Chapter 17 - Dane #2
“Dane.” Connor’s voice, along with Connor’s hand on my arm, startles me. “Your car’s not here.”
“Where the hell is my car?” The pressure in my head builds the harder I try to hold back my tears. It suffocates me—makes me frantic.
“It’s… I had to get you last night, remember?” Connor whispers.
Heavy stomps recoil me closer to the front door. “You lost the car?” Artie asks in his gruff, demanding tone. A fist snatches the front of my shirt and shoves me hard against the door. “What did you do with it? You got wasted and left it somewhere, didn't you? Where is it?”
“I don’t know!” I struggle against him while a firm pressure squeezes my brain against my eyeballs.
“Don’t forget who pays for that car. If it’s damaged, I swear—”
Connors interrupts Artie by sticking his arm through the sliver of space between Artie’s rage and my cowardice.
“Get off him,” he says with an uncharacteristic bite.
“The car is fine. It’s at the beach. I picked him up from the beach last night, and he left the car parked there.
Remember, Dane? I picked you up from the beach? I’ll take you to go get it.”
Artie releases my shirt but not his vitriol. He lowers his voice to a haunting growl and says, “So you spent my money getting so drunk that you don’t remember where the car is. Had Connor not rescued you from your own selfishness and stupidity, we may never know where it is.”
“He gets the picture.” Connor grabs his keys off the hutch and collars my arm before pulling me out the front door.
Artie’s snarl follows us before the door shuts. “That car better be in pristine condition!”
The sunshine is a spotlight on my dysfunction.
Parrots mock me from the trees. Playful children-sounds taunt me from the neighbor’s yard.
I can’t get into Connor’s car fast enough, and as soon as I’m there, I rest my head on the window and dwell on how incompetent I am. How useless. How utterly unlovable.
The driver’s side door opens and shuts, a seatbelt buckles, but I can’t discern Connor’s soft murmurings through the fog of my despair.
After a minute of slow-driving, I feel the pressure of Connor’s warm hand blanketing mine. His fingers curl and hold me. I look at him for the first time since leaving the house, and he spares a moment from the road ahead to glance back at me.
“Your dad is such a piece of shit,” he says. “And I don’t know why Thalia would do that either.”
“You know why.”
He glances again. The late morning sun turns half his face golden.
Connor doesn’t pull over until we’re in front of the club I went to last night when I was too up in my feelings to have a rational conversation. On a Sunday before noon, the doors are shut, and the sidewalk is as bare as the curb we park along.
“It’s gotta be around here somewhere,” Connor says before we both unbuckle and begin the search headed eastward.
We walk slowly and silently, the sunlight exacerbating my headache, but when Connor takes my hand again, I can’t help but smile.
“Careful,” I say. “People might think we’re gay.”
Interlocking our fingers, Connor replies, “Nothing wrong with being gay.” But the second some hetero couple rounds the corner in our direction, Connor lets me go and slips his hands into his pockets instead.
I stop when we hit the corner and do a three-sixty. “I don’t see it.”
“Maybe it’s down that way.” Connor nods toward the adjacent road. “Or, maybe back the way we came.”
“Shit.”
We backtrack just as slowly and silently.
A quarter of the way down the block, Connor’s hand finds its way from his pocket to my hand again and clutches it gently.
I clutch it back until someone in an apron bursts through the front door of a still-closed sushi shop, startling Connor’s hand back into his pocket. I can’t help but chuckle.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t be.” I reach up and rustle his hair into a feathery mop. It makes Connor laugh and push me away.
Another door busts open as we make it back to where we began, and a burly dude in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer t-shirt emerges from The Rowdy Seamen, squinting like he's seeing daylight for the first time in weeks.
“I was wondering when you two would turn up,” he says.
“Uhh.” Wondering if I’ve met this guy before, I ask, “You know where my car is?”
“Probably the parking lot.” He points in the direction we’re facing, alerting me to a sign that reads Club Parking. Maybe I really am stupid. “You got keys?” he asks.
“I know where the spare’s hidden.”
“C’mon in.” He nods me forward. “Someone turned in a set at closing.”
“San Diego State keychain?” I ask, already tugging on Connor’s arm to join me. Buddy-system, and all that.
“And a BMW charm?”
“That’s me.”
Following this guy into The Rowdy Seamen is like peeking behind the curtain in Oz. Half of the house lights are up, showing off the empty floor, empty stage, and vacant bar. There’s a mop and bucket chilling on the dance floor and a vacuum plugged in next to the stairwell.
“Glad to see you walking on your own,” the guy says before disappearing into a room with an Employees Only placard.
He leaves the door open and shouts through it that his name is Omar.
He comes out with my keys and nods to Connor.
“Sorry about last night. Thought you were just some punk kid trying to start something. We get a lot of, uh, party crashers.”
“S’cool,” Connor mutters like there’s a bit of bad blood there.
There’s no time to wonder about what Omar’s talking about when he’s flinging keys straight at my face. Thankfully, my reflexes are in-tact enough to catch them in two hands.
