Authors: Michele Zurlo
Across the table, Dylan chuckled softly. He gave me half a grin before continuing his dissection of the game with the cute towheaded pitcher.
Missy offered a long-suffering sigh. “He always gets the prettiest ones.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I accepted the compliment with a cocky, flirtatious smile. Very few people have called me pretty. My mother and John don’t count. They’re a little biased when it comes to me.
After pizza, I went home to shower because Dylan wanted to hang out some more. “Just the two of us,” he said. “No nosy older sister or her friends.”
The late-August evening had grown unseasonably cool, so I threw on a pair of jeans and a shirt with a sweetheart neckline that made me want to play with my own girls. When Dylan knocked on my apartment door, I grabbed a jacket and followed him to his truck. He might eventually like watching me touch myself, but we weren’t there yet.
“Where are we going?”
He opened the passenger door for me. The scent of his aftershave drifted on the breeze. “Will it kill you not to know?”
“No, but it might not go well for you if I’m dressed inappropriately.”
He looked me up and down. His gaze stuttered twice on my chest. Score! I did a mental fist pump.
“You look great. I mean, fine. You’ll need the jacket.”
A mental stutter. I was doing well tonight. After four months, patience is becoming my strong suit where Dylan is concerned, but I’m still hoping the mixed signals will eventually settle on the hot side of the relationship spectrum. In the meantime, I’ve celebrated the end of my dating hiatus by going out with several unmarried men who asked me. But none of those kisses (or men) have been memorable, and I haven’t consented to any second dates.
Dylan drove for a very long time. We talked about music and sports and what it’s like to work your way through college. Like me, he’d spent six years earning his degree.
I liked that he didn’t seem to have an agenda and was easy to be with. For the first time in my life, I opened up to somebody and told him truthful things right off the bat. Even Jane and Luma, who’d been my best friends since high school, had endured the morass of my lies before I’d let them get close. Maybe the fact that Dylan put no pressure on me worked in my favor.
He turned down a two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere, and I had no idea where we were. Absorbed in our conversation, I’d paid no attention to the scenery. He turned onto a narrow dirt road where a sign proclaimed the Highland State Recreational Trails.
“Is this open at night?”
“Probably not.” He parked in a small, dirt parking lot and grabbed a blanket that had been wedged in behind the seat. “We might get chased out, but they won’t arrest us. There’s a flashlight in the glove box. Can you grab it?”
I got it out. Darkness descended once the truck doors were closed and the dome light faded. I searched for a switch to turn the flashlight on, but I couldn’t find one. Dylan solved the problem by clicking a soft panel on the back. A strong, steady beam lit the path in front of us.
“Ah. It’s one of those newfangled contraptions.”
He laughed and steered me forward with a hand on my lower back. “I’m all about new technology.”
I like the way he touches me. It makes me feel sexy and cherished, and that’s not a feeling I experience very often. “Very manly of you.”
“Well, I am a man.”
Here’s where I stopped myself from saying something about how I’d wondered. There’s no way to make a snarky comment like that without damage to his ego. Plus, he’s definitely a man. My pointy nipples could attest to that.
We followed a trail through the trees. All of a sudden, it opened up and dropped off sharply, and that freaked me out. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but it was dark, and I couldn’t see the bottom. Even with the flashlight, we were surrounded by inky blackness. I was the one in front, and I would have been the one pancaked at the bottom if I hadn’t stopped short.
“A little warning would have been nice, Dylan. Real men warn people when they’re about to plunge into an abyss.”
“It’s not an abyss. Watch your step, though. It’d be a nasty fall.”
I threw my nastiest look over my shoulder, but I really couldn’t see his face, so I surmised that he couldn’t see mine either. “My ghost would haunt you forever.”
He paused for a millisecond, long enough for me to regret the thoughtlessness of my joke, but then he continued. His hand tightened on my waist, and he pulled me closer. “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, Lacey.”
That assurance washed over me, a quiet declaration he seemed to mean with every fiber of his being. I placed my hand on his smooth, soft cheek. It wasn’t usually smooth or soft.
“I know you wouldn’t.”
I don’t know if he was thinking about kissing me, but I was definitely having those thoughts. A heaviness hung in the air, and for a little while, I felt the palpable force of the magic between us. I hoped I wasn’t the only one.
He cleared his throat. “Just a little farther ahead. It slopes down to the right.”
I took the hint. He wasn’t ready, and I would continue being patient. I really don’t want to be with a man whose heart belongs to another woman.
The trail dropped a few feet, and flat land spread out to my left. Light from the flashlight glistened on a watery surface.
“A pond?”
“A stream. It connects two lakes.”
He directed me to the bank, and that’s where he spread the blanket. When he sat down and patted the space next to him, I swallowed a comment about taking him back to my place to make him scream in my bed. There was no need to traipse along dangerous paths in the dark.
I sat. He scooted back and lay down, folding his hands under his head. I set the flashlight between us. This had all the hallmarks of a seduction, but I didn’t think that was his goal.
“Dylan, what are we doing here?”
“Looking at the stars. You can’t really see them where we live. Too much light pollution.” He turned off the flashlight, plunging us into darkness.
Then I understood. This was probably somewhere he used to come with Nadia.
I wanted to leave.
I wanted to wash my hands.
I wanted to tell him I was allergic to looking at the stars.
Careful not to make physical contact, I lay down next to him. Above me, the sky sparkled. I’d never seen this vast array without the filter of a lens or a screen. It was bitterly beautiful.
