Chapter 18 Kieran
KIERAN
I’D NEVER REALLY liked the beach. In general, spending extended amounts of time outdoors had never done anything good for me, just made me sweaty and sometimes covered in bug bites, depending on the time of year.
But because it was our last day in town, and I knew Jordy desperately wanted to go, I shut my mouth and let him have his fun.
I’d finished my client’s sleeve in the early afternoon, and he’d given me a really generous tip for my time and travel.
It looked great, and he’d promised to post it on social media and tag me, which was great for me.
I’d accomplished a really great tattoo and taken another step in building up my client base, but even that satisfaction really paled to everything else that had happened on the trip.
I didn’t exactly know what was going on in my head, but everything felt so incredibly surreal.
We’d spent the day before resting and recovering in the room, other than the handful of hours I’d left to finish the second leg of the tattoo.
And then today I’d knocked out the last bit early so we could do this.
He’d dragged me out into the water, splashing and zipping around me like a slick little sea otter, and then he’d coerced me into building sandcastles with him while he’d chattered on about the made up lore he’d crafted for the imaginary residents inside.
People glanced at us when they passed by, either indifferently or with obvious appreciation.
Probably because Jordy was so cute. In my head I’d always imagined people would look at us together and see something…
unsettling. Or unpleasant. Like they’d somehow sense that I was corrupting my perfectly peppy little stepbrother with my cursed energy.
Did they think we were together? I wasn’t sure if I could believe anyone’s mind would go to that, but at the same time it was probably the most logical conclusion.
We didn’t look anything alike, and we were around the same age.
Plus he was always hanging all over me, like a sexy little burr.
I’d have to discourage him from doing that once we were back home, because people knew us in our town, but… I really didn’t want to.
Having him be so openly affectionate with me, where we didn’t need to hide anything and I didn’t need to pretend that I didn’t want him, had opened up something inside me that I didn’t know if I could close back up.
I didn’t know if I wanted it closed back up.
It felt like it would leave some horrific trauma scar that I’d be stuck with for the rest of my life.
I thought about Ritchie, who I’d already bought a big conch shell and a little bag of sea salt taffy for.
What would he think if he ever found out what was going on?
He knew Jordy, and he’d even called him cute once, which I’d chewed him out for.
At any rate, I hoped he’d understand and not think I was some kind of deviant pervert.
A gust of wind ripped through, rustling the hem of our umbrella and sending the scent of sunscreen and salt through my senses. A group of kids off in the distance screamed as their beach ball was thrown into the ocean and they had to scramble into the water to retrieve it.
Jordy stirred a little, making some adorable little mumbling noise as he floated in the between realm of sleep and consciousness.
Tilting my head as I watched him, I couldn’t help but notice all these tiny things I hadn’t let myself notice before.
Like the way his pale skin had the faintest tinge of pink where his wrist and ankle bones were, or the way his blond hair was just the tiniest bit lighter at the ends, almost white.
He had a freckle on the back of his left knee.
He’d popped an adhesive patch over the glucose monitor on the back of his arm to keep it from getting damaged in the salt water.
They had plain beige ones, but he’d picked out the ones printed with bananas and cartoon monkeys.
If given a choice, he’d always pick the cuter, more colorful option of anything.
I suddenly wondered if Chester would keep checking his levels on the app even when he left for college, and call to check on him.
What would it be like having someone that invested in keeping you alive?
Would I feel like that if I ever had a kid?
When Jordy’s eyes fluttered open, he immediately clocked that I was staring at him, and he gave me this gorgeous, infatuated smile as he lazily stretched his body out, tapping my thigh with his forehead.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” he said. “It just feels so nice out here.”
“I can’t believe you even could fall asleep,” I remarked back, my hand automatically raising from my side to drop onto the crown of his head. “It’s so damn noisy.”
“I don’t know, I guess I just feel safe with you.”
He said it so casually, with no hesitation or embarrassment or any of the wild emotions that suddenly roared to life inside me that I had to bite down to keep from showing on my face.
“That’s good.” Because I kind of desperately didn’t want him to elaborate on that statement and make me feel even weirder than I already did, I went on. “So you think you’re going to be hanging out at the beach a lot during the school year?”
“Sometimes,” he answered. “Because Dani really wants to. But I have a pretty heavy course load, so I don’t think I’m going to have a ton of free time.”
I wasn’t sure if I was glad he wouldn’t be out and about too much without me around, or if I felt bad that he wasn’t going to get to have as much fun as he maybe wanted to have.
“Plus I’ll want to come home a lot of weekends,” he added. “I’m going to try to convince my dad to help me get a car.”
“That’s a lot of driving.”
“Well, I’d say we could trade off but you wouldn’t have anywhere to stay if you came up here.”
My throat was suddenly dry and cracked like gritty sandpaper, my stomach burning and thrashing. He was saying it, the thing I wanted so badly. And he hadn’t even made a big deal out of it. Like it was just preordained.
“What?” He asked, giving me an odd look after a long span of silence passed. “You didn’t seriously think I was going to go weeks at a time without seeing you? It’s only an hour drive.”
“I didn’t know,” I managed. “I thought you were excited to go away.”
“I’m excited to start college,” he corrected me gently. “I’m not excited to go away. Is that really what you thought?”
I shook my head, only because I didn’t know what else to do or say. “No. I don’t know. I didn’t really want to think about it.”
