“You’re such an idealist.” He hooks his arm around me, which marks the second time today, and my heart does the tiniest flutter without so much as asking for permission.
We spend the next couple of hours touring the garden and a few more dig sites before stopping at the lake pit.
Hot bubbling asphalt glugs behind us as we stand next to a bunch of fake animals pretending to play in the pit.
“What do you think it’d be like if we went extinct and some future species found our bones and turned us into robotic models and placed us on display?” I ask as we watch the bubbles float to the surface and pop.
“Probably about how you’d expect.” He clears his throat, glancing down at me, and I’d love to know what he’s thinking about.
“You know, my grandma in the sixties, all she wanted was to have a legacy, to be remembered forever. People were always comparing her to Marilyn Monroe, especially after Marilyn died, and my grandma would get so upset because unless you die young and your beauty is immortalized, you’ve got nothing to leave behind but your good deeds. But if you’re simply known for your beauty, no one really cares if you’re feeding orphans and adopting shelter dogs or paying for vaccines in third world nations. She wants to be remembered for her philanthropy, but anytime someone hears the name Gloria Claiborne, all they associate her with is old Hollywood glamour or that white bikini.”
“Sounds like she needs a good PR team.”
I roll my eyes. “Does it really count if you have to publicize it? It’s like those people who donate money to places so they can get their names on a plaque on the wall as a “Gold Star Donor” or whatever the stupid name is.”
“Giving is giving.”
“Unless you’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Some people give for others. Some people give for themselves.”
“It’s not really our place to judge other people’s reasons for giving,” he says, words terse.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t met some of the elitist assholes who hang out with my parents and brag about how much money they donated to their kids’ schools. One jerkoff donated a hundred grand so he could have his kid’s name painted on some mural on the playground.”
“It’s their money,” he says. “They can spend it how they want.”
“Stop making me sound like an asshole,” I say. “I’m just being honest. This is a judgement-free zone. You can’t judge me for judging other people.”
“Seems a little hypocritical.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Okay. I take back everything I said. Everyone who ever donates a single dollar to a single cause is a selfless saint.”
Isaiah laughs. At me. “Why are you getting so worked up? This is such a dumb conversation to have. Who the hell cares who donates to what and why?”
Drawing in a deep breath, I let it go, crossing my arms over my chest. “I don’t know. You’re right. It’s dumb.”
He slips his arm over my shoulder—again—and gives me a side hug. “You ever heard of the phrase ‘stay in your own lane’?”
“No?”
“It means mind your own. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing,” he says. “Trust me, it’s the only way to live. Worry about yourself. Forget the rest.”
Turning to face him, I glance up into his warm gaze, studying his perfectly chiseled features and longing to brush the strand of dark hair off his bronzed forehead.
“What made you enlist, Isaiah?” I ask. “It takes a lot to sacrifice money for a good cause, but it takes even more to be willing to sacrifice your life. That couldn’t have been an easy decision for you.”
He releases my gaze, his expression hardening. I can practically feel him closing up.
“It’s a long story. Some other time, all right?” he asks.
I bury my disappointment in a small smile. “Of course.”
I know from talking to my cousin, that a lot of guys enlist for very personal reasons and it wouldn’t be right to push and prod. Maybe with time, he’ll open up?
Making our way around the tar pit, we stop next to a mastodon. Isaiah reads the plaque beside it, but I try to read him.
And fail.
Miserably.
There’s no denying something’s there, something that makes my heart trot when he looks at me, something that makes me slick on an extra coat of lip balm or an extra spritz of perfume before dashing out the door to meet him.
And while I’m the one who made the rules—no romance and only honesty at all times—I’m the one who can’t stop thinking about what would happen if we broke one of them.
Only problem is, I have zero idea if he’s thinking what I’m thinking. He’s so even-keeled and emotionally guarded, but they say actions speak louder than words and the fact that he’s here, spending time with me doing stupid shit has to count for something … right?
“Why are you staring like that?” Isaiah asks when he turns around.
My cheeks warm. I’d been spacing off. “No reason.”
“Bullshit. You can’t lie, remember? Tell me what you were thinking about.” His lips draw into a playful smirk, and I can’t decide if I like his mysterious side or his spirited side best. It’s like trying to choose between white chocolate and milk chocolate, which are both delicious in their own ways.
“You don’t want to know.”
And I’m serious. He doesn’t want to know that I’m thinking about him in a way that I was determined not to. Besides, he’s leaving in a few days. There’s no point in ruining the rest of our time together by making this situation unnecessarily complicated.
“Try me,” he says, his stare boring into me. Something tells me he’s not going to let this go.
Giving myself a moment, I gather my thoughts and nibble on my lower lip. “I was just thinking about connections.”
“Connections?” His hands rest on his hips, his shoulders parallel with mine. I have his full, undivided attention.
“I was just thinking about how I hardly know you, but I feel connected to you,” I say, cringing on the inside but fully embracing the discomfiture of this conversation.
