Chapter Nine

SOPHIE

 

“Colton?”

Sophie stood at the counter, waiting for her double scoop of coffee and coconut filled waffle cone to be made by the achingly slow cashier behind the frosty glass counter. Colton glanced up from a table for two where he sat, alone, by the window, dragging a bright-red straw through the dregs at the bottom of his old-timey milkshake glass.

“Sophie? The hell?” He seemed neither glad to see her nor repulsed. For quiet, thoughtful Colton, such was the norm. “I thought you had surfing lessons.”

“That was yesterday, dork,” she chuckled across the empty ice cream parlor. It was just after two, Sophie having memorized the hastily scrawled note Jessie had left on the nightstand for her:

Sorry, lover, gotta work this AM. Meet me at Scoopz at 3 after I get off my shift? That is, if you’re not busy?

She had ended the note without enough question marks to signify her lack of confidence in their admittedly new relationship, as if Sophie could ever deny such an offer: the chance to sleep in, wake up to indulgent ice cream and Jessie’s face her reward?

The cashier handed her the cone and, after thanking him, Sophie drifted toward Colton’s table. Halfway there, she noted the matching milkshake glass and crumpled napkins and untucked chair directly across from him. She stood beside the table, not wanting to interrupt. “Are you…on a date?”

Colton’s face flushed beet red, his eyes landing everywhere but on hers. “No, why?”

She gently nudged the empty chair across from him with the toe of her clean, white skate shoe. “Uh, the obvious evidence to the contrary, that’s what.”

Colton’s blush settled in, casting a merry glow on his breezily handsome face. It was hard to believe with all the time that had passed since their ill-fated prom night together, he was still the same effortlessly beautiful man-child she’d tried to go straight with. Maybe it was his vaguely feminine features, that feathery dirty-blond hair and those long, sensitive fingers and soft, smooth body that had tricked her into thinking a boy might quench all those burning desires she had for her own sex. Instead, she’d just ended up hurting him, and seeing him twice in a row during her first few days back in Siesta Beach was feeling like less of a trigger and more of an apology tour. “Well, I’m glad you’re getting back out there in the dating pool after I broke your heart,” she teased.

He chuckled heartily. They’d already hashed out their feelings for each other in that cheap hotel room after the dance four years prior, when no matter how hard he’d tried, sexy, willing, eager, sweet Colton had failed to convert her as he so desperately wanted to. The champagne had helped them pour out their feelings, such as they were, but not as much as Colton’s generous and forgiving heart. The last thing she’d wanted to do was hurt him and, after all these years, leading him on had been Sophie’s biggest regret from high school.

Her only regret, in fact.

“It took a while,” he teased, giving up on his milkshake and pushing it away toward his unseen partner’s glass. “But, well… I figured it was time.”

“Bullshit,” she snorted, taste buds alive with the hint of coconut and coffee on her hungry tongue. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since, well…Jessie. She blushed heartily at the thought. “You were already macking hard on Ashley Seltzer at the graduation dance, you old horn dog.”

His blush, only recently starting to fade, reignited itself with the sudden memory. “I mean,” he chortled. “I had to get back at you somehow.”

“Mission accomplished,” she murmured noncommittally above the sweet, creamy deliciousness of her coffee cone. Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him she was more jealous of Ashley’s appetizing rear as it threatened to poke out of her shimmering silver micro dress every time she and Colton hit the crowded dance floor. She was savoring the rich, delicious ice cream, to say nothing of the memory of Ashley’s tight derriere, when Colton motioned out the window at a trio of picnic tables, rustic and shaded beneath rippling red umbrellas. “Great weather today,” he murmured, apropos of nothing. “That cone would probably taste great in the summer breeze.”

Her jaw opened at the same time as the men’s room door on the far side of the ice cream parlor, and almost as wide. “Are you trying to get rid of me, Colton?”

“No,” he chuckled self-consciously, both of them knowing it was exactly what he was doing. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable out there, that’s all.”

“Out where?” A male voice chimed in, as if perhaps he’d been standing there all along, lingering halfway between Sophie and the cluttered table for two.

Sophie was in a good mood for once, nodding at the shady picnic tables just outside the plate glass window next to the table. “This shmuck was trying to pawn me off on those tables out there in the hot ass sun,” she murmured, still so shocked and mock offended she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Colton,” the new member of their vaguely familiar trio teased, sinking down breezily into the chair across from him with a proprietary air. “Don’t be rude. There’s plenty of room in here for all three of us.”

