Swept Away (3 page)

“Let me smell your breath.”

Michael laughs, “What?”

“I’m serious. If you haven’t been drinking then you shouldn’t smell like alcohol. Let me smell.”

He grins, bemused, but leans in and she takes in a deep breath. He doesn’t smell like alcohol. He smells pretty good actually. Amber’s eyes flutter closed. Really good, like mint and spice and—

“You’re not falling asleep on me, right?” Michael asks and his voice is whisper soft with a faint note of amusement ringing clear.

Amber’s eyes snap open and she blushes hot. “N-no,” she stutters.

Michael laughs again. “Good. ‘Cause I still need to know where you live. You satisfied now? I’m not too alcohol-ly to drive you home?”

Amber smiles tentatively and whispers, “You can take me home.”

He jumps to his feet and does a complicated sweeping bow. “My lady, please lead the way.”

Amber rolls her eyes even as the faint blush that had been going away floods her cheeks again. “Whatever,” she mumbles shyly, “I don’t know where you parked.” Which is the dumbest thing to say, bar none, it’s his freakin’ house. Where else would he have parked?

Michael doesn’t call her out on it. He leads her to his car, one arm securely planted around her shoulders, chattering away all the way.

Chapter Two

One of the major disadvantages of being in the drama club is the fact that Amber never manages to catch the school bus no matter how quickly she packs her bag or runs to the stop.

“No!” Amber groans and slams her palm against the brick wall as she watches the bus pull away. Again. Not today of all days, she forgot her wallet on her bed!

Every single freakin’ meeting, it always ends the same. And she’s not in the mood to call her annoying brother to come pick her up.

Amber sits down on the steps, arms crossed.

She loves her brother to death but lately he’s been the biggest jerk and she really just didn’t feel like dealing with his crap. But it’s between that or walking all twenty blocks home herself. Calling her jerky big brother it is then.

He picks up on the second ring. “What do you want?”

“Jeremy, I missed the bus again,” Amber starts, mature, calm, not even the slightest hint of whining.

He hangs up on her anyway, with a curt half-laughed, “better get to walking then!”

Cell phones don’t even have the decency to give her the dial tone sound, instead it’s just turned off and she’s staring at her home screen again.

“Bastard,” she hisses and snaps it shut. She climbs to her feet already feeling the ache in her calves and thighs just from the thought of walking all that way.

Barely a block has passed when she hears a loud honk from behind her and a familiar red Mercedes pulls up alongside her. It’s Michael.

“Hey, Amber, where you off to?”

Amber’s heart leaps into her throat just like every other time he says her name. He looks GQ cute even dressed casually in his white t-shirt and faded blue jeans with his hair spiked up and those stupidly pretty green eyes.

All of her anger subsides immediately.

“On my way back home,” she says.

He grins broad so each of those perfect white teeth are on display. “Great! I’ll take you, I know where it is now.” He honest to God winks at her and Amber’s knees go weak.

He unlocks the door and she climbs in, slowly to keep from wobbling.

“I caught your play the other day. You were pretty good,” he says.

She blushes at the compliment. “Thanks. I’m kind of scared actually. Freshmen don’t usually get leads especially not to Macbeth. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Yeah, it is, you should be proud of yourself.” He sounds sincere but he goes quiet at that and she doesn’t know what she’s done that’s shut him down.

For the rest of the ride there’s a distance between them, further and longer reaching than that of physical space. But then they’re pulling up at her house and his smile reappears.

“Cinderella,” he says, “you have reached your castle.”

Amber grins at his silliness, his momentary lapse into seriousness forgotten. From afar she’d known she’d like him but it’s nice that her fantasies and the reality for once are the same. She was beginning to think life could never live up to her dreams but Michael is everything she could have wanted in a—well, are they friends?

“Thanks for taking me, I always miss it because of drama club and my brother thinks he’s too important to stop what he’s doing for a couple of minutes to pick me up.”

“It’s all right, I don’t mind.”

Michael gets out of the car and goes to her side just to open her door and help her out. Seriously.

He’s like a prince out of some fairytale and she’s the little urchin girl who’d fallen in love in one glance. Amber worries a little that this isn’t going to end well though, life isn’t a fairytale as she knows all too well.

When they’re standing they’re so close to each other Amber doesn’t want to walk away. Her reluctance to leave is mirrored by his own, she can tell from the way he leans against the car door and stares at her.

“If you want, I can take you home after?”

It’s an offer he has to know she wouldn’t turn down but it comes out as a question and she can tell he’s nervous from the way he tugs at his ear. She just might know every single one of his nervous habits just from watching him for most of the last year. Admitting how hopeless she is over him can’t hurt as long as it’s just to herself, in the privacy of her own head.

“Yeah, okay, I’d like that,” she says. Amber doesn’t even bother false protesting, she wants every minute with him she can have and she’ll do just about anything to get it.

“Great. Tomorrow then?”

She doesn’t have drama club tomorrow but she doesn’t care. “Yes. I’ll see you after school.”

They’re grinning stupidly at each other as she walks away backwards and shuts her front door. Amber peaks out the window after him and waits until he pulls off, an excited scream bubbling up in her throat.
He’s going to drive her home. Every day.
Holy crap, she needs to find something to wear!

Homework is abandoned on the couch as she throws her book bag onto it and thunders up the stairs. The house is otherwise silent and she doesn’t bother figuring out where everyone else is. Stacy, her dad’s stupid new live-in girlfriend, should be off of work by now and the kids, Stacy’s bratty twin boys, definitely can’t be quiet for more than a couple of seconds at a time.

