“Spoilsport.” I laugh down at her while we make our way toward a row of food trucks not too far from the main stage.
A few minutes later, I must concede that her weight loss is probably not from lack of food. We’ve spread a blanket as close to the ocean as we safely can. Kai is chomping her way through a fried feast that would daunt a linebacker. French fries topped with crab meat. Yuck, by the way. Not to mention the pork belly chips, a monster burger and deep fried Oreos. This meal should come with a pacemaker, but my girl, barely able to get her little hand all the way around this mammoth burger, is halfway through hers before I’ve even dented mine.
“What?” She glances up from her half-empty, grease-laden plate, sauce all around her lips. “You’re not hungry?”
“Obviously not as hungry as you are.” I reach over to wipe her mouth with my napkin.
“You’re not supposed to tease a lady about how much she eats,” Kai says, mouth full. “It’s impolite.”
“Not even when this delicate flower eats me under the table?”
She falls back on the blanket, chewing and laughing, looking up at a cloudless sky. Even after the laugher stops, her smile lingers. With a parade of boats in the harbor, music drifting from the main stage, the sun warming our faces, and the people around us clueless about who we are, I can’t think of one thing I wouldn’t do to make her smile this way every day. She blurs everything. Erases every line I’ve drawn in the sand. Forces me to rethink the boundaries of right, wrong, acceptable, never would, and couldn’t ever. She’s my absolute. It should scare me, but I’m just too damn grateful to have her. I’m just too determined to never screw things up so badly again that she walks away.
Speaking of . . .
“So back on the road tomorrow, huh?” I keep my tone casual, but the voice in my head; that overgrown spoiled boy who wants his way 24/7 stomps around my brain throwing a tantrum. We’ve only had a few days together. A hundred and one excuses swirl in my head to keep her here with me instead of going back on the road. With Dub.
“Yeah.” All traces of her smile evaporate. Her eyes, when they meet mine, are cautious. “Bright and early.”
“Can you stay with me tonight?”
“The car’s coming at five in the morning to pick me up from San’s.”
“I could take you to the airport, or the car could pick you up from my place.”
“Except.” She bites her lip and looks out at the ocean instead of at me. “That kind of defeats the purpose of us keeping our relationship on the low.”
My lips clench over the words that want out so badly. That I don’t give a damn who knows. That Dub and everyone else should know she’s mine. That I hate her being out on the road unclaimed. I adjust my Dodgers cap and smooth two fingers over my fake stache.
“Stay with me tonight.” I put on my “hear me out” face. “I’ll take you to San’s as early as you need me to. Unless you don’t want to stay?”
Her eyes jerk back to me, a small frown on her face.
“You know I want to stay. I want as much time with you before I leave as possible.”
“Then it’s settled.” I stand, reaching down to pull her up to her feet. “We have tonight.”
“And the rest of the day.” She leans up, resting her forearms on my chest. “What do you want to do now?”
“Let’s walk for a while. It feels good to walk around and not be recognized, bothered for an autograph, have some camera shoved in my face.” I bend to grab one end of the blanket, meeting her eyes across it as she takes the other corners and we fold it up. “But you’ve gotten a taste of that now, too.”
“Some.” She shakes her head, taking my side to finish the blanket in a neat square she stuffs it into our backpack. “Not anything close to what you deal with.”
“It’s only a matter of time.” I wed our fingers, looking down at not just my girlfriend, but soon-to-be one of the hottest stars out there. I’m struck again by how proud I am of her, despite the fact it isn’t the route I would have chosen. Despite the fact I wouldn’t trust John Malcolm as far as I could toss his lard ass. She’s doing it. Her way, not my way, but she’s doing it. And, as hard as I fought it, it kind of makes me love her that much more.
We explore every corner of the festival, abusing our anonymity any way we can. We ride the Ferris wheel bordering the water. At the top, I take her mouth in a kiss as light as meringue and as rich as cream. Kai gets her face painted, sunrays on one side and rainbows on the other. We devour our combined weight in funnel cakes. To the world, just two guys in love. To us, it’s everything. It’s every date we never got to go on. Every moment we’ve ever had to steal all squeezed into one sunlit day.