Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
WREN
A couple of hours later, Ellis and I are each at least a hundred dollars poorer, dewy from exertion, and two colossal Care Bears richer.
“Here, hold this for a sec,” I say, handing mine to him. When I pull out my phone, he obliges me with a surly look, mashing the genial bears’ faces against his.
“I can’t wait to send this to Silas,” I say to the picture, snickering.
He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “What do you want to do with our friends here while we go on some rides, Byrd?”
I snort. “Guess I didn’t think this one through.”
“Nah. You were pretty singularly focused on victory.” He chuckles. “Thought you were about to fight that poor kid at the Top-a-Pop.”
“He said two pops got the top prize!”
“Say that ten times fast.” He ducks behind one of the bears like he expects me to throw something at him before he bumps my shoulder good-naturedly.
I let out a little groan. “I was too intense, wasn’t I? This is why I don’t compete in things.” I’ve told Sage for years that I’m allergic to competition.
“I liked it. Always have,” comes his reply. I can’t see him from behind the neon-pink bear. I bite my lip in a smile.
Ellis and I veer off and hover near the park exit until I see a family with two girls and offer them the bears. They are elated, and their mother is politely grateful. If she’s annoyed to add two more gigantic toys to a clutter of kids’ things at home, she hides it well.
I peel my smile away from the little girls and look back at Ellis just in time for him to shutter a heavy look, slipping his sunglasses back into place. “Is it too early for ice cream before noon?” he asks.
Rather than wonder what that expression was about, I aim for fun some more. “I dole out chocolatey-caramel sin before seven, honey. Ice cream is good anytime.” I shouldn’t have used the endearment. Too bold. His grin over it is downright beatific. “Don’t get a big head over it.”
“Over what? You flirting with me?” I spot his laugh lines fanning out from his sunglasses. He takes a step closer and cocks his head. Lets his arm brush against mine before he brazenly reaches up and tugs on a wild curl. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Byrd. I know it’s not like that.” His eyes are playful, but the silliness is gone, replaced with an invitation. All while he toys with my hair, testing its feel between his middle finger and thumb.
Oh, it’s definitely like that. I see what this is. An exchange. After rounds of games and surrounded by sunshine and cotton candy–scented air, we’re both feeling playful. If I indulge him, he’ll play back. I let my smile unzip across my face. Hope he feels it like a slow, metallic snick in a dark room.
He abruptly drops my hair and straightens with a laugh, then tucks his hands into his pockets. “Let’s go get ice cream. I’ll even let you buy, honey .”
I think I just got teased.
I nod at the Big Dipper after we secure our cones. “When’s the last time you went on a real roller coaster?”
“You mean the hand-cranked brontosaurus ride in the O’Doyle’s parking lot that year didn’t count?” His throat bobs when he laughs. “Junior year. Gandon County Fair.” He looks over his sunglasses at me. “Same night you got the Wrangler.” He watches my reaction to this while he laps at his ice cream, spinning it against his tongue. Heat creeps across my collarbone as I try to laugh and seem unruffled. Same night I got the Wrangler also equates to Same night we parked and played Just the Tip for the first time.
“You think it’s bad that we never told Sam he drives the car he was most likely conceived in?” I ask, since I can play dirty, too. He chokes lightly at my side, eyes rounding. “That Wrangler has seen some things, am I right?” I lick my vanilla nice and slow, a satisfied grin hooking my lips. “Do you need sunscreen, honey? You’re a little red.”
He recovers himself with a filthy look my way. “Yeah, baby, I could use some SPF,” he says, low and deep. “Finish up that ice cream and we’ll touch up your pretty shoulders, too.” He raises his chin like it’s a challenge.
I raise mine back. Flick my tongue over the tip of my treat. He bites the remainder off of his and smiles with a mouthful.
“Lunatic!” I cry. “You’re gonna give yourself a brain freeze.”
He manages to swallow it down after a beat. “Good. My brain is overheating,” he mumbles, throwing his bald cone into the nearest trash bin. “By the way,” he says as he leads us toward the roller coaster line, “I looked up some of those questions.”
