“What a dick. Tell me where he lives and I’ll torch the place,” I mutter, making Bodhi throw his head back and laugh, and my insides get all weird and warm.
Not wanting to dwell on that unusual feeling, since it probably means I’m dying of an ulcer or something, I give him another shitty story of my own to make him feel better.
“I lied. I saw my parents once more, four years after they dropped me off. They walked into my great-grandma’s cottage while it was all decorated with balloons and streamers, and my mom said, ‘What’s with all this shit?’ And I looked up at her and said, ‘It’s my birthday.’”
When Bodhi’s face scrunches up and he looks like he might cry, it’s my turn to laugh, which is really some fucked up shit, because talking about my past never makes me laugh in any way.
“It’s fine,” I reassure him. “I followed them outside when they left and hid behind a bush next to the front porch steps to listen to them argue out in the driveway. My dad wanted to come back and give me money for a present, and my mom was losing her mind about it.”
“Did your dad win?” Bodhi asks, cocking his head to the side, his hair falling down into his eyes, making my hands itch with the urge to reach up and move it out of the way, because this man has some killer blue eyes.
“He did.” I nod. “He marched right back across the yard and up onto the porch and handed me a twenty-dollar bill right in front of my mother.”
“I hope you blew it all on something ridiculous, like a shitload of candy.”
“Oh, I didn’t spend it. I lit it on fire right in front of them, tossed it into the grass to burn, and then went back inside to eat my cake.”
“You’re fucking savage, and I’m here for it,” Bodhi tells me, inching his flip-flop-covered feet even closer to me until his chest is bumping against my arms still hugging my planner to my me.
Reaching into his back pocket, he grabs his phone and holds it out to the side of us.
“When’s your birthday?”
“Uh, October 25th, why?” I ask, as he taps against the screen of his phone with his thumb before sliding it back into his pocket.
“Just put your birthday in my phone with two reminders so I will never, ever forget it. And just so you know, I buy the best fucking birthday presents ever,” he informs me, and I just want to toss him down on the floor and mount him like a goddamn bike.
“Live a little, Tess Powell,” Bodhi speaks softly, the ocean breeze ruffling through his hair as we cruise to the mainland. “Toss the planner overboard, stop making a plan, and just see where life takes us.”
My skin prickles and feels all hot and itchy, and my heart starts thumping rapidly in my chest when I take a step back from him and pull the planner away from me to look down at it. For the first time in my life, I suddenly don’t want to be tied to a plan or a schedule. I just want to stand on the top deck of a ferry, riding it just because it’s fun, with a man who makes me feel like I don’t have to be someone I’m not. Like I don’t have to be a smiley, happy, easygoing woman on a first date, who has to be nice and agreeable to everything and hide her crazy if she ever wants to get a second date. Fuck that shit. I’m letting my freak flag fly, and if Bodhi can’t handle it, then it’s his loss.
“Here, hold this,” I order Bodhi as I shove the planner into his chest, and he has just enough time to grab it before it falls to the floor.
Reaching into the back pocket of my black, holey, skinny jeans, I pull out a pack of matches I swiped from SIG earlier and then get the travel-sized bottle of lighter fluid out of the inside zipper pocket of my crossbody. Taking the planner back from Bodhi, I walk a few feet away from the railing, over to a small metal trash can bolted to the floor next to the stairs that lead down to the lower deck. Chucking the planner inside the can that already has a paper cup and a wad of used napkins in it, I pop up the nozzle of the lighter fluid bottle with my thumb, and squirt a generous amount all over the planner until it’s completely soaked. Pushing the nozzle back down and shoving the lighter fluid back inside my bag, I open up the book of matches and rip one out, slide it against the striker until it ignites, and then quickly toss it in before I change my mind.
“Well, that’s one way to do it.” Bodhi nods with a smile when the planner quickly goes up in flames, the fingers of one of his hands lacing through mine down by my side.
He gives my hand a squeeze as we both stare down into the fire of my quickly burning life plans, thanks to the lighter fluid and this crazy man next to me who makes me feel like doing crazy things.
“Don’t you want to know why I have my own traveling torching kit?” I turn my face to stare at his profile, studying the sharp angles of his perfect jawline, his full lips, and a dimple in one of his cheeks, when he turns his head and our eyes meet.
“Do you find yourself torching things a lot?”
“If it annoys me, yes.”
“Do people or animals ever get hurt?”
“Never.” I adamantly shake my head.
“Does it make you happy?”
“Yep.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.”
My entire body feels like it turns to jelly now, and I have to lock my knees together before I fall into a puddle of goo on this deck, when Bodhi drops my hand to reach into the front pocket of his shorts.
“Here, you can have this,” he says, handing me what he just pulled out of his pocket. “It’s an all-weather Zippo that works in wind and rain that a Shaman gave me in Tibet. Now you can torch things in all kinds of weather conditions.”
I never, ever want to get married or settle down, thanks to my shitty parents and their shitty marriage filled with nothing but resentment and screaming at each other. But suddenly, something as simple as a damn Zippo is making me seriously reconsider my stance on the whole thing and want to ride off into the sunset to make hot, homeless-looking surfer babies with this man.
No! Bad Tess!
“Wanna go down to the snack bar and get some popcorn, my little firestarter?”
My entire body jolts like I just touched an electric fence when he calls me that nickname, but not in an “Oh, God, I just pissed myself” way. In more of a warm, tingly, “this is freaking weird” way, like I’m suddenly starting to believe in the whole soul mates thing Birdie, Wren, and Emily never shut up about that doesn’t really exist. Even though he said he didn’t need to know why I travel around with lighter fluid, once again, I find myself spewing my baggage all over the place, because Bodhi just has a face that makes you want to tell him all of your secrets and let him make everything better.
“Funny story, my dad’s favorite movie ever was Stephen King’s Firestarter,” I explain to Bodhi as he takes my hand again and starts leading me down the stairs to the snack bar. “It’s one of the only things I remember about him. He worked nights and was rarely home or awake when I was, but on the rare occasions we were awake at the same time, he’d let me sit on the couch with him and watch that movie.
“And my mom would always yell at him on the rare occasions she felt like being a mother,” I continue as Bodhi orders us each a popcorn and a soda from the window, pays, and we head back outside to stand by the railing down here to enjoy the view. “My dad would look over at me and ask, ‘Are you scared?’ and I’d shake my head, and he’d turn to my mom and say, ‘See? She’s fine.’ And I wasn’t scared. I knew it was make-believe and that little girls really couldn’t light things on fire with their mind.”