The Real Thing (11 page)

His expression still hasn’t changed, but he opens the book and starts reciting the first lines without looking at the words again. I snuggle on his shoulder, hoping he gives in and wraps an arm around me. When we get to page twenty, he finally does.

My phone buzzes by our feet, and I don’t reach for it once, but every time it goes off, Eric’s eyes turn in that direction and his lips twitch.

Okay, next time I’ll put it on full-silent mode, put it in a box, put that box in another box, then lock it shut and shove it under the bed.

Eric Matua commented on a status he was tagged in

3 hours ago

You did have something on your face. Pretty sure it was drool ;)

5 people like this

It’s freaking ninety degrees and it’s past one in the morning. My sweaty hands can’t get a grip on the pill bottle, so I twist it to read the side effects for the twentieth time since I picked up the prescription.

Decreased sexual ability or desire.

Well, I know the desire part can definitely be decreased and I’ll still be jacked up every time Em walks down the hall in just her towel. She just smiles and I get an instant hard-on.

Yeah … it’s the ability part I’m worried about.

“Eric, you don’t just go for it like that. Seriously, it’s like you’re trying to tune a radio. Never mind, just let me do it.”

I run a hand over my face and blow out a breath. I hate pills. Last time I was on them the acid reflux was a bitch, and I didn’t sleep.

But the anxiety was gone. And after the small “episodes” I had today, I’m considering battling the insomnia and heartburn.

I get a grip on the lid and pop it open. Shaking a pill into my palm, I peel myself from the bed and listen to make sure Em is asleep. There’s no water left in the bottle I keep on the nightstand, since it’s been a sauna, so I pop it in my mouth and dry swallow.

It hurts my chest and I cough, and get up from the bed and head to the kitchen. I’m supposed to take this stuff with food anyway, so I dig in the cupboard for Em’s stash of Wheat Thins, then pull a fresh water bottle from the fridge.

After I wash the pill down, I take a few deep breaths and close my eyes. I know there’s no way it’s kicked in yet, but my mind already seems clearer. And it’s a good thing, because when I turn around, Em’s standing in the dark hallway, arms crossed over her stomach and hair falling from her ponytail.

“Hey,” I say, shutting the fridge. “Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.” She rubs her arms and looks at the floor. Her voice comes out soft and cracked. “I’m actually … I’m glad you’re up.”

I’m across the room in a second, turning on the hall light. She squints as her eyes adjust, and when they do, I see that they’re completely bloodshot.

“Are you okay?” I search her body, her face, looking for anything that indicates she’s physically hurt. “What happened?”

She reaches up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear, but her hand is shaking and she can’t get a grip on it. I quickly help her out, letting my fingers linger on her skin longer than they usually do.

“It’s nothing, really. It happens all the time, I shouldn’t be freaking out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Um … I just got a call from the Alaskan coast guard. They’ve lost contact with my dad’s boat.”

Her gaze flicks up to mine, and the wetness on her lashes makes me push back the panic rising in my chest. She needs me, the guy who needs therapy for anxiety attacks, to be the calm one. And I want to be that for her.

“Is that all they said?”

“Yeah. They just wanted to keep me updated since it’s been over forty-eight hours.” She drops her head to my chest. “Forty-eight hours, Eric. Life can change in forty-eight
seconds
. What if the boat sprung a leak? Or they ran into pirates? Or they were attacked by sharks?”

“Em … stop.”

“I can’t.” She bumps her head against my chest, and without even thinking about it, I wrap my arms around her.

“I hate the ocean. I hate that my dad’s on the ocean. I hate that I can’t talk to him. And I hate just sitting here with nothing to do but wait and worry.”

“Then we’ll do something else.”

“Like what?”

I’m not sure. There’s only one thing I know Em loves just as much as her dad.

“Read.”

She snuggles into my hold, and I get a twinge of panic from that small amount of movement. But it ebbs and I find myself tightening my grip on her.

“Will you pick something happy?” she asks, tilting her face up. “I need something funny, or with a good ending. Not like that one you read the other day.”

“
The Butter Battle Book
?”

“Yeah. That ending was totally cryptic.”

“I think you missed the point of that story.”

“Well, I need a noncryptic ending.”

