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“Fuck,” Ryke mutters, raking a hand through his hair. We search for our clothes, and he helps me dress, mostly, while he just puts on his jeans.
“Ryke,” I whisper, “can we go to jail for this?” I’ve never been to jail, and when I said Grand & Daring stakeout, I meant for the potential flour-bomber to be behind bars.
Not us.
“Hey, don’t worry about it, Dais.” He pulls my shirt over my head and fixes my off-kilter pink wig, but never says one way or the other. “It’s going to be—”
“Please step out of the vehicle.” The officer raps the window again.
My stomach tightens.
“Fucking fuck,” Ryke curses harshly before zipping up his jeans. When I’m fully clothed, Ryke opens the door, daylight bearing down on us.
A police officer has his squad car parked next to ours, a ticket book already in hand. “Do you two know what you were doing in the middle of the day?”
Yep. Multiple orgasms. Thank you, Ryke. I just nod, a little more than nervous since he has handcuffs on his belt. And a gun.
I sway from side to side.
Ryke’s arm curves around my shoulders, reminding me that he’s here.
We practically tower over the cop, who must only be five-feet and six-inches tall. For some reason, his short stature eases some of my nerves.
I smile at him.
He shoots me a stink-eye.
“I was just patrolling the parking lot and saw your fogged up windows, there, the back one clear as day.” He gestures to the hunting & camping store to the right of us. “This is a family area.”
I glance at Ryke, jelly all over his bare chest and arms. A streak of chocolate runs along his cheek. He must feel my gaze because he looks over at me. Then he swipes his finger across the top of my nose. He sucks off the strawberry jelly and raises his brows at me like you taste fucking good, Calloway.
My smile explodes.
“I’m talking to you two,” the officer snaps, jolting me.
“We fucking heard you,” Ryke says in his usual tone.
“Don’t curse at me, sir.” The officer asks for our licenses and all that jazz. Neither of us tries to talk our way out of a ticket or citation.
I just don’t want to go to jail.
I think Ryke knows if he opens his mouth again, our outcome will worsen. Just by the way people perceive him. Alone, I can see him trying to talk more to the officer. With me in tow, he’d never risk a trip to a cell.
We pass over our identifications, and if the officer recognizes our names, he doesn’t let on. I’ve never used the don’t you know who I am? line, and I don’t plan to start.
I tuck a strand of my pink wig behind my ear. “Are we going to jail?”
“You’re both getting a ticket.”
“For what?” Is there a no public sex citation?
Before the police officer replies, a news van rears up the curb of the hunting & camping store. My mouth hangs ajar. Our luck must like to find drain holes. I’m actually really worried now.
Because my dad will see this on the news.
He can’t be naïve to think Ryke and I haven’t had sex yet. I live with him. We share a bedroom. But my dad has been known to stick his head in the sand. He perceives me as young and wild, but I think he hoped I’d gravitate towards a man who’d tame me.
Not someone who’d start a donut war, bolster me to use my voice, and make love to me in a car.
God.
I love Ryke.
The news van parks almost parallel with the cop car.
Ryke rolls his eyes at the incoming journalist from a local station and mutters another fuck under his breath. To have this right up in my dad’s face—when I haven’t even unleashed we’re trying to have a baby! and I’m building a summer camp! on him yet—is not good.
I just don’t want to hurt him, but maybe it’s inevitable that we all hurt the ones we love eventually, even if it’s just a little bit.
The police officer rips the ticket and hands it to Ryke. “Public indecency. It’s a serious fine.”
No jail. No confinement. My joints loosen, and Ryke squeezes my shoulder.
The officer adds, “It’s also expensive.” Here comes the camera crew.
Ryke reads the ticket. “How expensive?”
“Five-hundred dollars each.” It’s a lot more than I thought it’d be.
But the officer is wrong about one thing.
Sex with Ryke—in this car, at that particular time, at this particular place—was totally and utterly priceless.
RYKE MEADOWS
“We need a game plan,” Lo tells me as the valet takes the keys to his black Audi. I’m fucking fixated on the private country club.
I remember that gray stone and those oversized, cedar double doors. I remember these same leisure bodies that pass us now. Dressed in collared shirts, removing their golf gloves. Fixing their tennis visors. I remember the distinct fucking smell of grass clippings and suntan lotion.
Lo sets a hand on my shoulder and jostles me awake. “You look like shit.”
I feel like I’m meeting a fucking ghost. “It’s been ten years since I’ve been back here,” I remind him. Every Monday, I saw my father at this country club. I stopped meeting him when I was seventeen.
“It’s for a good cause,” Lo says with furrowed brows like don’t leave me right now.
I wouldn’t.
I begin walking towards the doors, showing him that I’m not fucking scared of revisiting the past or letting it go.
My phone buzzes.
More pics (I’m the good-looking one) – Sully
He sent me extra ice climbing photos from March. Norway was fucking cold but really fucking fun, and even with slight guilt, knowing my brother hated me being there, I think I’d do it again.
I check the second missed text.
I found more of your old baseball cards. Do you want me to bring them to breakfast next time you come? – Mom
The message surfaces vivid memories. Of how my mom used to take me to Citizens Bank to see the Philadelphia Phillies when I was six, seven, eight, nine—all throughout my adolescence. I had this shoebox full of baseball cards
, and I’d fucking insist on bringing them to every game.
I called them my friends because I wasn’t allowed to bring actual friends out in public, not with her around. Because she had to be the mother to Loren Hale. Not to me. Because I couldn’t have any real fucking friends find out our relation.
My mom. Sara Hale.
It’s been five years, five fucking years, since my mom outed Lily’s sex addiction to the press and harassed her over text. Five years since we were all thrust into the media. Five years since the world found out my relation to Jonathan Hale. To Sara Hale.
Five years since everything changed.
The minute I heard that my mom hurt Lily, I swore that I’d cut her from my life, but after the years began to pass, as she kept contacting me, kept trying to apologize, I decided to unbury the debris and piece together something that we both could stand on.
A text sent to say hello.
A phone call to speak more than a few words.
To hear that she moved back to New Jersey.
A video chat to see her face.
To watch her cry when she saw mine.
A couple coffees at Foghorn Café where she works as a waitress.
To learn that she finally legally removed “Hale” from her last name. To learn that Sara Meadows’ bank account was wiped with the decision, thanks to my father.
One visit to Foghorn became two, then three, then too many to fucking count. About two years—that’s how long I’ve been seeing my mom. No one knows except Daisy. Because no one dares to fucking ask and trudge up old memories.
Truth is, she’s not a saint or wholesome. But she’s more the kind of mom I want to remember than the one I fucking crave to forget.
The saddest thing, I can’t invite her to my wedding. I wouldn’t. I can never bridge what I have with her to what I have with everyone else. It’s forever severed.
And all my life…all my fucking life, I never really imagined that this is the way the wind would blow. It’s a painful reminder that our futures are fragile fucking things. At any moment, someone can be left behind.
I turn off my phone, not wanting to feel the vibration. I’ll reply to her later, but this isn’t a good time for more childhood memories to crash into me.
Lo keeps pace with my stride towards the country climb, and I tell him, “It’s a little late for a fucking game plan. We’re already here.”
