Deeper

“Nice party,” he said, and turned away to load his plate with pizza.

It wasn’t the first time Ryan had flirted with her, and it wasn’t even that Bess minded. Whatever arrangement he and Missy had didn’t seem to be exclusive for either of them. Ryan was cute and knew it. It didn’t make her feel special. Just a little off balance. It had been so long since she’d paid attention to any sort of male interest, she wasn’t sure how to react.

“What are you drinking?” This came from a guy Bess didn’t know by name, though she’d seen him around. He held up a bottle of tequila. “Margarita?”

Bess looked for a blender and saw none. “Umm…no, thanks.”

“Okay.” The guy shrugged and turned to the girl next to him, who waited with open mouth. He took the bottles of tequila and margarita mix and poured both into her mouth at the same time, stopping when the liquid started overflowing. She swallowed and choked, coughing, waving her hands, and they laughed.

Bess tried hard not to make that face, the one Missy had mimicked, but…ew. Gross. Not to mention a good way to end up in the hospital. Shielding her pizza with her body, she eased through the throng, but found no place to sit in the living room. She leaned instead against the wall in a corner. People were playing quarters already. Someone else had set up a beer bong. Bess concentrated on eating.

The problem was, once finished, she was thirsty again, which meant a return trip through the party jungle to the kitchen. She had to stop to dance a little along the way with Brian, who worked with her at Sugarland, because he snagged her wrist and wouldn’t let her pass without a bit of bump and grind. Brian liked boys, but was fond of reminding Bess frottage didn’t need a gender.

“You look pretty tonight!” He shouted over the heavy bass thumping of “Rump Shaker.” “Zooma zoom, baby!”

Bess rolled her eyes as he grabbed her ass and ground against her. “Thanks, Brian. You like guys, remember?”

“Honey,” he said into her ear, with a lick that made her giggle and squirm, “that makes it even more of a compliment.”

She could hardly deny that, so she let him feel her up and down for a few minutes while they danced.

“So, who’ve you got your eye on?” she shouted into his ear.

“Oh, boys, boys, boys,” Brian said with a shake of his highlighted bangs. “Boys all over, honey, but sadly, most of them are straight. How ’bout you? Still remaining true to your Prince Charming?”

Bess kept herself from making a face at Brian’s assessment of her love life. He didn’t need to know about her problems with Andy. He’d either commiserate, which she didn’t want, or give her advice, which she didn’t need.

“Dish!” Brian ordered, twirling her. “Mr. Right’s Mr. Wrong, all of a sudden?”

If she’d been able to get in touch with Andy more than once in the past three weeks, maybe she’d know. Bess shook her head and eased herself out of Brian’s grasp. “I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” he shouted in her ear, and she winced. “What did that bastard do?”

“Nothing!” Bess tugged her hands out of his.

Brian didn’t let her go easily. “I don’t believe you!”

“I’m going to get a drink.”

“You have to work tomorrow!” He pretended to be scandalized, but his easy grin gave him away.

Bess laughed, shaking her head. “So do you. See you later, Brian.”

Before he could protest, she kissed him quickly on the cheek and disengaged from his octopus hands so she could finish her quest for something to drink. She pushed away and through the crowd, toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to talk about Andy to Brian. Or to Missy. She didn’t really want to talk or think about Andy at all, because once she started, she might very well have to admit that things were going suddenly, desperately sour.

The sodas had all disappeared from the fridge, and she wasn’t about to trust the open two-liter bottles littered all over the counter and table. The pizza had been completely devoured, with nothing but a few strings of cheese and some splotches of sauce left on the boxes to prove it had ever been there at all. Bess gathered up the empty cardboard and shoved it beneath the table, then searched for a plastic cup that didn’t look as if it had been used. She filled it with tap water and the last couple of ice cubes, then refilled the ice-cube trays and put them back in the freezer.

“It wouldn’t be a party without you, Mommy.” Missy draped herself over Bess’s shoulder and kissed her loudly on the cheek. “There. Now you can’t say you didn’t get any action tonight.”

“Too late. Brian beat you to it.” Bess wiped off Missy’s kiss and looked out over the room. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they rocked the trailer right off its blocks. Or set the place on fire from spontaneous combustion.

