Break My Fall (No Limits) (17 page)

“No! Don’t go!” I said, moving toward him.

He turned around and I grabbed him, throwing my arms around his neck and feeling his hands on my sides.

“Wow,
” he said, “you’re almost as happy to see me as Cliff was when I got back.” He lowered his voice. “Maybe later, I’ll give you a bone.”

“I heard that.” Rebecca stepped out from behind a rack of
surfboards. “Yeah, I was hiding there. I couldn’t help it. You two are so cute.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Drew said. He looked at me. “Sorry she heard that.”

Rebecca waved it off. “Please. It’s the best line I’ve heard in a while. Kyle just says, ‘You horny?’ and expects me to swoon over that.”

“So,” Drew said, loud and kind of dramatically, “nice weather, huh?”

I laughed and looked at Rebecca.

She shook her head. “You’re right.
Time for a change of subject. I have to count the drawer, anyway.”

I looked o
ut the window and saw Drew’s truck, with the surfboard in the bed.

“You here
to buy a rack for that board?”

He looked out at the truck
, then back at me. “I’m not putting a surfboard rack on that. I wouldn’t want to scratch it up.”

“Right,” I said, laughing. “Because it’s in otherwise perfect condition.”

“Actually, I figured you could give me a lesson today.”

“Oh, really…”

He leaned down and kissed me. “Yeah. I taught you how to play blackjack, so you kind of owe me one.”

“You didn’t teach me how to play it like
you
play.”

He
shook his head. “You don’t want to get mixed up in that.”

Before I could respond, he pressed his lips to mine again.

Chapter Seventeen

An hour later, Drew and I were on the beach, our surfboards sticking up out of the sand.

He sat with his knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them. “That’s harder than it looks.”

I was sitting diagonally to him
, almost reclining, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. I tilted my head and gave him a sideways glance. “I told you.”

“Hey,” he said, “I
never thought it would be easy. Why do you think I never tried it?”

He’d actually done
quite well. Certainly better than he thought he had, judging by what he was saying now that the lesson was over. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was funny watching him at first. This strong, athletic guy trying to get up on the board and busting his ass several times before he managed to do it. And even then, he was so proud of himself that he yelled, “Look!” like a little kid would to a parent. That’s when he forgot to do the next critical step that I had hammered into his head…and he busted his ass again.

He eventually did ride a wave, if just a little bit. He did better than most people do on their first outing, and I told him so.
What I didn’t tell him is that I hadn’t taught him the easy way to do it. I thought it would be best if he learned the hard way first. Plus, that meant it required more muscle use on his part, and if there was one thing I could never see too much of, it was his physique in full action. In my defense, he wanted to learn and I obliged him. I never promised to make it easy.

We rinsed off at the public shower. At one point, when I had my back to him, he ran his fingers through my hair as the water sluiced through it. I wondered what it would be like to take a real shower with him, which reminded me about how he hadn’t looked at my body when we had sex. I wanted to know why, and almost asked, but there were other people around so it would have to wait.

.  .  .  .  .

We went over to Sullivan’s Island for dinner, at a place where you could go in sandy and drenched, with or without shoes, and not be frowned at. Drew said they had the best shrimp and grits appetizer he’d ever had.

“I’ve never had it,” I’d said, as we crossed the inlet. “Not a big grit fan.”

“We’ll get two orders of it and if you try it and don’t like it, then I’ll have an excuse to be a glutton and stuff myself.”

But
I ended up liking it, so Drew didn’t get his wish.

We ordered steamed crabs, and when the waitress brought them out, Drew insisted that we wear the plastic bibs with the cartoon crab on them. “Let’s look like tourists,” he said with a grin.

“Isn’t that what we are? Neither of us is from here. We’re both just visiting.”

He cracked open a crab leg. “Speaking of that, when’s your last day here?”

Suddenly, my appetite disappeared. Leaving Charleston was the last thing I wanted to think about when I was with him.

I told him,
then put a piece of crab in my mouth, not taking my eyes off of him, wanting to gauge his reaction. This was where the conversation was going to happen. He was going to say something about how that day was rapidly approaching, and he would read the trepidation in my eyes, and then one of us—hopefully not me—would suggest some kind of master plan to make it all work out so we could be together.

