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She sucks in a breath and sighs, looking downright depressed.
“What?”
“It’s…going to be harder to leave this time than it was the first time.”
I watch her, silent. She didn’t say she wasn’t going to leave and she didn’t have to say that. I don’t expect her to toss away her career and stay in Ohio when her life is in L.A.
“You’re not gone yet.” I don’t want her to go. I don’t know what to do with that yet, but I guess there’s no rush, is there? Or maybe it’s the inevitability of it that makes me the Zen master she accused me of being.
“Do you feel like staying?” she asks. “Tonight?”
“I’m fresh out of clean clothes, Mini. I’ll head back home. But I’m not in a hurry. You want me to stay longer, I can.”
“I’ll take it.” She pulls in another breath. “When my parents come home this bubble’s going to burst.”
“Mini, the world knows about us. Your parents have to know about us unless they’ve been living under a rock.”
“That’s a good point. Sorry to drag you into this.”
“You’re famous. I knew that going in.”
“You knew a lot of things going in.” She pokes me in the ribs with her big toe. “And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.” Until she goes back to Cali and then where will either of us be? It’s not like me to be this melancholy.
A feisty twinkle lights her eyes and she bites her lip. “How about a dip in the pool tonight? No suits.”
Latching onto her ankles, I tug her roughly and wrap her legs around my waist as I wedge myself between them. She laughs, a soft sound tumbling around my chest and setting me on fire. I roll the hem of the T-shirt up and am rewarded with a flash of the undersides of her breasts. I kiss my way down her belly as her fingers twine in my hair and pull and push it this way and that.
I’m thrust back to the past—into her college dorm room where we were having a similar discussion about her going to California. When I had no idea we’d implode. When she’d assured me it was just for a summer. When we were trying to hurry up and have sex before her roommate came back from the library to interrupt us.
As if I conjured a similar scenario, the front door opens and voices bounce off the tall ceilings at the entrance.
“Finally. My own bed,” Stephen announces.
“Keep it down. You’ll wake Allie,” Cheryl warns.
“Oh my God.” Allie’s eyes grow comically wide as she takes in our state with her in my T-shirt and not much else. Me in dress pants and nothing else. Without time to do much beyond throw a blanket over her practically nude bottom half, she straightens on the couch and arranges the too-hot-for-July blanket over both of us. It’s burning me up, so I throw it off my lap.
Allie rearranges her hair and grabs the remote, unmuting the show we weren’t really watching. The sound is a blast in the small space, and Cheryl jolts as she steps into the kitchen.
“Oh my heavens! You scared the life out of me!” She sets her purse on the built-in desk along the back wall.
“Hey, Als…” Her dad’s eyes meet mine in the glow of the television. He frowns as he takes in our state of undress, and hopefully he didn’t notice right away that my boxer briefs are under the coffee table with my shoes and socks. “Hey. Jax.”
“Hi, Stephen.” I bite back a laugh mostly because this is funny. If I was still seventeen, it wouldn’t be. Conversely, Allie scrambles to fill the air like she still is seventeen.
She’s blathering about how she didn’t expect them so soon and how we were about to change and go swimming when we were distracted by the “great special” she found on TV.
Cheryl’s eyebrows pinch along with her mouth. She hasn’t enjoyed catching her only child in postcoital bliss, but she’s not buying Allie’s bullshit, either.
“Okay, enough of that,” I interrupt. Allie gawps at me. I scoop up my discarded clothes and shoes and offer a hand. “Let’s go upstairs and make ourselves decent so we don’t traumatize your parents further. Apologies for the weirdness, guys.” I smile as Allie stands with me. She swipes her dress and heels from the floor, holding the blanket around her like a sarong.
“Your room’s one hundred percent ready, so you should sleep well tonight.” I pat Stephen on the shoulder as I pass by. “Hope you guys had a great time.”
“We did, Jackson, thank you,” Cheryl calls as I follow Allie to the stairs.
She’s already run to the top of them and is looking down at me, her expression a combination of peeved and mortified.
I can’t help chuckling as I stride upstairs to her room and close the door, musing that she’s never been more right than the day she said we weren’t who we used to be. We’re something new, I remind myself when I scoop her into my arms. She resists for a second, telling me “it’s not funny” in as stern of an expression as she can manage while also trying not to smile. I persist, hugging her close and nuzzling her nose with mine. She melts into me.
“Jackson Burke.” She shakes her head, but there’s no fire in it. “What am I going to do with you?”
A jumble of answers crowd my mouth, bumping into each other like a multiple-car pileup on the freeway. I can’t choose one, so to be aloof and cool I say, “Whatever you like.”
By the way, “aloof” and “cool” are what guys default to when they’re scared out of their mind. Just so you know.