“What questions?”
“You said you were planning on bringing one of those lists. ‘Twenty-Six Questions to Fall in Love’ or something,” he explains.
“And you looked them up?!” I laugh incredulously. “Isn’t that kinda cheating?”
He shrugs, all innocence. Entirely unrepentant. “Wanted to get a head start on my answers.”
“Ellis Orion Byrd. That is cheating!” I squeal.
“Don’t care. Wanted to come up with good ones,” he states plainly. “Besides, I had no way to know which ones you’d go with exactly. Just did some googling.”
Oh , he’s diabolical. Stripping himself right down to the truth and laying it on the line. I’m defenseless against this brand of charm. I think of one of Sage’s wacky words she used the other week when she described Fisher doing something with homemade whipped cream. Dastardly.
“But,” he continues. “My favorite one that I thought was interesting wasn’t really a question but said to make three ‘we’ statements that you think are true in this moment, like… ‘ We are in line for the roller coaster, and we are feeling… excited.’” He gives me a questioning look.
“Okay.” I smile encouragingly. “Go on.” His returning expression is so damned vibrant, I bite my lip to stifle what would probably be a girlish giggle.
“ We are on this trip and we know it is early, but we are feeling… cautiously optimistic?”
The laugh escapes through my nose, and I shake my head at him. “You’re impossible.”
“To resist? Thank you. We are…” He trails off when I lift my bikini tie from where it’s digging into my neck under the weight of my chest, seeking relief.
“We are . .?” I prompt.
“We are what?”
“Uh, you were in the middle of telling me what.”
“ Right ,” he barks, crossing his arms and firmly tucking his hands into his sides with his thumbs out. “We are… genuinely concerned about sun protection. Hand me the sunscreen.”
The gruff edge in his tone makes me drop my tie. He makes a faint, strangled noise at the recoil. The line starts to shift forward, so we coast with it until it stops again. We both push our sunglasses back on our heads when we make it into the shade of the building. When his eyes meet mine, I feel it like a flash-zap down my limbs, that moment your brain recognizes you’re touching hot metal. He puts his palm out, and I swear it looks like it’s shaking. I spin around to cover my gulp.
“In my backpack. Front pocket,” I say.
I feel the reverberations of him rifling around, and god, I must be touch-starved because he might as well be bending me over for what this alone is doing to me. The sound it makes when he squirts it into his palm is decidedly unsexy, but it does nothing to quell the warmth purling in every single one of my erogenous zones. I think my eyes roll back when his hand finally touches a spot between my shoulder blades.
He’s indecently slow and firm rubbing it in, pressing the tips of his fingers into knots and sliding the pad of his thumb beneath the edge of my tank top, gliding against the muscle beside my spine. When his big hands cup over my shoulders, I hum. When one hand slides up my neck beneath my bikini tie, I go weak in the knees. He massages the base of my skull, and I don’t even care that he’s probably getting sunscreen in my hair there—it’s fucking heaven. I want to lean back into him, want him to cup my breasts and lift and ease this ache, want this same massage on my lower back, loving me while I ride him in reverse—
“’Scuse me,” a voice says. Ellis and I jolt apart. “The line is moving,” the man behind us adds. He’s got his daughter held against his leg protectively and is giving us a horrified look. Ellis and I dart forward to make up ground, avoiding eye contact.
My heart is still racing by the time we’re called for our turn, which is also when we finally break. He snorts and I cackle, and if I closed my eyes, it would sound like us as kids, laughing and lust-dazed in the tiny back seat of a Jeep, neon lights from a Ferris wheel glowing in the distance.
When the lap bar comes down, I look at him and say, “ We are about to go on this roller coaster, and we are going to be okay. We are happy we’re doing it together.”
His smile splits wider when he says, “We’re okay.”
