Notes On Love

by K. L. Shandwick

  “Hi, Gray, this is Parker. Parker, this is Gray Dennison, an old college buddy.”

  When I heard how she introduced me to the guy I was shocked by the insignificance she placed on our relationship. She’d made it sound like we were little more than casual acquaintances. It irked me and for the first time I understood how Phoebe must have felt around me. I had been less than thoughtful about how I had brought her into conversations with people we met. It hurt me to feel she placed such a low connection to us. But I had to admit I deserved it.

  Suddenly, I remembered those were the terms I set out for us back in college but it still pissed me off to hear her talking about me as if I was nothing to her. Shifting to my left I noticed Nora, the fan I’d been talking to, was still hanging around nearby, and when I saw Hettie’s eyes fall to the pretty girl standing close to me my impulse took over. Fuck it, if she’s playing games she’s no match for me.

  “Oh, forgive me,” I said, grabbing Nora’s hand, “Nora, meet an old college friend of mine, Hettie, and her…friend...sorry what was your name, again?” I pretended to forget the gimp’s name as I moved Nora into position by my side, and included her in the conversation. Hettie’s eyes narrowed, alarm and suspicion passed through them as a pissed expression donned her face. She cast a jealous glance over Nora who was oblivious of the stunt I had pulled.

  “You didn’t tell me you were bringing anyone,” Hettie commented, as she tried to hide the venom she felt at Nora’s presence. It was as if she’d forgotten Parker altogether. If she wanted the upper hand I’d have given it to her anytime, but not when she used another guy to do it. I watched her lips twitch in annoyance on her pouty mouth and couldn’t help the grin of delight that spread over my face at her reaction. She really cared about me.

  “Nora was just leaving weren’t you, sweetheart?” I said, glancing down at the fan, whose smile dropped the instant I said it. Looking a little perturbed I’d even introduced her at all she nodded. “Thanks. Gray, email me,” she prompted.

  “Of course I will, I always keep my promises.” I reassured her. Leaning in, she stole a kiss on the cheek, and I swear I heard a growl at the back of Hettie’s throat. Nora wandered down the small slope toward the crowd of beachgoers, and glanced back several times on her way. Hettie’s eyes followed her until she turned her attention back to me and met my gaze. I knew her better than I thought I did because the scowl she tried to hide was thinly masked.

  “And that was?”

  “Nora,” I said nonchalantly.

  “Is she not staying for lunch?”

  “No, she had things to do,” I said, bending the truth. I thought if Hettie was jealous of Nora then she wasn’t serious about the guy she was with. Two could play games like that.

  “Is she coming back later?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “I just like to know what’s happening. She asked you to email her,” she replied, giving a huff of frustration. Her jealousy was so fucking cute.

  “That makes two of us. I’d like to have known you were bringing Peyton here, we could have double dated,” I said, not caring that it was a female name I’d called him.

  “Parker…it’s Parker,” he said, his jaw flexing in anger. I would have felt sorry for him, except he was still holding my Hettie’s hand in a firm grip.

  “Excuse me. In England we don’t have guys called Parker, we have pens,” I told him without a hint of a smile. It was true, the Parker Pen Company was held in high esteem in the UK. I glanced down at my feet, swept some stray sand back and forth and looked him square in the eye again.

  Parker shifted uncomfortably from one leg to the other with a contemptuous look on his face and I could feel the beginnings of a pissing contest. However, I didn’t need to challenge him for Hettie’s attention. By the way she was eye-fucking me, I already had it. Besides, he’d have been dead in the water with the level of sarcasm that was building in my chest. I pitied him if this was Hettie’s idea of teaching me a lesson. It wasn’t the poor guy’s fault.

  “Sorry, Parker, shall we head to the beach, and catch some sun? It’s a beautiful day and I spend way too much time indoors these days.” Accepting my apology, he glanced down at Hettie while she stared in defeat, and right there and then I almost called her out for stringing the poor dude along.