He heaved himself up from his sprawled position, and settled between my legs, with his back pressed to my chest. When I reached around him, he gripped my arms closer to his body.
“You worry too much. It’s supposed to be easy, you know?”
“What is?”
“This. Us.”
I scoffed. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No!” He insisted. “I know it sucks because of our parents but it’ll work out. The college thing is, like, nothing. We’ll see each other as often as we can and then in a couple of years it’ll be over.”
“You act like we’re actually a couple,” I pointed out.
The whole conversation was starting to make my head spin. I felt like I was in some alternate universe, the one he’d once described when he’d asked if I would press a magic button so we could be together. But he was so matter-of-fact about it, like it wasn’t even a question anymore.
He shifted, leaning back against me so the back of his head was resting on my shoulder. I couldn’t help but inhale all of his sugary sweet essence, breathing him in like a healing tonic.
“You want to be, right?”
“A couple?” I asked, but I was really just stalling. I didn’t know why. It’s not like I thought if I said yes that he would suddenly laugh in my face and tell me he’d been messing with me this whole time. I was almost definitely sure he wouldn’t.
“Yeah.”
“Do you… seriously think that’s an option for us?”
“Kieran,” he started, wriggling into a more comfortable position against me, where he was resting more of his weight on me.
“At this point, what exactly do you think would change between us if I said yes? We’re fucking, we’re not seeing other people, and we basically spend all our free time together. ”
“It’s different,” I insisted. “Being a couple is…” Real.
“There’s an expectation of the future, and…
And…” I trailed off, unsure how to expand on that thought.
Being a couple meant we were really looking each other in the face and saying that we’d like to stay together forever and never break up.
It wasn’t a guarantee, and people broke up all the time, but to me there was no point in trying to be a couple without that one very basic prerequisite. We would try to make it work forever.
“You can’t see yourself having a future with me?
” He asked, but his tone made it clear he didn’t really have concerns about what my answer would be.
As always, he wasn’t like me. But of course he wasn’t.
Why would he have any worries that he could make me happy?
That much was obvious. I was the one that had to worry that I would end up disappointing him.
“I’m not saying that.”
“So?”
“Have you really thought about what a future with me would be like?”
“Yeah,” he answered instantly. “I’ve thought about it a lot. It’s what I want. You’re what I want,” he added, turning his head into my neck to nuzzle at my skin, which felt stupidly good.
It was like my body was completely attuned to him, to react only to his voice and his touch and his scent. A wave of yearning for him smacked me, settling down into my core until I found myself squeezing him, pressing my face into his hair.
“Kieran, are you hard?” He asked, and I could hear the smug, playful note dripping from the question. I cleared my throat, rolling my eyes up to the clear sky.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
He laughed a little, before reaching up behind him to nudge my face down into a kiss.
I lost myself in the feeling of his lips, absorbing the sweet taste of his mouth and the devoted way he opened up for me.
His skin was warm and soft everywhere we touched, his bare back a smooth expanse I couldn’t help but want to be pressed against.
He wanted to be a couple. He wanted me. Or at least, he wanted what he knew of me. For now. But for once, I couldn’t bear to focus on my uncertainty. It felt too good to just pretend like I believed everything would work out.
“Hey, get a room! There are kids here!” A harsh female voice scolded us from what sounded like way too close. My eyes snapped open, and noted a middle-aged woman standing just a few feet from our umbrella, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Sorry,” Jordy apologized with that trademark angelic tone that was really just ironic once you got to know him like I had, and I stayed quiet as he untangled himself from my arms. I tended to just make awkward situations worse by getting pissed off and snapping, or just unintentionally saying the wrong thing altogether.
“We’ll be more mindful,” he added, when she continued to state disapprovingly at us.
“Well, you better, or I’m going to report you to the lifeguard. There are kids here,” she repeated, before stalking off, probably to bitch about us to whoever she’d come with.
Jordy chuckled and then sighed, wiggling away before turning to face me.
“Oops, I kind of got us in trouble.”
“That part was a team effort,” I said. But now that we’d been noticed, I felt prickly and uncomfortable, like everyone’s gaze was boring into me like a tiny needle. I hated being watched.
He seemed to notice my discomfort right away, and tilted his head as he stared at me.
“Well, we do have a room, you know,” he pointed out, his sweet little voice ripe with naughty intention.
“Are you all beached out?”
“I think I’ve had my fill,” he said. “Especially now that we’re on someone’s radar,” he added, smirking a bit. “Wanna do it in one of those little shower stall things?”
“Uh…” Glancing behind him, I watched as the woman who’d scolded us looked in our direction again, like she was waiting for us to do something she didn’t like so she could throw a real tantrum. “Probably not a good idea.”
Not to mention we’d already rolled the dice once with fucking on this beach, but at least that had been when it was pitch black and empty. I wasn’t trying to actually get arrested for public indecency. I could only imagine what a pleasant phone call that would be to Chester and my mom.
“Do you want to take a shower together in our hotel room, then?”
We hadn’t done that yet, and the thought of a warm, soapy, slippery Jordy was more than appealing.
“On the basis of conserving water?”
“On the basis that I want to fuck,” he said, blinking slowly at me as he gave me that expression. The corner of my lip perked up even though I tried not to let it.
“Yeah, okay.”
I’d never thought about the concept of ranking weekends before, but if I wanted to start now, this one felt impossible to ever top.