“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Climb onto my back. I’ll carry you back to the car.”
“You’re going to carry me on your back for almost two miles?”
“I don’t suppose you saw any wheelchair rentals on your way up the mountain, did you?” With her legs wrapped around my hips, I hook my hands behind her knees.
“Smart ass.”
She’s leggy but light and this is going to be a piece of cake. I’ve carried grown men farther distances than this before.
Twenty minutes later, we arrive back at the street parking, and she carefully slides down my back, leaning against the passenger door of her blue Prius for support.
“You going to be able to drive home?” I ask, examining her ankle, which is already starting to swell like a son of a bitch. “Damn. You got yourself pretty good.”
Crouching down, I give it a closer look. Maybe she could drive herself home just fine, but she’s not going to be able to get out of the car once she gets there, not without some help.
“We need to get some ice on that,” I say, frowning. “Give me your keys.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m taking you home. Unless you want to ride in my car … I just figured you’d feel safer in yours. You know, since we’re strangers.”
Digging into a little zippered pocket in her tiny shorts, she hands me a valet key, which I use to unlock her passenger door. Helping her in, I get her seatbelt and tell her to keep her ankle elevated. Rounding the front of the car, I climb into the driver’s side.
I’ll have to Uber it back here to get my car later.
Pressing the “home” button on her GPS, we turn ourselves around and head down the steep hills that led us to this mountain trail, coming to a stop just before a busy road filled with lunch hour traffic.
“You doing okay?” I ask, glancing at her while we wait for the light to turn green.
Biting her lip and wincing, she nods. Her ankle is resting on her dash and I swear it’s growing bigger by the second.
The radio plays some cheesy pop song and I keep an eye on the GPS, focusing on getting her home. Twenty minutes later, we pull up to the familiar iron gate outside her grandmother’s sprawling, hacienda-style mansion. Reaching into the console, Maritza retrieves a remote, pressing a black button.
The gate swings open and I pull through.
“Just … drive around back to the guest house. I don’t want my grandma to see you. She’ll ask too many questions and then she’ll invite you in for tea and that’s going to turn into her showing you her Oscar and making you watch Davida’s Desire.”
“I see your sense of humor’s back. Feeling better?”
“Kind of.”
I come to a stop outside her little white guest house, and by little, I mean only in comparison to its big sister out front. This place, which looks different in the daylight, is still massive and it’s positioned just outside a sparkling teal-blue pool with trickling fountains and a Grecian-style cabana. There’s a lot of different styles going on here, but somehow it all fits in an eclectic, crazy famous person kind of way.
Killing the engine, I step out and move around to her side, getting her door. Placing her arms around my shoulder, I help her out and she hobbles to a side entrance where she punches in a key code. A second later, the lock beeps, and we’re in.
“Couch?” I ask. She nods, and I help her toward her emerald green velvet sofa. We prop her left ankle on a pillow I’ve placed on her gold-and-glass coffee table covered in fashion and lifestyle magazines, all of which are addressed to Melrose Claiborne. “All right. I’m going to grab you some ice.”
I head to her kitchen, which is the most eighties-looking thing I’ve ever seen, complete with yellow appliances and carpet on the floor, but judging by the kitschy accessories, it seems she and her roommate have completely embraced the vintage theme and made it their own.
Yanking the top door of the little yellow fridge, I grab an ice tray and check a few drawers until I find a spare hand towel.
“Here.” I return to her side, taking a seat next to her and placing the makeshift ice pack on her ankle. She breathes in through her teeth. “You okay?”
Maritza nods, leaning forward to place her hand over the towel, brushing mine in the process. “I’ve got it now.”
Reaching for the far end of the coffee table, I grab her TV remote. “Anything else you need?”
Her brows meet as she thinks. “Nope. I should be good for now.”
Pulling out my phone, I tap my Uber app.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Getting a ride back to my car.”
