Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
R arity…
I got over my embarrassment and made sure my makeup hadn’t suffered too much in my compact mirror and things settled down pretty quickly.
Lunch was great, exceptionally filling, and the food was so good ! After, we took a walk up the street behind the restaurant, strolling up the sidewalk and talking. We found ourselves in an open, almost a pedestrian square type thing that held an old schoolhouse with a big boat anchor and chain around it and a multitude of shops, boutiques, and sweet shops.
“Did they really think that was going to stop a hurricane from blowing down the schoolhouse?” I asked, eyeing the boat anchor and chain wrapped around the building and the hand-painted plaque explaining the thought process behind it.
“I have no idea,” Striker said, laughing. “People are strange, I have to imagine some of ‘em did, but I can’t imagine all of ‘em did, you know?”
“I feel like this is like, pre-internet meme, like real life meme-ing,” I said. “Like how that government opened up a website to name their newest research vessel and how it ended up Boaty McBoatface because of it.”
He laughed and nodded and said, “I’m sure it made front page news in some old-timey newspaper, for sure.”
We kept strolling, stopped for ice cream, and kept on pushin’ as we enjoyed the cool confection, licking quickly before our cones could melt in a sticky mess. I didn’t think it was just me that Striker was paying extra close attention to me, specifically my mouth, as I licked at the scoop of ice cream on my cone.
I know I paid more attention than I probably should have to his tongue and wondered idly to myself, what it would feel like to have it between my legs. A thought I tried like hell to keep off of my face. I mean, we were just friends – right?
Ha!
We found ourselves at the old city gates, and paused after we passed through them to look across at the cemetery surrounded by its old, rickety, cast-iron fence and gate, and turned to look at the old historical Spanish fort to the right of it across the busy boulevard.
“Wanna go check it out?” he asked.
“The fort or the cemetery?” I asked, just to clarify.
“Unfortunately, the cemetery is closed, you can’t walk through. I was talking about the fort,” he said.
“Fuck yeah!” I said enthusiastically. “You used to be able to go in, can you still?” I asked. and we walked along looking for the crosswalks to cross the busy roadways to get there.
“Yeah, you can,” he answered.
“Awesome,” I said then circled back to our earlier conversation with a; “What about you?” We found the signal and pushed it.
“What about me?” he asked and I felt foolish – he wasn’t a mind reader, of course he wouldn’t follow my inner thoughts at all.
“Sorry,” I said. “I meant to ask, ‘what do you do for fun?’”
“Oh, shit – well, I just recently started something new,” he said.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“I started hanging out with this pretty and pretty cool chick, which has been more fun than I’ve had in a while.”
I laughed and said accusingly, “That was really corny.”
“Did you like it, though?” he asked with a grin.
“I think I did, yeah,” I relented and he laughed and said, “Good! Good…”
The light turned and we hustled across the boulevard, stepping up on the much better maintained sidewalk on the other side, turning left to make our way toward the fort.
“What else do you do other than hang out with me?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Long rides to nowhere, sometimes – just hit the road with no real destination in mind. Usually, when I do that, I find myself on the A1A all the way down to the light on Ponce Inlet. That’s where I was the day I stopped by to give you that post card.”
“Why did you stop by just to give me that card?” I asked.
“Truthfully,” he said, finishing the last bite of his cone and tossing the napkin in the trash on the side of the road. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
I stopped, too, and finished the last of my cone, too, and tossed the wrapper and napkins from it into the same trashcan.
“I had a hard time, too,” I said softly, and he reached out and threaded his fingers between mine.
“Can’t say I’m terribly sad about that,” he said softly and I smiled.
We took up walking again, over the grass and the permanent structure of a pedestrian bridge over the trench of the old, but empty moat.
“Me either,” I confessed and he flashed a grin and raised my hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it that made all sorts of butterflies take off in my stomach.
“You’re not worried I’m too young for you?” I asked after a few steps.
“You worried about what people might think?” he asked.
“Of you, not me,” I said. “Someone sees an older guy with a younger woman and they don’t think ‘ stud’ anymore,” I sighed. “They think ‘predator.’ ”
He laughed at that and plucked at his leather vest, lifting it off his chest and letting it fall back down.
“They already look at me and think ‘predator,’ and they aren’t necessarily wrong about that fact.”
I bowed my head and thought about that for a minute and said, “I’m not really sure what I’m doing,” I said, “but…” I trailed off, trying to get my thoughts in order.
“But?” he prompted finally, and it was gentle in such a way that I felt comfortable finishing my thought.
