay, fine. But when you can’t walk tomorrow because I broke your spine, don’t come crying to me.”

  Sam was starting to lose his patience. “Would you just get the hell on already?”

  Leah leaned onto his back and wrapped her arm
s around his neck. As he rose, he grasped both of her legs behind her knees and pulled them up around his waist, locking them in place at his hips. Wiggling against him, she got into a more comfortable position and squished her breasts more firmly into him.

  His dick hardened. The hell of it was that he’d imagined this scenario many times before, but in all those visions, he hadn’t been facing away from her. Nor had either of them been wearing clothes.

  “All good?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  Sam started down the jetty, mindfully treading over the uneven rocks and being careful not to misjudge the landing of each of his steps. He wasn’t all that worried about himself, but if he tripped while carrying Leah, she was bound to get hurt, and there was no way in hell he’d let that happen.

  Once they’d made it safely to the beach, Sam released her legs and let her slide down his backside until her feet hit the soft sand. “Thanks,” she said.

  He nodded. “No problem.”

  “Your back okay?”

  Ignoring her irritating question, Sam ground his teeth together and started walking. They strolled down the beach with Leah dangling one lonely shoe from her fingertips. Daylight was nearly gone, but the security lights on the old pier still worked. Like a beacon, the yellow lights guided them back to her grandparents’ boardwalk with ease as the sounds of her family’s laughter wafted to their ears.

  Without thinking, Sam reached down and coiled his fingers around Leah’s free hand. She jumped a little at first then relaxed as her family came into view. The group had moved over to the lounge chairs surrounded by bamboo torches, and the faint scent of citronella infused the air. The group all greeted Leah and Sam with good-natured smiles.

  “Did you two have a nice walk?” her dad asked.

  “Yep, it was great,” Leah replied. “Well, except for the mishap I had with my shoe.” She held up the sole survivor and wiggled it in the air. “Unfortunately, it was the only pair I brought with me on this trip, and the other one has been lost at sea. Chances are, it will probably end up on a deserted island being worn by a stranded man whose only friend is named Wilson.”