Glancing up at me through long dark lashes, she chuckles. “You’re welcome to stay here if you want. We can … I don’t know … watch Netflix or something? The day doesn’t have to be a total bust.”
Sitting my phone aside, I drag my thumb and forefinger down the side of my mouth.
“I’d like you to stay,” she says, point blank. “Honest.”
I pull in a hard breath, giving it some more thought. Sightseeing and Saturday-ing is one thing. But hanging out on a couch watching TV and trying to fight this bizarre attraction between us is something else entirely.
It’s almost reckless.
“Don’t make me beg, Corporal,” she says with a teasing tone. “I just feel bad that I ruined our hike. And also, I don’t want to sit here and be bored the rest of the day …”
“Fine. I’ll stay for a little while. But only if I get to pick what we watch.” If I’m going to stick around, it has to be on my terms.
“Oh, now that might be a deal breaker for me. I kind of had my heart set on watching season three of Fuller House.”
“Yeah, well Fuller House just so happens to be a deal breaker for me.” I shrug, rising slow. “So I guess I should be on my way.”
“Wait.” She stops me, palm lifted in the air and head cocked. “If I let you pick … what might we be watching?”
Dragging my hand along my jaw and inhaling the spicy floral scent of her living room, I blow a breath through my lips. “The Punisher.”
She makes a face.
“Luke Cage, then,” I say.
Her expression doesn’t budge.
“Stranger Things?” I ask.
Her full lips twist at the side and she taps her finger against her chin. “I guess.”
Taking a seat on her sofa, I ensure we’re separated by at least one full seat cushion as she starts the show.
“Oh, wait. Can you do me the tiniest favor?” Maritza turns to me just as the opening credits finish. “I should probably take something for the swelling. Can you grab me a bottle of water and some Advil from the cupboard by the sink? Oh, and help yourself to whatever you want in the fridge. I think there’s some leftover beer from Melrose’s last boyfriend.”
“Melrose?”
“My cousin slash roommate.”
“I see.” Rising, I head back to the glorious eighties kitchen and grab her water and ibuprofen, helping myself to an ice-cold bottle of Rolling Rock on the way back.
“Why are you sitting so far away? That’s a terrible angle for watching TV,” she asks when I take my seat. She pats the cushion beside her, brows lifted. “I twisted my ankle. It’s not like I’m contagious.”
With my arm resting across the back of the couch, I shrug. “It’s fine.”
Maritza rolls her eyes. “You picked this dumb show and now you’re going to sit all the way over there where you can barely see the screen?”
Groaning, I slide closer—but only because she has a point. “There. That better?”
“Shh.” She swats at me just as the show begins to start. “Show’s on. No more talking.”
Her eyes are glued and I take pride in knowing that I picked out a fucking amazing show for us to watch.
Settling into the seat back, I cross my legs wide and watch her from my periphery. She’s totally into this and I love it.
By the time the first epi
sode ends, she doesn’t so much as touch the remote, letting the next one automatically play.
“I guess this stupid show is okay,” she says, leaning forward and adjusting the ice pack on her ankle. She lifts it for a second to check the swelling, but it’s still pretty ugly.
“Pretty sure you just broke rule number two.”
“Pretty sure you broke rule number one,” she says, her dark hair curtaining her beautiful face as she turns to look at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“It was sweet what you did for me today. Romantic almost—textbook standards anyway. Carrying me down the trail, driving me home, taking care of me.”
I scoff. “That’s not romance. That’s called being a decent human being.”
Licking her lips, she tucks her hair behind her ear. “Fine. Maybe I was reading into it too much.”
“Definitely. You were definitely reading into it too much,” I say.
When I saw her injured, it was instinctive—I had to save her. I may do this shit on the regular with my fellow comrades, but trust me when I say I’ve never done anything like this for some random girl I hardly know.
Reaching for the remote, she pauses the show, drawing in a deep breath.
“Can I just say something here?” she asks. “I feel like I need to address the elephant in the room.”
I lift a brow, having zero idea where she’s going with this. “All right. Address away.”