  Chapter 28

  Remembering ~ Gray

  Twisting the upper half of my body, I glanced out to the water. “Shall we? I gestured toward a small empty area of the white sandy beach. Without waiting for a reply, I spun on my heel and walked a couple of hundred yards from the main lifeguard station. Most sunbathers were reluctant to walk far from the boardwalk with all their chairs, cool boxes and wind dividers.

  My mood became more optimistic the moment I stopped and faced the water. The turquoise ocean was crystal clear, the sun beat down relentlessly, and the view was breathtaking, especially when Hettie dropped down to the sand, sat cross-legged, and made the horizon her backdrop.

  “How did you two meet?” I asked while slowly placing the cool box down. Spreading a small bamboo mat out, I sat down opposite. My dick had swollen uncomfortably in my swimmers and it was rock hard. I had never wanted to be inside a woman as much as I wanted to be inside her. I ached to lie with her wrapped around me. It had been so long, but the feelings that washed over me were like it had only been the day before since I’d had her.

  My urge to reach out and touch her was almost too strong to fight. The only thing holding me back from taking her right there on the beach was my respect for her, and she’d brought a guy with her.

  Once I was seated, I was careful to line myself directly in front of her. When we made eye contact neither of us could break our stare and look away. Parker cleared his throat uncomfortably after a few seconds and Hettie shook her head as if she suddenly remembered where she was. Slowly, she dragged her eyes away from me to him.

  “We met at a yard sale,” he said, snickering.

  “Yeah, I had some stuff from when I was with Harris so I held a sale. Parker happened to be visiting a client in my street and stopped when he saw a tennis racket I had among my things. He eventually bought it,” she said as she tilted her head and smiled up at him. I wanted to rip his face off when he smiled back.

  “I used to be semipro and I wreck tons of rackets practicing my serve. The one she had was the brand I normally use, so I figured I’d grab it for a few bucks…plus it gave me the courage to approach such a beautiful woman. I’d seen her coming and going from her building, and I’d been dying to find common ground to talk to her.”

  I fucking bet you did.

  I looked at Hettie to gauge her reaction and her gaze had dropped to her sundress, her dark brown hair strewn around her face by a sudden gentle breeze. She was clearly uncomfortable with the conversation. I had assessed she was pretty indifferent toward him by the way she had stopped paying attention as he spoke, and I sensed the poor guy had been brought along to our meeting to be used as a crutch. Or…Hettie’s feelings were still strong enough about what we had, she didn’t trust herself around me. With that thought, I knew I had to get rid of Parker to talk to her.

  “Damn, Parker, I only put a couple of bottles of water in the box. I wasn’t expecting anyone else, but you may want to go over to JoeJoe’s, they do water and sandwiches to take out.” Fortunately, there were no water sellers in sight on the beach and I’d made a bit of a big deal of pretending to search for one. Hettie’s suitor looked torn, like he didn’t want to leave her with me, but didn’t want to look like a douche by not trusting us. He reluctantly rose to his feet and wiped the sand from his blue Chino slacks.

  “Sure. Anyone want anything else?”

  I shook my head and smiled, “No thanks, I have all that I need right here,” I answered. My answer was loaded, adding extra weight to it when I glanced toward Hettie. I watched his fist clench, but he sounded passive when he spoke to Hettie. “You want to come with?” he asked with
a slight plea in his voice.

  “Oh, I’ve just sat down, Parker. Do you mind if I stay?”

  Indecision flitted across his face before a look of defeat settled there, “Sure,” he answered in a defeated tone before he turned and headed away from us.

  “Not cool, Hettie,” I scolded.

  “What isn’t?” she answered like she had no clue.

  “Don’t play with people like that. Why did you bring him along or agree to meet me if you were with someone else?”

  “I thought we were just being friends? Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yeah, I did say that, but I see the way you look at me. Your want is written all over your body language. He must have felt uncomfortable, the poor guy.”