He pointed out constellations: The Big Dipper. Orion the Hunter. The Pleiades. Others whose names he knew and I can’t remember. I relaxed and enjoyed what he was trying to share with me.
“Daisy used to bring me here after our parents died. We’d bring a picnic lunch and wander around for hours or sit here and talk. Sometimes we’d just sit and enjoy the silence. I was fourteen when they were killed in a car accident. She was eighteen, recently graduated from high school, and two months pregnant with Monty. Our parents never knew.”
I relaxed a little, but the urge to wash my hands didn’t go away.
“We didn’t have any close family. She got a job and fought for custody of me. Then Monty came along, and it was the three of us. She met Audra a few months after I started college. Audra was the T.A. for one of my freshman classes. I introduced them when Daisy made me argue for a higher grade on one of my papers. She went with me to make sure I did it. I wasn’t the kind of person who liked to rock the boat.”
It was difficult to imagine Dylan needing somebody to force him to argue, but I guess somebody had to teach him to stand up for himself. He continued talking, and I continued listening.
“Daisy said she’d never considered dating a woman before, but the second she met Audra, she knew. It was love at first sight. Audra changed the grade on my paper without even looking at it. She blended into our family seamlessly—Monty fell for her immediately, and she became another big sister to me.”
I understand losing something so profound that it leaves you feeling empty and alone, and then having someone come into your life and fill that hole. The pain never quite goes away, but it does become easier to bear. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me, but now was not the time for me to share. This was his place, his time to reveal some of what made him tick.
He pried my hand away from the flashlight’s handle—I wasn’t losing that thing—and twined his fingers with mine. We stayed that way for a little while, lying next to one another, holding hands in the darkness, and watching the stars move.
“I like you, Lacey.”
His soft statement rippled through the comfortable darkness.
I squeezed his hand. “I know.”
He rolled toward me and up on his side. “No, I mean I really like you, Lacey.”
I heard the weight of his struggle, and I felt for him. I felt for myself as well, because I’d finally met the perfect man, and he wasn’t in a position to make any fairy tales come true.
A breeze lifted from the water, bringing a freshness with it that seemed to be making promises. I wanted to listen, but didn’t think it wise. I’d listened to promises for years, and none of them have come true.
I wasn’t sure what kind of response he was expecting, so after chewing my lip for a moment, I rolled onto my side to face him. Holding hands this way was a little awkward, but neither of us let go. His face was inches from mine, and he brushed a caress down the side of my cheek, his fingertips tickling.
I couldn’t see more than his outline, which was good. This way I could imagine a sad expression on his face, with echoes of wistfulness. I don’t think I could stand it if I saw something sultry or affectionate. I want to see him look at me like that, but I don’t want to see it until he’s actually mine.
He kissed me, brushing his lips across mine, tender and sweet. I gripped his wrist, and he cradled my head. When we both pulled back, ending the kiss, he scooted me closer to him and guided my head to the crook of his arm. I stayed like that—cuddled up to him, enjoying his body heat and his comforting, male scent—for a long, long time.
As we packed up to leave (I held the flashlight while he folded the blanket), he threw out a casual question. “Are you doing anything tomorrow afternoon?”
I happened to have plans. “Baking a cake.”
In the dim glow, I saw his expression change from shy to very interested. “What kind of cake?”
“German chocolate.” My mom and I make one every year on my birthday. John sits at the counter on a bar stool, mostly watching us bake and listening to us chat. Sadie curls up at his feet and nibbles on anything we drop.
“That’s my favorite.”
I laughed. I sensed that any kind of cake was his favorite. “Mine too. I have a weakness for coconut.”
He slung the folded blanket over his shoulder and put his arm around me. It was the same pose he’d used to guide me down here, only now it was a little more familiar.
“I have a weakness for chocolate,” he said. “And cake.”
I wasn’t going to invite him to my mother’s house, not for my birthday. I sometimes invite Jane and Luma, but only for dinner. The time before that, when we do the baking and cooking, is sacred. Only my family is allowed.
“If there’s any left, I’ll save you a piece.”
“Maybe you could bring it to watch me practice tomorrow? I wrote a new song I’d like you to hear. It needs something, and you always seem to know exactly what will make us better.”
I snortled, which is a cross between a snort and a chuckle. It’s not a ladylike noise, but I wasn’t going to pretend to be someone I’m not.
I do critique the band’s performances, and now that they know me, they take a lot of my feedback into account. Except they still ignore the part where I insist they need more vocals. “Probably needs backup singers. I don’t see why Gavin and Levi can’t join in. Or Daisy. She has a great voice. You guys could do a couple of duets.”
“No, it’s something else. And I do agree with you about the backup singer thing. I’m hoping they’ll all try it in practice if you’re there.”
“Sorry. I’m spending the day with my mom and her husband.”
We’d made it back to the narrow part of the path. He held on to me a little tighter. “Her husband? That would be your stepfather?”
I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my mom or John to Dylan before. We keep our conversations to larger topics like continental drift or the evolution of AFI’s music.
“I don’t call him that.”
“You don’t like him?”
“I love him,” I said. “He’s one of my favorite people.”
“What do you call him?”
Dylan had put on his counselor hat. I wanted to knock it off his head. “John.”
“Are you close with your dad?”
I stumbled. Dylan caught me, pulling my back against his front. He held me for a few seconds, as if he’d realized how uncomfortable his question was for me. Because I held the flashlight, and a basic instinct wouldn’t let me release my grip, I couldn’t rub my hands together to simulate washing them. I rubbed my wrist instead. It kept a gruesome flow of images from manifesting.
“He died when I was little. I didn’t really know him.”