“You check me out all the time,” she says. “You think I don’t see it, but I do. And you’re always looking at me like you’re two seconds from devouring me. I don’t even think you realize it. Or maybe you do. Maybe you do it on purpose because you think you’re not going to get caught. I don’t know.”
Pressing my lips together, I stare at the paused show on the screen.
Fuck.
“I just … I feel like if the situation were different … if you weren’t about to be deployed … I think …” she stops, taking another deep breath. “I think we have chemistry. Basically. Is what I’m trying to say. And the more we ignore it and deny it, the stronger it’s going to get. So if we could just address it and kiss or fuck or whatever the hell we’re inevitably going to do by the end of the week, I think we could—”
“Fuck chemistry. Fuck all that bullshit.”
“So you’re just going to deny that we—”
Pulling her into my lap, I silence her words with a greedy kiss, and I don’t even feel bad about it. This isn’t romantic and I’m not some Casanova trying to win her heart. I’m simply a man with needs, a man who’s been wanting to taste those lips all over again since the night at The Mintz.
Her mouth is strawberries.
Her tongue is peppermint.
Her lips are hot, pillow soft.
Everything is better than I remember, and when her hands find my hair and her nails rake against the nape of my neck, I almost fucking lose it.
“Hi.” Maritza straddles me, pressing her hips against my growing cock as she balances on her knees. Her mouth curls, her eyes light, and I crush her cherry lips all over again.
“Is your ankle okay?” I ask between kisses, my mouth grazing hers.
“I don’t feel a thing, Corporal,” she says, breathless and smirking just before our tongues collide.
My hands grip her hips before working the hem of her shirt, fingertips trailing her soft skin until I reach the smooth fabric of her pink bra.
“This means nothing,” she says, grinding harder. “Right? Tell me it means nothing. We’re just … we’re just getting it out of our system.”
“It means nothing,” I assure her, unhooking her clasp. My hands slip beneath her bra, cupping her perfect tits. I’m so fucking hard it hurts and while I want to enjoy the hell out of all of this, I’m counting down the minutes until I’m deep inside of her, all the way in, fucking her in a way she’ll never forget so long as she lives.
And I don’t say that out of arrogance.
One-night stands and short-lived flings are kind of my specialty, and I’ve been told I’m the best, that I always deliver.
“Oh, my God!” A woman’s voice shrieks and the front door slams.
Maritza climbs off me, tugging her shirt back into place and fixing her hair. “Melrose, hey. I didn’t know you were going to be around today. Thought you had auditions?”
The other woman, who’s easily the blonde-haired version of Maritza, stands with her mouth agape and eyes wide as saucers, shocked gaze flicking between the two of us.
“Melrose, this is Isaiah. Isaiah, this is my roommate slash cousin, Melrose.” Maritza and her cousin exchange looks. I take it they’ve discussed me before.
She looks familiar, like a face I’ve seen before. Maybe on TV. Or it could just be the striking Claiborne resemblance.
“My audition ended earlier than I thought.” Melrose hooks her bag on the back of a living room chair.
“Oh, yeah? How’d it go?” Maritza asks, pretending like Melrose didn’t just walk in on us about to fuck.
My cock is still hard, though it’s beginning to diminish thanks to the sheer fucking awkwardness of this situation.
“Fine,” she says. “I read for some part in some Ryan Gosling movie. I’d be playing his snarky younger sister. It’s got about twenty lines, so that’s something.”
“No kidding. Better than ‘victim number two’ on Law and Order,” Maritza says with a wink.
“That role put me on the map.” Melrose points. “I landed two other parts because of that role.”
“I’m not knocking it,” Maritza says, palms up.
“Anyway, I’m going to go for a run,” her roommate says. I don’t know this chick from Adam, but she seems a bit down. I imagine it gets exhausting auditioning and getting your hopes up and dealing with disappointment after disappointment. “If you two feel the need to continue to get your freak on, kindly do it in the privacy of your boudoir.”
