What Endures (21 page)

He didn’t even have to consider her question. He smiled and shook his head. She chuckled. “Didn’t think so.” She raised her glass. “So. . .to a night of fun and not dealing.”

He grinned as he clinked his glass to hers. “To our great escape.”

#

“Aaaaahhhhh!”

Jason laughed as he ran after her, back to their fire and blanket. She was running as fast as she could go, and he had to admit, the sight of her body, silhouetted against the flickering firelight was making him glad that the water had been so cold.

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed, huddling as close to the fire as she could get. “I forgot how cold the water could be this time of year.”

He chuckled as he looked around the area where they had set up this makeshift picnic of theirs. “No towel.”

“I wasn’t exactly planning on going swimming,” she said ruefully as she picked at the strapless dress that was now clinging wetly to her body. Actually that dress might as well be her second skin the way it was plastered to her body, highlighting all her curves. She shot him a look. “And you make one, even a little one, wisecrack about me tripping and falling and you’re going to end up in that water buddy!”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he said, somehow keeping a straight face.

She looked at him doubtfully before she mumbled, “Stupid wave.”

He laughed. “It wasn’t the wave that made you fall.”

“You are so asking for it,” she warned him, though he could see the smile she was trying hard to suppress. “It was dark, and cold, and that wave just came and. . .” She stopped and chuckled. “I’m a big klutz! There. I confess. Happy?”

“Actually I am.” He looked at her shivering by the fire. “You really should get out of that dress.”

“E-excuse me?” she stammered, looking at him in surprise.

“I just meant it’s wet and you can get sick and. . .” His voice trailed off as the full meaning of his words finally hit him. “I-I didn’t mean, uh. . .you know. . .that.”

She smiled. She wasn’t annoyed or upset by what he had said. Instead, she looked amused. “And if I were to take this dress off, what would I be wearing instead?” she asked him sweetly.

“I could run back to the house and-“

“And leave me out here alone?” she asked, shaking her head. “Besides, by the time you get back, hypothermia will have set in.”

“Hey! I’m not that slow!”

She grinned. “I didn’t say you were. I-I’m really cold!”

She was still shivering and her teeth had started to clatter. “Uh. . .” He looked around, trying to come up with something. “Um. . .” He started to unbutton his shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving you my shirt," he responded, stripping off the shirt and handing it to her.

"Then you'll be cold."

His gaze met hers. "Trust me, I'm not."

She looked from his outstretched hand to him and then back at his shirt again. “I’m only agreeing to this because I think even my bones are starting to freeze! I don’t do this sort of thing. Not usually.”

“Not usually?” he asked, very curious all of a sudden.

She shot him a look. “First things first.” She began to unzip her dress and he found himself watching. He wasn’t even aware that he was watching until she had unzipped her dress about half-way and suddenly stopped. She looked at him, her cheeks flushed. “Um. . .could you uh. . .” She made a gesture with her hand that indicated he should turn the other way.

“O-oh!” he stammered, embarrassed. “Right! Sorry!” Quickly, he spun around, holding his shirt out behind him. Minutes passed before he felt her cold hand take his shirt from him.

He drew in several deep breaths of the cool night air in an effort to control the rapid beating of his heart. He had owned up to an attraction to Megan weeks ago, and that certainly hadn’t changed but watching her unzip her dress just now, it had given him a taste of how strong that attraction truly was. She was beautiful, mesmerizing and breathtaking. And at one point in time, she had been his. How could he not remember that?

“O.K., I’m decent. Goofy-looking but decent.”

He drew in another deep breath before he turned around. She was still standing by the fire, only now, her wet dress had been discarded in favor of his shirt, which came to about her mid-thigh, the sleeves well past her hands. She looked anything but goofy. She looked sexy as hell and the way his pants seemed to tighten told him his dick agreed.  How the night had started with a dinner from hell and ended up here, he didn't know but he didn't give a damn either.

“Better?” he managed to get out, even though his breath had caught in his throat.

