I rolled him onto the ground and kissed every inch of his face. “I love you. So much.” The moment could have gotten much more romantic, but I smacked a mosquito that had been quietly sucking at my blood, and Jake helped me to my feet.
“Enough lovey-dovey stuff. Finish getting dressed, and I’ll pack up. You’re gonna get eaten alive here in a few minutes if we don’t go.” I watched Jake get busy putting everything away, and felt like a tiny bit of the fairy dust had been rubbed clean from our trip to this secret Neverland.
I pulled my jeans on and put my feet in my sandals. “We’ll come back here, right, Jake?”
“Of course.” He looked over his shoulder as he packed the duffel bag and his smile was so sweet, it seeped through all my bitter worries. “This is our spot now. We’ll come back while we’re in Sussex County, and then we have our five-year-plan, when we’re big, important hotshots. This will be that place we come back to when we need to get away from everything.” He reached for my hand, and we went back up the rocky incline, away from our little secret sweet spot full of magic. Jake didn’t give it so much as a backwards glance.
We jumped back in the truck and he whistled. He grinned. He tapped the steering wheel in a happy beat. When he didn’t have to shift, he reached his hand over and held mine.
“You’re in an awful good mood, Jake ‘Speed Demon’ Kelly.” I pulled his hand up to my lips and kissed it.
“I really hope that’s a reference to my racing skills and not my, uh, other skills.” He glanced at me and winked.
“Winking! All this sexy time definitely went to your head.” I leaned back on the seat and let out a long, sweet laugh. “And I think your skills were above average.”
“Above average? Is that, like, a B+?” He shook his head.
“Yep. And you know what that means?” I winked back at him. “Practice. Lots and lots of it.”
“I swear I will practice until I get an A from you, Ms. Blixen.” He turned the dial on the radio and sang along with the first song that came on.
I’d never heard it, and I don’t really think Jake had either, because his version of the lyrics was totally off key and made no sense. He stuck his head out the window and sang with the full capacity of his lungs, then screamed with pure pleasure into the wind.
“Jake! What’s up with you?” I laughed.
“This is just a great day. Just a really great day, and I’m happy. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy.” He leaned his head back out the window and yelled again, and everything in me felt fever warm. I switched to the middle lap belt and snuggled against Jake’s shoulder, contented and sleepy after a long day of happy goodness.
I started the day different, and had changed in ways that were too new and raw and wonderful to process. I wondered if Jake would come back to my house tonight and say over. Or maybe we’d go to his. Would we have sex again? My whole world was suddenly full of intimate possibilities that just weren’t there before.
My thoughts wandered back to this time when I was a little kid. Mom and Fa bought me a fish tank. We agonized over rocks for the bottom and the background pictures, made the poor guy at the store net practically every fish in the place until he got the three specific ones I wanted. There was a little treasure chest that opened with a geyser of bubbles and a mermaid statue, which I thought was the sexiest, most amazing thing in existence. We took our time setting everything up, and then Fa plugged it in, and I snapped the power on. The whole thing lit up in a crazy dance of sinuous fish, buzzing too-bright lights, and streams of bubbles. I stayed awake way too late looking at that tank full of beauty, the tank that had been so many dull pieces in the store, but, all put together, turned into this underwater paradise.
That was today. So many little pieces, all placed just right, now something more than normal. Something with a tiny bit of magic that I would be able to tuck away and look back at forever.
My eyes were just about to close when Jake pulled down a long, bumpy road I’d never seen before and stopped at a squat ranch house with falling-down siding and dozens of people in the yard. Over to the side was a huge, roaring bonfire, fueled by everything from old branches to chairs, boxes, and even what looked like an entertainment center.
Jake’s arm snaked around my shoulders in a possessive slide. His muscles loosened, but he walked with a wary confidence, like he was sure everyone was watching him. I would have thought it was just his nerves. Then I noticed people were watching him. We walked through the crowds, and Jake kept his arm around my waist.
Jake held his hand up whenever someone called to him, but he never stopped, and he turned down beers from at least half-a-dozen people, mostly heavyset older guys with neck tattoos and multiple facial piercings who seemed very happy to see Jake around. It was like the entire party was crushing in, nervously excited to embrace Jake back into the fold.
He looked down at me and smiled. “Kind of my old group. They’re nice, you know.” At that minute a guy wearing a skull hoodie threw a dresser with no drawers into the fire, then followed it with an entire can of lighter fluid. The flames shot high and exploded so hot my cheecks glowed hot from the fire that was thirty feet away. “Crazy, but nice,” Jake amended.
I looked around with wonder. So this was the kind of gathering where Jake had spent so many summer nights? It was still comfortable and familiar to him. It was also obviously a place he’d grown away from, like a favorite jacket one size too tight that still fit, but strangled your shoulders and clung too hard around the zipper.
“Kelly! Blix! Come forth and revel!” Saxon’s voice rang out, loud and slurry, but not completely drunk. He sat near a smaller fire, a beer bottle in his hand, Cadence on his knee. She looked slightly confused, and not very comfortable as she ran her fingers through her shiny black hair and looked at us with a helplessly nervous smile hello.
Jake and I walked up to the roaring, belching fire, kindled partially on things that probably weren’t meant to be burned. It loosed a chemically, thick smoke and, every once in a while, sputtered or gave off a loud, crackling pop. Jake’s arm tightened with possessive constraint around my waist, and I was happy to lean into the comfort of his overzealous embrace.
“Hey Saxon. Cadence.” I waved at her, and she gave me a shy smile in return.
Jake glanced around and rocked back and forth on his heels. “There’s a shit-ton of people here.” People were spilling out of the dilapidated house, burying their hands in coolers filled with cans of beer, throwing things into multiple fires, and gathering around a huge roasted pig. “Shambles’s dad slaughtered a pig?”
“Would it be a bonfire without a hog?” Saxon raised his beer and laughed before he took a long, eager pull from the bottle. Cadence touched his wrist and shook her head, and he nodded, then laid a long, dramatic kiss on her lips before he turned his attention back to us. “So, what have you two fine, upstanding youths been up to?”
“Just hanging out,” Jake said vaguely, shaking his head at yet another beer offered by yet another hulking, tattooed man with a huge smile. He pulled me closer when the man licked his lips openly in my direction.
“Jake took me to see this waterfall.” The words flipped out because of a nervous need to fill the uncomfortable feeling of not belonging that dredged up in me. Jake kissed my temple and avoided looking at Saxon, who was staring right at him.
“A waterfall, huh?” Saxon nodded slowly and took another long sip. “Hell of a way to celebrate that second place win, eh, Jake?”
Jake’s arm tightened into anaconda territory, and he and Saxon locked eyes in a long, nasty standoff of unspoken, raging tempers. I pulled at Jake’s hand and squeezed it until his stance relaxed.
Cadence said something sharp and quiet in Saxon’s ear, and he locked his jaw tight.
Just when I was getting nervous about how everything would iron itself out, the man who’d ogled me a second before came back to the fire. “Saxon, could you pull your car around? Davey parked like a fuckwad and can’t get his truck out.”