“Us?” Sophie couldn’t help but blurt as she noted the obvious implications of the offer.

Colton audibly gulped before nodding at the interloper. “Sophie, this is Kendrick. Kendrick, this is—”

“Sophie?” Kendrick’s face lit up, warm, brown skin growing lighter with the delight featured there. He pushed thick black, almost retro glasses frames up his nose. “The Sophie from…prom night?”

“Colton!” Sophie gasped, waffle cone suddenly forgotten as she sank into the nearest chair and dragged it over. “You told him?”

Kendrick was incredulous, lips curling into a satisfied smile. “Told me? It’s, like, my bedtime story every night.”

“Oh. My. God.”

Kendrick placed a comforting hand on Sophie’s arm, long ebony fingers squeezing it reassuringly and with a vaguely gentle grip. “It’s not like that, girl. It’s…” He nodded at Colton across the table. “You tell her, baby.”

Sophie sank back into her seat, mind thoroughly blown. “What is actually happening right now?”

Colton chuckled, his goose obviously cooked, the cat literally out of the bag, all his bluster back at Foam about banging surf bunnies and spring breakers an obvious bluff. “Listen, it’s just, I never told you because Hallmark doesn’t exactly make cards for that kind of thing but…after prom and senior year and everything that happened with you, with us, I just… You inspired me.”

“I? Inspired? You?”

Kendrick’s giggle was equally merry and light. “Girl, I know this may come as quite a shock to you, but…you are never gonna hear the happy ending if you keep interrupting him like that.”

She shot him a wicked eye roll. “Listen, Kendrick, and don’t take this the wrong way but forgive me for being vaguely mind blown when this dude was Siesta High’s resident lady killer last time I saw him, so…give me a moment to process the new deets, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Kendrick murmured, absently dragging his straw through the melted muck at the bottom of his strawberry milkshake. “It’s…a little hard for me to believe, too, Sophie.”

“What Kendrick’s trying to say,” Colton said a smidge defensively, bewildering Sophie all the more, “is that after you poured your heart out to me in that hotel room, about all the girls you secretly pined for and couldn’t bring yourself to approach, it…hit home.”

“But you never said a word, Colt? Not that night. Not all these years, not even yesterday back at the surf shop. I just…” Sophie knew her words sounded like an accusation.

“I couldn’t, really. Not…not even to myself. But I sat there, listening to you, and I just wanted to scream ‘get out of my head,’ you know, because everything you were saying was how I felt about…”

“Boys?” Sophie finished for him.

“Yes, girl, ring-a-ding,” Kendrick murmured playfully from the sidelines. She nudged his foot beneath the table before he apologized with his hands.

“But all those girls? Senior year? A new one every week?”

Colton sighed, sinking back in his chair as if with the weight of it all. “It was like I was trying to prove to myself how straight I was.”

She clucked her tongue, glancing from Kendrick to Colton and back again, then back some more. “Kind of like I was doing with you on prom night, huh?”

“I guess that’s why I never blamed you at the time, because in my heart, I knew exactly what you were doing. Then, after that night, I started…doing it myself.”

“But if you were so into guys, how did you make it with all those girls?”

“Maybe it’s easier for guys,” Colton surmised, eyes peering past her as if drifting back through time. “Or maybe I’m just a really good actor. Or maybe I just really, really wanted to be straight, for all the wrong reasons. But all the while, it just felt like work to me.”

She knew the feeling all too well. “So when did you give up…working?”

Colton glanced at Kendrick first, offering an apologetic smile. “Do you mind?”

Kendrick rolled his eyes. “Sweet Jesus no, Colt. God knows I have a past of my own you’ve heard a time or two.” As if on cue, a cell phone bleated next to Kendrick’s milkshake glass. “Saved by the bell,” he teased, patting Colton’s hand tenderly on the table before winking at Sophie. “Duty calls,” he murmured to Sophie as he stood beside her. “Enjoy story time and don’t let him skate on the juicy parts, ’kay? I promise you, this will all be worth the wait!”

Colton nodded, glancing up with an obvious sigh of relief. The bell over the door rang as Kendrick departed, chatting amiably into the phone as the door shut again behind him.

