by Lila Felix
“Yeah, I need to change.” I grabbed my shorts from the bag at my feet and went into the bathroom and she turned and went into her room.
I came out and she was already dressed. I could see her packing up towels and bottles of water. She had a long white dress over her suit. Her hair was knotted up again.
“Ready,” I asked.
“Yes,” she responded as she grabbed another pair of flip flops with hearts on the top.
I grabbed the bag from her and she grabbed my hand. We walked out onto the beach and straightaway I could tell that she was dead on. The beach was a whole different scene at night. There were just as many people but most of them now had torches lit next to them or lanterns instead of the daytime umbrellas. Couples were cuddled up watching the night waves roll in. There were very few children out, and the ones I saw were curled up with their mothers, asleep.
We picked out a spot just out of the reach of the waves and she spread out a couple of towels. She waggled her eyebrows at me and I loved it. What a lucky bastard I was.
Chapter 33
Storey
I tried to play it off as nothing, but I was nervous as shit to meet his biological father.
I did it on purpose. I wanted to lay there on the beach with him at night, just once. That way I could hold on to that memory, even if I never came back here again. He sat down on the towel and I sat in front of him. He pulled me flush against him and leaned his chin in the crook of my neck. He said something but the only thing I could concentrate on was his breath in my ear. It did things to me.
“What—what did you say,” I asked him.
“I said, the ocean’s really pretty at night. Where were you, in space?” A laugh rumbled through his chest behind me.
“No, but it’s kinda hard to concentrate with you breathing in my ear.” He backed off, my words having the opposite effect than I wanted them to.
“A good distraction or a bad one? Give it to me straight Storey, I’m new to all this.”
I tightened his arms around my torso, “A very, very good distraction.”
“Noted,” that was the same thing he’d said about me liking dancing. Hopefully there would be more of that too.
I relaxed against him. I realized that I had quit comparing him to Simon a while ago, even in my head—because there was no comparison. Simon didn’t even qualify enough to occupy space in my head.
We sat there, cuddled close, listening to the lullaby of the ocean until we were the only ones on the beach. I turned to face him and whispered, “We’re the only ones here. What should we do?”
“Build a sand castle?” He asked and then did that thing where he tried not to smile. Instead of my fingertips, I used my lips to worship his dimple.
“Really? A sand castle?”
“Nah, I have a better idea.” He closed in on me and I was finally getting what I brought him out here for, his mouth on mine. He was so close, I could smell the basil and tomato on his breath. His hands trailed a blazing path from my knees to my thighs. Then he pecked me quick and hard. He jumped off of the towel and ran into the water. If I didn’t love him, I would beat him into the ground for taunting me.
“Come on Storey, I haven’t gotten to swim with you. Don’t deny me a memory.”
He was right. We needed to make memories while we were here. Later on we would be able to tell our children about them. Where in the name of ovaries did that come from? I’ve got to stop before I say something like that out loud.
Then I remembered that I had one more trick up my sleeve. I had one bikini that I’d never worn in front of anyone. It wasn’t vintage and it showed more skin than a dermatologist’s office. So I stripped off my dress and made a move towards him. He was busy looking at the ocean and then he turned, hollering at me to swim again. “Come on Storey, don’t make me wai…”
His mouth stayed agape while he looked at me entering the water. I used my Missy Hellcat walk to escalate my intentions. Then he stalked towards me and took my mouth before I could stop him—not that I would. With our mouths connected he pulled us into the water, deeper and deeper until I had to hang onto him for gravity’s sake, purely for gravity’s sake. He could still stand and after what seemed like an eternity in heaven we broke our mouths free.
“I’m so freakin’ glad it’s dark out. I’m gonna sound like a pig here, but I don’t want anyone seeing you in this but me—ever.”
“I’ve never worn it before. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Thank God.” He hugged me close to him. He finally loosened his hold. I took the opportunity to look him in the eyes, intending to tell him how much I loved him again. But I was caught off guard by his irises. The green one reflected me. I saw myself reflected in his eyes and it almost brought me to tears. His brown colored eye was so bright under this moon, more like dark ale than coffee tonight.
“You always do that,” he crinkled his nose in confusion.
“What,” I asked.
“You always look at the green one and then to the brown one and then back to the green one. Why?”
I stayed silent for a minute, thinking about how to word my answer. “Well, they both show me different things.”
He squinted his eyes at me and shifted in the water, “Like what?” Always curious Maddox—forever needed to know the whys.
“Well, like right now I can see the reflection of my face in your green one. And right before you’re about to kiss me, your brown one gets a little darker brown. The green one sometimes gets lighter. It makes it look like a marble.”
“Huh,” he said. When he did he pouted his lower lip a little and it made his dimple appear.
We stayed there for a while, letting the saline waves ripple around us. Mad suggested we go back inside and get some sleep since tomorrow might be a trying day. I showered first and while I could still hear his water running I fell asleep. But I felt it when he got into bed and lay behind me, and I regained slumber again, this time with his fingers in my hair.
