Every Second With You (16 page)

“A sports fan with a typewriter tat,” Trey adds.

“Yep. An ugly, faded, hideous one at that, but I wear it like a badge of honor.”

“That’s the only way to wear one,” Trey says.

As we reach the parking garage, Robert shoots a lopsided grin at Debbie and me, and points to Trey. “I like this one. He’s a keeper.”

On the drive to their house, Debbie spends the entire ride twisted around in the front seat, so she can chat with us in the back, playing tour guide. She tells us about the old school feel of Ocean Beach where they live, the mom-and-pop owned shops, like bakeries, boutiques and indie book stores. Next, she chats about their dog, The Sheriff. After that, she mentions the dinner she has planned for us tonight.

“You probably figured we were going to take you to Once Upon a Sandwich,” Debbie says, with a glint in her blue eyes.

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Nah. We were thinking we’d take you to our favorite burger joint for burgers, fries and milkshakes. Would that work for you?”

I glance at Trey, and he’s smiling and nodding. It’s such a simple plan, and it’s so us, and it’s so them, and it feels so right.

* * *

“Do you think he’s watching us?” Trey asks, nodding at the black and white border collie.

I check out The Sheriff. He’s curled up and sleeping on the hardwood floors of our bedroom in the duplex adjoining their cottage-style house. Debbie said they usually rent the duplex but the new renters aren’t moving in for a few weeks, so we have our own little home on the beach during our stay. It’s bedtime, alone time, on our first night here. Trey has already kissed me madly, nibbled on my collar bone, and stripped me down to nothing. Now, I’m lying naked before him in the dark of a moonlit night in California.

I shake my head. “Nope. His eyes are closed.”

“Good,” he says, running his strong hands across my skin, first my arms, next my hips, and then he trails his palms along my thighs. When he reaches my knees, he parts my legs, and my breath is uneven and needy.

“Why is it good? Are you going to do something naughty to me? Something you don’t want the dog to see?”

Trey raises an eyebrow suggestively. “Even if he saw, dogs keep secrets, right?”

I smile. “So I’ve heard. Their secret-keeping abilities are legendary.”

“Then he won’t tell a soul what I want to do after I do this,” he says, pressing his lips on the inside of my thigh, kissing me behind the knee as he taps soft notes of desire with his fingers up my legs, barely touching me where I’m already electric for him.

Teasing me.

So much teasing that I try to wiggle my way closer.

“What do you want to do after this?” I ask him, arching my hips, trying to bring his delicious mouth all the way to me.

“I want to see if you taste as good in California as you do in New York.” He switches positions, moves up the bed, and flops down on his back. Then he reaches for me, his hands on my hips. “Sit on me,” he whispers in a hungry voice that burns with desire.

“Really?”

He nods against the pillow. “I want you on my face,” he says, breathing out hard, and I don’t know who’s more turned on now, but I know this much—I’m aching for his touch. I’m dying for the exquisite agony he delivers with his mouth, lips and tongue. So I don’t ask any more questions. I simple obey, straddling his face, balancing my hands on the headboard. His hands are locked on my hips, and he holds me above him. “This is a fucking beautiful view,” he says, then tugs me down.

I bite my lip when he first licks me so I don’t scream out in pleasure.

“Mmm,” he murmurs as he kisses all my wetness, his soft lips greedily devouring me, like I’m the key to his survival. He slides his tongue across my sex as his lips consume me. I grip the headboard, digging my fingers around the wood as electricity shoots through me like a hot buzz running through my skin, spinning in my veins, turning my entire body into nothing but the deep, hungry ache for release. I won’t last long, not with his moans and groans as he laps me up, plundering me with his tongue so eagerly, like he’s coveting my pleasure.

Soon, I start to rock into him, to buck against his mouth. He grips my hips harder, grinding me deeper and faster into his mouth until I am awash in a hot charge that starts tight in my belly then pulses throughout my entire body, coating me in nothing but ecstasy and heat, all the way to my fingertips.

Everything is a blur as I shout his name, the orgasm rocketing through me, leaving no inch of my body untouched with its pure and beautiful bliss. I exhale hard, panting still, my legs shaking.

Then, as I slow my movements, I’m hit with the most fantastic aftershocks that radiate throughout me.

Soon, I shift off of him, collapsing on the bed.