Missy babbled something, slurring, but Bess wasn’t listening. Across the room, standing along the back wall next to the hall, stood a boy. She recognized the faded T-shirt after a second. Ryan’s friend. He’d taken off his ball cap.

He wasn’t doing anything notable, just tipping a bottle of beer to his lips, but he turned to look toward her just as she noticed him. Their eyes met, or she thought they did, though it was impossible to tell if he was looking at her.

That moment stamped itself into her mind forever. The smell of weed and beer, the lingering taste of pizza, the warmth of Missy’s hand on her arm. The splash of cold on her calf as someone spilled a drink at that moment.

The first moment she really looked at him.

“Missy. Who is that?”

Missy, busy making fun of the guy who’d lost his cup, didn’t look up at first. In the half minute it took for her to answer, Bess had already imagined herself walking across the room and taking the beer out of his hands. Putting it to her mouth. Putting him to her mouth.

“Who?”

Bess pointed, not caring if he saw.

“Oh, that’s Nick the Prick. Dude! Wipe it the fuck up!”

Missy, no longer amused by her guest’s fumbling fingers, punched him in the arm. “This isn’t a fucking bar!”

Bess ignored them both, just moved out of the way to let the guy get on the floor to wipe up the spill. Nick was no longer looking at her, and she was glad, because that meant she could stare all she wanted. She imprinted his profile on her mind. From this distance she had to imagine the length of his lashes, the depth of his dimple. The way he’d smell…

“Bess!” Missy shook her arm.

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

Missy gaped. She looked at Bess, then toward Nick and back again. “You’re shitting me. Nick?”

Bess nodded. She’d forgotten her ice water and grabbed it up now, needing to quench the sudden dryness in her throat. She’s going to say he has a girlfriend, she thought. She’s going to tell me he’s in love with some girl with big tits and bigger hair. Or worse, she fucked him. Missy fucked him…

Missy blew upward to move her bangs off her forehead. She shook her head. “Why do you want to know?”

Blaming the booze and weed for the stupid question, Bess shot her a look Missy couldn’t possibly misunderstand. She gaped again, then laughed. “Nick? You have a boyfriend, remember, sugar-tits?”

Bess hadn’t forgotten. Then again, it was sort of up in the air whether or not she still had one. She looked at Missy. “If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I would be on him like butter on a cob of corn.”

Missy guffawed and slapped her thigh. “Are you serious?”

Bess had never been more serious about anything in her life. “Does he?”

“Have a girlfriend?” Missy’s thickly lined eyes turned calculating, and she looked over Bess’s shoulder, presumably at the topic of their conversation. “No. He’s into guys.”

“What? No!” Bess clenched her fists, turning to stare. Nick’s head bobbed to the beat, up and down, and he tipped his beer again. “He’s gay?”

“Sorry,” Missy said.

She gritted her teeth and tucked her fists beneath her opposite arms. “Goddamn it.”

Missy’s brows flew up to her hairline. “Dude!”

“I’m not a dude,” Bess snapped, so disappointed she couldn’t think straight.

Missy patted her arm. “Have a drink. It won’t seem so bad then.”

“It’s not bad.” Bess shook her head and gulped ice water. “Forget I said anything.”

Missy ho-ho-hoed. “Have a drink anyways.”

Bess lifted her glass of ice water and gulped down the rest before tossing the empty cup into the sink. “I have to get home.”

Her head hurt, suddenly, and her stomach, too. All from a stupid boy she’d never even talked to. She was the stupid one. Bess shoved off her disappointment, angry at herself. Angry at Missy.

“Aww, don’t leave.” Missy grabbed Bess’s hand. “Party’s just getting started.”

“Missy, I really have to go. It’s late.”

It wasn’t, really, and she worked the late shift tomorrow. But suddenly Bess didn’t want to watch everyone else drinking and smoking and making out. She didn’t want to watch everyone else hooking up and having fun. Worst of all, while she’d been talking with Missy, Nick had vanished.

“Call me tomorrow!” Missy yelled after her, but Bess didn’t answer.

She burst from the trailer into the welcome freshness of the cool early June air. Not much of the party had moved outside. A shadowy couple kissed leaning against the wall, their hands groping and the sound of their heavy breathing loud enough to carry. A moaning girl bent over in the bushes while her girlfriends held back her hair and urged her to “get it up.” Bess reached for the pitted metal railing but tripped anyway on the last concrete step and twisted her ankle hard enough to make her curse.