I half smile over her head. “How about you read to me this time? Pick one of your books.”

She takes a step back, and I drop my arms. Her mouth is starting to turn up in a smile, but her eyes still say she’s worried as hell.

“You’ll make fun of them.”

“I promise to be open-minded.”

A loose strand of her brown hair falls in front of her eyes as she studies me. And when she tucks it back behind her ear, I see she’s not shaking as much anymore.

“Okay. But no heckling.” She grabs my hand and tugs me toward her room. The familiar glow of her computer lights it up, and when she unplugs her phone from the charger, an involuntary grumble comes out of my mouth. I’m starting to hate that thing.

“I need you to take this,” she says, grabbing my hand and slapping the cell in my palm. “Keep it away from me. Be in charge of waiting for that call. Please?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll constantly be looking at it—Googling boating statistics and accidents and going absolutely insane.”

I give her a salute and stuff it in my pocket. Em grabs her Kindle as I sit on the bed, waiting for her to curl into my side. But she lies flat on her back, patting the small spot next to her. There’s no way I’ll fit on this twin without touching her, nearly everywhere.

Counting breaths, I ease down on the mattress, watching her face in case I touch her somewhere or somehow I’m not supposed to, but she doesn’t give any indication that it’s bothering her. In fact, she yanks on my arm and pulls me down so fast I’m pretty sure that if I hadn’t taken any medication, I’d be hyperventilating.

I hold still, and Em pulls her Kindle up between us.

“All right,” she says, sounding as breathless as I feel, “Chapter one …”

My ass has been nonstop vibrating all day and still no word about Em’s dad. I keep teasing her and joking around to keep her mind off it, but the second she goes off alone, I’m yanking her cell out and cursing every time I see it blank.

Well, not
blank
. Just no calls. She has four IM chats open, and that Facebook and Twitter thing goes off at least every ten minutes. It’s not only the stress of Em’s dad that has me anxious, but there’s this one chat bubble of this guy who looks like a tool, and it’s currently got a red
21
next to it. I want to open it up and see who he is and what the hell he’s saying to Em, but there’s the whole privacy thing … and Facebook tells you when someone sees your message. So I leave it closed and let it eat at me.

I glance back at the restrooms as I stuff the phone into my pocket. This rest stop isn’t exactly five stars, but Em had to pee so bad she was doing that bouncing thing in the passenger seat, so I stopped at the first place I saw.

“Hey, you in line?” the dude behind the counter asks, and I shake my head, shuffling closer to the bathrooms so I don’t have to talk to anybody or get in anyone’s way. I should’ve grabbed my pills on our way out. It’s not just Em’s dad, or whoever the hell is on her phone.
Everything
has me on edge.

I’ve got to get it together before she comes out, because I want be the guy to distract her today, not the guy who has a panic attack in the middle of a gas station.

As much as I hate it, I think I need food. There’s nothing in this place on my diet, but I need something to keep my mouth busy. I snatch a bag of Chex Mix and turn to the refrigerators for a Gatorade.

I hear Em’s flip-flops as I’m bent over in the fridge.

“Will you grab me a yellow one?” she asks, tugging lightly on the bottom of my shirt.

Snatching a lemon Gatorade, I throw her a half smile. “Didn’t know you were a fan of lemon.”

“I’m a fan of yellow.” She knocks the fridge door shut with her hip and grabs the drink. “It’s the best flavor ever.”

“Yellow isn’t a flavor.”

“Yes it is.”

We get to the counter and she plucks a pack of gum from the impulse aisle. I point to the red packaging.

“I suppose red is also a flavor?”

“No, that’s just silly.” She does that attempted wink of hers with one eye chasing after the other, and I can’t help but laugh. A deep flush fills her cheeks, and she suppresses her smile as I pay for our junk food.

We get to the Camaro, and Em pops open her drink. She guzzles down a quarter of it before I even get the engine started. My gaze drifts to her chest as it works overtime to get the liquid down her throat. My own throat goes bone dry.

“Still nothing?” She licks away at the yellow Gatorade dotting her upper lip and gestures to her phone sitting by my hip.

“Not yet.” I put the car in reverse. “But my ass is getting a good massage today.”