“Holy hell,” I say, still dizzy and glowing from coming so hard on him. “You have a magic mouth.”

“I guess that was good for you, too,” he says, with a sly smile.

“Yeah. Slightly,” I say, and then I glance down at the sleeping dog. “Guess he doesn’t mind our noises, either.”

“I knew he was my kind of wingman,” he says.

I laugh. “So, what was your verdict?”

He switches to his side, brushing his lips ever so faintly against my ear. “You taste like the one thing I will never have enough of.”

A shiver runs through me with his words. They make me feel both loved and sexy. “Let’s do it in our position,” I say, and I move to my side, too. I reach down between his legs, grasp him in my hand, and bury him inside of me. I move with him, savoring his sounds, his breath, his ragged pants when he tells me he’s so close.

“Come in me,” I whisper, watching his face strain and twist with pleasure as I bring him over the edge.

Later, as we lie together, it occurs to me that San Diego is already winning. That the happiest days of my life were here when I was younger, and that so far, California is a bit like paradise.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Harley

The sky stretches with endless blue, the shade so pure and perfect it seems unreal. The sun inches its way overhead, and the waves crash into the sand, the powerful Pacific Ocean pushing and pulling at the sandy shore with its mighty force.

“I told you so,” I say to Trey the next morning. “I told you you’d want shorts.”

He holds up his hands in surrender as he throws another tennis ball to the dog. Trey’s jeans are cuffed up, but the cuffs are soaked. He wears a T-shirt, but without board shorts he looks out of place on the beach and, frankly, a bit silly.

“You look like an interloper. Like a city boy. You’re embarrassing me,” I say, as I kick sand onto his feet playfully, the grains sliding through my naked toes. I love the feel of the sand on my bare feet, the breeze on my arms, and the salty bite of the waves in my nostrils.

The Sheriff returns to Trey, trotting by his side and making big puppy-dog eyes at him as we cut across the beach toward the house. Already, the dog has adopted Trey, or maybe it’s the other way around. I never knew my guy had that side of him—the dog-person side. Then again, he never knew he did, either.

“I’ve never had a pet,” he’d told me this morning when he woke up, laughing as The Sheriff licked his face, the dog’s way of asking for breakfast. “But this dog kind of rocks.”

We reach the deck of the house; Robert and Debbie are drinking their morning coffee outside.

“He needs shorts,” I tell Robert.

“The Sheriff? That’s crazy. He only wears clothes at night, when he puts on his PJs. He goes full monty during the day.”

I laugh and point my thumb to Trey. “Him.”

“You telling me I need to take your boyfriend shopping?”

I nod. “Pretty please.”

Robert shakes his head, but he’s already giving in. He turns to Trey, and claps him on the shoulder. “Now son, I’m giving up my man card to take you shopping, but she’s right. I’m thoroughly embarrassed by your lack of appropriate beach attire. Surprised, too, that TSA didn’t confiscate your bags at the airport yesterday. We usually don’t let anyone into San Diego with jeans on,” Robert says, pointing to his own cargo shorts.

They leave, and I join Debbie on the deck. The dog follows, parking himself in a perfect sit next to me, and looking expectantly at Debbie with the ball in his mouth.

She takes the ball and tosses it far away in the sand, and the dog is off like a shot.

“Why’d you name him The Sheriff?”

“When we adopted him we had cats, and he was always trying to herd them, and round them up, like they were his posse or something. So we called him The Sheriff.”

“I like that name.”

“Thank you. Would you like some coffee? Tea, or lemonade?”

It’s only ten in the morning, but lemonade sounds delicious. “Lemonade, please.”

She heads into the house and returns quickly with two tall glasses. She takes a sip, sets the glass down, and presses her palms against the white wooden deck railing, gazing out at the water.

“I bet it never gets old, this view,” I say, drinking in the gorgeous sky and the sun that bakes my skin slowly, luxuriously.

“Never does. Every day it feels new again,” she says, and then she turns to me. “So, how’s it going with the two of you? How is he with being a dad soon?”

I’m momentarily startled by the directness of her question. She reminds me a bit of Joanne; going for bluntness. It’s such a change from what I’ve been used to my whole life over.

“He had a hard time at first, but he’s changed a lot in the last few months. Sometimes, he’s too sweet for words.”

“That’s how it should be. And you’re very serious about each other.” It’s half a question, and half a pronouncement.

