Summer's Desire (24 page)

I ignore his stare and continue my
explanation. "Anyway, most boys—present company excluded, of course, for
politeness' if not exactly the truth's sake—are clearly undiscriminating
bunnies who think of only one thing." Once more Seth gives me his sideways
glance, this one filled with amusement as well as a bit of annoyance, probably
at having been insidiously included in my prejudiced statement. "And after
I filled out in the chest area, I started to get hit on a lot. I didn't enjoy
the attention."

That is part of the truth. The complete
truth is that I was mostly scared of the attention. Which, I guess, is just one
of the myriad ways in which I'm broken by what happened when I was five years
old. When my parents were killed because of me.

The tenebrous tentacles of memory try to
suck me in, but I manage to fight them off.
I'm with Seth
, I remind
myself. I'm safe now.

I refocus on him. "So my genius
idea was born, and I started wearing my 'uniform'. Then ta-daaa!—ninety-five
percent of my boy trouble was gone, just like that! You men really are shallow
creatures," I remark sagely.

Surprised at Seth's lack of response, I notice
that, unlike a few moments ago, his hands are clenched too tightly on the wheel,
and that familiar angry tick has appeared above his jaw. Oh my, did my joking
comments really annoy him that much? I bite my lip in consternation.

The laden silence persists until, two
minutes later, we've reached Joe's Garage and Seth's finished parking the car at
the back of the shop. After extracting the keys from the ignition, he unfastens
his seat belt and immediately turns to me, his warm hand going to my cheek.

His expression is grave with intensity. "Sunny,
tell me the truth. The reason for your so-called 'uniform'..." He breaks
off, closes his eyes, inhales audibly, opens his eyes again, and continues
hoarsely: "Did anyone ever try to hurt you... Like Josh did?"

"No! No, Seth!" I'm horrified.
This is why he became so upset? My hand rises to his wrist, clasping it in a fierce
gesture of reassurance. "I had a couple of foster fathers and brothers who
made me feel uncomfortable, but they never tried anything, I swear. And the boys
in school who hit on me never became aggressive. The thing with Josh was a
total anomaly, and it wasn't even because of
me
!"

"What do you mean?" He seems
calmer now that I've allayed his worst fears.

"I mean that Josh didn't attack me
because he had gone crazy with
lust
for me, or anything like that!
Mostly, he seemed to want revenge because of my rejections. What's more, taking
into account something he said, I think that freaking Jessica asked him to
teach me a lesson!"

A scary kind of rage leaps to life in Seth's
eyes. "And you're only
now
telling me this?!"

Provoked, I snap back, "Oh, for crying
out loud, it's not like I intentionally withheld information from you! These
past two days, I've been on an emotional roller-coaster, so please forgive me
if one little detail slipped my mind!"

He actually growls at me. "That's
not exactly a
little
detail, Sunny! It means that fucking bitch wasn't
happy with just ruining our lives five years ago; she's doing all she can to
ruin them again!"

Wow, I knew that Seth had a lot of anger
and resentment bottled up against Jessica, but right now he seems so off-the-scale
menacing that I almost feel sorry for my nemesis when he gets through with her...
Actually, scratch that! I don't feel sorry at all. That freaking devil's spawn—I
wish I could strangle her with my own two hands!

Still... "Seth, I'm not completely
sure about the thing with Josh. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that even
Jessica would go so far as telling her buddy to rape me."

The remembrance makes me sick to my
stomach. Heavens, those rotten memories are like so much slime clinging to the
recesses of my mind. I wish I could wipe them
all
away, like Seth's gentle
touch wiped away the ugliness of Josh's brutal fondling. My hand around Seth's
wrist clenches tighter.

I continue in a whisper: "Maybe Josh
was just supposed to try and seduce me, which he had a snowball's chance in
hell of accomplishing, and he grew enraged when I rejected him. Besides, even
if Jessica was the instigator of his attack on me, it's still Josh who actually
went through with it."

