Chapter 23
“Hey, Mom, everything okay?” I stepped back through the doors Elijah and I had exited through earlier and into the kitchen.
“Did you buy bananas?” she asked.
“Are we out? I can pick some up on my way home.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Is that all? Are you doing okay?”
“I wish I could drive.”
“I know you do.”
“You could get me a motorized wheelchair. That would make it to the corner mart.”
“You’re not supposed to be operating anything motorized with your concussion.”
“It’s a wheelchair, Sutton.”
“I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
“Obviously not,” she said, and then the line went dead. I rubbed at my arms while I stared at the large picture of Half Dome above the fireplace again.
I held my phone up to my mouth. “Hey Siri, what kind of loan would it take to finance a long-term caretaker for an ungrateful mother?”
It was a joke but Siri answered back, “I have pulled up several long-term care facilities on the web.”
“If only,” I muttered.
“It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it?”
I let out a small yelp and whirled around. Elijah’s mother stood in the kitchen behind me. For how long, I wasn’t sure. She opened a drawer and pulled out a corkscrew, holding it in the air to show me she’d accomplished the mission that must have brought her into the house.
“Um…” It took me a moment to process her comment. “Oh! Yes, the photograph is amazing. I haven’t been to Yosemite since I was a kid.”
“Elijah is very talented.”
“Elijah?” Again, my brain was slow to process what she was saying. “Wait, did he take this?” I pointed to the picture.
“He did. He has an artistic eye. Did he show you his room?”
“He didn’t.”
She smiled a sneaky smile, then looked outside as if making sure she had time. “Do you want to see it?”
“Absolutely.”
She led me up the stairs to the second floor and then to the end of the hall.
“He doesn’t live here anymore, but I haven’t wanted to change his room because it’s so beautiful.” She paused at the door as if giving me a moment to anticipate the reveal, then she opened it.
The first thing that caught my eye was the large beach scene taking up the entire wall.
But not just a photo of the beach, a scene made up of hundreds of photos.
When I stepped closer, I could see each picture featured the color required for its position in the overall image.
A light brown dog as a piece of the sand.
A blue sweater, the water. All different.
I couldn’t imagine the hundreds of hours this must’ve taken.
“Why doesn’t he do this for work?” I wasn’t sure if she’d heard me. I’d said it so quietly.
“He tried,” his mom said, proving she had heard me. “Nature photography is a hard thing to make money in. Especially with the rise of AI art. People just tell the internet what they want and it provides. Why would they pay?”
Maybe that was true, but it felt like a sin that Elijah was stuck in a boxing gym all day when he had this ability. If he liked the boxing gym that would be one thing, but he didn’t. “Wait, did he actually have a photography business?”
“Before the gym he—”
“How did I know this was happening?” a deep voice said from the doorway, cutting off whatever his mom was about to say.
I turned with a smirk to see Elijah leaning against the frame of the door. “You’re a psychic now?” I asked.
“My mom was supposed to be getting a corkscrew, and you were in the house. I put two and two together.”
His mom held up the corkscrew. “I got it. I was sidetracked.”
“She’s hard to say no to, isn’t she?” he asked his mom, nodding toward me.
My mouth opened, ready to protest, when his mom said, “I offered to show her the room when she was admiring your Yosemite photo over the mantel. She did not ask.”
He narrowed his eyes at me like he wasn’t sure he believed that.
She squeezed my hand, then headed for the door. “I have a corkscrew to deliver or the wine-starved people are going to protest.”
“Yes,” Elijah said, pulling her into a hug as she passed and kissing her on top of the head. “You do. No more bragging about my rusty hobbies.”
“I will never stop bragging,” she said, and left us there alone.
After a few beats of silence, I said, “She offered, I did not put up a fight.”
He nodded, studying my face. “You okay? Tara wasn’t exactly thinking before she spoke out there.”
“It’s whatever,” I said. “She was being truthful.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You don’t need to be sorry. You didn’t do anything.”
His gaze traveled to the beach scene. “It was my photography final my senior year in high school.”
“It had to be incredibly time consuming. I hope you got one thousand percent on it.”
He smiled. “Close.”
“What happened with this? With photography? Your mom said…” I trailed off because his mom hadn’t said much, but I hoped he would fill in the blanks.
“This was the first business my dad invested in for me. But unlike my sister and her passion project, mine crashed and burned along with his investment. Which is why I’m now working at his choice.
” He nodded toward the door. “Speaking of, he was impressed with yours. That’s a good sign.
He knows what works for a business and what doesn’t. ”
“Does he?” I asked.
“He’s very successful.”
I nodded; I couldn’t argue that point. But that didn’t mean he knew everything about everything.
I hated that Elijah was giving up on a dream because he thought he had failed at it.
Because his dad had told him that his time was up on trying to make it work.
That Elijah figured his dad must know best and listened.
And now he felt indebted to him for two separate investments.
He probably felt like he was at the bottom of a deep hole.
“I should hire you to bring some character to our restaurant,” I said.
“It’s lacking character?”
“In a big way.” Two million people big. Or at least that’s how many had seen the viral review. And so many of them had left mean comments.
“You couldn’t afford me,” he said with a smile.
“I probably couldn’t.”
He stepped to my side, inspecting the photos more closely. “It’s been a while since I’ve picked up a camera.” He smelled really good. Like cedar and soap.
