Chapter 15 Stormy
I can't believe I actually kissed Tex.
I put my hand on his beard and my mouth on his mouth. I kissed him and he kissed me back.
The thought keeps circling through my brain on a loop.
I kissed him. I touched his face. I felt the beard under my fingers, soft and warm.
I leaned in and I did the bravest thing I've ever done in my life.
Braver than running, braver than stealing a motorcycle, braver than climbing into a stranger's truck during a hurricane.
I kissed a man for one reason.
Because I wanted to.
My body is wrecked. The near-drowning took everything out of me.
My arms ache so deep that the bones feel bruised.
My lungs burn with every breath, a raw, salt-scraped feeling that makes me cough when I inhale too deep.
My legs are shaking on the stairs and I'm gripping the railing harder than I want Tex to see.
I probably shouldn't be working, but there's no way in hell I'm letting him down.
My body is exhausted, but my mind is buzzing with a clarity that feels like stepping out of a dark room into sunlight.
I know what I want. I've said it out loud.
I've acted on it. The dam that I built between myself and everything good in the world, the dam that kept me alive but kept me empty, is cracking.
And instead of drowning in what's behind it, I'm breathing.
We reach the first floor. Sheila is standing at the base of the stairs with her arms crossed and her eyes sharp and wet.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
Not to Tex. To me. Her voice is steady but there's fear underneath it, a tremor she's controlling, and I realize she's been down here alone for too long not knowing if we were okay.
"I'm fine," I say. "Please don't worry about me."
"You are not fine. You almost drowned. Sit down."
"Sheila, I'm good. I just needed to rest a few minutes. I want to help set up."
"You're going to sit down where I can see you and drink water. Then eat before you do a single thing in this parking lot or so help me God, I will tie you to that stool."
I sit down. She puts a glass of water and a sandwich in front of me and stands there until I eat it.
Tex is already outside, moving tables. I can see him through the open door, shirtless in the late afternoon heat, setting up for tonight like a man who didn't just swim half a mile through rip currents carrying another man.
"He's going to put on a brave face and pretend he's fine too," Sheila says, watching him through the door. "You're both terrible at admitting when you're not okay. It's like having two stubborn mules around."
"I really am fine."
"Sure, you are." She pours herself a glass of sweet tea and leans against the counter across from me.
"Baby, I have been bartending here forever.
I've watched people lie to me across this counter more times than I can count.
You are lying through your teeth. You're exhausted.
You're hurting, and you're running on nothing but adrenaline and pure stubbornness.
But I also know that telling you to rest is like telling the tide not to come in.
So, I'm going to let you work tonight on the condition that you drink water every twenty minutes and you sit down the second you feel dizzy. Deal? Because I'll be watching you."
"Deal."
"Good." She takes a sip of her tea. Her eyes haven't left me. "Now eat your sandwich, sugar. You scared the living daylights out of me."
I eat it. The bread tastes like the best thing I've ever put in my mouth, which might be the near-death experience talking. Everything tastes better when you almost didn't get to taste anything again.
I finish eating and go outside to help with setup.
The heat is still as brutal as it was before I went into the water, and my body protests every movement.
My arms feel like they're filled with wet sand.
My legs tremble on every trip between the kitchen and the parking lot.
I ignore it. I push through it because Tex and Sheila are out here working.
I'm not going to sit on a stool while the two people I care about most in the world carry the bar's weight without me.
Tex catches me wincing as I lift a folding table.
"Hey." He's next to me in a flash. Not hovering, just there. "You sure you're up for this? Nobody's going to think less of you for taking a night off."
"I will think less of me, so I'm not taking the night off. I'm fine."
He gives me that look. The one that sees through every wall I've ever built. "You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"It's not true. You almost drowned four hours ago. You should be in bed."
"I was in bed. The bed was very nice." I smile at him. "But the parking lot needs tables."
His mouth twitches under the beard with a secret. Something private just for me, that lives in the space between what happened upstairs and what's happening now.
"Fine," he says. "But if you pass out, I'm carrying you again, and this time Sheila's going to take pictures and put them on the bar's Instagram."
