Chapter 2
Two
EMBER
I scrape my hair out of my eyes and crank the window down all the way as I cruise the beach parking lot looking for a spot to park Pumpkin, my VW bus. The A/C conked out the day after my run-in with Kayce Dutton—I looked up how to spell his name later that same day, because when Dutchie and I watched the show, I'd been envisioning it as Casey, rather than Kayce. Anyway, point being, Pumpkin, the ungrateful bitch, decided to kill the A/C on me right as we enter the hottest days of summer.
Fixing it is beyond my meager automotive repair skills, and certainly beyond my financial means to have fixed. So, I suffer.
And yes, Felix Crowe does look a good bit like Kayce Dutton, if he were a few inches taller and had a good thirty pounds more muscle.
And a more rugged jawline.
And the most arresting eyes I’ve ever seen—the piercing, arresting pale blue of the underside of an iceberg.
Maybe it’s just the slightly too long, shaggy, unkempt-but-sexy dark blond hair and the heavy stubble that's not quite a beard.
I don't know.
Why am I still thinking about him? I spent ten minutes max with him, and that was what…two, three weeks ago?
Ugh: no spots at this beach either, and this is the third one I've been to. Like, come on. I just want to chill at the beach for a minute before I have to take this online exam for my undergrad program.
Sweating and annoyed, I leave that lot and trundle down Main Street toward the fourth and last public beach within the downtown Three Rivers area.
And that bitch is full too. Wonderful.
Fighting tears—because I'm always on the verge of tears these days, it feels like—I sigh in resignation.
This calls for ice cream. I spot the Korner Kustard down the road a few blocks, and head that way. I have to park a quarter mile down the side street and walk, and then wait in a fifteen-minute-long line, but I walk away victorious with my M the stairs, it turns out, were built in a natural cut in the hillside. The sand expands away in both directions, and Lake Michigan is a rippling blue field of sparkling diamonds in the sun. Faye shuffles through the sand straight ahead and plops her bag down a few feet from the water's edge. I spread out my sand blanket and we arrange our things. Faye stares at her bag as if it has offended her. "Forgot a chair."
I frown. "Well shit, so did I." I cast an eye at the stairs, which seem rather far and steep from this end. "I have a couple beach chairs in my van. I'll go get them."
Faye snorts, waving off the suggestion. "Horseshit, missy," she snaps. "By the time you get back up that hill and down with the chairs, it'll be time to go. You'll just have help me lay down and then help my fat ass back up again when I wanna go swimming."
"Faye, you do not have a fat ass. You ought to be nicer to yourself.”
She turns away from me, grabs a double handful of her buttocks, and jiggles them at me. "This ain't nothin', sweetie." She wriggles out of the coverup, shoves it into her bag, and then faces me again. "Listen to me, now. I'm a billion years old. I've earned the right to call myself a fat ass if I want. When I was your age, I had curves like you wouldn't believe. I had to sleep with a stick next to me so I could fend off my husband long enough to get any sleep, and not a word of that is a lie. The man had an absolutely insatiable sex drive. He'd chase me around the house penis first. Course, I always gave the man what he wanted because he'd get so damned whiny if I didn't." She winks at me. "I'd be lyin' if I didn't say I let him catch me for my own purposes, too."
I laugh, shaking my head. "I love that."
Her eyes scan me as I peel my dress off, revealing my sapphire blue bikini—growing up the way I did, among Mom's free love hippy friends, I've always been comfortable with my body and with nudity. My bikini is…small. And let's be honest, I am not. I mean, I'm short, so I'm small in that sense. But the rest of me is decidedly…juicy. Big tits, a bit of a tummy, wide hips, big ass, big thighs. I keep in shape, despite living out of my van—I do a lot of yoga and Pilates, and a little bit of resistance work with Dutchie's adjustable dumbbells and my handful of kettlebells, and I walk a lot. So, I'm curvy, but I like to think it's a fit curvy.
Faye snorts and shakes her head. "Well now you're just showing off."
I frown at her. "Showing off?"
She gestures at me with a vague flip of a hand. "You. That ridiculous body of yours. That bikini that could fit in a cupholder."
I blush. "Oh, c'mon, Faye. You're being silly."
" And she blushes? My my." Faye reaches out and gives the underside of one of my boobs a playful tap. "With knockers like these, girlie? You better carry a big damn stick if you go to a public beach. What was it you said? The boys'll be swarming around you like flies on shit."
"I think I said flies on honey, actually," I say, laughing.
"I think you're mixing up your metaphors with that one, missy. It's bees to honey and flies to shit.”
I frown. “Oh." I burst into laughter. "You're right."
"Course I am." She waves both hands at me. "Help me sit my fat ass down. I wanna get some sun before I go for a dip."
I bite down on a comment about her self-denigration and hold her hands, helping her lower herself to the blanket. Once there, she fishes in her bag and comes up with a tube of sunscreen, which she applies liberally to her exposed skin. That done, she lies back, covers her eyes with her visor, and lets out a happy sigh.
I go through the same process, spraying sunscreen on myself and then arranging myself comfortably on the blanket, ereader in hand, a sweating can of sparkling water nearby.
Doesn't get much better, I'd say.
At some point, my eyes droop, and my ereader sags to my belly, and then my eyes close.