2. The Bucket List
Chapter 2
The Bucket List
R ose
How far the hell down was this time capsule? Covered in mud, bitten up by mosquitoes, completely soaked through with sweat—why? Just….why was I here? The hole before me was big, but not nearly as big as the favor Lily would owe me.
I jammed the shovel into the earth again. What should I ask her for? Photographs of my dresses for my website I still had to build? Too small an ask. I could probably talk her into doing that for free, anyway. Kick her boyfriend out of her apartment so I could live with her? As if that would happen. And why would I want to live with her constant judgment?
“I don’t know what I’m looking at, but it seems pretty shady.”
I whirled in a panic at the voice as a flashlight lit me up from behind. A ripped, shirtless man leaned against the statue of St. Dorothy, flashlight pointed off to the side so I could look up into his—oh no—very familiar face.
I knew this man. Or I knew that boy, a long time ago. Time must’ve had a crush on him. Why was he so goddamn hot? My brain and mouth were slow to catch up with the situation and even slower to attempt a response.
I tried not to let my gaze dip below his eyes. But in a spectacular fail, I clocked the mountain range across his chest, veins down his muscled arms, the stretch of delectable yumminess below his belly button that made my lady business actively clench, and athletic shorts hanging low off unreasonably toned hips. My hormones were Christina Aguilera and her “Dirrty” background dancers.
Isaac, with his sickly Victorian goth mystique, did not look like that naked. I sucked my tummy in and pulled down on my short shorts.
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Wait, aren’t you…? Rose Guidry? Is that you?”
He took a step closer. Yep—Jason Soniat. Becca’s little brother.
Fuck me, he’d grown up.
“Jason? Ohmygod hi!” I pushed a curl out of my face, no doubt smudging even more dirt onto it. Unbearable heat from inside and out made my face as hot as a crawfish in a boiling pot and probably twice as red. I crossed my arm across my braless boobs. “What’re you…did Lily…are you here for the necklace too?”
But no, it didn’t make any sense that Lily would’ve called Jason to help me. And by the confused, pissed look on his face, that was not why he was out here.
He shook his head, brows furrowed. “What necklace?” His gaze followed the flashlight’s bright spot into the hole and over the piles of dirt around it. “Why are you digging a hole in my garden?”
His irritated tone tightened my chest and sent my heart racing like I’d been called into the hot principal’s office. New kink unlocked. We stared at each other, and I gripped my shovel with white knuckles. “ Your garden?”
“Yeah. This is my property.” He gestured at the mess I’d made with a deeper frown. “What are you doing out here?”
“I’m so sorry, oh my God I’m so embarrassed I didn’t know this was your—Lily asked me to come and dig up the time capsule we buried in summer camp because she put the other half of her best friends forever necklace Becca gave her in it.” Big breath. “Because Lily’s in Oregon until tomorrow and if she doesn’t have it at the shower tomorrow night, Becca’s gonna kill her…”
My voice petered out as he pursed his lips and scratched the back of his head. Surveyed my vandalism in total silence.
I swallowed hard. I would die right here in the mud of hot face, tachycardia, and wretched cringe, and Lily would owe a debt to my ghost. A fancy casket. Maybe a marble tombstone with an awkward statue of a weeping angel putting her foot in her mouth so everyone would remember me accurately.
“A time capsule? Um…” He turned and looked back toward the church, then back to me. He sighed, and his frown smoothed out into straight-lipped resignation. “Hang on. I’ll grab a shovel and help you.”
“Oh no, no, no. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to help me.”
“You didn’t.” He wedged his flashlight onto the statue of St. Dorothy between her basket of roses and flowing robes. “I’ll be right back.” He walked off toward the old rectory.
Goddamn that ass. Fuck. Me.
I resumed digging, whisper-cussing myself out. “What the fuck? Why are you such a horny dumbass?”
My crush on Jason started in science class on the first day of sixth grade. And the last time I saw him—oh God, prom. He took me to my senior prom. Nobody else had asked me, and I was so desperate to go that I let Lily ask Becca if one of her brothers would take me. Even though they went to a different high school, and I hadn’t seen them in years.
I’d asked for Jason.
And bless him, he went with me, even though he had a girlfriend at the time. But he must’ve been so miserable all night—I was so shy and quiet back then. Becca must’ve owed him a favor as big as the one Lily owed me now.
Jason came back with a shovel and a bigger work light on an extension cord. Ohmygod he’d actually been serious about helping me dig up his yard.
