Where the Stars Still Shine (8 page)

The sound of an engine rumbles into my thoughts, disrupting them and making me look up. A white boat with the name
Evgenia
painted on the side in blue slides into the empty spot, Alex Kosta behind the wheel. Today, his sweaty shirt is faded green, his bandanna is red, and his face is as perfect as I remember. There is another guy with him, shorter and rounder than Alex, who helps him tie off the boat. They stand beside the boat for a minute and talk before they shake hands, and the shorter guy heads off toward Athens Street.

“If I’d have known you were going to wait for me …” Alex closes the distance between his boat and my bench. His eyes, I notice, aren’t really dark at all. They’re on the greenish side of hazel, and a tattoo wends its way down his right forearm from his elbow to his wrist, a banner carried in the beak of an old-school swallow that reads
rise free from care before the dawn and seek adventures
. Thoreau. “… I’d have told you I was going to be gone a few days.”

“I wasn’t waiting,” I say, but now that I see him again, it feels like a lie. “You just got lucky.”

“Yes, I did.” He grins and it feels as if my bones have liquefied. If he has this effect on me, I can only imagine what he must do to female tourists. I feel an inexplicable flicker of jealousy at all those imaginary girls. Silly, because he is Danny. He is Matt. He is another name on my hit-and-run list.

He extends a hand. “I’m Alex.”

Without telling him I already know his name, I let him pull me to my feet. “I’m Callie.”

As we walk to his boat, we’re close enough that I can feel the sleeve of his T-shirt graze the bare skin of my arm, sending a flurry of shivers down my spine. He climbs aboard first.

“Pretty dress,” he says, as he helps me up and over the side. “What’s the occasion?”

“I am.”

His laugh is warm and slightly wicked. It should scare me, but it doesn’t. Well, maybe a little, but I don’t care. “Yes, you are.”

“I mean, a homecoming party. For me.” I watch his face for signs of recognition—for him to connect the dots between me and the Kidnapped Girl—but they don’t seem to appear.

“Where were you?” he asks.

“Everywhere.”

“And you came back here?” Alex shakes his head. “Well, welcome home anyway.”

The boat stinks. Literally. As if I’ve walked into a bathroom after someone forgot to flush. I fan my hand in front of my nose, and he laughs again.

“It’s the sponges,” he explains, flipping the latch on a small door in the cockpit of the boat. “Until they’re finished decomposing, they secrete this foul-smelling shit called gurry.”

“How long does that take?”

He opens the door and steps down into a small cabin that reminds me of the Airstream, beckoning me to follow. “Three, sometimes four days.”

“How can you stand it?”

Alex shrugs. “I don’t really notice it much.”

He reaches into a small refrigerator for a couple
bottles of beer, twists off the tops, and hands me one. We stand there for a moment, and we’re both looking at each other as if neither of us can stop. And this inexplicable thing between us hangs the way humidity hangs in the air, heavy and thick.

Finally, he takes a long drink of his beer, his eyes still on mine.

“I need a shower,” he says. “Do you mind?”

“Yes. I mean, no,” I say, my face growing warm as he grins at my stammering. “No, I don’t mind.”

He takes his beer with him into the bathroom and less than a minute later I hear the shower running. I look around the cabin while I wait. The berth opposite me is made up for sleeping with blue-striped sheets and a navy comforter. On the floor, the zipper-edged mouth of a duffel bag gapes open, exposing a jumble of T-shirts, shorts, and plaid boxer shorts. An open box of brown-sugar Pop-Tarts sits on the counter. And beside me, the sink is filled with books—Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski, Hemingway, Thoreau, and a bunch of brightly colored Carl Hiaasen paperback mysteries—which makes me smile.

I’m paging through a Hiaasen when Alex comes out of the bathroom. His curls are wet and I watch a drop of water fall onto his bare chest and slide south until it disappears into the waistband of his shorts.

“My library,” he says, and I remember I’m holding a book.