  “Looking at you how, exactly?” she replied, challenging me.

  “Oh come on, you’re going to deny it? I’d wager a bet if we had met somewhere private…just the two of us, that I’d be balls deep inside of you right now.” I smirked when her eyes registered her surprise at how frank I had spoken.

  “You’re so damn cocky, Gray. Are you sure about that?” she answered with a sassy lift of one eyebrow.

  “It may have been a while, but I’d recognize the heat you have in your eyes right now if it had been twenty years since the last time I saw it. You know I’d have you in a heartbeat…I want you more now than ever, but not like this. We’re too old for games and I’m only here for four days.”

  Hettie looked down at the sand and began sifting it through her fingers in thought. After a few moments of studying it hard, she swallowed roughly and glanced fleetingly at me.

  “And that’s just it, Gray. Four days and then what? Another two years? If it’s any consolation I only met Parker a few days before you called.”

  I felt a sense of relief when she said that.

  “We’ve kissed, but that’s it. He is the first guy I’ve been out with in a while. After my split with Harris and the way I reacted with you…it gave me a lot to think about.”

  Hettie’s phone text alert sounded. She dropped the sand and dug into her linen beach bag to find it. Reading the text, her lips twisted before she shoved her cell back inside.

  “You really messed with my head springing up out of the blue like that.”

  “I really fucked with my own too,” I snickered as she glanced up and met my gaze.

  “What are we doing, Gray? I feel miserable. I’ve been miserable since I last saw you.”

  “So miserable you’d bring some poor guy to make me jealous?”

  “That was wrong of me. Another desperate act. No wonder you left me back in college without a proper goodbye.”

  “No, Hettie. That was the old me. The guy who was fucked up inside and had no idea he was. Making decisions for reasons I thought were for the best.”

  I glanced over toward the diner expecting to see Parker coming back toward us. He’d been gone a while.

  “He’s not coming back,” Hettie told me when she saw me looking for him.

  “Parker?”

  “Yeah, that text was from him.” She turned her cell and showed me the screen to read it myself.

  Parker: Next time you want to hit on a guy, be straight about it, don’t use someone else to manipulate your position.

  “Good for him. Glad he saw through you. And are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Hitting on me?”

  “I feel I want to, but maybe I just feel like hitting you,” she answered with a small smile.

  “Good, then Parker isn’t the dumb-ass you thought he was. He read you right. I’m sorry you did that. I never knew what jealousy was until you walked toward me hand in hand with that guy today.”

  Hettie’s eyes widened in surprise, “You felt jealous? I’ve seen the women you’ve been with. All those leggy model types chucking themselves at you right and left. You told me once you didn’t have it in you to be jealous. Who was the girl you were with today?”

  Hettie was accurate in her assessments of the women I’d been with. Phoebe was a leggy model type. “That girl was a fan. I don’t know her. She said she’d never gotten tickets so I sent her email to the band’s PA. Listen, Hettie, I’ve been dealing with some shit from my past. I hope it makes me a better man. I’m not sure I like all the new feelings that go on inside sometimes, but I guess it’s part of my growth. And yeah I felt jealous…like my gut was gonna burst. When I saw the way that guy held your hand I wanted to beat the crap out of him.” She smirked at my answer, like it pleased her.

  “I’ll admit that the vibe you’re giving off is different. You seem…less distant.”

  “How so?”

  “When we were…what we were, back in college, every time we met I thought that was the day you’d tell me you felt something for me. Deeper feelings, you know?”

  “I did feel something. You meant a lot to me.”

  “See you told me that. What did ‘a lot’ mean?”

  “You never bored me. I mean, I never got bored of you the way I did with other girls. And the sex was fucking incredible. I couldn’t wait to see you again…missed you when you weren’t there. I thought about you a lot.” I smirked, amused, because when I voiced my feelings, I knew I had really wanted to be with her. Still wanted to be with her.

