103. Day Eleven The Box in the Box at the End of the Line
Day Eleven: The Box in the Box at the End of the Line
Lindsey opened her eyes to his face barely illuminated by light from the open patio door. They’d only slept a few hours, and it was near dawn.
Jase’s lips were cold when she kissed them, their bodies warm and entwined underneath the covers.
The taste of his sleeping mouth, his breath in her nostrils, and the salty smell of his ocean-washed skin was how she wanted to remember him.
Jase in the raw, not the chrome-wheeled cowboy with a trail of panties in his wake.
“It’s freezing.” He groaned without opening his eyes.
She’d insisted on sleeping to the sounds of the waves after they ran naked into the ocean last night for the swim he’d promised her. Lindsey had experienced her third orgasm of the night in the Pacific Ocean. The fourth had put her to sleep around two in the morning.
“Come here.” Jase pulled her onto his chest and ran his hands down the curve of her back, lifting her hips to settle over him. She kissed him and fell into a slow, groggy rhythm. She wanted to remember this too.
Afterwards, she laid her head on his chest and his fingers toyed with her hair.
“You awake?” he asked.
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled into his skin.
“Good, I want to show you something. Get dressed.”
“I can’t believe you want me to put clothes on.”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t if it wasn’t worth it.”
Jase, in a T-shirt, jeans, and his leather jacket, helped her put her arms into the sleeves of his new white—buttonless—shirt.
“What are we doing?” Lindsey asked.
“Catching the sunrise, baby.”
Baby. It sounded too flippant and upbeat for how heavy she felt. Sunrise meant it was morning. Morning meant their time was up, and she wasn’t ready.
“Aren’t we facing west?” she asked.
“Doesn’t matter. We’re on the ocean and you should see it.”
Jase was surprisingly good at boyfriend things. On the beach, he pulled her back into his chest and wrapped his arms and legs around her body as if he knew she was cold in his shirt and the dress she wore last night.
We have a good thing. It might even be a great thing… Isn’t it worth something?
It is, he’d said.
But he still hadn’t said it wasn’t over.
“If there weren’t any clouds, it’d be really fucking cool,” Jase said.
“No, this is good,” she said, unable to say what she was really thinking. Gray sky, gray waves, and gray mist connecting the two. Dawn was as dismal as her outlook.
She thought about Christmas with her own family, how her dad had made a stink about Graham not carrying the suitcases. “He’s not acting like a real man,” he’d said. “If you don’t know that, Linds, what kind of people are you dating?”
Jase didn’t stick around long enough to have girlfriends or meet parents. She knew he would’ve carried her suitcase if he ever did.
She should’ve found the courage to face him even with tears in her eyes, but what else could she say? Lindsey wouldn’t be one of those women who begged him to stay, even if she wanted to scream.
I’m not like the rest. I know you. We’re better than that.
At least, it’s what she wanted to believe. All his women probably did.
A wave bigger than the rest soaked their feet and they stood. She watched it go back out to sea, leaving bubbles and froth behind to disappear in the sand.
He rubbed her arms against the chill. Another boyfriend thing.
Tell him. Tell him you’re falling in love with him.
She swallowed those stinging love words as her eyes spilled over, keeping them trained on the western horizon and the expanse of endless ocean bringing her gigantic problems down to size.
The sun finally pierced the gray veil, shining its deep orange rays on their backs and glimmering off the water.
“See? What’d I tell you?”
“It’s beautiful,” Lindsey said. And cruel. They could have so much more of this if he was any other man.
After a few minutes he gave her arms a squeeze. “I’m going in. You coming?”
“In a minute.”
Jase shrugged out of his leather jacket and set it over her shoulders. It wasn’t fair. Graham, her actual boyfriend of a year, never took care of her this well.
“I’ll grab coffee from the lobby,” Jase said, heading back to the hotel room alone.
I bet he’ll bring me a cup and turn on the TV and we’ll sit up in bed and watch it and we’ll eat more room service, and then we’ll leave like none of this mattered and I’ll never see him again.
Lindsey waited until he disappeared through the patio door to wipe her eyes and follow his footprints across the beach.