He handed me a cold bottle of water, and the condensation dripped down my arm to my elbow, splashed on my flushed chest. “You must be dying out here.”
The cold water bottle and the visible sweat on his muscles made my nipples pebble and my throat extra dry. “Thank you.” His skin looked smoother and more luxurious than mulberry silk. I bet he exfoliated.
“I didn’t know there was a time capsule here.” He dropped his phone in his pocket, and it dragged his shorts even lower on his hips. Holy smokes.
I downed half the bottle before answering him. “There used to be a plaque for it.” I set my bottle on the statue’s base and walked around to the opposite side of the hole for a new spot to dig.
Then I tripped over my own feet and slammed into him with a yelp, grabbing his shoulders with my dirty gloves.
He threw his hands up at the last second, and one landed squarely on my boob.
“Oh God!” He immediately moved his hand to my waist with an “I’m so sorry are you okay?” as he helped me steady myself.
But he wasn’t fast enough to stop the cascade of hormones whizzing straight to my vagina.
“Yeah. That’s the most action I’ve gotten in two months,” I said. Painful heat shot up my face as he stared at me for a full second.
He cleared his throat and coughed. “Me too,” he admitted, his face reddening.
Now all I could think about was his hand on my boob. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah,” I said in a small voice. “The plaque is…well it doesn’t seem to be here. Anymore.”
He set his big muscles to work, digging twice as much and fast as me. Neither of us spoke as we dug. I wanted to be digging my own grave. What could I say to him after that? I couldn’t very well ask him when he got so freaking hot. And for the love of chiffon, I wouldn’t mention the eighth grade spin-the-bottle debacle.
“Did you really buy St. Dorothy’s?”
“Yeah. I couldn’t pass it up. Repurposing old buildings was my main interest when I went to school for architecture.” He paused to wipe sweat from his brow. Eyed his shoulders and brushed off the dirt I’d put there. “I always wanted to live in a converted church.”
“Why’s that?”
“I love the bones of it.” He gestured toward the old church. “The steeple, that amazing bell tower. Churches are built to last, and you just can’t replicate the original stonework, the stained-glass windows, the vaulted ceilings. Plus, all the utilities are there.” He leaned closer to me on the handle of the shovel as if to get me to share his vision.
I froze like a deer in headlights, my next big breath taking in the lusty, masculine scent of soap heating off his toned body. I bet he tasted as good as an orgasm felt.
“I’m so sorry. You’re gonna need another shower.” I curled into myself. I shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people.
He glanced at me kinda sideways. “No worries. I love the creative challenge of putting everything into place in a new way. Not to mention save a community building from being demolished to build another soulless neighborhood of duplexes with no trees.”
His excitement was infectious. Or maybe that was his pheromones? Regardless, I’d always loved this church. As a child, I sat in the pews on Sundays looking up at the rafters and spent so many days after school running through the brick arches in the back. I was glad it was in such sexy, rough-looking hands. I mean, such good hands.
Cheese and crackers, Rose, remember Isaac? I was with Isaac.
But…window shopping was okay, right?
Jason turned to me as if remembering himself. He smiled sheepishly and went back for another shovelful. A mosquito landed on his large, smooth shoulder, and I swatted it off. He looked at his shoulder and back up at me.
“Mosquito,” I squeaked.
“Thanks. Hey, are you sure we’re digging in the right place?” He dove the shovel in again, and it pinged against something hard. He looked up at me, dark eyes sparkling. “I think we found it!”
He dug around the edges of a stainless-steel cylinder, hefting it out of the dirt. “This is almost exciting, like a treasure hunt.”
“God, I’m glad you think so.”
He chuckled and pulled the cylinder from the mud, knocking the worst of the mud off. “Your time capsule, m’lady. Let’s bring it to the porch so we don’t lose anything in the dark.”
“Bless you. You’re my knight in shining…” He wasn’t wearing a shirt. “Flesh.” I winced. Too weird, Rose, too weird.
He set the time capsule down onto a piece of plywood stretched across sawhorses and pulled off his gloves. Even more handsome in the incandescent light of the porch, his eyes were the big brown I remembered, the kind of warm eyes I wanted to curl up in. His dark, thick hair was curly and out of control in the best possible way, loose around his ears.
“Hmmm. Looks like I’ll need a wrench—hang on, I’ll be back.”
