Chapter 21 #2
The next day, we left the inn and the village of Rose Beach, driving a couple hours down the coast to another, larger resort on the beach.
Ricky’s ankle was sufficiently healed for him to do the driving, which definitely kept things simple, though I resolved to keep practicing so that someday it would be even simpler because we’d both be able to drive with equal ease.
We kept things simple at the resort, sharing gourmet dinners in their lovely restaurant overlooking the Pacific and swapping our scheduled massages at their spa for a private couples yoga lesson instead.
I grinned indulgently at all of Ricky’s inappropriate cracks about the erotic benefits of stretching, and exulted with him after the lesson when he said it had helped his ankle feel significantly better.
I definitely enjoyed the yoga more than the massage, and it probably helped that our instructor was a pleasant but entirely unthreatening middle-aged woman; no Cole redux to throw me off.
I let Ricky take pictures of me on the beach, on the nearby dunes, of my hands during our oyster-shucking lesson with the restaurant’s executive chef—though I insisted on also getting one with both our hands in it as well.
We kept things simple, or at least tried to avoid too much complication too soon, by keeping both of the rooms Drea had reserved for us. Though whether both rooms were occupied for the entirety of both of the nights we were there—well, that’s none of Drea’s business.
Keeping it simple was nice. And it did feel romantic, though I wondered as Ricky drove us south, heading back to California at last, whether that wasn’t merely the honeymoon effect of finally knowing that Ricky was my boyfriend.
I looked Ricky over out of the corner of my eye, then remembered I could ogle him openly now, so I did.
He looked so summery and cool in his sunglasses and pale blue shorts, the short sleeves of his linen shirt rolled even shorter, the top several buttons undone, all to show off more of his gloriously sun-kissed golden body.
“Like what you see?” A grin broke out across his face. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking, I found it,” I said dreamily.
“Found what?”
“Romance. On the Oregon coast.”
“Well, whaddaya know? You’re right, we did. That should make writing your piece a breeze.”
I shuddered to think about how distracted I’d been from my assignment when we were in Rose Beach.
The week had been unforgettable, for better or worse, so I knew I’d be able to pull an article together, but it would be hard work, that was for sure.
“I don’t know about that … I guess I’ll figure that out, but finding romance definitely took a while.
Like, until the last two days maybe,” I said.
Ricky feigned shock. “What are you talking about? It was very romantic, the whole time.”
“I demand proof,” I said.
“Let’s see,” Ricky said thoughtfully. “The very first day, I held you in my arms and soothed away your tears. That’s romantic, in a Byronic sort of way, I think.
Then you went to sleep for, like, a full twenty-four hours and, I assume, dreamed of nothing but me.
That’s straight out of a fairy tale or something. ”
“Yes, I dreamed only of you,” I said, remembering how wonderfully romantic it had seemed when Ricky had given me that pillow.
“Then, on our first evening in Oregon,” he continued, “we shared an intimate dinner for two, of everything on that restaurant’s menu, then were serenaded from above by what I can only guess was the most romantic composition in the classical canon, and then decided to take a hot tub with very full tummies, which, I’m realizing, might have been romantic, but would not have been in line with water safety recommendations, so maybe it’s as well that we didn’t. ”
“I think that swimming on a full stomach thing is a myth,” I said. “We never did use a hot tub at the inn, though, did we?”
“I think the shine wore off after Richard dropped in on us,” Ricky said drily.
He was right, I was sure. I thought about what had happened later that night, when I’d held Ricky as we slept. That had certainly been something.
“And then the next day, I taught you a new life skill, which is maybe kind of romantic if your love language is ‘acts of service.’ And we agreed to become lovers.”
“Fake lovers,” I interjected.
“It was never that fake, and you know it,” Ricky said, raising an eyebrow in my direction. “And you decided we were cursed—or curséd, should I say, because that’s a very Shakespearean kind of romantic. What ever happened to the curse?”
“Well, Tawny did die right after we decided to drop the fake thing,” I said, only a little nervously. “But I’m hoping we broke the curse by figuring out what had happened and bringing Rachel to justice. I mean, nobody died nearby in the last couple of days, right?”