He reached for his glass, took a sip, set it down and looked at m
e. “Do you need help moving?”

That wasn’t exactly where I thought the conversation was going,
and I managed to hide my disappointment. “No. I don’t have much to take back. Mostly clothes.”

He nodded. “What are you going to do after graduation? Thinking about grad school?”

“That’s the plan,” I said.

“You don’t sound too sure.”

I reached for another crab leg. “No, I’m sure I’m going, I’m just not sure where.”

“Go anywhere you want to.” He wiped his hands with a napkin. “Something tells me you were going to finish your undergrad degree at USF, and stay there for grad school.”

“No,” I said. Well, he was partially wrong, anyway. The plan all along was that Kevin and I would apply to all the same grad schools, and then pick the same one among those that we both got into. The easy thing and the likely choice was indeed USF, but I didn’t want to give Drew the satisfaction of knowing he’d nailed it. “I have time. I have options.”

He nodded. “
Or you could not go at all.”

I was looking down at the table and lifted my eyes without moving my head. “Why do you say that?”

He shrugged. “Things happen. Things change. Life changes. Like the old phrase ‘shit happens.’ I don’t know. You tell me. Your head’s still in the same place it was…before?”

“Right here on top of my shoulders. Twenty straight years.”

He laughed. “You know what—”

“Yeah,” I interrupted. “I know what you meant. And yes, my head is still in the same place it was before all the shit with Kevin. Why should I change my goals—my
life
—just because he fucked me over?”

Drew pulled back and put his hands up as if I had pointed a gun at him. “Just asking. And I don’t think you should change anything.”

There was a little tension. I didn’t think we were on the verge of an argument, but the situation had become uncomfortable, mainly because I was coming to the difficult conclusion that Drew wasn’t thinking beyond the end of the summer. I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me, knowing the way he lived his life, but still it wasn’t easy to accept.

.  .  .  .  .

“You won’t be counting, you’ll actually be gambling.”

“Yeah, but with you coaching me, how do I know
you
aren’t counting?”

Drew pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his head to cover his eyes. “You won’t.” He grinned, turned his head to face forward, and
leaned back against the airplane seat.

“Great. We’re going to get busted again.”

“Relax, Leah. I’m not going to count. This is straight-up blackjack, just like I promised you. And I’m only going to say something when you want some advice, just like I promised. Have I broken a promise to you yet?”

“
Not yet, but you’re kind of unpredictable.”

He
put on a fake frown. “I can try to be boring, if you’d like.”

We were on a flight to Atlantic City, New Jersey. I’d never been that far north before
, so it was yet another new adventure, courtesy of Drew.

This trip was just an overnighter. It had been two days since the awkward conversation in the restaurant, but since then we’d had fun. I gave Drew his second surfing lesson, and he seemed to be picking it up pretty quickly, although I didn’t tell him that.
Despite having never given lessons before, it turned out I was a pretty good teacher, even if I was a hardass, which Drew pointed out several times.

While Drew
had bobbed in the water, waiting for the perfect wave on each practice run, I had stayed on the beach with Cliff. More than once I had found myself thinking how much I would miss him as well, and even told him so. In response, Cliff had dragged his slobbery tongue up the side of my face.

When I
’d mentioned that I wished we could have had one more trip to Vegas, Drew correctly pointed out that the meager winnings I’d had on the last trip had given me the blackjack bug. I didn’t deny it. That’s when he suggested a quick trip up to Atlantic City.

Our plane landed just after eight
p.m. and we caught a cab to the Golden Nugget.

“Do you come here much?” I asked as we made our way to the casino floor.

“Couple times a year, at most.”

“
Why not more? It’s a lot closer.”

“Yeah, but it’s no Vegas.”

We passed row after row of slot machines and the people sitting there dropping their coins in. It looked boring to me. Not as interesting as blackjack, anyway.

Sitting down at
one of the tables, I got out four fifty-dollar bills and the dealer changed them into chips.

I started off betting the minimum and quickly lost half my money. I got another
one hundred in chips, and my next hand was a 10 and a 6.