Seth shakes his head. "I find it unbelievable
that, after all she did, you can still defend that bitch."

"I'm not! Believe me, I'm really
not! It's just that I don't thi—"

We're interrupted by someone rapping on
Seth's window.

"Hey, lover boy!" a young
redheaded guy in coveralls greets with a big grin. "You plan on ever
getting out of the car and, I don't know, maybe start getting some actual work
done? Unlike the zingy kind of work you're doing right now?" His gaze moves
to me, and the grin becomes wider. "Hey there, pretty lady!"

Seth's hand has fallen away from my
cheek. He grits out, "I swear, Andy, one of these days!..."

Andy laughs and takes off, and Seth
turns back to me. "We'll finish this later."

Uh, I kind of hope not.

Seth gets out of the car, comes to open
my door, and helps me out of the BMW. Of course, it's not like I
need
his help to get out of the freaking car, but I really enjoy his sweet, courtly
gestures. They make me feel valued and special.

Gripping my hand, Seth leads me to a
side entrance of the garage, and we enter a medium-sized working area. There
are two cars in here: one suspended, with presumably Andy's legs sticking out from
under it; the other one with its hood raised and with another guy, this one in
his forties, with salt-and-pepper hair, bending over it.

"Hi, Joe!" Seth calls out to
the second guy, still holding my hand.

Joe turns to face us and greets Seth
dryly. "Glad to see you could finally join us, Lewis."

Seth is unabashed. "I'll make up
for the time."

Andy slides out from beneath the car,
again with the broad grin aimed at me.

At Joe's inquiring look in my direction,
Seth makes the introductions: "This is Summer, my girl. Summer, this is my
boss and owner of this fine establishment, Joe Larson. The clown down there is
Andy, a fellow mechanic."

I melt at hearing him say "my girl"
in that deep, sexy voice of his. He's always called me this, even when we were
children.

Seth looks back to me. "You can sit
on that couch"—he points with his free hand at a green, dusty couch lying by
the wall a few feet away—"and make yourself comfortable. I'll go and
change. Be right back."

With a squeeze of my hand and a last glance
at me, he disappears quickly through a door at the back of the shop, leaving me
alone with the two men. They're both gazing at me with curiosity.

"Hello." I smile weakly.
"I hope you don't mind my presence here, Mr. Larson. I won't distract Seth
from his work." At least, I hope I won't.

Joe cocks his head to the right, while Andy
disappears with a guffaw back underneath his car. "That's all right,
Summer. Lewis would know his way around a car even blind; I'm sure he won't
mess up. But I don't think I've seen you in town before. Whose kid are
you?" He wrinkles his forehead, apparently deep in thought.

I gulp. "I'm fostered with the
Andersons." At this, he raises an eyebrow. For some reason, I add, "But
I used to live here in Rockford five years ago. I was fostered to Seth's
Grandma then."

His expression lights up in sudden
comprehension. "You're Seth's Shadow?" Then, exploding into laughter:
"Ah, now I see!"

Andy pops out from under the car again,
mouth open. "This girl is
Seth's Shadow
?"

My cheeks are red. As if the situation
wasn't awkward enough already, of course Joe had to go and remember that stupid
nickname!

When I entered first grade, I was so
happy at finally being in school with Seth that I always stayed glued to him at
recess. (Seth didn't seem to mind; in fact, if I wasn't beside him within one
minute after the bell rang,
he
would come looking for
me
.) Very
soon though, some of the older boys at our school started to call me "Seth's
Shadow" and to make fun of me. Seth bloodied their noses, and the mockery
stopped.

The nickname, however, stuck.

Honestly though, when it wasn't meant in
a mean way, I didn't mind the name all that much; after all, it kind of
reflected the truth. Throughout our childhood, Seth and I were always a package
deal: if you got one of us, then you got the other as well. Just like a person
and their shadow, we were inseparable.