It takes him only a couple of steps to reach me. His mouth touches mine and
Stormy Weather
crashes to the cabin floor, my arms sliding up around his neck. I twine my fingers in his hair as he catches the back of my dress in his fists. Kissing him holds the same sweet relief as inhaling after holding a breath too long. I lose track of how long we stand there, our bodies pressed together. You could tell me that the sun went down and rose again the next day, and I would believe it.

Alex’s mouth pulls away from mine and wanders down my neck to my collarbone. Heat pools between my thighs and my nerve endings explode in tiny fireworks as his lips brush my skin. His grip on my dress loosens, but only to lift it up over my head. His shorts come off. My bra. His boxers. My underwear. He eases me onto the striped sheets, as cool against my back as his skin is warm against the front of me.

His hand skims down between my legs, and reality gets wrapped around memory. I feel Frank’s sour breath against my face and Frank’s rough fingers probing where they don’t belong. I grab his wrist. “Don’t.”

“What did I do wrong?” The voice in my ear isn’t Frank. It’s Alex.

“Just—don’t. Please.”

Confusion flickers in his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything. He moves his hand away, cupping my face and kissing me until the memories melt away. Kissing me until I want him again. It doesn’t take long.

“Do you have protection?” Not sure why I’m whispering.

“Oh, shit. Yes. Hang on.” Alex scrambles off me and rummages through his duffel, swearing, apologizing, scattering half the contents, and his butt is so white compared with the tan of his skin it makes me laugh. “Found one.” He holds up the foil packet. “You know, in my head this goes much smoother.”

“You’ve thought about this?”

“I’ve been in a boat in the Gulf of Mexico for five days with another dude.” He returns to the bed. “I’ve thought about this a
lot
.”

“With me?”

“Yes. With you.”

Sex is so different with Alex. On a purely physical level, there’s more kissing and less grunting, more touching and less groping. And when it’s over I feel as if I’m shining bright enough to light a room.

“I should probably go.” Right now I don’t feel like I’m trash waiting to be discarded, but I want to leave instead of being asked to go.

Except Alex is tangled around me, his face against
my neck, and he makes no move to let go. “Is there somewhere you need to be?” His voice is sleepy and content.

Greg and Phoebe are probably wondering where I am, and I may have offended my grandmother by walking out of her welcome-home party, but I have no intention of returning. “I guess not.”

“Hungry?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” His lips brush against my neck, making me squirm. “When I get feeling in my legs again we’ll go get food.”

This wanting me to stay—and me not wanting to leave—is new and unexpected. “Yeah, okay.”

Alex and I don’t speak as we walk up Dodecanese toward the parking lot. We’ve returned to being the total strangers that we are. His curls are matted down from dozing off with damp hair and my dress is wrinkled, and it feels as if everyone we pass can tell what we’ve been doing. Sex was the easy part. Thinking of things to say afterward is harder. Except I don’t feel uncomfortable not talking to Alex. He doesn’t make me feel as if it’s necessary.

We reach a chalky white pickup truck that’s more dented than smooth, and the wheel wells are starting to rust. Alex opens the passenger door for me.

“I wouldn’t lean against it,” he says, holding it open as I get in the truck. The dark-red vinyl seat is hot, so I wedge my hands beneath my thighs to keep them from burning. “It’s been known to fly open.”

I shift away from the door as he slams it shut and walks around to the driver’s side. He starts the engine and slides his arm along the back of the bench seat. Not exactly putting his arm around me, but not exactly not, either. It occurs to me that he might be lying about the door, but there are tiny points of heat where the tips of his fingers touch my skin and I don’t bother caring.

“What are you hungry for?” he asks.

“Anything but dolmades.”

Alex laughs. “Greek food is for the tourists. I was thinking maybe pizza?”

“Yes.”

As he drives through Tarpon Springs, I check my phone for messages. Greg is not happy I ran off, so I send him a text that I’m getting something to eat and will be home right after. He replies that this is not how grounding works, but I don’t respond. Kat’s message informs me that I missed the arrival of Nick and Connor at the party, and that I should come back. I don’t answer that one, either.