Maritza rolls her eyes and Melrose disappears down a hallway.
“She’s always in a mood after her auditions,” she tells me. “She wants so badly to be the Gloria Claiborne of our generation. Her words, not mine.”
“Nothing wrong with setting goals.”
“Right. I have no room to talk. At least she knows what she wants to do with her life and she’s taking the necessary steps to get there.” Maritza reaches for her water bottle on the coffee table, lifting it to her swollen lips, the very same ones I was claiming a few minutes ago.
But now the moment is lost.
And maybe it’s for the best.
“I should go.” I rise, grabbing my phone and trying not to acknowledge the disappointed look in her eyes that has no business being there. She should be fine with me staying and equally fine with me going. “See you tomorrow. I’ll text you the info in the morning.”
Showing myself out, I walk toward the front gate and wait for my ride.
Half of me wants to stay.
The other half of me knows it’s best that I go.
Chapter Nine
Maritza
Saturday #5
“Okay, let me just apologize quick.” I hobble up to Isaiah the second he enters the main doors of the La Brea Tar Pits, maneuvering through groups of families, mothers with small children, and preschoolers on field trips. “I had no idea this was, like, a children’s science center type place.”
His eyes scan the lobby before dragging the length of a realistic-looking woolly mammoth.
A little curly-haired boy in a red polo plows into him, shouting sorry as he runs off. His mother chases after him, and just outside a yellow bus full of elementary schoolers pulls into the drop off lane.
This place has been open all of twenty minutes and already it’s filled to the brim with tiny humans, their loud voices echoing off the high ceilings and expansive wall space.
“We can go somewhere else,” I tell him, apologizing with my eyes and my voice and the placement of my hands on his broad chest.
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Raking his teeth across his lower lip, he pulls in a deep breath, like he’s mulling it over, and then he shrugs.
“It’s fine. We’re here,” he says.
“You sure?” I lift a brow. “I’ve got some other ideas, more places we can go.”
Isaiah shakes his head and hooks his arm over my shoulder, which catches me off guard for a moment. We walk to the ticket desk, the warmth of his body permeating through my cotton tee and his spicy cologne filling my lungs.
“How’s the ankle?” He asks when we reach the line.
“Better. Sore but better.”
Ten minutes later, tickets in hand, we begin a self-guided tour, beginning at their Titans of the Ice Age exhibit and moving on to the Fossil Lab, which seems to be popular with the preschoolers surrounding us.
We stop at Pit 91, where they’re conducting a live excavation, unearthing saber tooth tiger and dire wolf fossils, and Isaiah stops to watch.
“You know, I read once that if you placed the entire timeline of the universe into a single calendar year, humans would show up on December 31st at 11 PM,” I say. “I’m paraphrasing, but you get the picture.”
His lips flatten. He’s engrossed by the architects digging in the dirt with all of their fancy tools and brushes.
“Isn’t it crazy when you think about how inconsequential we are? As a species, we’re still so new and all these living, breathing creatures existed millions and millions of years ago. It blows my mind, really. Kind of makes me awestruck and depressed at the same time,” I say.
“Depressed?” He turns to me.
“Well, not clinically depressed, but almost kind of sad … because it makes me feel like someday maybe millions of years from now, we’re all probably going to be extinct. Just a bunch of fossils in the ground, no legacies to leave behind, no one to tell our stories.”
“I still don’t see how that’s a sad thing. Being extinct. If we’re dead, we’re not going to be around to care,” he says. “And these dinosaurs and whatnot have left a legacy of fossil fuels, if you want to put it that way. They didn’t live and die for nothing.”
“I guess, but I just think people are always so fixated on their problems all the time, but if they could just look at the big picture—that someday they’re just going to be a pile of bones in a mound of dirt—maybe they’d worry a little less? Live a little more? Try to contribute to society or leave the world a little bit better than they found it?”
P.S. I Hate You Page 9