“Well, you’ll like this one if we don’t miss it because you stood around bitching and moaning about not liking surprises for too long.”
The challenge in his threat makes me want to test him, but I’m dying to know what he has planned. “Do I have time for a shower?”
“If you’re fast,” he says, tapping a finger to his wrist, where there is no actual watch.
“Fine,” I say, spinning for the hall.
I am quick in the shower, but the whole time, I’m picturing what would happen if Marcus walked in right now. I dry off and scrunch some gel into my hair to tame my curls, wrap my towel around myself, then pad to my room. It looks like it’s going to be sunny, but there’s a definite fall chill in the air this morning, so I decide to match Marcus: jeans and a hoodie. When I come out, he’s in Dad’s chair channel surfing.
He clicks off the TV and stands when he sees me. “Took you long enough.”
I throw a hand at the hallway. “That was, like, ten minutes.”
“Whatever,” he says, stalking toward the door. “Come on. We’re late.”
I hurry across the room and just as I catch up to him at the door, he spins. I smack right into him and he catches me in his arm.
“And also, this,” he says before his lips lock onto mine. He kisses me as though I was his beginning and his end. I feel myself coming back to life in a way I only am when I’m with him.
“What was that for?” I ask when he lets me go.
“I need a reason?” he asks with an amused glint in his eye.
He lets me go and pulls open the door. I lock it behind us and he guides me to his truck, half a block up and across the street. We climb in and he peals out of my neighborhood.
“Not even a clue?” I ask.
“I already gave you one. I said you were going to like it.”
“That’s not a clue. That’s a prediction. And it might not even come true.”
He turns for the highway and we start heading across the valley. When we climb over the Altamont Pass into the Bay Area, I start to get nervous this has something to do with my old life. But then he heads up 680 toward the North Bay. When he finally exits the highway, I can see the loops and twists of the roller coasters at Six Flags.
“An amusement park?” I say.
“You sound disappointed. What were you thinking?”
A hotel? Some alone time? “Not disappointed, just surprised. Didn’t know roller coasters were your thing. Plus,” I say as we pull into a nearly empty parking lot, “are they even open this early?”
“They’re open for us.”
I just look at him as he pulls into a spot up front. There’s a small group of people hanging around the gate. Marcus grabs his duffel from the back and takes my hand. We walk up to a woman with a Discovery Kingdom vest on.
“Leon,” he tells her.
She looks at a list on her iPad. “You have two?”
“Yes,” he says with a grin at me.
“We’re waiting for two more, then we’ll head in,” she says.
He drags me around the corner of the ticket booth, where he pins me against the wall and kisses me again. “Because I want to,” he says with a cocky smile as if answering my question from before about his reason.
It’s only a minute later that we’re being called back by the staff. The woman leads the group through the park to the Dolphin Theater and Marcus grins like a school boy. We all take seats in the section she directs us to.
“Welcome to the Dolphin Experience,” she says. “My name is Donna and I’m one of the dolphin trainers here at Discovery Kingdom. We’re going to spend the first part of our program on land getting to know the animals and what to expect before we all jump into the water with them.”
My jaw drops. “Swimming with the dolphins.”
“Got to chip away at that bucket list,” Marcus says with a grin the size of California.
When Donna tells us to suit up for the swim, I squint at Marcus. “I don’t have a suit.”
He zips open his duffel and produces the Speedo from my locker at school.
“How did you get this?” I ask, ripping it out of his hand.
He gives me a sly smile. “Told the custodian you’d quit the team and I needed your locker.”
I give him a parting glare and spin for the locker room.
When we get to the tank and jump in, Marcus snatches me up in his arms and we spend the next half hour moving together through the water while the dolphins swim around us.
“And if I can get the newlyweds’ attention,” Donna calls.
It’s only when an older woman in our group nudges my elbow that I realize she’s talking about us.
“Would you like to do the dorsal swim?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” Marcus answers.