Sail (Wake #2) (31 page)

The car ride was comfortably quiet until she asked, “Where are we going?” I didn’t have any plan or destination. I’d simply been driving, enjoying the warm spring day with the windows down and her beside me.

“I don’t know yet. Where
are
we going?” I asked, repeating her question and being ornery. My hand lightly squeezed her bare leg.

She covered my hand with hers and said, “Somewhere you love. Somewhere I’ve never been.”

I knew just the place.

The brewery.

In all of the time we’d known each other, I’d never taken her there. She’d never seen one of the places I was most proud of. Plus, the brewery was just fucking cool.

“I’ll buy you a beer.”

She looked confused, but smiled. It was early afternoon, and after having cake and ice cream, the look on her face said beer wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted.

“Beer? I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t feel like going to a bar, Casey.”

“We’re not going to a bar,” I shot back.

She looked at me, eyebrow cocked, and shook her head. “Okay.”

She turned on the radio and scanned the stations for something that caught her attention. If you would have told me what song was going to come on, I would have told you to fuck off, but chance is like that.

Sometimes songs pick you.

When I heard the intro’s opening drum beats, I immediately knew what song it was she’d stopped on. That damn Led Zeppelin song haunted us.

She looked up and then at me and guffawed. The laugh that bellowed out of her was almost delirious. Her head fell back onto the headrest, and she wrapped her arms around her stomach as she giggled without care of how she sounded or what she looked like. It turned into a coughing fit, finally catching her breath, somewhere around the first chorus.

“Oh my God. This fucking song,” she exclaimed, as she looked at me, face red, eyes wet from crying through her laughing fit. “It’s never going to leave us alone.”

A breeze flowing through the car filled my nose with her scent. Then she began singing at the top of her lungs, laughing and looking carefree and dazzling.

As I went back and forth, looking at the road then back to her, I couldn’t wait to get to the brewery to kiss her. Really kiss her.

Then I couldn’t wait. I pulled over into the first parking spot I found on a downtown street lined with shops and offices.

Her eyes darted around looking for where it might be that I was taking her, but nothing caught her attention. Perplexed, she looked me.

I turned the key toward myself and killed the engine, turning to face her.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi there,” she replied. She looked so much like the first time I’d listened to that song with her. Hair perfectly wavy and untouched after being wet, mischievous and sexy as anything I’d ever laid eyes on. It took my breath away. She was back. I couldn’t see guilt or shame in her eyes. She looked like first-night Blake. Come-up-to-my-room Blake and there she was, back with me, after all that time waiting for her.

A moment passed where she realized it too. We were going to be okay.

We unclicked our seat belts at the same time and lunged for each other.

There was no kissing. No flirt in our touch. My arms wrapped around her center, and hers around my neck, and we hugged.

We sat like that, squeezing the hell out of each other forever.

“Would you do it all again?” she asked into my neck, and then giggled like it was a huge joke.

“Do hobby horses have wooden dicks?”

She pulled away and ran her hands across my cheeks and held my face merely inches from hers.

“When are you going to get new material?”

“When it stops working.”

Then I kissed her beautiful fucking face off.

I made a mental note to write those old rockers a thank you. That song
was
magic and it worked every damn time.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

I HAD TO ADMIT, that song had some sort of power over us. Like an old friend, one you’d fought and forgiven, it was always there when we needed it.

After he kissed me, and he got us back on the road, I studied him.

Watching him drive was such a turn on. He looked both completely focused and totally relaxed. The muscles in his forearm, tight, as he held the wheel. His hair had grown out more. Even I could admit it needed a trim as it blew around in the spring air. He looked sexy, wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses as he drove. I could have gazed at him all day.

“Take the wheel for a second,” he requested.

Cautiously, I gripped it from my side.

He glanced at me and asked, “Ready?” Then he leaned up from his seat, which was way too reclined for me to ever drive comfortably, and I found myself steering. He watched me and the road, back and forth, the windshield and then back to me.

Casey lifted his left leg and helped guide the wheel, as it was clear, and instead of watching traffic, I was watching him.

“You got this?” he asked and chuckled.

I shifted my focus from him and watched where we were going, as I smiled to myself.

Had anyone ever loved someone as much as I love him?

