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She reluctantly accepted the beer. Fortunately, the room only had one chair, which gave him the perfect excuse to stretch out on the bed. “Pose me any way you want.”
He hoped she’d suggest the naked thing again, but she didn’t.
“However you’re comfortable.” She set the beer on the carpet, crossed her ankle over her knee tough-guy style, and balanced the sketch pad on her ratty black track pants. Despite her aggressive posture, she looked nervous. So far, so good.
He propped himself on one elbow and finished unbuttoning his shirt. He’d posed for enough cheesy End Zone photos to know what the ladies liked, but he still didn’t entirely understand how they could prefer something lame like this to a game shot of him throwing a perfect spiral. That was women for you.
A spike of inky dark hair had worked free from the Beav’s perpetually disorganized ponytail, and it fell across one of her sharp cheekbones as she turned her attention to her sketch pad. He let his shirt fall open far enough to reveal the muscles he’d developed over more than a decade
of hard work, but not far enough to reveal his fresh shoulder scars. “I’m not…,” he said, “…actually gay.”
“Oh, honey, you don’t need to pretend with me.”
“The truth is…” Slipping his thumb into the waistband of his jeans, he tugged them lower. “Sometimes, when I go out in public, the demands of fame get to be too much for me, so I resort to extreme measures to hide my identity. Although, in fairness to myself, I never lose my dignity. I wouldn’t, for example, go so far as to climb into an animal costume. Do you have enough light over there?”
Her pencil moved across the sketch pad. “I’ll bet if you found the right man you’d get past your denial. True love is powerful.”
She still wanted to play games. Amused, he temporarily switched tactics. “Is that what you thought you had with ol’ Monty?”
“True love, no. I have a missing chromosome. But a real friendship, yes. Would you mind turning to your other side?”
So he’d be facing the wall? No way. “Sore hip.” He bent his knee. “All those things Monty was saying about trust and abandonment issues…crap?”
“Look, Dr. Phil, I’m trying to concentrate here.”
“Not crap, then.” She wasn’t looking at him. “Me, I’ve fallen in love half a dozen times. All before I was sixteen, but still…”
“Surely there’s been somebody since then.”
“Well, there you’ve got me.” The fact that he’d never fallen in love drove Annabelle crazy. She pointed out that even her husband, Heath, a head case if there ever was one, had been in love once before he met her.
The Beav’s hand swept across the paper. “Why settle down when the world is your playground, right?”
“I’m getting a cramp,” he said. “Mind if I stretch?” He didn’t wait for an answer but let his legs fall over the edge of the bed. He took his time standing up, then stretched a little, which sucked in his abs and sent his jeans low enough to reveal the top of his gray stretch End Zone boxer briefs.
The Beav kept her eyes glued to her sketch pad.
Maybe he’d made a tactical error bringing up Monty, but he couldn’t get over somebody with the Beav’s strength of character being attracted to such a dick. He set his hands on his hips, deliberately pushing his shirt out of the way so he could display his pecs. He was starting to feel like a stripper, but she’d finally looked up. His jeans slipped another inch lower, and her sketch pad slid to the floor. She leaned over to pick it up and banged her chin on the chair arm. Clearly, she needed a little time to adjust to the idea of letting him explore her beaver parts.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” he said. “Wash off the road dust.”
She pulled her sketch pad back into her lap with one hand and waved him away with the other.
The bathroom door shut. Blue moaned and dropped her feet to the carpet. She should have pretended she had a migraine…or leprosy—anything to get out of coming to his room tonight. Why couldn’t a nice retired couple have stopped to help her today? Or one of those sweet, artistic guys she was so comfortable with?
The water went on in the shower. She imagined it trickling over that billboard body. He used it like a weapon, and, since no one else was around, he had her in his sights. But men like him were meant to be lusted over from a safe distance.
She took a deep swallow from her beer bottle. She reminded herself that Blue Bailey didn’t run. Not ever. She looked delicate, like the faintest gust of wind would blow her over, but she was strong where it counted most. Internally. That’s how she’d survived her itinerant childhood.
What does the happiness of one little girl, no matter how beloved, mean against the lives of thousands of little girls threatened by bombs, soldiers, and land mines? It had been a miserable day, and old memories unfolded inside of her.
“Blue, Tom and I want to talk to you.”
Blue still remembered the sagging plaid couch in Olivia and Tom’s cramped San Francisco apartment and the way Olivia had patted the cushion next to her. Blue had been small for eight, but not small enough to still sit in Olivia’s lap, so she’d nestled next to her instead. Tom sat on her other side and rubbed Blue’s knee. Blue loved them more than anybody in the world, including the mother she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. Blue had lived with Olivia and Tom since she was seven, and she was going to live with them forever. They’d promised.
Olivia wore her light brown hair in a braid down her back. She smelled like curry powder and patchouli, and she always gave Blue clay to play with when she threw her pots. Tom had a big soft Afro and wrote articles for the underground newspaper. He took Blue to Golden Gate Park and let her ride on his shoulders when they went out on the street. If she had a nightmare, she’d climb in their bed and fall asleep with her cheek against Tom’s warm shoulder and her fingers twined in Olivia’s long hair.
“Do you remember, Punkin’,” Olivia said, “how we told you about the baby growing in my uterus?”
