I shrugged. I knew he didn’t totally mean it. CJ knew the full story, but that meant he also knew every dirty detail. My dad had been a schemer his whole life: shaking your hand with one hand, and tying your shoelaces together with the other. But there was something about him that women loved—a charisma woven through his gap-toothed smile. It’d done my mother in, which is why I’m here.
When she left, though, he did the best he could for me. Even if it wasn’t enough, it was his best. When I’d tossed a fistful of loose earth over his final bed, I’d taken comfort in that.
CJ merged onto the highway and reached over the center console, silently grabbing my hand. I held it all the way back to his friends’ place, shoving my guilt down for one night. Relieved not to be in the driver’s seat for once.
Georgia
CJ and I didn’t get to bed until well past four in the morning. Once we got to his friends’ place, we sat on the beach and talked until our words got lost in yawns. He took the floor and gave me the pull-out couch in the office where he was staying. I’d assumed that Regan was in the house as well, but I didn’t know whose house it was, and everyone was asleep, anyway.
While it was Monday, and I technically had the day off, I wanted to get some coffee in me and get back to the bar to pick up my car before I had to show Regan the apartment in La Jolla. The house was quiet and the sound of waves, like crinkling paper, swept through the windows.
I tiptoed to the kitchen and found the coffee pot already on and full. Looking around for a moment, I didn’t see or hear anyone. Gazing out the window over the sink, I spotted someone’s feet in the air. Like, straight in the air. As they appeared to stand on their head.
“G? You all right? It’s fuckin’ early.” CJ’s morning voice always sounded like a polar bear on valium. I don’t know why he even bothered with the AM half of the day.
As he clomped into the kitchen behind me, I leaned my head forward, squinting to make out why that person in the sand looked familiar. Dawn didn’t provide excellent contrast, though. Just as CJ shouldered up next to me, I figured it out.
Then smacked him.
“You bastard, you brought me back to her house?” I pressed my finger against the glass.
“What?” His eyebrows drew together, eyes barely open as he followed my finger. “Oh ... yeah...”
“She’s a bitch, CJ!” I whispered as loudly as I could.
“You’re still mad about her thinking you and I hooked up? Christ, Georgia, half the Cape thought that for years.” He cracked his neck and pulled down two coffee mugs.
“No, it’s not that. It’s that she took pride in judging the hell out of me last night. And the night before, though it didn’t bother me as much then because I didn’t think I’d ever see her again. Plus, you got pissed at her too, remember?”
“Yeah.” He yawned. “And since when do you give a flying fuck what people think?”
“Besides, she’s not a bitch.” Regan stepped down into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes, interrupting my poor attempt at answering CJ.
“You coulda fooled me.”
I didn’t care what people thought.
I thought.
Regan was wearing black board shorts and ... that was it. All except for the elastic that held his deep copper hair away from his face. I stepped aside so he could reach the coffee, and as he did, I caught the muscles in his back move as he poured the coffee and put the pot away. Eyeing his back from his neck to the tops of his hips, I didn’t see any tattoos. No references to his beloved violin or his renegade appearance. Nothing on his freckled back to display who he was. Or who he wanted people to think he was.
Interesting.
“All right, maybe Ember isn’t a bitch,” CJ raised his eyebrow to Regan, “but even you have to admit she was being kind of snatchy last night.”
Regan slurped his first slip of coffee, hazel eyes settling on me for a moment before he responded to CJ. “Snatchy?”
“Where’s your accent?” I blurted out. CJ told me he’d teased Regan about it. I don’t know why I even asked him.
CJ laughed. “Boarding school boy here doesn’t have an accent. His must be hiding the same place yours is.” He playfully smacked my ass, and I squealed.
I felt myself blush as Regan caught me eyeing the v-shaped crevices barely holding up his shorts.
With a grin, he leaned in and whispered, “It’s okay.”
I’m sure I had the same mortified look on my face as he’d had when I said the same thing to him just two days before, but he didn’t laugh. He winked and poured more coffee into his mug.
He fucking winked.
“Anyway,” I cleared my throat and gestured to the window with my hand, “what the hell is she doing?”
“Sirsasana.” We all turned slowly toward Bo who was walking into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.
“What?” CJ sounded drunk on confusion.
“Sirsasana,” Bo repeated. “A headstand.”
“I’m going back to bed.” CJ set his mug on the counter and disappeared down the hallway.
Momentarily ignoring that I had to leave soon, and my ride just went back to bed, I looked back out the window. “How ... long does she stay like that?”