“A little.” She smiled as she reached for the champagne bottle. She poured herself another glass, before she sank down on her knees in the sand. By his count, that would be her 3rd glass. She downed about half the glass and grimaced slightly. “Champagne just does not warm you up the way vodka does.”

He grinned. The more he found out about her, the more he liked. “I can’t picture you doing vodka shots.”

She arched her eyebrow. “You’re not trying hard enough then.”

“How about you help me out?”

She chuckled. “My first vodka shot was with you, coincidentally enough, on a beach. It was a little warmer then.”

“Really?” he asked, coming over and sitting down next to her.

She nodded as she drained her glass. “It was a class trip to Rehoboth Beach." She shot him a sly grin. "You convinced me to sneak out and we ended up on the beach at night." She shook her head. "I can't remember where you got the vodka from but we ended up doing shots. The first one was awful." She laughed. "The other ones, not so bad." She made a face. "The throwing up afterward sucked though."

“Sounds like I was a bad influence.” She poured herself another glass. “You might want to slow down on that, Megan.”

She gave him a look before she took another big gulp of champagne. “You thought that back then too.”

“That you should slow down on the drinking?”

“No. That you were a bad influence on me.” She shook her head and looked at him reproachfully. “You never were. You were a great influence on me, Jason. Don’t you know that? You changed my life.”

Her words touched him. Deeply. It was the first time in this whole confusing, chaotic  mess he called his life that she had been so open with him. Usually, her guard was always up. They could be joking, laughing, or having a serious discussion, but he noticed that protective shield of hers in place. Even when she was sharing some memory of theirs, her guard was up, .and her recall of the events, while interesting to him, often felt as if she were recalling a scene from a movie she had seen. She was completely honest with him, but it was done at a distance almost. It was as if she didn’t want to tie any real emotions into what she was telling him.

But just now, he got a peek at her without that protective shield in place. And he wanted to see more of it. He knew that she loved him, but he knew this from the things she told him, from pictures he saw around the house, from the brief glimpses of it on the home movies he had watched. But
seeing
that love first hand? That was something else entirely. 

Whether this ‘openness’ of hers was the result of this special one-night-only celebration or the champagne loosening some of her inhibitions, he didn’t know. All he knew was, he liked it. He liked it a lot.

“Did I change it for the better?” he asked.

“Do you really have to ask?” she returned.

“I kinda do.”

She drained her glass before she sighed. “Sometimes I wish that I never met you.” She quickly shook her head, as if to negate that sentence. “That’s not really true. It’s just. . .sometimes it hurts too much but then I think of all the things we’ve been through, and how loving you made me happier than I’ve ever been or probably ever will be and it’s. . .” Her eyes found his and he stared into their lightened depths, watching the emotions swirl.

"It's what?"

"Worth it," she whispered. "Loving you was worth it. Worth everything."

“Even this?”

His heart contracted at the completely open and vulnerable emotion he saw in her eyes. No sign of any protective barrier between them now. “No regrets.”

“What?”

She smiled and he could see her almost retreat into the memory. “That has been our mantra. Whenever we did something that we knew others wouldn't approve of, we'd tell each other that we didn't want to live life with any regrets.” She shook her head. “You said that when you proposed." She gave him a small smile. "The first time. I thought you were insane. I mean we were just out of high school. What did we know about marriage?"  She sighed. "But you were so sure. ‘I want to live a life with no regrets,’ was what you said."

“Did we? Have any regrets?”

“I didn’t,” she answered simply.

He looked at her, in all her open vulnerability and somehow, somewhere, despite the disastrous events earlier that evening, he found the courage to ask her what he had wanted to ask her since he had found out that they were married. “Why’d we break up Megan?”

She turned away, shaking her head. She grabbed the champagne bottle and poured herself another glass. She nearly drained the glass and he resisted the urge to pull the glass out of her hands.

“Megan?” he prompted.

There was silence as she stared at the dancing flames of the fire and then she whispered,

“Baseball.”

“We broke up because of baseball?” She nodded, still staring at the fire. “How?”