My body shifted toward his, my shoulder pressing into his arm. “It’s probably like riding a bike.”
“In what way?” he asked, turning a serious expression on me.
“You don’t know that saying?”
“What saying?”
“You know, ‘it’s like riding a bike.’ Meaning, once you’ve learned how to ride a bike, your body doesn’t forget how to do it. So no matter how much time has passed, you pick it right back up again. Like…” Sex. My mind provided that word without any warning, and my cheeks immediately went hot.
“Like what?” he asked in a husky voice, as if he knew what I’d been thinking.
“Like photography,” I said.
He let out a gravelly laugh.
“You knew what that saying meant,” I said, seeing the teasing crinkle of his eyes.
“I just wanted to hear you explain it.” He reached out and plucked a picture off his wall, one from the water section. It was a blue Volkswagen Beetle. He held it out for me. “Here’s a start for your restaurant.”
I gasped. “Do not dismantle this masterpiece.” The photo had a clear, jellylike dot of adhesive on the back, and I used it to put it right back into place.
He took me by the waist, pulling me away from the wall and into his arms. “You’re not the boss of me.”
My back was pressed against his front, and I reached up and wrapped one arm around his neck. “If I hire you to do photography for the restaurant, then I kind of am.”
“My skills aren’t for hire. They only come as a perk.” His mouth was pressed against my neck, and the words came out muffled. Or maybe they came out muffled because blood rushed through my ears all the way down my body, ending with a deep throbbing between my legs.
“A perk?” I asked, breathless.
“A perk of dating me.”
“Are you holding your skills ransom?”
He turned me in his arms. “I have no idea what we’re talking about anymore,” he said. “I can’t think.” And with those words, my back was against the closest wall and his lips were on my neck, then tracing a pattern to the soft spot beneath my ear.
“Not on the beach,” I said, trying to move us.
He chuckled and practically flung me onto the bed, my legs draping over the edge. I gasped in both surprise and pleasure. He stepped between my knees, forcing my dress to ride up my thighs as his hands followed the same path.
My eyes fluttered closed at the sheer pleasure of his skin on mine.
But when echoey laughter sounded from downstairs, I was reminded that the door was wide open and any of the many guests—or his mother!
—could wander in at any moment. I pushed myself onto my elbows, his body blocking me from shifting any farther.
“There are people,” I said.
“Where?” he asked, undoing the button on his jacket, then dropping to his knees.
“I don’t see any people.” His hand pushed my dress up even more, then continued past the hem and up my inner thigh.
His intense gaze was fixed on mine as his fingers came to the edge of my underwear, a lacy black pair.
He traced the scalloped edge and my body reacted, lifting to meet his touch.
He palmed me, and I was sure my underwear did little to hide how ready I was for him.
He let out a low hum, then placed a kiss on the inside of my left knee, then an inch higher, and another.
I wanted to enjoy this. I was enjoying this. But the thought of his parents, a whole party full of people, downstairs kept interrupting my ability to completely relax.
“Elijah,” I said, his mouth, his tongue, now tracing the line of my underwear that his finger had earlier.
“You want me to stop?” He paused.
“No,” I said, and his mouth resumed, his tongue lighting up every nerve ending on the hollow spot of my inner thigh. “I mean, yes. Now is not the right…”
He pulled away. Thoughts of his tongue in even more places flashed through my mind, and a spasm of pleasure went through me. I wanted to grab him by the hair and pull him right back. I didn’t. I sat up and adjusted my dress back down my thighs.
He stood and rebuttoned his jacket, then held his hand out to help me off the bed.
“So we can scratch childhood bedroom while a party is going on off the list of places you’d have sex.
” He was teasing, I knew this. After our talk about airplane bathrooms and coat closets and basically anywhere in public.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t joking. Maybe my list of acceptable places for sex was pretty small.
Maybe it was part of my personality. Maybe I didn’t have the adventurous gene.
I wanted stability and predictability and security. Boring.
I wasn’t sure if my demeanor had changed or if my thoughts were written all over my face, but whatever the reason, his expression softened. “Hey,” he said, kissing my cheek and the corner of my mouth. “I’m just teasing you.”
“I kissed you in an elevator,” I reminded him and myself.
He smiled. “You did. But I don’t need to ravage you in a public place.” He moved his lips close to my ear. “But for the record, I do want to ravage you, pretty much always.”
I nodded. “I want to be ravaged.”
He chuckled and started to straighten up when I smashed my lips to his in a passionate kiss. Or maybe it was a desperate one. He reciprocated, wrapping me up in his arms and exploring every inch of my mouth with his tongue. When we broke apart, I could hardly breathe.
“Go ahead of me,” he said, when I moved toward the door. He tugged at the crotch of his pants. “I’m going to need a minute.”
I chuckled, but as I headed downstairs, I couldn’t help but wonder what we were doing.
I didn’t live here. I was leaving in a matter of weeks.
A month, two at the most. He knew that. I knew that.
Neither of us had uprootable lives. Was that the point?
This spontaneous, fun-loving, unsettled man saw me as someone he didn’t have to commit to and just wanted to have a little fun with.
I had never wanted to have a little fun with a man in my life. I’d always dated for a purpose. Could my purpose be fun? Could my purpose be to live in the moment and then leave it all behind? Because I knew long distance wasn’t for me. Not when my dad left and never looked back.