“I can see your point,” I said finally. “I mean, maybe I used to think that myself – which I admit now, was totally biased and unfair!” I rushed out. “You definitely schooled me different. I hope you can forgive me for ever thinking that way about you.”
He pulled me into a hug then and kissed the top of my hair.
“You’ll find I can forgive a lot of things, baby girl – but that one? No harm, no foul.”
I looked up at him, stiff in his embrace at first, simply because it was so new, but eventually, I felt myself relaxing. I put my chin on his chest and stared up into his hazel eyes and asked out of morbid curiosity, “What are the unforgiveable sins, then?”
“Lying,” he said evenly. “Cheating. Not asking for help when you need it. Not taking care of yourself,” he added after a pause to think.
“What like not drinking enough water?” I asked teasingly.
“And not eating regular and healthy meals, getting enough exercise,” he said without a hint of joking. “See also, not asking for help when you need it – there’s more to keeping yourself healthy than keeping your body healthy.”
I blinked at him and drew my head back saying, “You’re being serious.”
He nodded and said, “I am.”
I felt a little thrill go down my spine and stammered a bit as I asked, “Are you – is this you like, legit asking me out?”
His serious look dropped and his smile took its place.
“If I was?” he asked, and I could tell he was being cautious.
Honestly? Same.
I blinked again and said, “I would have to think about it.”
He nodded and said, “I ain’t going anywhere. You take as long as you need to think about it and I’ll be here.” He let me go except for the fingertips of my right hand and stepped back to give me some breathing room.
“You promise?” I asked hesitantly, surprised at myself for feeling a little bereft at the distance he’d put between us.
He cocked his head and searched my face and nodded, “I promise, baby girl,” he said.
I swallowed hard, unsure why I’d even asked that, but grateful that he didn’t laugh or make fun of me for it.
“Come on,” he said, shaking my hand just a bit, “I wanna show you something about this place before they close it.”
I smiled then, and nodded, and let him lead me into the fort.
From above, the Castillo de San Marcos was shaped almost like a ninja throwing star. Silly, but true. The fortress was in the shape of a square, but the four points of it had these almost diamond shaped protrusions off of them. Only one of them had a rounded watchtower with a dome on it, though – the one facing the mouth of the intracoastal waterway, to watch for approaching enemy ships.
I’d been here plenty of times before, on school field trips, but that had been ages ago in like elementary school. Still, I was curious as to what Striker was keen on showing me. I half expected it to be the part of the fort where the leader of the Seminoles was killed, but no – he took me to a different part of the fort, away from that side.
“You ever hear of the ‘lost lovers of Castillo de San Marcos?’” he asked.
I squinted and put my sunglasses atop my head and said, “Vaguely. I don’t know the full story.”
“Okay, well, legend has it, when the fort was still being built there was this Spanish fucker that was running the show here, right? Some big military general or high baller.”
“Okay,” I said laughing at the way he put it.
“Story goes, he brought his wife here, and she was a looker , like… He wolf-whistled, and I laughed some more. “She was smokin’ hot and this dude’s pride and joy.”
“Ew, you make that sound like he’s one of those dudes that married his wife and then treated her like his property.” I wrinkled my nose.
“BINGO,” he said. “That was exactly it. Anyway, she was here but she didn’t like it – in fact, she was terribly homesick and fucking hated it here – which who could blame her? It was unbearably hot, humid, and the mosquitos were wicked bad . So were things like yellow fever and dysentery, right?”
“Right,” I nodded and didn’t even realize I’d just sort of naturally cuddled into his side, my fingers finding the spaces between his and my other arm curled around the same one we held hands with.
He smelled good, I noticed it then. Like sunshine, salt air, clean laundry, and something woodsy. He smelled distinctly masculine and it tickled my senses, turning me on and making me want to melt into him – which low-key made me feel kind of stupid, like girl! Get it together!
He kept talking, like he didn’t notice my internal struggle with myself over just how hot I thought he was, and how bad I was leaning toward wanting him.
“Make matters worse, her husband wasn’t spending like any time with her and she was terribly lonely.”
“Right,” I nodded, and hoped like hell I was being subtle and cool, that I wasn’t throwing super bad mixed signals – good lord, how did this man simultaneously make me second guess everything I did, but at the same time, made me feel so comfortable that I was cuddling into his side like it was as natural as breathing?