He says nothing, which doesn’t make this moment any less awkward for the both of us.
“You asked!” I remind him, throwing my hands up.
Another moment passes, the two of us lingering next to some hairy elephant-looking creature with a long-as-hell scientific name as a group of children runs past us.
“Now I want to know what you’re thinking about.” I nudge his arm. “It’s only fair.”
He smirks, then it fades, and he gazes into the distance. It’s like there’s something on the tip of his tongue, but if I push or prod too much, he’ll never share it.
“Nothing, Maritza. I was thinking about nothing.”
I don’t buy it, but I don’t press any further. I want to burn this awkward moment into a pile of ash and move on.
“Are you going to remember me after this week?” I ask after a bout of silence.
His golden irises glint as his eyes narrow in my direction. “What kind of question is that?”
“A legit one,” I say. “Will you remember me? Or am I always just going to be that waitress girl that you hung out with for a week?”
“Don’t think I could forget you if I tried.” He speaks in such a way that I’m not sure if what he’s saying is a good thing or a bad thing. “Can I be honest right now?”
“You must. It’s a requirement.”
Isaiah’s tongue grazes his full lips for a quick second and he holds my gaze for what feels like forever. “I don’t want to make this any more confusing for either of us, but I feel like kissing you right now.”
I fight a smile. I don’t want to smile. I want to scoff at him and tell him to stop being such a hypocrite.
But that’s only half of me.
The other half of me wants him to kiss me, wants his hands in my hair and his taste on my tongue just one more time because we’ll never have this moment again and once it’s gone, it’s gone fo
rever.
“I’ll allow it,” I say, half-teasing. “But only because we’re standing in front of a fiberglass mastodon and it doesn’t get any less romantic than that.”
Isaiah glances around to ensure we’re not in the presence of impressionable minds, and then he sinks his mouth onto mine, taking his time like he’d been waiting patiently all day and doesn’t want to ruin it by rushing.
I’m light as air and grounded at the same time. Nothing else exists outside his warm, soft mouth and his steady hands. I can’t even comprehend my own thoughts because my heart is pounding so hard in my chest it’s the only thing I hear.
When it’s over, reality is back in the driver’s seat. Rubbing my lips together, savoring the sweet burn of what lingers, I tell myself it’s just a kiss.
As long as there are no flowers exchanged these next couple of days, no sweet words or careless whispers, no promises made and no looking at each other like we hung the moon … we should be fine and both of us should be able to walk away from this completely unscathed, not a single battle wound or commemorative scar.
“How’s that ankle holding up?” he asks, glancing down toward my foot. “Still looks a little swollen. Hope we didn’t make it worse today.”
“I took, like, ten Advil this morning so I can’t feel a thing.”
Except that kiss.
I felt the hell out of that kiss.
He smirks, half-chuckling. “You hungry? You want to go somewhere?”
He’s not ready for our “Saturday” to end just yet.
And truth be told, neither am I.
Chapter Ten
Isaiah
Saturday #6
I miss a lot of things when I’m overseas, but most of the time I try not to think about them. Out of sight, out of mind is a way of survival when you’re thousands of miles away from the comforts of home.
It’s just easier that way.
But it’s what I signed up for. There are no regrets or self-pitying moments that seep into my mind when I’m tossing and turning on the nights when it’s unbearably hot and sleep is impossible.
But last night, when I took Maritza back to her car after an afternoon of hanging around the city, dropping into coffee shops, people watching on Rodeo Drive, and catching the latest Marvel flick at my insistence, she asked me point blank if I was lonely.
Her question came out of the blue, but given what I know of this woman, randomness is kind of how she rolls.
“Clearly you’re longing for some kind of connection with someone,” she told me as I walked her to her car. “Or you wouldn’t be here, spending a week with some girl you picked up at a café.”
“Excuse me? Last I checked, you picked me up,” I told her. “And it wasn’t in a café. You fucking rear ended my car. And then you—”
“You don’t have any other friends around here?” she cut me off with a question.
“Some.”
“And your family?” she asked.
“We’re not that close these days.”
She looked at me with pity in her eyes and I shook my head, telling her not to feel sorry for me.
“I’m not a sob story,” I tell her. “My life hasn’t been ideal, sure. But you’d be doing me a disservice if you felt sorry for me.”
“Then you’re running away from something,” she said, nibbling her thumbnail as she studied me. It was dark by then, the moon reflecting in her chocolate-brown irises, her creamy complexion glowing. Everything about her was soft and ethereal and I wanted to kiss her again, but I couldn’t.
I’d kissed her enough that day, and for reasons I couldn’t comprehend.
Of course, I swore to her they were just kisses, they meant nothing. But I couldn’t explain why I kept craving them, kept finding every excuse I could to casually touch her, trailing my fingertips down her arms, brushing her dark hair out of her face, leading her by the hand when we’d cross the street.