“You okay?”

She looked up to the wink of a cigarette tip. “Yeah. I just tripped. I’m not drunk,” she added, angry that she felt she had to explain.

“You’re one of the only ones.”

It was too much of a coincidence, too much like fate, but even before he stepped out of the shadows and into the streamer of light from the streetlamp, Bess knew it was Nick. He took another drag on his cigarette and tossed the butt to the dirt, where he ground it out with the toe of his boot. They both turned at the sound of vomit splattering and moans, and Nick grimaced. He took Bess by the elbow and steered her around the corner of the trailer, toward the street, so easily she didn’t have time to protest.

He let go of her before she had time to protest that, too. “Some people shouldn’t drink.”

Bess shivered a little. The light was brighter here, and it painted his face in silver with purple highlights. He looked like Robert Downey, Jr. in Less Than Zero, she thought a little disjointedly. The un-strung-out version.

Nick smiled. “Hi. You’re Bess.”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded hoarse. Her thoughts seemed fuzzy. Contact high? she wondered as a wave of dizziness swept her. Or Nick’s smile? “You’re Nick. Ryan’s friend.”

“Yeah.”

Silence.

“I’m heading home,” Bess said. Gay. Why did he have to be gay? How could he be gay? Why was every cute boy around here gay? “I rode my bike.”

“That’s hot,” said Nick with another grin. “What do you ride? A Harley?”

Her thoughts weren’t normally so slow, but somehow lust and disappointment had made syrup of her brain. “What? Oh…no. Ten-speed.”

He laughed. Bess watched his throat work. She wanted to lick him, and had actually moved forward a tiny bit before she stopped herself, embarrassed. Nick didn’t seem to notice.

“Where do you live?”

She hesitated before telling him, not wanting to admit she lived in one of the beachfront homes.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a serial killer,” Nick said. “You don’t have to tell me.”

She felt really stupid then. “Oh. No, it’s not that. I’m staying in my grandparents’ house on Maplewood Street.”

There was only the barest pause before he nodded. “Uh-huh.”

His gaze traveled over her, up and down, and Bess suddenly wished she’d borrowed some of Missy’s clothes. Put on some makeup. Except what did it matter, when he didn’t like girls, anyway?

“Nice meeting you,” she said. It sounded lame, even to her. The sort of thing you said at a cocktail party, not an impromptu kegger in a trailer park.

“You work at Sugarland, right? I’ve seen you there.” Nick thrust his hands into the pockets of his faded jeans.

“Yes.” Bess looked for her bike, still chained to the hitch of Missy’s trailer.

“With Brian, right?”

Bess gave an inward sigh. Of course he would know Brian. “Yeah.”

“I work at the Surf Pro.” Nick walked with her to the bike and watched as she unlinked the chain and wound it along the straddle bar.

One of the few stores Bess had never been in. The bathing suits were too expensive there, and she didn’t surf. Or sail. She nudged up the kickstand with her foot, grasping the bike’s handles, and swung her leg over the seat.

“You sure you’re okay?” Nick asked. “Your ankle’s okay and everything? You’re okay to…ride?”

“I already told you, I’m not drunk.” Her answer came out a little more clipped than she’d intended, but it was late. She was tired. And she was trying very hard not to notice how nice his mouth looked when he smiled.

“Okay, well, maybe I’ll see you around.” Nick gave her a nod and waved as she pushed off and rode away.

“See you,” Bess called over her shoulder, with no intention of ever seeing him again.

Chapter

03

Now

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

At the sound of the voice in the doorway, Bess’s soap-slick hands twitched on the coffee mug she’d been rinsing. It slipped from her fingers and crashed to the kitchen’s tile floor. Hot water splashed her legs as she turned, gripping the counter to keep from sliding in the spill.

He stood, backlit, for just a moment before moving forward. The same dark hair, same dark eyes. Same quirked smile.

Everything the same.

Bess couldn’t move. Last night she had dreamed…Oh, but it hadn’t been a dream. Had it? If not, surely she was dreaming now. She curved her fingers against the sink’s porcelain, finding no purchase. Nothing to grip.

“Nick?”