After I settled on this interpretation and
impressed it upon Seth as well (who listened to me with easygoing amusement and
didn't contradict my whimsical notions, even going so far as to say that he,
for one, didn't mind at all being
Sunny's
Shadow), I even sort of grew
fond of the nickname, fanciful dork that I was!

At any rate, the expression "Seth's
Shadow" never disappeared in the ranks of our age peers (however, Seth did
ensure that it was never again used openly as a weapon against the two of us),
but until now I had no clue that it was also known among adults.

Joe hasn't finished embarrassing me.
"I'm sorry for not recognizing you, Summer. Adelaide Lewis was a good
friend of mine, and I saw you with her a couple of times. But it's been many
years since, and you were such a tiny thing last time I saw you." Then,
giving me a wry once-over: "Not that you've grown much."

"I've grown some," I mutter
sulkily. And I have, really! I'm 5'3''... almost (surely, a measly quarter of
an inch is hardly worth nitpicking over!). Anyway, it's not like everyone can
be a giant like Seth!

Andy snorts and disappears again under
the car. Joe just gives me another smile. "Well, I'm glad you're back in
town. Lewis must've missed you a lot."

I smile shyly, loving to hear that.

The door at the back opens, and in comes
Seth, holding something in his hand. Heavens, I can't believe this! It's so
unfair how smoking hot this boy looks even in grease-stained brown coveralls.

He comes to me, smiling, pleased to have
me here, I think. He hands me a paperback. "I found this mystery among my
stuff here. You can read it if you want, to pass the time easier." I accept
the paperback and nod. He kisses my forehead and gets to work.

I go sit on the couch and call Louise,
telling her that I left early and am out for the day. She acquiesces
distractedly to my plans, informing me that she's at a fundraiser and doesn't
have time to speak. Then, predictably, I hear the disconnect signal while I
still have my mouth open. I shake my head, curl on the couch, and open the
paperback.

* * *

The mystery Seth gave me to read is pretty
engrossing, so I only raise my head to sneak looks at a certain blue-eyed
mechanic, oh, maybe once every thirty seconds. I feel his gaze touching on me
just as often, and he's actually working and accomplishing a lot during this
time.

Truthfully, I know next to nothing about
cars—I don't even have a driver's license—but I'd have to be blind to miss Seth's
obvious proficiency at his job. I love his earnest expressions when he's
consulting with Joe or Andy, the absorbed look on his face when he's checking things
out, the competent way in which he takes apart and puts back together the car
parts.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I also
love the play of his muscles when he's bending, or lifting, or flexing. Holy smoke,
this boy's butt is like a masterpiece of human anatomy!

At lunch we go to the nearby deli and
buy sandwiches, and we eat them sitting on the couch back at the garage, so
close to each other that I'm practically on his lap. We're leaning into each
other, maintaining steady eye contact, conversing softly about our favorite music
and bands and movies.

We're constantly touching, as if we both
need an unremitting connection to the other. In my case, it's slight brushes of
his arm, my hand timidly drawing circles on his chest, and once when I feel exceptionally
daring a playful finger-tap on his lower lip. In his case, it's his hand at my
waist, sometimes lying still, sometimes caressing, and his fingers stroking
with tenderness down my cheek or curling a tendril of hair back behind my ear.

For more than five years, I've been
starving for affection and human touch: Seth's affection, Seth's touch—
his
,
because apart from my fondness for Grandma, he's the only person in the world whom
I've let myself love since becoming an orphan. Now, having everything I've
yearned for suddenly lavished on me again, and in such great measure... it
feels almost surreal.

I'm soaking in Seth's closeness with
something akin to desperation, for in the corners of my mind lurks the dark
fear that everything—that
Seth
—will be taken from me again very soon. God
knows, I don't deserve to be this happy after what I've done in the past... yet
still I can't help but cling to this feeling of joy. And pray for it to last.