“Very serious.”

“I can tell,” she says, her blue eyes holding mine. “The way he looks at you. How he talks to you. And you, with him. You have this connection that goes beyond most people. One that runs so deep it’s almost like a secret language. I think that’s what it’s like with true love. With soul mates. You just have it.”

“You can tell with us?”

She nods, and taps her heart. “Oh yeah. I can tell. I have a soul mate detector.”

“We are soul mates. I’m sure of it. What about you and Robert? Is that what you have?”

“Absolutely,” she says as The Sheriff trots up to the porch, dropping the ball with a loud thunk then staring at Debbie. She grabs the ball, and tosses it back out to the sand.

As The Sheriff tears away, I spy a seagull careening towards the sand in hot pursuit of a french fry. The seagull lands and grabs his carbohydrate prey, gulping it down.

I turn back to Debbie, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand. There’s something I want to know, and she doesn’t mince words so I go for it. “My parents didn’t have that, did they?”

“No,” she says with a sigh. “They didn’t. They tried hard. But they didn’t.”

“Will you tell me about them? Is it okay to ask?”

“Of course it’s fine to ask, and of course I’ll tell you. I figured you’d want to know. Let’s sit,” she says, gesturing to a pair of white wooden chairs with a small table between them

“What were they like together?”

Debbie tilts her head, considering my question as a breeze gently rattles the wind chimes that hang above the screen door. The pretty tinkling sound fades away and she turns to me. “They were like this.” She makes her hands into fists and bumps the knuckles together. “They were metal against metal. They were both brilliant. John is a very smart man, and Barb fell hard for that. She loved his brain, and she loved the way he could hold his own with her. She was taken with him, and he very much was with her, as far as I could tell. He was a political advisor, and they met when she was on an internship for a paper out here. I don’t even want to say they fell in love; it was more like they crashed into something volatile. Each other, maybe. Because they argued all the time. It was as if they were always locked in a debate. We’d have dinner with them, and they were always looking for some mistake in the other.”

“That sounds sad,” I say and my chest hurts for my parents.

The Sheriff arrives again and deposits the ball. Debbie reaches for it and fires it off. The dog’s black furry legs blur through the sand.

“But sadly, John is like that.”

“Really?”

“He’s not a happy man. Oh, on the surface, he’s the life of the party, but deep down, he’s not a happy soul. I love him, he’s my son, and I’d do anything for him. I could beat myself up and say I’m a bad mom and it’s all because of me, but I don’t know why he is the way he is. I just know he’s like that.”

“Is that why you don’t talk to him much?”

“I don’t talk to him much because he went his own way. He’s been living in Europe for years now. He made choices that I didn’t agree with, and while I love him, I don’t love his choices, and he knows that.”

The pit in my chest deepens, threatens to tunnel its way through me. Yet I need to ask. I open my mouth, and it’s almost painful to say the words; they taste like tinfoil against my tongue. “My mom told me something. I want to know if it’s true. She said he was a sex addict, and in therapy when I spent that summer with you. Is he an addict?”

Debbie stretches her hand across the small table between us and grasps mine. “Oh, sweetie. There are things between them that I will never understand. There are things between a man and a woman that need to be between them and them only, right?” I nod my agreement and she continues, her fingers clasped tight around my wrist. “But I know this. John has been married six times. Every time, he falls in love with someone else and leaves his marriage for another. I love him, but I don’t love the addict in him. I don’t love the choices he’s made, and I’ve told him so. So call him a sex addict. Call him a serial cheater. Call him a ladies’ man. What it amounts to is he is a person who has not changed, and because of that, I’m not close to him. He doesn’t want to engage on a meaningful level. But then, this isn’t surprising, is it? He wasn’t much of a father, was he?”

“He wasn’t one at all.”

Debbie sighs heavily. “I’m sorry, sweetie. You got the short end of the straw.”

Her kindness and her blunt honesty pierce me straight through to my core. My one-time modus operandi—lying, hiding, keeping secrets—no longer fits. “I felt all alone sometimes. I don’t know if I even realized that’s what it was. I don’t think I could name it till I was older. But when I saw your cards, I knew it was loneliness, because I didn’t know anyone except my mother.” My throat catches, but I rein it in. I might be becoming more fluent with the truth, but that doesn’t mean I need to shed tears every time. “Did you ever think about why I was never in touch with you?