“He’s a crisis counselor for Mercy General, so…always on the phone.”

Sophie watched Kendrick pace back and forth outside their window, gesticulating with his hands as if forgetting one held the phone. “Are we gonna talk about him, or just gloss over the giant ass, pretty boy elephant in the room?”

Colton chuckled. “Eventually, sure, I just… Let me get this off my chest first, okay? It’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for years now.”

Sophie nodded, licking her cone absently before it melted all over her favorite khaki crinkle skirt. “By all means, proceed. This shit is getting juicy.”

Colton rolled his eyes before proceeding. “It was the year after high school before I finally had the opportunity to do something about my feelings for guys. Like, everybody had gone away to school, or at least community college, and the place was a ghost town. Literally. Winter break had come and gone, and it was too early for kids to come back for the summer, so it was even emptier than usual. I was still working at Foam and surfing every day, just to fill the time, and it was late one session that I looked out from the swells and saw this guy kind of lingering on the beach near my towel. Not beside it, but near it. Like, inappropriately near it, you know? He basically had the whole beach to himself, and he had to chill two feet from my Bob Marley towel?

“Anyway, he looked like he could be a spring breaker cuz he had one of those foam boards you get at the cheap surf shops, but he never ended up using it. I thought then that he might be cruising me, because I was out there alone and he set his towel down just a few yards away from mine and sat there, still watching even when there was no good reason to be. But I’d never been cruised before, never done anything with a guy before, you know?”

Sophie murmured. “I don’t know anything anymore, Colton. My mind is officially blown and before I get to tell you, I’m so very happy for you. Like, honestly. I just… It kind of hurts that you never told me before just now.”

He nodded. “I wanted to tell you yesterday, but I was nervous seeing you again and I figured, if you were in town for the summer, I’d spill it eventually.”

She nudged his foot under the table. Hard. “So spill already? I’m literally on the edge of my seat.” She pointed with her free hand as if for emphasis.

He chuckled and did as he was told. “Anyway, I could tell he was cute even from a distance and when I finally gave up and rode my last wave in, he was even cuter up close. Small and slight, smooth all over, if you know what I mean.”

“Gross.”

He snorted. “Anyway, he watched me dry off, like…very obviously. It was late afternoon; the beach was deserted. I hadn’t gotten laid in months, so I wasn’t entirely opposed to being ogled by some pretty stranger, let me tell you. I wanted to say about a hundred cocky things to him, and it looked like he wanted to do the same, but neither of us really ended up saying anything. I just kind of trudged over to the boardwalk shower and, by the time I turned the water on, I saw that he'd followed me. Not close, but close enough, you know? He watched me shower and when I was done, I took a risk and held the nozzle for him.”

Sophie could picture the scene: Colton, long and limber and dripping wet in the sun. He must have looked all but irresistible. No wonder the pretty boy was ogling him. “How romantic,” she teased.

“I guess he thought so. He said he hadn’t done anything to get dirty yet, but I told him he looked hot and sweaty anyway. He smiled and got under the water anyway.”

Sophie crossed her legs at the implications. This was like hearing a smutty book read out loud by your favorite narrator, one dirty paragraph at a time. “Did you, like, bathe him?”

Colton snorted. “What? No? But I sure wanted to. He was so pretty, and I told him that as he dried off. I heard keys and saw one of those old-timey hotel keychains resting on his tank top as he was drying off. I knew it was for one of the older motels on the strip. Not too far. I figured I’d go with him, if he asked.”

“Did he?” Sophie blurted when Colton paused to sip the water by his milkshake glass.

“Not in so many ways, but as he was drying off, he told me I looked thirsty. I said I was. He asked if I was legal, but I don’t think it was about beer, you know? I said I was, but he looked too young to drink. He said he was, but not on his fake ID. I grabbed my board and followed him to the Sea Pines just up the street. He opened the door and let me in and handed me a beer. We drank on the little porch outside his room, watching the waves and each other.”

He paused again. This time it was Sophie’s turn to gulp audibly. “Jesus, Colton. This is pretty damn hot.”

“It got hotter, obviously. One thing led to another and, well…he was my first.”

She literally begged for more details. “First what? Kiss? Handy? BJ? What, dude? Spill already!”