I stood at the coffee pot, cursing it for taking so long. I swore it dripped slower while I stood there. Renee had woken me up early with a phone call, angry that I hadn’t returned her call from the day before. We talked for an hour and after I filled her in on all the Maddox hotness, she was satisfied. I heard a groan from my bedroom then sliding feet. I turned to see him jump up on the counter and then lay across it, everything but his feet sprawled across my kitchen counter. And my kitchen was tiny, so his head touched one cabinet and his ankles touched the edge of the cabinet on the other side.
“Don’t tell me you’re sleepy.”
His eyes were still closed while he answered, “Me, sleepy? No way. It’s not like we stayed in the damned ocean until two a.m. I have no clue what you’re talking about.”
This is what I wanted to see every morning. Maddox’s smart ass lying on the kitchen counters with a smile on his face while we both waited for coffee.
“You don’t remember the bikini? Ok, I see. I’ll just have to wear it again, jog your memory.”
“Dear God, like I could ever forget the sight of you in that.”
I laughed at him. The coffee finished and I poured him a cup and realized I didn’t know how he took it.
“Mad, I don’t know what you like in your coffee. I’m like a girlfriend failure.”
I got out the cream from the fridge and the sugar from the cabinet. When I turned, he was there, his pecs in my face. I looked up and he was awake now, for sure.
“I take my coffee black, two sugars. And if I hear you call yourself a failure again, in any capacity, I’m gonna make you listen to Owen talk about the different species of eels.”
I scratched my head, “Is that a threat?”
“Trust me, no one wants to sit for hours and listen to him talk about freakin’ eels—not even his wife.”
“Oh, wow. Ok, I get it.”
We got dressed and neither one of us mentioned food. We were both as nervous as could be. I sat on the couch and tr
ied to read but it just wasn’t happening. Mad flipped through the guide over and over until it was eleven thirty. He stood up and made one more debate attempt.
“What if he’s nuttier than a fat rat at a peanut factory? Or what if he has some kind of—you—fetish.” He was just full of crap.
“I’m going. Nothing’s gonna happen except you’ll get to talk to this man and satisfy your curiosity. So shush and let’s get moving.”
We drove over to the apartment complex. Maddox probably had no idea this was considered the slum of Venice Beach, but that didn’t mean anything about the people who lived there. It was just crime-ridden. Maddox knocked on the door and directly it was opened by a young man, not much older than Mad. He swung the door open and welcomed us. The place was obviously older, but it was very clean. I remembered Mad telling me about the newspapers and the grimy condition of everything. But I wasn’t seeing it. Mad shook hands with the man who introduced himself to me as Rex. We sat down on the couch and Rex excused himself to the other room.
“It’s clean, Mad. And I don’t see any newspapers. Maybe you just caught him on an off day.”
He looked at me like it was my sanity that was in question.
“Ok, ok. We’ll see.”
Rex came back in, accompanied by an older man with salt and pepper hair. He was dressed in a sweat suit. Mad, moved to the edge of the couch and put his hand in mine. Einer sat on the couch and asked Rex who we were. Red flag number one: He’d already met Maddox the other day.
Mad reintroduced himself and asked the man about Sela. He got very upset, almost on the verge of crying and said he knew no one named Sela—red flag number two.
Rex grew very serious and said he would let Einer go back to bed and then we could talk. He escorted the older man back into the bedroom and shut the door behind him. He returned and nearly pulled his hair out running his hands through it.
“Is he okay?” That was Maddox. He wasn’t just going to come out and ask about the man’s mental state. He would be polite about it. Me—I would’ve asked him if it was a case that needed a straight jacket or more of a padded room.
Rex explained that he had some PTSD from being in the military and some child abuse. It sounded bogus to me. Mad just listened intently but I couldn’t tell if he bought it or not. Rex flat out asked Mad if he wanted a DNA test, like it was an everyday thing. Mad declined. He said he would be there for the rest of the summer and just wanted to try to get to know him as much as he could while he was in town. Rex said that he worked all week but Mad could come by on the weekends and see him whenever he liked. But it was the shifty way he kept looking to the bedroom that weirded me out—like he expected Einer to burst from the room any second. While he looked towards the bedroom I got a pen from my purse and slipped it in my pocket. I had an idea and felt a bit like Penny from Inspector Gadget.
“Um, Rex, do you mind if I use the ladies’ room?”
He shrugged and pointed to a closed door. I opened it and went in, assaulted by the smell of urine and an unkempt male’s bathroom. I knew just how to get to the bottom of this, I hoped.
I opened the mirrored cabinet above the sink and pulled the pen out of my pocket. I wrote down every unique prescription name on my hand until there was no more room left—damned tiny hand. I felt a twinge of guilt at my invasion of Einer’s privacy but Maddox needed to know the truth, not the watered down version he was being spoon fed out there.
I flushed the toilet and ran the water in the sink for good measure and then exited. Maddox was ready to leave, dissatisfied with the five minutes he actually got to see Einer. He had my purse in his hand and I joined him by the door. We said our goodbyes and got into the Jeep. I looked over and saw Mad’s jaw working overtime.
“Just give me the gut reaction, don’t overthink it.”