He went inside the church, and I took off my mom’s gardening gloves and sat them on the workstation, studying the time capsule. Eight bolts on either end. This was gonna take a minute, and here I was with still no makeup on, in a tiny tank top—with no bra—and shorts that barely fit anymore. And he was going to have to see me in the light. I pulled my hair down and back up again, adjusted my clothes. Lily was going to owe me the freaking world.
Jason
I walked back onto my porch with my favorite toolbox. The pretty yard vandal smiled at me and went back to studying the time capsule. When did I last see Rose? It had to be her prom. She’d worn the tightest black dress and barely spoke a word except thanking me profusely the whole night for taking her.
Wrench acquired, I set to work on the time capsule’s bolts and threw a quick up-and-down glance at her. Her thick, dark hair was a messy bun on top of her head, and frizzy, corkscrew curls poked out wildly at the nape of her neck. Mud smudged her pretty pink cheeks and the colorful tattoo of roses on her upper arm. That was new. She fidgeted with a pink crystal necklace that kept falling into her cleavage, which was generous and also mud streaked. Jeez, how did I accidentally grab her boob?
I tried to avert my eyes from her chest, but she kept pulling up on that tiny tank top and drawing my attention to how her nipples stood proud of the fabric. My shorts were suddenly tight.
Kind of like my pants on prom night.
My body was only on edge because I hadn’t been this close to a beautiful woman with that little clothes on in a long time. I flexed my thigh muscle really hard and held it, trying to make the blood flow somewhere else. It was a trick I learned off the internet a couple of weeks ago, and it didn’t work too bad. But even abstaining from self-pleasure was harder than it had been a few minutes ago.
Pun intended.
I flashed her a smile. “Did you wear all black just to sneak around in my yard and dig this up?”
“Yeah, I went full stealth mode for my wild Friday night,” she laughed. She casually brushed dirt off her chest and pulled the ripped hems of her short shorts down, as if wishing they were longer. I sure as hell didn’t.
“Also, most of my clothes are still in transit from New York.”
I glanced at her again just as a mosquito landed on the pale, soft swell of her breast. I reached out on instinct but froze before I touched her. “You have a mosquito on your…” I pointed.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, slapping at it. “They’re eating me alive.”
“You must be delicious.” My cheeks heated even more than the August night called for. Why did I say that? I was thinking it, but why say it out loud? I bit my lip and started on the sixth bolt.
She laughed nervously. “I guess so.”
What did I know about her these days, besides that she was making my sister’s wedding dress and standing in the wedding? “New York. Fashion internship, right? Becca mentioned you were moving back home.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
I nodded, starting on the last bolt. Another memory of her popped into my head, from my eighth-grade end-of year party. Pretty Rose, sitting wide-eyed across from me in a circle of classmates, where the bottle I’d spun pointed unmistakably at her. Crawling toward each other at the center with friends whooping all around us, her long curls hanging down, lips parted, eyes determined.
I dropped my wrench to the workbench, the cylinder unbolted.
“Thank you so much,” she murmured. I carefully emptied the contents of the capsule on the plywood as she rifled through it. A few stuffed animals, a bracelet, lots of folded up pieces of loose leaf, a rolled-up newspaper…
“There!” She grabbed a pink enamel and gold half-a-heart necklace. “It’s a little dirty, but I bet my mom has jewelry cleaner.”
I dropped a few items back into the capsule, but a Polaroid of a dozen campers caught my eye. There in the center was middle school Rose. “Oh wow, look at you!” Just as I remembered her—wide-eyed with her long curls everywhere.
She leaned in toward me, the heat magnifying her rosy scent. I smirked. Of course Rose would smell like roses.
She grabbed the photo from me, groaning. “Oh wow, look at those bangs. Let’s put that back in the time capsule, shall we?”
I shifted through the papers. What did people think was important enough to put in? “A poem for the future, a prayer, and oh, what do we have here?” An index card with Rose’s name on it. I’d hit gold. “‘Rose Guidry’s Bucket List’?”
“Oh my Lord, let me see.” Her hand snaked out for the card, but this was too good to hand over without reading it first.
I held it up over my head, laughing. “No, I wanna read it.”
“Give it!” She swiped for it but was too short to grab it.
I started to read it.
“It’s mine, Jason. Give it!” She jumped for it, chest-bumping me and knocking a sharp pain into my chin with her head.
“Ow!” She ducked her head with her hand over it. “I’m going to die the minute after I kill my sister,” she growled.