I glanced over my shoulder. Drew nodded and I gave the sign for hit, drawing a 3. The dealer
got 22, busted, finally giving me a win. I looked at Drew again and quickly dropped the smile from my face when I saw that he was expressionless. I remembered him saying you didn’t need a “poker face” while playing blackjack, so I figured I’d caught him concentrating, which meant he was counting the cards as he coached me.

I hadn’t been expecting him to do that. When I realized that he was, I quickly scanned the area, looking for a pit boss.
I got a little nervous about what we were doing, but decided to trust Drew’s experience and instincts.

After another hour of alternating between winning and losing hands—a few more winning ones than losing—I h
ad turned my three hundred dollars into a little more than two thousand.

.  .  .  .  .

Later, as Drew brushed his teeth in the bathroom, I was lying on the bed and called out to him: “I know you were counting.”

He stuck his head out of the bathroom. “Prove it,” he said, through a mouthful of toothpaste foam.

I laughed. “Nice try, but I’m not a pit boss. I don’t have to prove it. I just know. I could tell by the look on your face.”

I heard the faucet running as he finished
up. He came out into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, taking his shoes off.

I had already brushed my teeth and washed my face, and I was still wearing the black shorts and red tank top I’d worn all day.

Drew didn’t say anything.

“Fine,” I said, “then how about you just explain how you were able to stand there and count the whole time without getting busted.”

He ran his hands through his hair. The curls around the edges were wet from him washing his face. “It’s too obvious. Nobody would be dumb enough to stand there, counting and coaching the whole time. So it looks innocent. Maybe like you’re a rookie and I’m just helping you learn the game.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Then why not do that all the time, and then you’d never get caught?”

Drew grinned and reclined, propping himself up on his elbow. “Because then it would be too obvious.”

I frowned. “So, obvious is good, but not too obvious, and not too many times?”

“Now you see why I work alone. Some people do it in teams, but they’re taking a bigger risk that way. They’re also going for hundreds of thousands a night. I’m not. Anyway, you say you could tell by the look on my face, huh?”

“Yep.”

“How do you know what I was thinking?” He yawned. “Maybe I was daydreaming, thinking about how I couldn’t wait to come up to our room so I’d have you alone.”

“
Nice diversion.” I shifted so that I was almost flat on my back. “Fine. You won’t answer that, then answer something else.”

He turned to face me, pulling one knee up onto the bed, still sitting. “Ask away.”

I took a deep breath. The previous topic had been light-hearted. This one would be anything but that.

“Why don’t you look at me?”

An expression of confusion grew across his face. “I look at you all the time. I’m looking at you right now.”

I rolled over onto my side,
resting my head in my hand. “That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the times we’ve had sex.” I bit my lip.

His jaw clenched and he looked away, down at the floor. “
I don’t know why I do that.”

“Yes
you do.”

He looked back at me. “After what happened to you, I don’t want you to feel like you’re being gawked at.”

Just as I’d figured. I could see that it was a sweet, considerate thing from his perspective, but that also meant that what happened to me was baggage I was carrying over into…whatever this was with Drew. Fling? Relationship? It didn’t matter at the moment.

“It’s not the same,” I said. “Not even close.”
And that’s when the idea struck me. I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood. Right in front of him. Barely a foot away. My heart raced, but I knew I needed this,
wanted
this. “I want you to look.”

I unbuttoned my shorts and pushed them down my legs until they fell to my ankles and I kicked them aside.

“This is different,” I said.

I grabbed the hem of my tank, lifted it over my bra, my head, and tossed it near my shorts.

Drew’s eyes had been locked with mine, but as I stood there motionless, his gaze swept down my body, then back up.

“You’re different,” I said, reaching behind my back to unclasp my bra.

Drew had undressed me before, and while that had given me a rush of excitement the few times it happened, this was a different kind of feeling. A surge. Not the usual excitement, not a thrill. This was an intense, intimate moment. I didn’t want him to undress me this time. I wanted to undress myself as he looked at me. This was something I needed—I was allowing him to see me like this on my terms, trusting myself to trust again.