He looked at me and then out the front windshield again. “I think he’s nuts. And it’s a lot more than PTSD or child abuse. And I think Rex is hiding it for a reason. What it is, I need to find out.”
I cringed, but I had to tell him. “Mad, I know how we can find out.”
He turned to me, “How?”
I showed him my hand. He scrunched his eyebrows together, read the words on my hand, and then smiled, “Oh, my clever girl. Damn, I love you.”
Chapter 34
Mad
I was really starting to miss home.
She had just blown me away. I thought it was kinda strange that she chose that moment to use the bathroom but with girls you never know. She had managed to write down at least twenty different prescription names on her hand with a pen. Where in the hell did she get a pen?
We went back to her apartment and looked up the prescriptions on the internet. We made a list of what conditions each one could treat. Each one was able to treat several different mental illnesses, but schizophrenia came up most frequently. I looked at her, sick to my stomach. If this is what I came from then there was a chance I could turn out just like Einer. Maybe the twitchy thing was the beginning of a life long battle with mental disease. She stared at the computer, still engrossed in the research. I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t confine her to a life with Einer Macon’s son.
“Don’t do that. Not until we have more information.”
I looked at her like she was the head case. “What are you talking about?”
“I see it in your face. You’re not like him. And it says right here,” She pointed to some Mayo Clinic website, “that there’s no proof that schizophrenia is genetic, If that’s even what he has. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe he doesn’t even take those medications. Let’s just lay it out there for Rex and make him tell us what’s going on.”
“Let’s, us, we? I’ll be damned If you’re ever going anywhere near there ever again.”
She rolled her eyes and it really ticked me off. “It’s fine. I get it. But don’t jump to conclusions about whatever Einer has until you know the truth.”
I paced the living room for a good half hour while she ticked and clicked on her computer. But nothing she could show me would convince me until I heard it from Rex. I took my phone out of my pocket and called him. He’d given me his number while Storey was in the bathroom.
He answered and I told him I wanted to meet with him the next day, without Einer. We decided to meet for breakfast the next morning but he sounded less than enthusiastic about it.
I put the phone back in my pocket and tried desperately to think of something else. I was wound so tight, I thought I might crack at any moment. Cold hands slithered underneath my shirt from behind and took up residency on my stomach. She laid her face against my back and just held on. I blew out a breath at her touch, she was right. I just needed to chill out until I knew exactly what was going on. I linked my fingers in with hers and rubbed my thumbs over her tiny ones.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said.
“Of course you do. Shoot.”
“Let’s go get some food and then let’s go to Mulholland and make another memory.”
I bowed my head and watched the movement of our hands intertwined under my shirt. I turned; her arms still around me. My hands now made circles on her back, hoping to soothe her as well as myself. “Yeah, we should do that. I’m gonna need you to distract me tonight.”
“Oh, I can do that.” She purred. She threw some things in her purse and I grabbed my sketch pad she’d bought me. I wanted to capture her image on paper if I still had the talent.
She drove us to a taco place and got everything to go. Then we drove for so long higher and higher in altitude, I swore she was driving us to the top of a mountain. Then she began the dissension. She drove through swerves and curves, twisting and turning through them while I took in the view. Everything could be seen from this vantage point. I could see the city, the ocean, and by the time she parked, the coast and city were before us and the Hollywood sign was behind us.
We ate sitting in the Jeep but then got out to sit on the hood and absorb the city. I forgot all about
drawing her, or the view, or anything else. I didn’t need proof of this; I needed it branded in my heart.
As the sun set I felt her shiver next to me.
“Any chance you have a blanket with you?”
She scoffed, “What kind of girl do you think I am?”
“The kind that planned on getting cozy with me on the famous Mulholland Drive.”
“Ugh, I brought two,” she confessed.
I leapt down and found the blanket in her bag. She was already shivering by the time I reached her again. I got on the hood and leaned all the way back on the windshield. I pulled her on top of my body, her smaller height making her head fit right under my chin. She pulled the blanket on top of both of us and soon I felt her relax in warmth.
We watched the city lights fade from sunlit busyness to fluorescent lit empty skyscrapers, beacons of the city.
“We always end up like this. Me on top of you, lying against your chest.”
I maneuvered my mouth closer to her ear, well aware of how it affected her, “Maybe I like you on top.”
That won me a gasp and I could see retaliation brewing in her head. “Maybe you just haven’t had the right girl on bottom.”
I grinned at her quick-witted comeback. She’d said it without really thinking it through, “Sweetheart, I’ve never had any girl on the top or bottom, except you.”
Her body stiffened atop mine as it hit her, the meaning behind my words. Silly girl, I’ve only been able to touch her for less than a month now.
“Oh wow, you’ve never—Maddox, Simon and I were together for four years—I…”
I kissed her neck, right below her earlobe and whispered, “Storey, I don’t care and quite frankly, I don’t wanna know. Everything is new with you—everything. I don’t care who you were then, I just love who you are now. Let’s just leave it at that.” She gave me a curt nod and it ended that conversation.
We sat there for a while and as the night wore on, more and more people parked beside us and they weren’t sightseeing.