She drained her glass and dropped it haphazardly onto the sand before she turned to him. From the glassy, unfocused look in her eyes, he could tell the champagne was starting to take effect. “No, no, no. We’re not going to talk about depressing things tonight. No sad talk! We’re supposed to be having fun!”

She clumsily crawled over to where he had set the pastry box down on the sand. She had only buttoned his shirt up partially, and the movement shifted his shirt so that he caught a glimpse of one of her breasts. His dick throbbed against his pants at the sight and he felt his chest tighten. He knew he should look away but couldn't seem to tear his gaze from the sight. He sucked in a deep breath of the cool air and tried to think of something else. Anything that would take his mind off of what she looked like naked, how it would feel to touch her.

“O.K.,” she said with a bright smile once she had retrieved the box and was once again kneeling in the sand next to him. Mercifully, his shirt had righted itself and was again fully covering her. “Birthday cake time.” She fidgeted with the box for a few seconds before she got it open. “Actually, birthday cupcake time.” She grinned and held up a chocolate cupcake with silver and blue frosting on top.

She rummaged inside the pastry box for a beat before she pulled out a single white birthday candle. She jammed the candle into the middle of the cupcake and held it out to him. “We’re gonna go with just one candle. I don’t think this little thing can fit twenty. . . .” She paused and frowned.

“Eight,” he supplied with a smile.
Yep. That champagne was definitely getting to her now.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling at him sweetly. “We need to light it.” He didn’t know whether to be alarmed or amused when she turned questioningly toward the blazing fire with the cupcake.

“Megan,” he said quickly, placing his hand on her arm to draw her attention back to him. “I got it.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved the lighter.

She smiled happily as he lit the candle. Once it was burning, she launched into an out-of-tune rendition of ‘Happy Birthday.’ Once she was done, she held the cupcake out to him, indicating for him to blow out the candle. “Don’t forget to make a wish.”

That was easy
, he thought. There really was only one thing to wish for.

He blew out the candle and their eyes held for a beat before she smiled and said softly,

“Happy Birthday.”

He returned her smile. “Thank you.”

“Glad you decided to escape with me?”

“Of course,” he replied honestly. He saw her eyes light up at his answer and she beamed at him, causing his own smile to widen. She giggled suddenly. “What?”

“I was just wondering what was going on back at your Dad’s place.”

He made a face. “They’ve probably killed each other by now.”

“Your family’s really not that bad.”

“Compared to what? The Manson family?”

She giggled. “So they’re a little screwed up but. . .” She paused and looked at the cupcake oddly, as if she were noticing it for the first time. “This is yours. Are you going to eat it?”

He took the cupcake out of her hand and placed it back inside the pastry box. “Later. What were you saying about my family?”

“They’re. . .” She frowned, trying to remember, but clearly the effects of the alcohol were beginning to play with her memory. “They’re not your only family you know.”

“What?” he asked, not knowing whether to be confused or concerned. Having witnessed what he had at dinner, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he had a secret family somewhere else.

“I mean your parents. . ..” She grimaced. “They’re kinda screwed up, but then you have Tyler too and he’s not like them. That was a nice family. Then there was you and I, no, me and you. . .” Her brow crinkled adorably as she grappled with the correct grammatical configuration. “Me and. . .”

“Us?” he offered helpfully.

“Yes! Us.” She smiled. “We were a family. And we weren’t bad. We were really good. I mean we had some problems, but it was a good family. Just our little family of two.” Her voice became soft and wistful. “I loved our little family.”

“Megan. . .”

“Why did things have to get so messed up?” She looked up at him and he could see her eyes shimmering with tears. One escaped and trailed slowly down her cheek. His heart ached at the sight, and he wanted nothing more than to stop whatever it was that was making her cry. He reached out, wiping the tear away. She inhaled sharply, before she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his hand.

Her hand felt incredibly warm against his own.
Surely no one’s touch should feel this hot
he thought to himself. He met her eyes and was surprised to see just how clear they were. They didn’t seem clouded by the alcohol all of a sudden.