  “Are you saying I entertained you?” The annoyed inflection in her voice was notable.

  “You definitely did, but no, that’s not what I mean. You are the only person that makes me feel different in here.” I placed my hand over my chest. “You touched a place in me no other person has.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, with a furrowed brow in her expression.

  “I fell in love with you. I loved you then.”

  “Then?”

  “In college. I think I fell in love with you back then.”

  “You think?”

  “Yeah. The feelings I had rumbling inside my chest for months after I went home. It was like I’d lost someone; like you’d died…I missed you.”

  “If that was the case…” Hettie’s voice tailed off and she sat there sifting the sand again in her hand as a heavy silence fell between us.

  Hettie stared at me silently, an intense piercing look that made me wonder what she was thinking. She broke the connection and looked down at the sand again. “I loved you so much…I thought my heart would never recover. It took me a long time to live again. Harris was the guy to lift me out of that depression. He made me feel I could love someone else. In truth? I never loved him as much as I loved you. Love you.”

  I fought the urge to reach out to her, to comfort her. I’d be leaving again in a few days and we had so much to say. The way I felt in that moment, I’d have done anything to have her again. That was the old part of me; the selfish man inside, the one who thrived on instant physical gratification without involving my heart. The devil on my shoulder screamed what the fuck are you waiting for, man? She’s yours for the taking, and the new man inside, he was trying his best to ignore him because I hurt people when he had gotten the better of me.

  Hettie rose to her feet and for a moment I thought she was done, but she reached for the spaghetti straps on her long white dress, flicked one off one shoulder, and then the other. The dress slid quickly down her body and pooled in a soft heap at her feet.

  My eyes had followed the material cascading onto the sand. Her swift, unexpected unveiling made me swallow audibly. Slowly, my gaze scrolled back up past her beautiful shapely legs, lingering a second on her small, white bikini bottoms while I imagined from memory what was hidden behind them.

  Finally, my eyes settled on her small, slim hips, and her gorgeous flat stomach. Living in the sun meant Hettie had always been tanned to perfection, her skin bronzed and deliciously tempting. Noting her belly button that I’d once explored with my tongue, I was reminded of how I felt when I swept the palm of my hand across the warmth of her body. Heat rose in my blood; a sudden rush of a burning sensatio
n which spread through me like wildfire. Piquing my desire once again until I craved the intimacy, knowing how she had once reacted to my touch.

  In that moment, I felt like we were suspended in time, all the memories of those particular instances where I had tasted, touched, and pressed my dick inside her flicked through my mind like a rewind of an old movie reel. I finally placed my hand in front of my eyes to shield the sun’s rays and looked up at her face. Standing with the sun behind her it was hard to see her expression, and before I could read what was there in her eyes she turned and dropped back down onto the sand alongside me and faced the ocean.

  The whole incident probably only lasted a few seconds, but as no words passed between us, it had felt much longer. “You’re very beautiful, Hettie.”

  “I know,” she said, turning to look at me with a serious face. A second later she burst out laughing. “I’m kidding.”

  “I’m not. You’re gorgeous. I’ve always thought so. I couldn’t believe my luck when you were interested in me.”

  Shaking her head, she scoffed. “Every girl is interested in you, Gray. You look like a god, you fuck like one, you have a fantastic voice, a great sense of humor, you are charming, seductive and your charisma—”

  “Is that all? So I take it you like me?” I poked back in fun, nudging her shoulder with mine. When my skin brushed against hers, my small, spontaneous gesture added weight to the burden of not touching her. Another quiet moment ensued, and I glanced sideways to look at her. Dark brown eyes, shone bright as they stared back at me. “Fuck like a god, huh? And you would know this, how?” I snickered when she raised one eyebrow.

  “I remember.” That wasn’t what I’d meant. I’d been joking about how she would know how a god fucks, but I preferred her focus.