“What’re you doing?”
“Exactly what it looks like.”
“Articulate it to me. It’s six in the morning.”
“Quarter to nine. And I’m throwing away your clothes.”
“Why?” I demanded, straightening my back alertly. I didn’t have money to replace those clothes, no matter how horrid they were. Didn’t he know people who didn’t have his money valued every little thing they owned?
He didn’t stop what he was doing, carrying on with the same smooth motion as he emptied out my side of the closet.
“Well, because we had a bet, and in that bet, you promised you’d let me get you a whole new wardrobe, and since you’ll be wanting to take those clothes with you back home, you won’t have any room for these ones. Shame, really. But that’s life for you.”
I knew what he was doing, and I didn’t appreciate it. He wanted to help me look good and proper so the people of Fairhope would accept me.
Well, despite my bitterness, I didn’t want to be accepted.
I liked to stick out like a sore thumb, a weed in an otherwise picturesque rose garden, and remind them that this town wasn’t all that.
“Leave my clothes be.”
“A bet’s a bet.”
“I’ll honor the bet, but I still want my clothes.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t change me. I am who I am, and if you don’t like it, you’re welcome to join Fairhope’s general population and ignore me.”
Or engage in sexual warfare where you low-key sexually harass me.
That seemed to be the trend, too.
“Thing is, it’s not, in fact, who you are.” He swiveled toward me, giving me a stern look. His eyes could melt panties in the same way Uri Geller could bend teaspoons. “You’re the closest thing to Virgin Mary I’ve ever kissed, yet you prance around lookin’ like a man-eater. Your self-destruction button is big and shiny and red, and I want to break it. You lost yesterday, and I don’t like sore losers. Now get your ass up. We need to get an early start. It’s breakfast and duty-free shopping.”
If it weren’t for the fact that it was me he was bossing around, I could appreciate Cruz’s domineering streak. I momentarily toyed with the idea of refusing him and getting into another argument, but the truth was, I was fresh out of fight after the day I’d had yesterday.
The Rob thing really worried me, and the kiss with Cruz didn’t help matters at all. Like bangs in fifth grade, it never should’ve happened, and I wouldn’t let it happen again.
I knew he’d been drunk beforehand—I could taste the whiskey on his lips—and figured it was a human error on both our parts. But dang, he made some convincing points about why we should hook up.
“All right. Let me call Bear and make sure he’s okay, and then we’ll go.”
Cruz seemed surprise by my flexible attitude. His eyes skimmed over me suspiciously as I moved around the room, as if he knew I was planning an escape.
There was something lethal about those dark blue eyes and strong jaw. I wondered if I was the only person who noticed that about him. That he was not always chivalrous and suave.
“Why Bear?” he asked out of nowhere when I got out of the bathroom, wearing a pair of cropped shorts and a cherry blossom top that showed off my midriff.
Funny. Even Rob hadn’t asked me that.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I applied a second coat of lipstick in front of the little mirror by the entrance door. “I suppose because I grew attached to him in the last seven years or so and would like to know if he slept well, ate this morning, that kind of stuff.”
Cruz leaned a shoulder against the wall, one stylish sneaker propped against my suitcase, watching me intently.
“No. Why’d you choose that name?”
“Promise you won’t laugh.” Was I actually going to give up this info? Our families were merging—he’d hear things sooner or later.
“I cannot, in good conscience, promise you that, considering the things that tend to leave your mouth unfiltered.”
“Fair enough.” I slid the lipstick into my little fake-fur purse. “I called him Bear after Bear Rinehart, Needtobreathe’s lead singer.”
“That Christian rock group?”
“One and the same.” I waited for the blow to come.
“Isn’t Bear the guy’s nickname, though? His first name is William or something.”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time, did I? And I couldn’t afford the fancy name books people buy before they give birth and think of something more fun, like Axel or Cosmo.”
I watched him, expecting him to cackle—I did feel dumb after finding out about it myself—but to my surprise, he shrugged the whole thing off, joining me by the door and opening it for me.
“Well?” I raised my eyebrows. “That’s it?”
“You gave me an explanation to my satisfaction. Yes. That’s it.”
“Do you think it’s a weird name?”
“I wouldn’t choose it for my own son, no. Then again, I wasn’t the one who pushed a seven-pound human out of an intimate hole in my body after eight hours of contractions and nine months of heartburn, so I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask.”
“Nice answer. And it was ten hours, not eight.”
“Christ. No wonder you turned to Jesus.”
After I called Bear to make sure he was okay (he and Landon were hitting the ice rink later today), we went up to the breakfast buffet. Cruz had freshly-squeezed orange juice with egg whites and some fruit, while I had everything else the continental breakfast had to offer.
I hadn’t been on a vacation since the summer I’d turned fifteen and, now that I’d resigned myself to not getting to enjoy the trip with my son, I wanted to squeeze the heck out of this occasion before I went back home.
Cruz made no comment about the amount of food I was shoveling into my mouth at a Guinness-record speed, and I had the dignity to not try to explain my chipmunk-like behavior.
But when I arrived with my seventh course for the meal—my dessert, a chocolate chip ice cream—and began seasoning it with salt, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“You put salt in your ice cream?” He dropped his newspaper, glaring at me.
“The saltiness heightens the sweetness.”
“Your craziness heightens your hotness.”
“Cruz!” I chastised. “What did you drink? It’s unlike you not to hate me.”
“I never hated you, you fool.”
There was something wary and unguarded about the way he looked at me. Something so completely un-Cruz-like. But I chose to ignore it because…well, because I was a mess and knew nothing about men and did not want to make any mistakes.
He might be harmless, but he still didn’t make me feel safe.
From there, we moved to the shopping mall, or arena, or whatever this hell was. Duty free or not, none of the prices were within the range I liked to pay.
Let me rephrase—I did not like to pay anything at all for the atrocities I called my clothes, a fact that oftentimes landed me at different thrift stores, where apparently, a lot of the clothes belonged to women of a certain ancient profession.