My eyes scanned the street and cars around us, then to him quickly going down his buttons, starting at the top of the lavender dress shirt he wore. Lavender isn’t a color most men can pull off, but it only stood to contrast his beautiful eyes. It somehow made him all the more masculine for having the bravado to put it on. His long fingers pushed the plastic buttons through their respective holes. And when he was finished with the light work of releasing them, he shook out of the shirt, wadded it up and threw it in the back seat. Leaving him in only a tight, white V-neck T-shirt.

Could he really be mine?

I saw the sign on the massive warehouse as we grew closer.

Bay Brewing was a much larger operation than I’d realized. We drove around to a lot nestled in an alley. The fenced area was closed and locked, so when we approached, Casey had to punch in a code for it to let us in.

The large gates swung in and he drove onto the private parking lot. There were a few delivery trucks, but other than those it was empty. He whipped the car into the spot nearest the door.

“It’s a lot bigger than I imagined,” I confessed.

“Imagined?” he asked, and then snickered. “You’ve seen it before. And I’m a little—no, a lot—offended that you can’t remember. That said, I’m really happy about how big you think it is.” He stretched an arm over my headrest, as he leaned back in the driver’s seat to taunt me.

He looked like a classic bad boy. Jeans. New Converse. Fresh white T-shirt. He pulled the glasses up over the front of his hair and left them there.

I wasn’t sure what kind of cologne he had on. Hell, it was possible the scent was just his deodorant. But whatever it was, to my body, it was like waving a steak in front of a tiger. I breathed him in, in every way I could. Absorbed him into my mind. My senses. My everything.

The sight of him, sun shining through his hair, the way his chest pulled against the front of his shirt. How his legs were parted. My mouth watered thinking about what was just beyond that denim.

He watched me as I let myself get drunk on him.

“You know what I meant,” I accused, but I didn’t really correct him. He was, after all, right. I played dumb. “So where are we?”

“This is where the magic happens, honeybee. Remember that.” He was still as cocky as the night we’d met, and I loved it.

He showed me around the brewery and told me about how they’d expanded. They were looking at buildings in other cities for logistical reasons, having grown out of the one current facility.

We stopped by what looked like a break room. He opened the refrigerator and brought out two beers. Like he’d done it every day, he found a magnetic bottle opener on the side of the old Maytag and popped the tops off, handing me one.

He lifted his and I followed his lead, like we were toasting.

“To trouble and Led Zeppelin,” he said.

“To trouble and bait,” I repeated. He kissed me for that.

Then, he proclaimed, “Now, taste the nectar of the gods.” Casey was so dramatic.

He showed me around the rest of massive building. When we went upstairs, where the offices were, I saw Aly’s name on a door as we walked past.

It reminded me.

“You didn’t call me this morning. Was everything okay?”

He shook his head, and swallowed his drink, before apologizing. “I’m sorry, I woke up late.”

That didn’t help me feel any better. Last I’d known, he was putting Aly to bed. My face must have shown how I didn’t like the thoughts in my head. I knew they weren’t true, and that I had nothing to worry about, but I still thought about it.

“I wasn’t with her. She was drunk and making a fool out of herself—and, therefore, the company. I didn’t stay with her last night.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“You do?” He appeared shocked and relieved at the same time. He stopped walking as we approached the door that read “Casey Moore, V P of Sales.” I was impressed.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because I know you. You wouldn’t do that to me.”

“That’s right, I wouldn’t.”

My stomach cramped thinking about how I’d made him feel in the past. How in the hell did he not give up on me?

“I’m sorry I’ve done that to you. I’m sorry you’ve had to fall asleep knowing I was next to someone else.” That guilt might always live inside me. The excuse of, “He knew what he was getting into” never really took away the sting of it. I’d done that to him. I hated it. “That will never,
ever
be the case again. I hope, someday, you’ll be able to trust me like I trust you.”

His brow furrowed. He’d never liked it when I talked like that, but sometimes things needed to be said. Something I’d learned in therapy. It didn’t undo what I’d done, but it relieved something inside me to own up to it. Shitty as it was.

“And I know Aly loves you. She told me she does. But I hope she knows I’ll fight for you—if it comes to it.”

“It won’t,” he stated definitively, jaw tight and eyes set on mine. “She knows I only want you. I’ll only
ever
want you.”

We were bound to have those moments, but they were getting easier. Tossing out old habits of building walls between us and hiding what we felt, were becoming things of the past. Our new way of communication—even if it wasn’t easy—was proving much more rewarding.