Not even the thought of them can bring her down. Amber’s riding high for the rest of the day, easily the happiest she’s ever been since they moved to California.

* * * *

It starts a routine for them. Every day after school there’s Michael, leaning against his red Mercedes, waiting for her. Sometimes he’s surrounded by a group of kids all jockeying for his attention but more often than not, it’s just him. On those days when there’s a flood of people around him, he parts the waves and walks to Amber to let her through, like she’s some sort of royalty or of noble blood and it never fails to make her internally flail. And with each day that they ride to her house, talking and laughing or just singing the wrong lyrics at the top of their lungs to whatever song that’s on the radio, she grows a little deeper in love.

Amber has six months with him and then he moves away. He’s joined the military, he’s not even staying to graduate first. His folks are spitting mad and have disowned him. It’s the biggest news in town since the Dashell’s youngest daughter got herself pregnant with twins right before graduation.

He comes to see her first before he gets on the bus and he looks different and grown somehow, like he’s gained five years of maturity with one decision.

They sit out on her porch, Mom’s on the phone with Jeremy but Amber doesn’t want to talk to her. Maybe never wants to talk to her ever again, so the choice of ignoring Jeremy’s bleating to ‘come pick up the phone!’ in favor of speaking to Michael, it’s not a difficult one to make.

He’s quiet and subdued kind of like he was the night of his party, and the air around them is still like even the weather and the insects know something important is happening here.

“I gotta do this for me, you know,” he says. And his eyes are so haunted that she wants to kiss them, smooth his pain away with her lips. But she can’t ‘cause they’re not friends like that.

“Anyway, they’ll get over it, they still have my kid brother to mold after all. They never did think I’d be able to make much of myself without their help. I guess I’ll at least get to prove them wrong, right?”

Amber entangles their fingers and he lets her. She doesn’t talk when he’s in these types of moods, just holds on tight and listens to give her moral support. Slowly by inches his tense shoulders relax and he lays his head on her shoulder. “Thanks, Amber, I knew you’d understand.”

She does. “Can we still keep in touch?”

He looks up at her, surprise written on his face. “Yeah, of course, I don’t want you to forget me.”

Like she could.

“I’ll send you my address when I can. I don’t know how long I’ll be in boot camp or where I’m going from there but some of the guys say you get a mailbox so, yeah, definitely, I want to stay in touch.” He’s the one babbling now, like she’s done so often to his patient ear. It’s sweet and cute. She places her fingers over his still-moving lips and it feels like a kiss. The closest she’ll ever get to one from him anyway. They’re so close she could do it now. Just tilt her face a little and there he’d be, soft lips under her own mouth, his breath breathing into her.

She’s not though. Brave.

“Good. I’ll write every day,” Amber says shakily.

He smiles and pulls his face away, lays back down on her shoulder. The weight and heat is soothing and she never wants to move again.

“Good. I’ll answer every letter.”

They stay there until the stars come out and Dad makes her go in. If she were a little older, a little wiser, a little more prepared she would have kissed him.

* * * *

His first letter gets to her on a Saturday three weeks later.

At first, it’s pretty basic.
“How are you? What’s happening there? Miss me and our rides back home after school? Bet it’s not as much fun walking everywhere.”
But Michael has always been a talker as far as she knows and it’s not a personality trait that’s contained to his voice-box. He rambles on and on about the most inane things,
“Hey, you ever think about what kind of cheese the moon would be made of if it really was made of cheese? Would it be Swiss? You know, with all those craters and dips, it kind of looks like holes, right?”
and she answers every single one faithfully. Every line, every word.

It’s not the same as seeing each other daily but they develop a new routine so that’s almost just the same. They pour their feelings and thoughts out on paper and neither of them laugh or mock the other no matter how ridiculous.

She falls in love with him for a second time with that letter.

Holding it in her hands and knowing there is someone—Michael—out there who keeps his promises, who wants to know her and be there for her even when he is going through his own things.

She’s still too young to know what to do with it, so she hoards her love, keeps it secret, and doesn’t breathe a word of it to anyone.

* * * *

Amber is thirteen when her dad finds out Mom has been sleeping with a co-worker. They try and pretend everything’s okay and their whole life didn’t just end for another six months but in the end none of them are that good of actors. Two days before her fourteenth birthday Dad moves them to California to be close to his parents. Mom lets him, she doesn’t even fight for them. And maybe that’s the part that Amber can’t understand.

Amber is fourteen when Mom and Dad divorce, and it’s weird and it’s strange because Amber didn’t divorce them but that’s the way it feels some days.

Michael says adults are as selfish as kids and the worst part is they convince themselves they’re doing everything for someone else and not just trying to cover up their own pain. He says the first three weeks after his dad moved out, his mom wouldn’t even let Michael say his name, and if his dad called then his mom hung up. So for three weeks Michael didn’t get to have a dad at all.

He tells her about boot camp and how it’s nice not to have to make any decisions for himself for a while and know that it was going to continue to be that way. His parents tried to act like he had full control over his life but they’d planned everything for him: where he was going to school, what he’d major in, what he’d do after he graduated. But then confused the crap out of him by pretending he still got to make those same decisions independent of them. The worst, he says, was the way they pummeled him with questions: what do you want to do after you graduate, Michael? Still planning on joining the family business, right?