Smirking at me but nodding toward Connor, Omar says, “Your boyfriend here is a little Rottweiler.”
“Oh, we’re not—” Connor and I say in unison before cutting each other off with an awkward look.
“He’s not…” I trail off, feeling glum suddenly about how badly I want Connor to be something he’s not.
Omar whips a perplexed look between the two of us. “Well, uh, unless you’re related, you should be.”
“It’s complicated,” Connor says.
“Ah.” Omar’s arms bulge with intimidating muscle as he crosses them over his chest, t-shirt sleeves stretching to accommodate.
“Yeah, everything was complicated when I was young too. But then I turned thirty-eight and realized everything that felt so complicated at twenty was just bullshit I made up in my head. Who knows where I’d be today had I told my almost-boyfriend how I really felt about him when I had the chance. ”
Omar’s words sit heavy in my chest, and I wonder if Connor will slip through my fingers as easily as he lets go of my hand whenever someone’s looking. At least the Beemer is easy to find now that I know where the parking garage is and can thumb my fob until I spot flashing lights.
“Hey.” Connor catches my arm, turning me around before I reach my driver’s side door. He grabs my face and tilts it down until our mouths are perfectly matched, and he kisses me as slowly as he drives and walks.
My arms circle him, and my tongue swirls around his with languid purpose, like two lazy snakes nesting in the heat of our breaths.
We part when breathless, foreheads rested together.
“I just need some time,” Connor says.
“I know.”
“Don’t give up on me yet.”
“Never.”
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Dane. I didn’t mean it, I swear. I’m so sorry.” He hugs me, and I lay my face on his shoulder, savoring his scent.
I tell him I don’t want to go home, and he says we don’t have to—that we can go wherever we want. When I can’t think of any place better, we go to the beach, leaving our cars parked up by the highway to bask on the sand above the tide.
My Crocs are in a pile with Connor’s flip-flops, making it easier for me to build a sand mountain over his bare feet. Every time I pat the sand down, his wiggling toes bust fissures into the construction.
“You think this is funny?” I grumble. “I’m trying to bury your feet, and you’re wrecking it.”
“Sorry.” He giggles through sealed lips, watching while I hand-shovel more sand over his feet. I tamp it down, creating a smooth dome that—
Pale toes break through the slope like Godzilla busting through the Earth’s crust.
“I’m doing this for you,” I growl, hunkering low to push even more sand over his feet. “See how much I do for you? And you just take it for granted.”
“You’re silly.”
I smooth the sand down into a perfect half-circle.
“Don’t move.” I stay frozen, watching and making sure he obeys before I let myself settle down beside him.
Our fingers lace on the sand between us. This time, Connor doesn’t let go when someone walks past. He gazes at me and asks me how I’m feeling.
“I’m okay,” I lie before the truth glosses my eyes and makes my chin quiver. “I just, um…I feel…a lot of things.”
Connor lifts our hands and kisses the tip of my painted thumb.
Looking out at where the blue water meets the blue sky, I let my achy head think about things it shouldn’t. “I tried to steal her car,” I say. “My mom’s. That’s how I got the scar.”
“You crashed?”
“Not exactly. But that was the last time I ever saw her. She didn’t want nothing to do with me after that.”
I brace for questions I’m not strong enough to answer without crying all over myself, but none come. All Connor does is squeeze my hand and lay his head on my shoulder.
“I want you,” he says.
But not enough.
His head lifts, and mine turns. Eyes just as blue as the horizon stare back at me, unblinking until I lean in and kiss him. And he kisses me back, with the sun and the waves and everyone else watching. We keep kissing until my tears quit welling, and my mind is as calm as my heartbeat.
Connor looks down at our joined hands. “Do you think it’s possible for one person to change who you are?”
I take his chin and draw his gaze back to mine. “I think that’s why people exist, puppy. To change each other. For better or worse.”
The next time our mouths touch, I put enough of my weight into it to lay Connor on his back. His sandy foot tickles my calf. I break our kiss to look down and see he’s busted out of my sand hill.
“Noooo,” I whine while Connor laughs. It’s a precious enough sound that I forget all about his indiscretion and kiss his smiling mouth.
Propped on an elbow, I look down at his blushy cheeks and freckly nose. I sweep the blond fringe off his forehead and kiss him there.
“I’m gonna get sunburnt if we stay out here too long,” he says.
I sit up and whip off my shirt, baring myself to the sun so I can drape the flimsy tee over Connor’s face.
“Thanks,” he chuckles, nose wiggling under the fabric.
I flatten my naked stomach to the sand and fold the shirt back enough to reveal Connor’s smile and shimmery eyes. I lean in and peck his soft lips. “A little longer?”
He nods and pulls me close.
With my cheek on his chest, I shut my eyes and let the sound of his heartbeat mix with the breaking waves and the seagull-songs. Until my head stops hurting and my stomach starts growling. Until Connor kisses my head and says he’ll buy me breakfast—anything I want.
But the only thing in the world I want is right here.