“That we know of,” Ricky said ominously. “And I wasn’t going to say anything, but I think I saw a swimmer getting eaten by a shark when you were busy climbing that dune. You know, the morning after we—”
“You did not,” I said firmly.
“No, I didn’t,” he said, grinning. “The only thing we’re cursed with is the hots for each other. And that’s pretty romantic, I think.”
I contemplated this for a few miles. This was a curse I could get behind.
I’d never taken the curse thing too seriously, anyway.
I’d cared much more about making sure Ricky got a modicum of closure on what had led Richard to fall right in front of him.
It had ballooned into so much more than that one accidental, but not at all innocent, fall, but we had managed to chase all of it down.
“Do you feel better? Knowing what happened, I mean,” I said.
Ricky thought for a bit. “A little bit, yeah, I think so. And it helps knowing that we did something about it. Was that really what drove you to keep poking into the whole thing? To make me feel better?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Look,” Ricky said. “It’ll never be perfect. I’ll never forget what I saw. But knowing that goes a long way to making me feel a whole lot better.”
“I had to show you that I—”
“Oh, yeah,” Ricky said, smiling. “You said it. You love me.”
“I did say that,” I said a little sheepishly.
I knew it had been way too soon, but I was fairly certain that, after all we’d been through already in our short time together, I’d meant it.
Leave it to me; I didn’t know how to get close to many people, but when I did, I went all the way.
No matter how certain I was, though, I still felt the need to give Ricky an out.
“You don’t have to say anything about it. ”
“I was going to say something at the time, but I didn’t get the chance,” Ricky said. “What was it?”
I felt my heart start to race. Did Ricky feel pressured to say something he didn’t mean?
“Ah, right,” he said at length. “I was going to say, I think you’re real cute.”
“I hate you.”
“And you love me. That’s how we know this thing was always real.”
I turned and looked out my window to hide my smile.
As he drove, Ricky reached over and twirled a finger through the hair behind my ear, bringing my attention back to him.
“It just occurred to me how prophetic I was,” he said.
“About what?”
“Back when we became fake-not-fake boyfriends, I said we could be one of those couples that solves mysteries together. Like Batman and Robin.”
I looked at him sternly. “You’ve named several twosomes, but only one that I can recall that were actually a couple who actually solved mysteries.”
He untwirled his finger from my hair, returning his hand to the steering wheel. After a moment’s deep thought, he half shouted, “The Hardy Boys!”
“Ricky. They were brothers.”
He turned and tilted his head down so that he could look at me skeptically over the tops of his sunglasses. “Were they?”
I sighed deeply. If he was going to be my boyfriend, he was going to find out eventually about all of the weird things I shouldn’t or didn’t need to know but did anyway.
I started counting on my fingers. “Nick and Nora Charles, I’ll give you that one. Moonlighting. McMillan & Wife. Mulder and Scully, sometimes. Columbo and Mrs. Columbo, although they never appeared on each other’s shows, so maybe technically they didn’t solve mysteries together. …”
“See,” he interjected. “This is what makes us a powerhouse mystery-solving couple.”
I rolled my eyes at him, making only a tiny effort to suppress my smile.
I decided to change the subject. “So are you still planning to stick around awhile when we get back?”
“I thought I might,” he said.
“And you’re coming to stay with me, right?
” It had seemed so impossibly presumptuous, such an embarrassing indictment of my failures when my mother had suggested it a few days ago.
But that was before. Now that Ricky was my boyfriend—I couldn’t stop forming those words over and over in my mind, my boyfriend—it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
Ricky kept his eyes straight ahead on the road, his expression locked into a stony poker face. “Am I?”
“I thought you might.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” he said. “But I don’t want you to feel too much pressure. I’m happy to take a guest bed or sofa or whatever.”
“I don’t have a guest bed,” I said, staring defiantly at the side of his still resolutely impassive, impossibly beautiful face. “Or a sofa.”
“Sounds like you need some furni—oh.”
The upward twitch at the corners of Ricky’s mouth was nearly imperceptible. But the thrum of the engine deepened noticeably as his foot dipped further into the accelerator and the car surged ahead.
He reached his right hand over once again, this time placing it palm up on my leg. I took his hand in mine.
“Let’s get home,” he said.