So, I settle myself on the back of his motorcycle. I wrap my arms tightly around him. As soon as he feels the embrace, he accelerates, and we’re flying down the driveway, my hair streaming out behind us. We pass a group of smoking employees. I press my cheek against Cruise’s back, not particularly wanting to be seen on the back of his bike, but also not overly concerned about employee gossip.
I might have taken his assurance of a quick ride, too easily. He revs the bike up, and the pastel buildings of Seascape Village fly past. He barely slows at intersections, and when we turn, the bike leans so far over, I’m sure we’re going to make contact with the blacktop.
Finally, we pull into a gravel parking lot below a hand painted sign that says City Limits Café.
Cruise puts down the kickstand and runs a hand through his hair.
I sit, frozen, my arms still locked around his midsection.
“You okay?” he asks finally.
With a gasp, I finally remember to breath.
“That,” I tell him, “was amazing.”
He turns to look at me, his mouth turning up in the corner despite himself.
“That was the most fun I’ve had since I rode a roller coaster when I was twelve,” I admit.
“The most fun you’ve had?”
“Well,” I qualify, “the most fun with my clothes on.”
“I hope you’re hungry,” he says.
It’s a diner with a row of maroon booths upholstered in plastic. Cruise holds the door open for me, and a gum-chewing waitress hands us menus.
“I’m having meat loaf,” he says.
“Really?”
He registers my surprise, and raises his eyebrows.
“It just doesn’t seem like a very bad boy sort of meal.”
“And what would be a bad boy meal? Chicken fingers? A shot of tequila chased by a shot of bourbon?”
“I don’t know. Steak?”
He grins. “When I got back to the Villas, I ordered steak from room service every single night.”
I wait for him to expand upon this thought, but the waitress returns. We order, and she disappears.
The diner is small, but our booth is at the far end, and no one is sitting near us.
I look across the table to Cruise. The lighting is dim, but the shadows just accentuate his excellent cheekbones, and his blue eyes are nearly glowing along with the neon lights on the jukebox behind him.
“It’s a long ugly story,” he says. “Are you sure you want to hear it?”
“I’m sure.” Even if he didn't tell me, I have no doubt I’d hear it from someone else, sooner rather than later. We’ve spent too much time in one another’s company for his skeletons to remain in the closet.
“So I was telling you all that stuff about being kicked out of school, and my mom to set up my relationship with Dad and Adrian. Two years ago, when I was twenty three, I was at the hotel for a few days. Some money went missing. A lot of money. Dad pressed charges, and I went to prison for a year.”
His expression, as he watches me, is the most unguarded I’ve ever seen him. I could be wrong, I’m probably wrong, but my gut feeling is that if I turned my back on him at this moment, it would crush him.
“That must’ve been terrible,” I say.
He shrugs, like it’s nothing, but I can see the pain in his eyes. “People live through it.”
“You lived through it.”
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrible.”
“There were days when I didn’t think I’d make it. When I thought I’d lose my mind.” He toys with the silverware on the table. “They didn’t give us silverware, you know. Just these little plastic forks that broke really easily, so we couldn’t stab one another, or ourselves, with them. Guys would keep the tines from their forks to make needles, so they could sew up their socks.”
“It’s why you need the loud music. And the motorcycle. And swimming, and running on the beach.”
I didn’t think he could look more unguarded, but his expression is completely open.
“I already had the motorcycle,” he says. “That bike is just part of me. I bought it years ago to piss my dad off.”
“But I’m right about the rest of it.”
“Yeah.” He stares off for a few moments, as if deciding if he wants to confide in me. “I can’t tell you what it was like, to lose my freedom. To not be able to do anything I wanted. It was a complete shock.”
“And you’re reacting to it by doing everything you couldn’t do.”
I remember the two girls in his room, but push that thought away.
Cruise doesn't get a chance to respond to my statement, because the waitress comes back with our food.
“I can’t seem to stay away from you, even though I’ve known since the second time we were together, that I should,” Cruise says finally. “Eventually, being around me will get you in trouble with my dad, you know that, right?”
“I’ll handle that when it happens.” Since I haven’t seen Mr. Bancroft in days, it’s easy to ignore his existence.
After dinner Cruise saunters over to the motorcycle.
“You want to take a real ride?” he asks.
I can barely breathe as I answer, “Absolutely.”