9
9
YELLOW
T urns out being kidnapped by someone you love is a lot of fun. Wind in your hair, rolling along freeways in a Jeep kind of fun. We were invincible. Neither one of us so much as got a headache or needed a Band-Aid during this time. No lows. We were high on life and each other. Drunk with love and freedom. Every day was a day at the beach. Every night a trip to paradise.
Wherever the winding road took us, we were there with our matching backpacks and grins. One day paying twenty bucks to try couple’s yoga on a grassy knoll in Venice with some hippies. (That one was cut short on account of “me in my spandex doing downward facing dog.”) The next day a trip to Disneyland . . . Disneyland! An envious place I’d only heard about as a kid. There were fairytale kisses with my handsome prince in a magic kingdom. A souvenir picture crowned with mouse ears to commemorate it, already my most prized possession.
There were dusty canyon hikes and leafy green day trips to national parks. Long, lazy baths in cheap hotels. I’d seen more terrain and awesomeness of this country in the short, crammed-packed, love-jammed, dizzy, whirlwind of our wrinkle in time than I had my whole dang life. We absorbed each other’s mood, like a sponge soaking up sea water, becoming one thing together. And I liked the who we were together. We were an unstoppable force.
Every time I laid eyes on him, it set off endorphins, like tiny sparks in my brain. Forget about rose-tinted glasses. Mine were yellow. Pete had the Midas touch—everything he touched turned to gold. The whole world was diffused in his radiance, which seemed to make everything glow. Like me.
And there was a constant sound track on: rap, pop, rock, alternative, country—a song for every occasion. Even when the music was off, he was singing. I never knew Pete was such a singer. Cheesy power ballads I’d never heard was sung at me word for word, while I laughed, and we whizzed by everyone else on our way to a new destination.
If there were other humans in California during this time, I couldn’t see them. We were the only two people in our own little world. Except for the chubby, cheerful cherubs that floated above us, strumming love chimes while they beamed their approval. Like we were their most favorite humans.
We sang, ate, laughed, and danced the night away to hip-hop at hip clubs, always leaving, as if on some signal only we could hear. Called back to the siren call that was our bed. Sometimes we didn’t even make it back. Like on the Fourth of July, climbing up a Malibu mountain to create our own pyrotechnics while fireworks boomed and flashed over our heads. And I can say I’ve had sex on the beach, even though I’ve never tried the cocktail.
But we did imbibe in alcohol and overindulged in food, overcompensating for our individual lives of lack. And, again, the normal rules of life didn’t really apply to me because this was a life break. A perma-vacation, where cocktail hour was every hour. Pete introduced me to “his friend Don Julio.” Informed me it was high time I put down the champagne and picked up a beer. So I did, and put it right back down for some of his tequila that came mixed with a bunch of sweetly sour (or sourly sweet) stuff that made it taste good. We tasted and tried to our heart’s content, not thinking about anything but taste: fried empanadas, exotic sushi rolls, creamy sweets rolled into pastry. Nothing was off limits. We popped buttery popcorn into our mouths during afternoon matinees and chased it down with bags of candy and syrupy soda.
We only did enough to keep from rotting, until our languid muscles demanded more exercise than the sheets could provide. I woke up one morning in the mood to jog, so Pete bought me some new sneakers. The Academy trainers went in the trash.
That was so much fun, he took me shopping for new clothes I got to pick out myself. “The sky’s the limit!” he announced with a grin . . . until I hit $1,500. (I still had pants hanging in my closet that cost that much.) But not for long. Most of my “fancy finery” from the other dimension was discarded. At least the ones “my lunatic ex-husband” picked out.
We went to J.Crew, a store I’d never been to. Pete remarked, “That’s practically un-American.” So we laughed our way through racks of jeans and soft cotton button-downs that were anything but boxy. I modeled; he admired. I discarded; he snuck in. We made it in the dressing room—the dressing room of J.Crew!
We stumbled back to our “love nest,” with our shopping bags and ice cream cones to make it again on the denim duvet. Then we laid on the couch, heads on opposite ends, rubbing sore feet, staying up late, watching marathons of reality TV, a phenomenon I’d never bore witness to before.
During this blissful slice of life, the only learning I did were things about Pete. Some things I suspected and was gratified deep in my soul when I was proven correct. Like what a generous person he was. Not only to me, but in all aspects of his life. He was an extravagant tipper, even if the service was subpar. If it was really bad, he might teach the guy a lesson by leaving him fifteen percent. And other things about him still surprised me. Pete was a chauvinist, I’d learned to my dismay, because if the poor service came from a girl, the same standard did not apply. But any semblance of a frown from me, and he would fight back with a kiss here or a tickle there, until I was pawing at him for more Pete love. He seemed to find sex as endlessly fascinating as me. I was shameless, wanting it as much as he was willing to give it to me, which was a lot. A lot. Sometimes three or more times a day until that finally trickled to two-a-days, where we remained to stay in practice.
I was so happy it terrified me.
The first fingers of reality didn’t poke us until about the third week in. Time being as hazy and lazy as we were, it was hard to know for sure. A calendar would need to be examined, but I could only drum up enough energy to examine the contours of Pete’s back.
We were on his comfy couch. His face was smashed into a pillow, his body sprawled across my lap as I leisurely stroked my fingers up and down and around, creating curling patterns of hearts and flowers as befit my mood. This I did while watching The Morning Show , another new phenomenon he claimed was “the American thing to do.” With coffee. Unfortunately, my cooling “cup of Joe” was just out of reach on the coffee table (so aptly named), but I was entirely too content to move.