"You really have an Instagram account? I thought you were joking about that before."
"Sheila made one. It's mostly pictures of Big Bertha and sunset. She has fourteen followers. We're very exclusive. Twelve of them are Sheila's relatives. One is Mickey. The last one is a bot that sells discount motorcycle insurance. It's a very curated community. We don't let just anyone in."
I snort at him and shake my head. We work hard to make up for lost time. We set up tables and string lights. Tex fires up Big Bertha and I stock the serving station. It's the same routine we've done a dozen times, but everything is different. We're different now.
I'm allowing myself to see him clearly.
Not the way I've been seeing him, which was always through the filter of threat assessment first and confused attraction second. I'm seeing him the way I wanted to see him in the water when I thought I was dying. How I would have looked at him every day if I hadn't been so afraid.
I'm seeing him as the man I want desperately.
He's at the grill, laying out ribs, and his back is to me.
His shoulders flex as he works, the muscles moving under the tanned skin, and I let myself look.
The breadth of him. His jeans sit on his hips, low and easy.
The tattoo across his shoulder that I still haven't read, dark ink against dark skin.
I'm still dying to read it. I want to trace it with my fingers and feel his skin under my hands. I want to touch him everywhere.
The wanting is brand new. Not the existence of it. I've been wanting him for weeks, in that confused, terrified way where desire and fear are so tangled together you can't tell which is which. What's new is the absence of fear. The wanting is clean now. Clear.
When I look at the line of his spine and the width of his back and the way the sweat runs down between his shoulder blades, what I feel isn't panic.
It's hunger. Simple, honest hunger for another person, and I didn't know it could feel like this.
I didn't know wanting could be anything other than a weapon pointed at you.
Sex has always meant bad things. I'm not ready to think about the specifics, not yet, maybe not for a while. But I know that whatever happened to me before, whatever was done to me in dark rooms by hands I didn't choose, has nothing to do with this.
This is mine.
This wanting, this hunger, this heat that builds in my stomach when I watch him move, this is the first sexual feeling I've ever had that belongs entirely to me.
Nobody put it there. Nobody forced it. It grew on its own, slow and stubborn, like a plant pushing through concrete, and it's all mine.
Tex turns to grab the tongs and catches me watching. I don't look away. I hold his gaze and I let him see what's on my face, which is everything. His eyes widen just a fraction and his hand tightens on the tongs. A flush creeps up from his collar into his beard.
I wink at him.
He grins and turns back to the grill. His shoulders are stiffer than they were thirty seconds ago and I can see him breathing carefully, like a man trying to keep his composure while being tested.
The bikers start arriving around six. The parking lot fills up the way it always does with bikes and noise. I fall into the rhythm of running plates and keeping the serving station stocked.
Everything in my body hurts.
But I'm here and I'm working. Tex is at the grill and every time I pass him, I brush against him a little closer than necessary and every time I do, his eyes track me.
Around seven, he's behind the outdoor bar restocking bottles. His back is to me and he's bending down, reaching into a cooler, and I come up behind him.
I put my hand on his lower back. Low, just above the waistband of his jeans. My palm flat against his skin, warm and damp with sweat. I lean forward like I'm looking at whatever he's reaching for, and I leave my hand there.
He goes still. That stillness I know so well now, the one that means every cell in his body is focused on the point of contact. He doesn't move. He doesn't pull away. He straightens up slowly, my hand sliding up with him, staying in contact, and he turns his head and looks at me over his shoulder.
He smiles at me. "Need something?" he says. His voice is steady but his eyes aren't.
"I don't know. Maybe. What do we need?"
"We're low on about six things and you already know what they are because you've got the inventory memorized."
"Maybe I forgot."
"You don't forget anything."
I rub my thumb across his skin then I take my hand off his back. I can feel his eyes following me across the parking lot, and I let him look the way he let me look. The current between us hums.
Later, when the rush slows down and Tex is at the grill telling a group of bikers about the time a heron stole a whole rack of ribs right off his platter, Sheila finds me at the serving station.