‘I’m just busy. Really busy getting ready for a big job. An attorney’s office downtown. I promised several canvases and…’
Jack held up a hand. ‘Ms Adams – August – you don’t owe me an explanation. I took a shot. No harm, no foul.’
Her heart sank. Because he understood or because he wasn’t pushing? She wasn’t sure.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’ll be back in the morning. That hole’s fairly deep.’ He glanced down at his mangled trousers and laughed. ‘As you know. So I’ll have to do more than just fill in with dirt. Probably gravel, filler dirt, topsoil. So…yeah.’ He studied her face for a moment and then pulled his cap off again and ran his hand through his hair. A nervous tic maybe. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Bye,’ she said, weakly, watching him walk out of the door and down to his truck.
Damn.
Jack Murphy climbed into his white pickup, punched something into his cellphone, sat there for a moment and finally pulled off. She kept herself to the side of the curtain so he couldn’t see her there. ‘Me, here, being creepy,’ she whispered.
Six years was a long, long time to go without. The men she interacted with by accident couldn’t tempt her out of her celibacy. Occasionally, she’d feel some nameless ache for a connection. Or just to be around someone who could hug her when she was sad. Someone to catch a movie with or go to brunch with on a Sunday morning. For the most part, she was just fine by herself. Absolutely OK with being alone. It was better this way. Much, much better for everyone.
August realised she’d been holding her breath and exhaled. She pushed the curtain back into place and surveyed the silent living room. Restlessness crawled through her centre, making it hard to breathe and even harder to feel calm on any level.
‘Right. Get back to work. Stop daydreaming,’ she scolded herself, moving through the room and switching on the lights. The afternoon was waning. Soon it would be getting dark.
In the studio she turned on two extra floor lamps and found her palette. She eyed the iris she’d abandoned when she’d gone to investigate the sound of his truck. Its delicate petal was only half painted, curled down like a rumpled collar on a flouncy shirt. She smiled. Better to focus on something productive like painting and not something frivolous like wondering what those nicked-up hands would look like travelling up her bare thigh.
When August finally glanced up from the nearly finished painting, her neck ached and she was tired. No wonder. It was fully dark and well past dinner.
‘Food,’ she said and headed to the kitchen. A simple meal of grilled cheese, tomato soup, a glass of Cabernet. And then a long hot shower. A long hot shower where she pushed every stray thought of a strapping kind man named Jack from her mind’s eye.
She tumbled into bed with a glass of wine and a mystery novel and prayed to sleep like the dead. No dreams. No waking up to think about something she couldn’t have. Or, more accurately, refused to give herself.
He was on his belly. His back tan, his blue eyes staring out at the ocean.
‘The beginning of our lives,’ he said, knowing she was listening.
August stroked her hand along his strong back, liking the feel of the muscles jumping at her touch. A pre-honeymoon he’d called it. A kickoff to their lives together.
‘Are your parents still freaking out about us getting married now? Right out of high school? Before we even do the college thing?’ While she waited for an answer, she dropped a kiss on his sun-browned shoulder.
Aaron rolled on to his back and tugged her down to him. He kissed her once, and, when she pushed her body close to his, soaking up his heat, he kissed her again.
‘Yeah, but it really doesn’t matter now, does it?’ He pulled back to look her in the eye. His eyes were the same colour as the water outside their tiny, but nice, Virgin Island hotel room.
They’d saved all through high school for this trip. And their parents said they weren’t responsible enough to get married.
‘Nope,’ August said.
‘What matters is we have a plan and we stick to the plan.’ His hands came up to grip her hips, pulling her down even as he thrust up beneath her. He was hard and, though she thought she’d already been ready, she found herself overwhelmingly so. Just beyond ready to be with him again. She never tired of having him inside her.
‘We do and we did.’ She kissed him.
‘What about your parents? Still freaking out? Still convinced we’re ruining our lives?’
She laughed, her lips pressed against his strong jaw. Stubble bit at her lips and she moved them softly to feel the sting of it again. ‘Yep. Of course.’
This time when he rolled, she ended up beneath him. He looked down at her, a length of overgrown sand-brown hair falling in his eyes. His beach-bum hair, he’d called it, skipping his normal cut at the barber.
‘Let’s forget about them, then, OK? We’re here. We’ve waited the three years we’ve been together to be here. So let’s…’ He rotated his hips, grinding his cock against the wet gusset of her bikini bottom.
‘Let’s…?’ She trailed her fingers up his back, feeling how smooth his skin was. Welcoming the heat that baked off him.
‘Let’s do one of the things we do best.’ Aaron rested on his elbows and untied her bikini top. He pulled the cups down and bent to suck one ocean-cooled nipple into his mouth. Heat flooded her. Heat that had nothing to do with the bright sun or the tropical temperatures. It had everything to do with the man she loved. Had loved for three years and counting.
And counting…
The thought left her head when his mouth closed over her other nipple, a line of fire on her skin from where he’d dragged his lips across her chest. She wriggled beneath him, hooking her fingers in the sides of her bikini bottom and tugging it down. August was only successful when he raised his hips to give her room. Then they were tangled, each of them trying to disrobe the other until they were laughing and naked and everything was perfect. Just as it should be.
Eighteen, out of school, future ahead. Everything perfect.
Aaron slid into her and she wrapped her legs around his waist, moving up to take him, brushing her lips over his when he kissed her. She tugged his hair lightly so he grunted but then he laughed. Then he was rocking into her, taking his time, playing her body perfectly with every motion of his. He looked into her eyes and said, ‘And this, August, is only the beginning…’
Then the sky caught fire.
The sheets were wet. Tears or sweat, she wasn’t sure. August stayed there, sprawled on her back, heart pounding. Sunlight, meagre and new, which meant it was just now dawn, slipped between the slats of the Venetian blind.
‘Fuck,’ she said. Wishing for the millionth time she’d bite the bullet and get a pet. Someone to hear the random words she spilled into the empty air every day.
She rolled towards the clock, towards the left side of the bed she always thought of as empty. Aaron slept on the left. She slept on the right. At least that was how it had been.
Three minutes after six. She should still be asleep. She should still be blissfully unconscious. Instead she was awake, in damp bed linen, with her heart doing a sickening little jig in her chest.
The explosion. She’d seen it in her dream. It wasn’t the first time, but even after all these years, that sound, that shock of orange and red glow, always seemed like the first time when she relived it. Awake or asleep.