“What are you in the mood to do today?” I mused, thinking I was in the mood to make him dinner and wondering what pieces of cookware I’d find stashed in the nooks and crannies of the kitchen.
“ Hmmmm ?” Pete breathed in deeply, then sighed. I laughed and scratched my fingers across the flawless skin of his back, leaving track marks—a move I knew drove him crazy.
He growled and flipped over to face me with a panty-dropping smile and a dent from the pillow seam right smack in the middle of his face. I laughed and brushed my finger along that track, and then my hand got lost in his hair. I never got tired of looking at it. His face. It was a testament to God’s talent, the ninth wonder of the world. I stared at it now, and his mouth, which just dropped down at the corner lazily.
“I know what I’d like to do,” he said, reaching up to palm my breast (over his T-shirt). He brushed his thumb across my nipple. The response he sought was automatic. He smiled with joyful satisfaction, like a child who is continually thrilled every time he pushes a button and a pop-up toy appears. He traced a lazy circle with his thumb.
I sucked in a breath, heat flooding my face and nether regions in expectation. But Pete surprised me by slipping off my lap onto the floor. I laughed when he stayed down there, scratching his arm.
“Hey.” I poked my head down. “Where’d you go?”
He glanced up at me before averting his gaze out the window. One lock of hair flopped over his forehead. He brushed it back before standing up in one lithe movement, his sweats slipping low around his waist. (Even our ties were lazy.)
“Kate, will you be okay here for a while on your own?” Pause. “I’ve got a ten ‘o clock this morning.”
“Sure.” I felt a little letdown dart in and out of my chest and wondered why he hadn’t mentioned it before. Maybe it wasn’t that important? Gah. He looked so dreamy with his tousled hair and scruffy jaw. His warm, hard body (Did I mention it was the tenth wonder?), that intriguing V my hand was itching to go in for. I got up to wrap my arms around his back, running my fingers along aforementioned shape.
He dropped his head, and sighed a little, unfolding my arms and stepping away. “You’re going to make me late.”
I pouted a little. “So, what’s five minutes? Or better yet, ten?” I tilted my head up with a grin.
He sighed again, a little impatiently. “A lot of time for someone who’s paying me by the hour.”
I frowned at his tone.
“I’m sorry, honey, but it’s going to have to wait.” Another deep breath. “It’s time for me to get back to work . . . we’re running a little low on cash.”
Ah . So, the admission he didn’t want to admit.
My eyebrows knitted. I hadn’t thought very much about the mundane things in life like money or jobs . . . I’d have to get one of those. “I want to help,” I said. “Tell me what I can do.”
He gave me a lip smile. “You can crawl back in bed and watch a lot of bad TV.” He observed the look on my face and amended, “Or, if you’re feeling really industrious, you can spruce up the place a bit . . . yunno, give it that woman’s touch it’s been needing.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“Great.” The grin was back. “I’m gonna hit the shower.”
“Great. I’ll just hit the remote.” I sank back down, trying very hard not to feel let down.
Reality sucks.
Pete emerged from the bathroom about ten minutes later, a towel wrapped around his waist. Honestly, I couldn’t look at him or else I might run over and assault him. Instead I got up to pour the last dregs of cold coffee down the drain. Then I switched places with him. It seemed privacy was needed to change back into real life. Not sure why—we’d definitely explored every square inch of each other’s bodies.
I brushed my teeth, skipping a shower in lieu of washing my face. I wasn’t ready to wash all that love off me yet. Coming out a few minutes later, I found him backpacked and ready to go, a forest green sweatshirt over khaki shorts and a pair of rugged sneakers completing his business casual ensemble. The amount that he didn’t have to try could not be underscored enough.
I sighed. A wave of sadness shimmered across my face. I knew he was a high-paid tutor. I also knew how he really made his money—girls. A hundred and fifty bucks an hour bought a lot more than technical support and explaining how molecules are held together. It bought the dream that was Pete Davenport.
Our eyes met. I forced a smile. “Okay. Well, ah . . . go get ‘em, Tiger.”
He gave me a smile, a hug, and a squeeze that lifted me off the floor. “I’ll be back this afternoon. I also have a few things to take care of.”
This declaration sparked some kind of intuition. Something was wrong. Something he was hiding from me. I breathed in his sweet male scent, choosing to ignore it.
“Yeah, me too. Like catching up on The Challenge and our laundry. Speakin’ of which, is there a laundromat nearby? I don’t mind hand-washing a few things, but . . . our ah, love sheets could use a good washing,” I said with a sheepish smile.
He grinned at that. “Love sheets?”
Color exploded on my cheeks while he pulled me in for another hug and a smack on my other set of cheeks.
“Leave the laundry for now,” he said. “When I get back this afternoon, I’ll ask Ruthie if you can use her washer and drier.” I made a face at this suggestion, and he reassured me. “They let me use them all the time. The only tradeoff is you have to endure a couple of hours of her sweet-talking you into trying her sweets, followed by a dinner invitation that you just can’t refuse, and an evening playing bones with the old guy. I think they’re definitely comin’ out ahead in that trade,” he finished with another grin and smack on my behind that made me yelp.
After a quick peck, Pete was out the door. About two beats happened before I ran out the door after him, trailing him down the stairs and to his Jeep, parked beneath our tree. I waited next to the knobby tire for him to get in and start it up before poking my head in for a last kiss.
He grinned down at me. “I could get use to this.”
A smile lit up my own face. “Okay, Tyler Jennings, I’ll see you when you get back home,” I teased, trying out his alias to see how it would roll off my tongue.
The remnants of his smile faded. “Yeah . . . don’t get too attached to that one.”
I tried to read his eyes before he left, but he threw on his shades and backed out with another smile and a wave.