What was I, a little kid with a crush? “I’m sorry. I’m such an ass. Are you okay?”
With a triumphant cackle she made a sneak attack for the card, but I whipped it above my head again. “Ahh, you almost got me! Waltz with a cute guy, go to Paris…how many of these have you done already?”
“I don’t know,” she shot back, “because you won’t let me see it!”
I peered into her narrowed, angry eyes. “Okay, I’ll let you see it if you don’t take it and run. Deal?”
My heart stumbled as she glared back at me, her full, rosy lips turned up at one end. Her dark blue eyes were almost purple in the porchlight. Stunning. She’d always been cute, but now she was fucking gorgeous.
“I did help you dig up my property in the middle of the night.”
“Girl. It’s not even one.” For a moment, she only stared back. “Fine. Okay. Deal.”
A corner of my mouth quirked up. Did she call me girl ? “And I’m gonna hold it while you read it so you can’t run off with it.”
She shrugged. “Whatever. Can I see it now? What mortifying things did twelve-year-old me write?”
I brought the list down to her level and leaned in with it.
She slipped her hand around my forearm and gripped it, probably so I didn’t take the list away again. Thank God it was dark out here, or she’d see exactly what that simple touch was doing to me.
“Okay, I grew out my bangs.” She ran a finger with chipped purple nail polish down the list, as if trying to find all the worst ones before I could. “I’ve lived in New York City.”
But I found it first. “Number five: ‘Make J.S. fall in love with me.’ Who’s ‘J.S.’?” My heart rate went up with my eyebrows as I met her wide eyes.
Her face, already bright pink from the heat, turned a vibrant shade of red as she removed her hand. Her breath hitched.
It was totally me.
I couldn’t stop my slow smile. Didn’t somebody tell me she had a crush on me when we were in school together? This and her deer-in-headlights stare just might be confirmation.
That was kinda…cool. I felt my smile spread wider.
“It wasn’t you,” she blurted. “That was, oh, what was his name?” She scrunched her eyes shut and pressed her fingertips to her brow. “Jonathan Santos. Yeah. Huge crush on him in middle school.” She crossed her arms and fixed her eyes on me.
“Oh yeah, Jonathan Santos.” Sure it was. “The first openly gay boy in our class.”
She shrugged, her stare daring me to challenge her. “The heart wants what it wants.”
The church’s clock chimed one o’clock. She broke her gaze and started shoveling everything back inside the capsule. “I’ve kept you up long enough. Thank you so much, really. Is it okay if I come back tomorrow to bury it again?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ll seal it up and bury it for you.”
“Are you sure? I’ve already put you out enough.”
“Yeah. I don’t mind.” I stuck her bucket list back into the capsule and experimentally laid the silicone seal back over the mouth of the cylinder. “I probably ought to clean this first and let it dry so it seals back right.”
Kasey had sanded me down a little each day so I wouldn’t snag under her thumb, but the last few minutes with Rose had me feeling like a fresh-hewn cut of wood, full of splinters and promise. And I didn’t want it to end.
“Do you want to come in and cool off before you go?” I asked. “Let me get you some more water.”
“No,” she said forcefully. “Absolutely not.”
She didn’t have to turn me down with such vehemence, but okay. I crossed my arms and nodded as if I agreed that was best.
She downed the rest of her water and tossed it into a nearby trash can, then edged toward the steps looking positively miserable. “You already took me to my prom because your sister made you, and you helped me dig up your yard. I’ve imposed on you enough for one lifetime.”
I laughed. “My girlfriend at the time was pretty mad when she found out.”
She covered half her face with her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“No worries. She was kind of mean anyway.”
“Oh good! I mean, not good. But. Yeah. Um. I have some third quarter moon manifestations to do anyway. Goodnight. Thank you again!”
Ooh, that’s right. She was a “godless Guidry girl,” as Mom called her and her sister. Even if she hadn’t shot me down so hard it stung, Mom would never approve of me dating her.
She took three steps off my porch.
“Rose! Your gloves!”
She turned around and met me at the edge of the porch, took them without meeting my eyes, and then headed straight across the yard toward her car.
I leaned against a porch column, trying not to notice the sway of her ass in those short shorts. “Shovel!” I shouted.
She pointed her index finger up in the air, sharply changing her trajectory to pass by the statue.
“See you tomorrow night, Rose.”
She waved without looking back, got into her car, and was gone.