We spend another four hours at the park, riding rides, playing games, and sampling a cornucopia of fried foods. After the erotic sunscreen application debacle, things between us stay PG-rated for the most part. When we grab sandwiches from the same café we got breakfast from, he leads me outside with his hand at my back, and I feel the echo of all the earlier heat. We eat our early dinner on the outdoor patio area, nod and smile at the same couple from this morning when they pass by.
“What do you want to do with the rest of the evening?” I ask Ellis when I slurp up the final dregs of my iced tea.
A thought insinuates itself suddenly, and I feel myself tense. I hope he doesn’t say, “Whatever you want to do,” and put the onus back on me like he once would have. We’re good and comfortable and making headway, and I hope we don’t fall back on old habits this soon.
He stretches his arms out wide and leans back in his seat, a strip of his stomach revealing itself, dusted in a dark trail of hair. His eyes are brighter against his suntanned skin. They’re the same shade as the darkening, dusky blue sky around us, backlit by a lemony sun.
He scratches at his five-o’clock shadow. “I’m not gonna lie to you, Byrd. I’d really love an early night.”
I make a joyous noise before it tumbles into a laugh. “God, nothing sounds better.”
Well, almost nothing sounds better.
Right now, we’re sun-cooked and pleasantly full. Sticky with sweat and sunscreen, mildly sore from being shaken around by rides, and tired from riding down memory lane. Optimal sleep conditions.
“And tomorrow’s flexible. We can sleep in or hit the pool in the morning before we leave. Whatever sounds good. Aquarium opens at eleven, and it’s an hour-and-a-half drive. We do have dinner reservations, but they’re not until seven,” he says. That leaves us all day.
We FaceTime Sam on the walk back, and my chest pinches at the easy delight on his face, like seeing us side by side excites him. It should absolutely make me wary, but that lonely, hopeful piece of my heart burns brighter at it instead.
God, I’m such a sucker for good feelings, aren’t I? Sweet, deep feelings that I lose myself in. I make a living out of doling them out in food form.
And I know our rooms are right next to each other, but when he walks me to my door, it feels like he’s just walked me home from our first date. I’m a little mortified by how badly I hope he might try to kiss me. I’m also worried that if he does, I’ll lose any remaining vestige of restraint. Self-regulating bargains fulfilled or not, I think moving too quickly in a physical direction might not be wise.
He’s bashful now, though, and admittedly, so am I. His hands stay snug in his pockets other than when one of them scratches the back of his neck. None of that earlier swagger or teasing to be found here in this empty hallway. I want to thank him for the day with more than words somehow, so I spin my backpack around before I can second-guess myself.
“Here,” I say. “You can read it.” I zip the bag shut and return it to my back so I can’t change my mind.
He takes my journal in both of his palms like it’s something fragile, expression melting into a startled sort of happiness. The sight of it in his big, capable hands—calloused but clean, thick fingers that end in blunted, tidy tips—makes me lightheaded. I feel paralyzingly shy all of a sudden and nearly snatch it back. People consume things I make every day, but this is my heart on paper. He immediately flips it open.
“ OH MY GOD, NO! ” I shout. “Don’t! Don’t read it in front of me!” I flail my wrists like they’re on fire.
He holds it up like he’s under arrest or like he knows I might make a grab for it. “All right, all right!” he says. “I’ll see you in the morning!” He cocks his head, hands still in the air. “Had fun with you today, Byrd.”
“Okay,” I titter, caught between groaning and giggling. “I had fun, too. Thank you.” The apples of my cheeks are so tight I’d swear they were pulling something up from my ribs.
We laugh at the same time, and I wiggle my fingers in an odd little wave at him just before I try to turn around and am promptly lurched back when my backpack snags on the door handle.
“Here—” He lunges forward and tries to help.
“I got it. We’re good.” I clumsily liberate myself and shove my key into the slot before I swan-dive through the door and shut it as quickly as possible at my back, falling against it.
I let out a whine under my breath. Thunk, thunk, thunk my head against the door.
I’ve got the biggest, most devastating crush on my ex-husband, and I hope I don’t get absolutely flattened by it in the end.
Not again.