“Now, from every story I’ve ever heard or read about it, she tried to tell her husband – ‘look, yo, you need to spend some time with me. I’m lonely, I’m miserable, and like you can either spend some time with me to make it better or if you don’t want to do that, then at least let me go home .’ Now her husband did what most dudes nowadays do and just kind of waved her off and said ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, bitch; whatever. ’ The more she persisted, the more he pushed her off, until finally he basically told her, ‘Look, I’m in charge of this place, suck it the fuck up, because I’m busy and like it or not – you’re here, because you’re not going home to Spain!’”
“Oo, so he was a real peach,” I said, all sarcasm intended.
“Basically, yeah,” he said.
“What a choad,” I said and he snorted caught off guard and laughed.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“No offense, but when it comes to stories like this, I hope she cheated on him. Sounds like she was doing everything to communicate that she needed some attention or whatever from her husband and he just wasn’t listening.”
“Exactly,” he said, “and that’s the thing – she did. She communicated in every way what she needed short of interpretive fucking dance, and this guy was just ignoring her. So, and spoiler alert, she did. There was this young buck in the military or whatever, closer to the wife in age and with a lot in common, and they started talking and one thing led to another and they fell in love and started carrying on.”
“I think I remember this story now,” I said smiling and stopping.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “They ended up cheating and then disappeared together, right?”
“Right.”
“Except they didn’t. Husband found out about the affair and had them chained up here in the fort and sealed them in.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Here.”
I looked around us, “Here?”
He pointed at a low opening and said, “Technically, in there. Feeling brave enough to go in?”
“Hell yeah,” I said and I went first, crawling into the room and leaning up against the wall. He climbed in after and sat across from me and looked at me, finishing the story.
“It wasn’t until a hundred or two hundred years later,” he said, “that they found them in here, and the only reason they did was because a cannon they were moving fell through the ceiling and when they went down to retrieve it, they realized that they couldn’t find it – that there was a secret room.”
“Because the husband had them manacled to the walls and walled up in here,” I said.
“Yep,” he sighed. “With a bunch of his wife’s favorite flowers – roses.”
“Probably to mask the smell,” I said. “When they finally died and began to rot.”
“You watch too much true crime?” he asked laughing.
“I do!” I agreed. “But that’s how it happened if I remember the story right. He walled them up in here and left them to die of thirst or to starve together. Sold some story about him going AWOL and that she went back to Spain and no one was the wiser, because who was going to question Dear Leader?”
“You’re right,” he said. “That’s exactly how it went down, and the mystery of their disappearance wasn’t solved until all that time later when this chamber accidentally got opened up.”
“I thought there was an old ghost story associated with this place,” I said. “You know, other than the one about the floating head of the Seminole leader that died here.”
“There’s a few,” he said, “but yeah, this is one of them.”
“I can’t remember the details on the ghost though,” I said.
“Phantom smell of roses in here,” he said. “Sometimes, you come in here and get overwhelmed by the smell of roses.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in deep and said, “Nope. Just the smell of old musty fort.”
He smiled and said, “I like to think that when they died, they went together, and went into whatever afterlife free of suffering and pain.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, leaning my head back against the coquina blocks that made up the fortress walls. “Bet you they’re living their best un-life in Elysium or whatever.”
He cocked his head, “Elysium?” he asked.
“Ancient Greek myth originally,” I said. “Their version of heaven or the garden of Eden. The place set aside in the Underworld ruled by Hades for the heroes of Greek myth at first, but then it turned into the place where anyone that led a righteous life belonged after they died.”
“Is that what you believe?” he asked. “In the ancient Greek gods and goddesses?”
I shrugged and then shook my head.
“I honestly don’t know what I believe,” I said. “Religion was never really a part of my upbringing. My dad was staunchly anti-religion and my mom has always been more spiritual than religious.”
“That’s legit,” he said.
“What about you?” I asked.
He studied my face, “Not particularly religious,” he said. “Had it shoved down my throat a ton by an overbearing mother in the heart of the Bible Belt in Arkansas growing up. Pretty sure my dad just went to church every Sunday to appease her, too.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Oh, I did it all,” he said and his expression was pained. “Youth group, Bible camp, revivals, you name it.”
I laughed and said, “Oh, come on, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Worse,” he said and my high and bright laughter echoed back at us within the tight confines of the chamber we were in.
“After you,” he said and gestured and I rolled my eyes.
“You just want to look at my ass,” I accused.
“Guilty,” he said, grinning, and I couldn’t help but grin too.
I almost fooled myself into thinking I smelled roses as I shifted to go back out of the small chamber.
Almost.