The pizza place is inside a small Italian grocery with two small aisles of pasta, sauces, cookies, sweets, and Italian wines, and a deli counter filled with meats and cheeses. The walls are covered with New York memorabilia—sports team pennants, autographed photos of various celebrities, framed newspaper clippings about 9/11, and a large framed photo of the New York
City skyline at night. Our table is one of only three and it has a candle in the middle, but with the deli counter three-deep with takeaway customers, it’s not a romantic candle.

A beefy guy wearing a white apron smeared with dried blood comes out from behind the counter to take our order. “You want the usual?”

“Yeah,” Alex says. “And a pitcher?”

The waiter-slash-butcher looks at me with one eyebrow raised. “You got ID?”

Mom taught me how to drive, but I never tested for a license, so I don’t have any identification at all. For all practical purposes, I’m nobody. I shake my head. “A Coke is fine.”

“How old are you anyway?” Alex asks, after the guy shuffles away.

“Seventeen.”

“Really?” His eyebrows hitch up a little. “Huh.”

When Matt found out I was only fifteen, he rolled away from me, called me jailbait, and told me to get the hell out. The trailer park where Mom and I were living was about two miles from his apartment, so I walked to the diner where she worked. When she asked what I was doing wandering around town in the middle of the night, I lied and said I couldn’t sleep. I’m not sure she believed me. Not when I could still smell his sweat and cologne on my skin and hair.

“I’m not going to tell anyone.” I focus on the fork he taps against the tabletop. “It doesn’t have to be an issue.”

“It’s not an issue.” He shrugs. “I’m a little surprised is all. You look older.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty-two in April.”

“My birthday’s in May.”

On the wall behind him is a photo of the restaurant owner—I’m guessing, but it seems likely because he appears in other pictures as well—shaking hands with one of the New York Yankees.

“Have you ever been to New York?” I change the subject.

Alex picks up and puts down the glass shaker of grated parmesan cheese and shakes his head. He’s got one curl that’s all askew and I tuck my fingers into my palm to keep from reaching out to smooth it down. “I’ve never really been anywhere but here.”

“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?”

“Australia, Polynesia, Central America, the Caribbean, the Galapagos—” He ticks them off on his fingers easily, as if this is a list he’s had plenty of time to think about. “Hell, I’ll even go to the Keys if it means diving that doesn’t involve me cutting sponges off the ocean floor.”

“That’s what you do?”

The butcher returns with a bottle of beer and a can of soda. “Pizza’ll be ready soon.”

“It’s a family business,” Alex says. “It used to be me and my dad, but my mom got sick, so now it’s just me. I don’t mind doing it, but—never mind. Not important. Why’d you come back?”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

“Why?”

“My mom got sick, too.” I’m skirting the truth, but this is as close as I want to come with a guy I barely know. “So I had to come live with my dad.”

Frankly, I’m surprised he hasn’t put the pieces together. How many teenage girls named Callie come home to Tarpon Springs to live with their dads after living everywhere with their sick moms? Especially when Kat claims I am a local legend. But if Alex has figured it out, nothing in his face gives it away. He leans back on his chair. “Tarpon Springs isn’t a bad place.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I can tell how much you love it.”

The corner of his mouth tilts and my stomach does an elevator drop. “I still plan to escape someday,” he says. “But definitely not today.”

Alex takes me to the sponge docks when we’re finished with our pizza. He offers to drive me home, but I don’t want Greg to see me getting out of some strange guy’s truck. Not when he’s already upset with me.

“Thanks for the pizza,” I say, as Alex opens the sticky door for me, its hinges groaning. I’m pretty sure he was lying about it flying open unexpectedly.

“Do you want the leftovers?”

I’d never heard of putting carrots or asparagus or
capicola
—I didn’t even know what kind of meat that is—on pizza, but it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted, so it’s a tempting offer. Except Greg would definitely wonder how I managed to walk to a pizza place that far from Georgia’s house. “You keep them,” I say.