“Ah, the vibrations … that’s why I always keep it in my front pocket.” Her face turns red when I raise an eyebrow. She tickles my knee and the car jerks as I put a little more pressure on the gas. “You perv, that’s not what I meant.”

I’m about to respond, but she starts digging in the glove box, and her face is still red. I’ll give her a break today.

“I swear I put sunblock in here,” she says. “My right arm is going to be burnt to a crisp with all this driving.”

“Do you want to head ho—”

“No!” Her already-flushed cheeks go a shade darker. “Sorry, I just … driving around, going to random stops on the road and collecting dumb stuff and taking weird pictures … it’s helping.
Really
helping. So, can we still … can you just
drive
?”

She stares at the open glove box, and I have to move my gaze from her to the road or I’m going to have a problem. And even though it scares me, and I’m not sure if she wants to, I reach across the center console and grab her hand. We interlock fingers. I’m not looking at her, but I feel her looking at me now.

“You bet.”

She squeezes for a brief second, then lets go. I was hoping for a bit longer than that, but at least she didn’t look disgusted when I went for it.

“Ah ha!” Her arm flies up in victory, and I’m glad I’m at a stop sign because I would’ve swerved right into a tree. “Success.” She shakes a blue bottle by my ear. “It’s a good thing we took my car. I doubt you have sunblock in your console.”

She’s right. “Not my fault I’m built for hot weather.”

“I guess Florida suits you,” she says, and I clear my throat as her eyes travel over my bare arms.

“I think you mean I’m suited for Florida.”

“No … I meant exactly what I said.”

Our eyes lock for a second, and I have to forget the way her freckles speckle over the bridge of her nose, the way her mouth never quite fully closes, and how her hair always has one piece that refuses to stay in place … because I’m
driving
. The road needs to be more interesting than my best friend. When I get my focus back on the street, I secretly tell it that it has no chance in hell.

The sunscreen bottle makes a squirting noise, and Em goes, “Agh, crap!” I look over at her
again
, to her palm, covered in about a pint of Coppertone.

“I’ve heard that stuff comes out fast.” I laugh.

“Thanks for the warning.” She dips a finger into the sunscreen and wipes a long white line across my forearm. “And I guess I’m getting a sunblock shower today.”

Her feet kick up onto the dash and she swipes three fingers through the pool in her palm. She strokes over her leg, starting at her thigh, then traveling down to her ankle and back up. My throat feels like a frickin’ desert, and I force my eyes from her legs to my drink and chug half of it in one go.

The road bends and I may be looking out the window, but my damn head is on her legs and that Coppertone running over her knees and soaking into her skin, making it shiny and smooth and slippery and—

“Ugh, seriously. I still have, like, half the bottle left in my hand.” She laughs and it takes every ounce of self-restraint I have not to look at her.

Her elbow bumps into mine as she wipes sunscreen down her arm. I jerk back and breathe, but it’s hard to push air past my heart where it has lodged in my throat.

The trees thicken around us. I have no idea where the hell we’re headed. Probably right into a swamp. Is the AC working? Why does it feel like a sauna? I blow out a breath and scratch my elbow where we made contact, and rub in the rest of the sunblock she wiped on my arm. I catch her moving her hand over her neck in my peripheral vision, and I have to blow out another breath.

“Ooh, I’m a bit tight here,” she says, and I can’t stop my eyes from following her thumb as she rubs it into the dip by her collarbone. “Maybe
I
should get a massage.” She giggles and I make some noise that’s similar to a cat choking on its fur. Her neck is moist with sunscreen, a piece of her brown hair is stuck to her nape, and a drop of sweat runs down into her cleavage.

I’m done. Absolutely gone. My brain has shot straight to my dick, and I forget the fact that I’m driving. I reach over to rub in the rest of that sunblock on her neck, already feeling the heat beating off her skin—

And something slams into the front bumper.

My hand leaps to the wheel and my brain jumps back to where it belongs. “What the hell?” I spin the car to the side of the road and press the brake to the floor. Em swivels around to look out her window. She still has a blob of Coppertone in her left palm so I wipe the rest of it from her hand and rub it over my arms, even though I haven’t used this crap all summer. I can’t take any more of her rubbing herself.