Chapter 2 #2
“You left it here last night.”
“What were you doing here last night?” Hen waggles his eyebrows at me.
“Drinking coffee and playing my guitar.” It’s all coming back to me now. Strumming my guitar in the corner, Raven refilling my coffee every so often to keep it from getting cold, broken conversation between us about nothing much at all.
“That’s boring.” Goose sighs. “We need some fresh drama around here.”
“I literally just found out this morning that you’re banging my brother, so I’m all set for a while,” Hen reminds him.
“We gonna play a card game?” I ask, nodding to the deck of cards still in Raven’s hand. “I can never keep the rules for poker straight, but I play a mean game of Go Fish. The trick is using your reverse Uno card strategically.”
Pete snorts into his coffee and Hennessey giggles. What? What did I say?
“There’s no reverse Uno in Go Fish, babe.” Goose reaches over to pat my hand.
I frown. “Yeah, there is… Wait, what game am I thinking of?”
“Uno,” Hen and Pete say in unison, creating a cool stereo effect.
“Oh, shit. Yeah that makes sense.” I chuckle and wolf down the rest of my sconewich, dripping a glob of jam onto my guitar. “Whoops,” I mutter before lifting it up and licking it clean.
“No,” Pete gasps. “I’ve seen that thing sitting in the sand. The sand, Lyric. Do you have any idea how many microbes live in the sand?”
I frown again. That feels like a trick question. Probably a lot though, right? But aren’t there microbes, like, everywhere? A sleeper cell of information I learned in high school suddenly activates in my brain.
“There’s a trillion microbes living on our skin at any time, so it’s probably chill. My microbes will make friends with the sand microbes.”
“I’m going to be ill.” Pete does look a little green now that he mentions it.
Raven hands me a napkin and I take it, even though my guitar is perfectly clean now.
“These aren’t Uno cards,” Raven says, ignoring all the talk about microbes as he starts shuffling the cards in his hands, his gaze fixed on me.
“It’s creepy when you stare like that,” I tell him.
He grins and nudges my plate out of the way to set the deck down in front of me.
“Cut it and pick one.”
Ah, I get it. It’s the tarot stuff. As long as he doesn’t get freaky and tell me when I’m going to die or anything, I’m cool with it.
I just think some things are better left as a surprise.
I cut the deck unevenly, setting the bigger stack to one side, and he leans over me to flip the top card on the smaller stack.
The picture on it has six golden cups lined up in two rows.
“Interesting,” Raven says.
“Let me guess, it says Lyric’s going to smoke his body weight in weed today,” Goose jokes.
“Nah, Raven said it was interesting. That would be a regular Tuesday for Lyric,” Hen argues.
He’s not wrong about that. Is it Tuesday though? I thought it was Saturday. Not that it makes much difference. Before Raven can tell me what’s so interesting about six cups, the bell above the door jingles and a warm breeze blows in from outside.
I look over and there he is again, even closer than he was before, clutching the strap of his duffel bag like his life depends on it and looking just as damn good as he did the last morning we sat across from each other in his tiny kitchen, drinking coffee and trying to pretend like it wasn’t the last time we’d ever see each other.
Instead of an ironed polo shirt and khaki pants, he’s wearing a button-up with big, tropical flowers on it and a pair of blue board shorts.
It’s not his style at all, but maybe that’s changed in the last eight years.
It takes a second before he seems to actually notice me, but as soon as he does, he lets out an audible gasp and everyone else’s attention swivels towards him.
“You okay?” Boston asks, patting him on the back.
Yuri’s face turns a shade of pink I’d managed to forget about over the years, but suddenly my mind is flooded with a million memories of seeing that blush when he was flustered, when he was feeling shy, when he was turned on and gasping underneath me…
I shift in my seat, glad for the guitar in my lap. He looks at me like he’s expecting me to say something, but I can’t work out what. And then he manages to find his own words.
“I’m fine.” He forces a laugh. “I just… uh… swallowed a bug.”
Boston pats his back again and then introduces him to everyone, pointing out each of us as he gives our names.
“Come on over to the counter and I can tell you about what I have fresh today,” Raven offers, leaving his cards on the table and flouncing over to help them.
Bird and Boston go straight to the counter, but Yuri lingers for half a second, looking at me like he’s thinking about coming over to talk to me.
I smile, distant and polite, letting him know that I’m not going to mess this up for him, whatever it is.
Palm Island is a fresh start for most people, and if that’s what he’s looking for, I want him to know that I won’t saddle him with old baggage.
He never was all that good at reading expressions though.
Maybe that’s why his face falls a little before he turns and shuffles over to the counter too.
Without thinking about it, I slip the cup card I pulled into my pocket and then pick up my plate to shake the scone crumbs into my mouth.
“Are you seriously not going to say anything?” Hen asks.
“About what?”
He looks at Yuri’s back and then back at me. “Whatever that was.”
I shrug.
“Do I sense a little Harold magic in the air?” Goose nudges me. “Yuri’s hot, right?”
“Hey,” Pete complains.
“Not as hot as you, obviously.” Goose leans over and pulls him in for a kiss.
“I’m both flattered and creeped out,” Hen says. “Seriously though, you were drooling over him when he got off the boat too. Do you think there could be something there?”
I shrug again. I don’t know what they want me to say. Obviously, Yuri is gorgeous, but I’m not going to get into the whole thing with them.
I have no idea how long Yuri is planning to hang around, but I’m not opposed to a trip down memory lane if it happens.