Now he looked uncertain. His hair dripped, and the hems of his jeans. His bare toes, coated with sand, gritted on the tile as he took a step toward her, hand outstretched but quickly pulling back when she shrank against the counter. “Bess…it’s me.”

Her guts tumbled inside her, and she couldn’t breathe. She sipped at the air in uneven, hitching gasps. “I thought…I thought…”

“Hey.” He soothed her, coming closer.

She could smell him. Salt and water and sand and sun. The way he’d always smelled, back then. Bess found more air. Took a deeper breath. Nick didn’t touch her as she stared. His hand hovered an inch from her shoulder.

“It’s really me,” he said.

A low sob forced its way from her throat and she launched herself forward. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the damp fabric of his shirt. She breathed him in, deep and deeper.

It took him a second to put his arms around her, but when he did, his embrace was firm. Warm. He rubbed her back, then slid up a hand to cup the base of her skull.

Bess, eyes closed, shuddered against him. “I thought I was dreaming last night.”

She remembered stumbling up the beach, peeling off her clothes, tumbling into bed without even bothering to dry her hair or brush the sand from her skin. She’d woken to find the pile of salty, sodden clothes staining the rug, and her bed a shambles. The passion of the night before had been replaced by a pounding head and slightly sick stomach.

Nick’s hand rubbed a small, tight circle on her back, between the shoulder blades. “If you were dreaming, I was dreaming, too.”

Bess held him tighter. “Maybe we’re both dreaming, because this can’t be real, Nick. It can’t be real.”

He put his hands on her upper arms and pushed her back far enough to look into her face. She’d forgotten how small he could make her feel. How deceptively bigger he’d always been.

“I’m real.”

His fingers on her arms felt real. Solid. Strong. Her cheek was wet from where she’d pressed it to his shirt. Heat radiated from him as though she stood in front of a furnace, and the smell of him, that lost, welcome smell, filled her head until there was nothing else inside her. Tears blurred her vision and she blinked them away. Then she pushed herself out of his arms.

Bess looked at him. Salt water had spiked his hair, but had ceased sliding down his cheeks. His clothes had started to dry, too. He took up as much space as he ever had. His touch was as warm. Time hadn’t changed him, hadn’t painted lines in the corners of his eyes and mouth or silver in his hair.

Bess touched Nick’s cheek. “How can this be? Look at you. Look at me.”

He put his hand over hers, then turned his face to press a kiss to the center of her palm. He closed her fingers over it, but said nothing.

His smile broke her.

“Oh, no,” Bess said. “Oh, no. No.”

She pulled her hand from his. Neither of them moved, but the distance between them grew vast. Something flickered in Nick’s eyes, an emotion she couldn’t read.

“How many people have a second chance?” he asked. “Don’t push me away, Bess. Please.”

He’d never asked her for anything. Blinking, Bess turned back to the sink. She’d left the water running, and flicked the handle of the faucet down. Without the rush of water pouring from the spigot, the sound of the ocean outside filled the space between them and brought them together.

“How?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“It should.”

He smiled and sent the same old twist into her belly, and lower. “But does it? Really?”

When he bent to kiss her, the taste of him chased away logic. All reason. And that, too, was the same as it had always been.

“No,” Bess said, and opened her arms for him again.

The bedroom she took him to wasn’t the ground-level, closet-size room next to the carport she’d used in the past. She’d claimed the master bedroom now, with its private deck and bathroom. Not that he’d have known the difference. She’d never brought him home before.

Nick seemed to hesitate in the doorway until she took his hand and led him to the king-size bed. Bess had stripped the sheets first thing this morning, but only managed to get a fitted sheet back on the mattress before the promise of coffee and breakfast distracted her. Without the mountain of decorative pillows and coverlet embroidered with seashells, the bed looked bigger. The pristine white sheet, stretched tight, begged to be rumpled.

At the foot of the bed Nick bent to kiss her, but Bess was already stretching on her tiptoes to reach his mouth. She pushed and he let her, and she was on top when they fell together onto the vast empty bed. She straddled him as they kissed, mouths opening and tongues stroking. His hands came around to grab her ass and press her to his damp, denim-covered crotch.

