“Is he with someone?”
“Yeah, and she’s just as drunk as he is. She was practically shrieking in the background.” Levi looks up, out the window, at the cliff and our lookout and the moment we’d wanted to share here. He looks like he’s about to apologize, so I stop him.
“You need to go get your dad, Levi. Don’t worry about this.”
“I can’t believe him.”
Frankly, neither can I, but this is important. Levi needs to know that I’m here for anything. “Let’s go,” I murmur. “We only have so much time.”
Before he puts the car into reverse, Levi angles his body toward me, grabbing my face in his hands, and kisses me hard.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, in between bursts of kisses. “We’ll come back here, I promise.”
I smile and poke his cheek to make him face forward. “Don’t get distracted now. You’ll never get anything done.”
“Right. Well, I can only think of one thing that might be as exciting as kissing you by the moonlit sea.”
“What’s that?”
He grins devilishly as he pulls back onto the road. “Borrowing one of my dad’s excellent sets of wheels.”
Chapter 32
Levi looks incredibly scrumptious in the front seat of his dad’s matte gray Maserati GranTurismo. So scrumptious, in fact, that I have to stand back and gape at him for a second.
“Get in, Bee,” he prompts, fiddling with the radio. With the flick of his wrist, the top of the car goes down, and I’m looking at a convertible that’s almost as gorgeous as my boyfriend. He looks up at me when I don’t respond. “Speechless?”
“No,” I lie.
He calls my bluff. “It’s kind of badass, right?”
I pretend to be unimpressed as I climb in. “Nah.”
Levi laughs. “There’s just no way in hell I’m paying for the gas to go get him, and he’s not going to remember any of this in the morning anyway, so we might as well.”
“Sounds reasonable.” It’s ten thirty now, which means it will be nearly midnight when we get to Mr. Orville. Wherever he’s stopped. I silently thank Tracy for letting me take the late shift tomorrow.
Levi follows the map on his phone, which directs us to the Pacific Coast Highway. It’s a drive I’ve always thought of as beautiful, but now I’m stunned. Looking out of this roofless car, I feel like I can see everything and touch all the pieces that make up the mountains and the ocean and the sky. My dress swirls around my legs, picked up by the wind, and my hair is never going to calm down at this speed.
Levi switches on a mix CD and turns it to a low volume that I can barely hear over the rushing and the sound of tires on asphalt and the ocean waves against rocks. We talk sparsely (Levi: If we were stranded on a desert island, who would eat who first? Me: Sh, don’t even think about that. Levi: It’s important. Me: It will never happen. Levi: I’d let you eat me. I’m probably delicious, but then again, I hope no one ever knows for sure.), mostly just holding hands between us, watching the small beach cities and mansions in the hills as they pass.
We reach Mr. Orville’s awkwardly parked car at 11:44, and by this time I’m yawning and stretching and shifting uncomfortably. Levi makes a U-turn and pulls up behind his dad’s sleek, black car—yet another convertible, this time a Jag—and flips off the lights. The beach is to our right, across the freeway; the little town we’ve parked in is called La Conchita.
That is, until I hear, “Son!” Jerking my head toward the sound, I catch Mr. Orville practically springing out of his car. His date is primping herself in the passenger seat, her skimpy purple dress showing me a lot more of her boobs than I ever wanted to see.
“Dad,” Levi answers, and if I didn’t know him so well, I would have missed the underlying relief in his tone. While Levi steps out to talk to his dad, Miss Purple Dress closes her mirror, collects her things, and saunters over to the Maserati in her four-inch pumps. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence, just opens the back door and sits behind me.
Good, I didn’t want to talk to you anyway.
After speaking quietly to his father by the car, Levi turns to look at me. “Bee, you feel comfortable driving one car?”
I immediately shake my head no, and Levi sighs and turns off the other car, the one we’re going to leave here.
Mr. Orville fumbles with the handle on the Maserati for a second. Then he looks up at me, catching my attention only because I can feel his stare. “You,” he says, as if he’s only just seeing me.
I raise an eyebrow. I have no response for this idiot.
“I met you earlier?”
I can’t hold back my laugh, but I still don’t answer. Yeah, I think, and at the last fundraiser, too. Nice to see you again. I’m your son’s girlfriend. No need to remember me, though.
“You’re wearing my wife’s necklace,” he adds, his face darkening. From behind me, his purple-clad date makes a sound of protest. “Ex-wife,” he amends, and finally manages to open the door. He gets in the vehicle (jumps is a more appropriate word), landing beside his girlfriend with a plop, and (I kid you not) grabs her boobs to catch himself.
“AuGUStus!” she shouts, laughing.
I turn to Levi as he gets in the driver’s seat again and just stare at him, waiting for him to say something, anything, because I’m speechless.
He shields his eyes from the backseat and says, “If I wasn’t wearing this suit, I’d probably puke.”
“Son, did you meet Penelope?” AuGUStus! yells from the backseat, even though we’re, like, a foot away.
Levi and I exchange a glance. “Ah,” he says. Then he turns around. “Yep, we did. Buckle up, please, or you’ll fall out onto the freeway and I won’t be able to come back for you until tomorrow, and by then you’ll already be a street pancake.”
He mumbles the last bit, making me laugh loudly, over the sounds of AuGUStus! sloppily smooching Felix’s (probably fired) secretary, over the music and the wind. The only thing left is Levi, and just as the rest of the world world disappears, he is everything.
We pull up to AuGUStus’s house a little over an hour later, music blaring to keep us awake. I’ve yawned once a minute for the last half hour, and Levi’s eyes look a little bloodshot. But the massive house looming ahead of us, even with its seven garage doors and palm tree collection and glass roof, provides a sense of calm. In my mind, House + Bed = Sleep.
Until I remember that we have to drive home, of course. “Who’s on drive home duty?” I ask.