I pull up outside her grandmother’s house just past sunset and send her a text. Today I’m picking her up—her insistence. Within minutes, the gate swings open and she strides out in a short sundress, her long legs tanned and accented in strappy sandals.
Her mouth is slicked in bright red and when our eyes meet, she smiles as wide as I’ve ever seen her smile. Reaching up, she holds her chestnut curls in place as the breeze blows at her skirt.
“Day six,” she says with a smile while she climbs into my passenger seat, her voice tinged in melancholy.
“Yep.” I shift into reverse, not wanting to dwell on the fact that after tomorrow we’re going our separate ways. “How was work?”
She wasn’t able to switch shifts with anyone today, which worked out because tonight I’m taking her stargazing at the Griffith Observatory. I’m sure she’ll say it’s romantic and I’ll insist that it’s not, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.
There’s something about feeling small that puts things into perspective for me, and no better way to do that than to gaze at billions of stars in an infinite universe.
“I lied to you last night,” I say as we head down her grandmother’s picturesque residential street.
“What?” Her attention whips to me as she adjusts her dress over her legs.
“You asked if I ever miss anything when I’m over there,” I say. “I miss Pringles. And Starbursts. And peanut butter M&Ms.”
Her fist meets my shoulder, though it hardly hurts. “Ass.”
“What?”
“I thought you were being serious.”
I chuckle, coming to a stop at a red light. “I am. I miss those things. You can’t get them over there. Not that easily anyway.”
I know there are other things I should probably miss … like the feel of soft lips, the smell of sweet perfume, the wash of contentedness I get when a beautiful girl looks at me like I’m something special. Soft things. Comforting things. Distracting things.
We don’t have those over there.
But I try not to think about that. And I try not to think about what it might feel like to be thousands of miles away from here, missing Maritza.
If the past has shown me anything, it’s that I’m a shit boyfriend. I’m terrible at communication. I’m bullheaded and rash. And I’m not quite ready to lace up my boots for the last time.
This is why I can’t go deep with her.
I can tell her that I miss candy, but I can’t tell her that I might miss her …
We pull up to the observatory forty minutes later and find a place to park.
“Stargazing, Corporal?” She laughs through her nose, shaking her head as she checks her phone, silences it, and slips it into her purse. “Like that’s not romantic.”
We get out of my car and I meet her by my dented, scratched-up bumper. “I knew you’d read into it.”
She walks beside me, arm grazing mine as the soles of her sandals pad the concrete sidewalk. “Just keep your hands to yourself and we should have ourselves a nice, non-romantic evening.”
We head inside, and I hold the door for Maritza and the couple entering behind us. They’re dressed to the nines in a navy suit and little black dress. Diamonds glint from the woman’s ears and the man presses his hand into her lower back before muttering a quick “thanks.”
We find an available telescope a few minutes later, and I stand back as Maritza crouches slightly, peering into the eyepiece.
“You have to look at the moon,” she says, waving for me to come closer. “That’s so crazy. You can see every little detail.”
I take a look for myself, though it’s exactly what I expected. Growing up, one of my brothers had a telescope. He’d use it to spy on the girls next door when they were outside sunbathing, but I actually put it to good use, checking out stars and neighboring plants as best I could.
The moon was always my favorite though.
Even through our cheap telescope it looked so tangible, like I could reach up and touch it, crumble it in my hands.
“What’s your
favorite constellation?” I ask her.
She stands straighter, gazing up at the clear sky as she blows a breath through her red lips. “I don’t know? The Big Dipper?”
“Ursa major,” I say. “That’s the proper name.”
“It’s the only one I really know.”
“When’s your birthday, Maritza?” I ask.
“August fourteenth. Why?”
Placing my hand at her lower back, I pull her closer to the telescope. Bending, I peer through the eyepiece and locate the Leo constellation.
“We’re in luck,” I say. “Take a look.”
She bends, squinting as she glances in. “What am I looking at?”
“See that cluster of stars that kind of looks like a clothes iron with a little hook coming out of it?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s Leo. Arguably the easiest constellation to find, but there you go.”
Maritza stares at it a bit longer before backing off, and when she looks at me, she clasps her hand over her heart. “Isaiah, that was really sweet what you just did.”
“I wasn’t trying to be—”
“Hush.” She swats my arm. “When’s your birthday? I want to see your constellation.”
Dragging my thumb and forefinger down the sides of my mouth, I chuckle. “April first. Fool’s day.”
“You’re joking.”
“Yeah, no.” I roll my eyes, like I haven’t heard that a million times before.
“So that makes you, what … an Aries?”
I nod. “Yeah, but you can’t really see the Aries constellation this time of year. It’s easier to find in the winter, right around Christmas.”
Maritza stands in awe of me, quiet, eyes wide. “Seriously, Isaiah.”
“What?” My brows meet.
“There’s so much more to you than you let on,” she says. “All week I thought maybe I was scratching a little bit of that surface of yours, and then you spring this on me.”
P.S. I Hate You Page 10