Bess broke the kiss long enough to reach between them and tug open the button and zipper. She reached inside as Nick lifted his hips with a groan. She found more heat, and she cupped him for a moment before working to get the wet jeans down his thighs. They didn’t want to go, but she was determined. Once she got them to his knees it was easy, and she pulled his jeans off and tossed them to the floor as Nick sat up to pull off his T-shirt. He wore only a pair of thin cotton boxers, the front of which tented impressively.

Bess paused, heart pounding. She reached to fill her palm with his erection, at first with the cotton barrier between them and then skin to skin when he helped her tug those down, too. Naked, Nick lay propped on one elbow on the bed, one leg bent at the knee and the other straight. Bess knelt beside him, the hem of her shortie nightgown brushing her at midthigh.

She looked at him, then down at herself. Beneath the thin nylon gown she was bare. Her nipples had already poked out the front of the bodice. Lower, her thighs rubbed together, already slick with her arousal. She looked at him again and found the old familiarity of his body. The dip of his belly next to his hip bone and the pattern of hair leading to the thick, dark nest around his cock. She touched him again, curling her fingers around the root of it and stroking upward with a firm grasp that made him moan.

He was silk and steel against her palm. She stroked again and twisted her hand around the top of his prick before sliding down again. Nick’s cock jerked under her touch, and her body pulsed in reply.

Bess looked at him. His eyes shone and a faint flush had begun creeping up his chest and throat. His mouth parted. His tongue swept his lips. His head tipped back and he sank all the way onto his back when she added her other hand to his balls, cupping and stroking. He muttered what sounded like her name, and Bess smiled.

She straddled him again, his cock trapped between the bare flesh of her thighs. She moved, teasing him with the brush of her pubic curls. Nick put his hands on her hips, his fingers bunching the material of her nightgown as he pushed upward.

His cock rubbed her clit as he rocked against her, and Bess’s lips parted in a sigh. She licked her mouth just as he had moments before. The way Nick’s eyes glittered at the sight of her tongue sent shivers of pleasure dancing down her spine.

“Nick.” She murmured his name, tasting it. She thought saying it might feel unfamiliar, but like the sight of his body, the sound of his name hadn’t changed.

“I want you,” he said in voice as rough as the grit of sand on tile. His fingers tightened on her hips as he nudged his prick along the seam of her slick folds. “I want to be inside you.”

Bess nodded, unable to speak. She shifted, lifted, and he moved to help her. She bent her head, waiting for her hair to fall and shield her face as she guided his cock to her entrance. She’d forgotten she’d pulled it up to keep it from getting tangled as it dried, and with her other hand she yanked off the clip. The heavy locks, longer and thicker than twenty years ago, tumbled around her shoulders and over her face.

Nick hissed and thrust upward at the same time, and Bess didn’t know if his reaction was in response to the sight of her hair falling down or the sensation of easing into her wet tightness. It didn’t matter. She gave her own low cry as she settled onto him. Her thighs gripped his sides. They were connected now.

She didn’t move right away. She looked up through the curtain of her hair, then pushed it off her eyes so she could really see him. Nick smiled. His grip on her hips eased, and he shifted. Bess put her hand on his chest to support herself as she leaned forward to brush his lips with hers. “If this is a dream, I don’t want it to end when we’re finished.”

“It’s not a dream.” His voice was low and hoarse, but unmistakably his. “I told you that.”

He lifted the hem of her nightgown to skim her thighs and belly. “Does this feel like a dream? I’m touching you.”

He pushed upward. “I’m inside you.”

Bess gave a half-strangled laugh. “You’ve been inside me before.”

“Not like this.” He thrust harder and she gasped at the sweet pleasure-pain of him stabbing into her.

He’d been inside her for the past twenty years, but no. Not like this, though she’d thought of it often enough. She didn’t have to think about it now, because now it was happening. Bess ducked her head again as her fingers curled against Nick’s chest. Beneath her palm she should have felt the thump-thump of his heart as it sped up. She took her hand away before she could notice if it was there or not. She gripped him again with her thighs and slid both her hands to the bottom edge of his ribs.

She rode him, remembering how sometimes their rhythm had faltered. She knew her body better now, and when Nick’s pace began to stutter, Bess adjusted easily. She moved when he did, and when he thrust harder, biting his lip in the expression she’d never forgotten, she slowed him with a murmured word and a shift of her body. She slid a hand between them, her finger on her clit and circling just the way she needed it. She groaned at the touch and opened her eyes.