“First…everything. Turns out he was on spring break after all, and I just stayed with him until he had to leave. Literally stayed with him. I mean, we barely left the room. We kept in touch for a little while after he got back to school in Alabama, but you know how it goes. Still, after that, I never looked back.”

Sophie nibbled the last of her cone, wondering when she’d actually finished the rest of it. She glanced out at Kendrick, still pacing between the picnic tables Colton had tried to banish her to. “When did lover boy out there enter the picture?”

Colton smiled the grin of a happy, satisfied man. A man in love. With another man. At long last. “Almost two years ago, actually.”

“Wow, Colt. Congrats.”

He waved away the compliment. “He’s right, though, when he says he owes you one.”

Sophie felt flattered, if confused. “Yeah, how’s that?”

“Soph, I would have never had the balls to follow that spring breaker back to his room and learn everything there was about pleasing another man if you hadn’t given me the inspiration to do so.”

She gave him a little “pshaw” snort, then waved her hands dismissively for good measure. “I just led by example, Colton. You would have given in to temptation eventually.”

“Eventually? Maybe, like…ten, twenty years in the future. But that night, prom night, everything you said, how lonely you sounded and how hard it was for you to come out in a small beach town, it really hit home. I knew, because of you, it was possible to live the life I wanted, and not just pretend forever. So…thank you. Honestly.”

Sophie shook her head, as dazed and confused as she’d been after Jessie’s first tentative, sweltering kiss back at the beach house, less than an actual day earlier. What a short, strange trip it had been. “I’m happy for you, Colton, really. I know how hard it can be to live a lie, so I’m glad you don’t have to do that anymore.”

He grinned, nodding at her casually sexy getup: the crinkle skirt, the chocolate-brown tank top with no bra, hair up in a pile on her head, held in place by stylish chopsticks just waiting to be slid out by an eager, willing lover. “And you? Those bikinis yesterday? Your hotsy-totsy outfit today? That shit-eating grin. Who are those for, huh, Hot Pants?”

“Just…someone I met.”

“When?”

“Yesterday.”

He rolled his eyes. “Wow, you don’t waste time, do you?”

“I wasn’t planning on a summer romance, but she was borrowing our walkway shower and it was…”

“Love at first sight, huh?”

“Probably the way that spring breaker felt, looking at you that day, Colt?”

He gave her the same dismissive handwave she’d just given him. She realized, now, how stupid it looked. “Stop.”

“Stop what?” Kendrick had suddenly appeared, face vaguely less enthusiastic than it had been before his phone call.

“I was flattering your boyfriend mercilessly,” Sophie said, making Kendrick smile, albeit not as easily as it had been too before his phone call.

He reached for Colton’s hand and squeezed it. Not for show, Sophie noticed, but with genuine, sincere affection. “Hard not to, right?”

Sophie beamed. “Sure is…”

“Listen, I don’t want to break up your reunion but duty calls and you’re my ride, Colt, so…”

Colton looked at her, already apologetic. She stood along with him. “No, no, I’m meeting someone in a few minutes anyway, so…”

They murmured goodbyes and promises to meet again, the usual empty promises that sometimes meant they would, but mostly meant they wouldn’t. Sophie didn’t need them anyway. She knew, in a town as small as Siesta Beach, with three whole months to kill, that she’d be running into Colton and Kendrick before too long anyway. They shared more awkward hugs and murmured promises before Colton finally drifted through the door, Kendrick holding it open for him. As if forgetting something, he murmured to Colton and sent him on his way with a merry shove. Colton chuckled but drifted outside just the same. Kendrick came back and embraced Sophie gently but eagerly. “Honestly, it’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m exaggerating obviously, but Colton talks about you more often than you’d think.”

It was hard to talk, what with the sudden lump in her throat. “I’m honored.”

His smile was warm and easy as he gently drifted away. He paused in the open door, giving her a quick up and down. “Listen, for what it’s worth? Maybe you should sit outside for a bit. If you’re really meeting someone, that is.”

“Oh yeah. Why’s that?”

He offered a radiant smile, smooth and knowing and conspiratorially girlish. “Those headlights have been on the whole time you’ve been in here, girl. I know it’s cold, but…maybe play a little hard to get for your next meetup, ’kay?”

With that he was gone, leaving an orchestra of playful giggles in his wake. Some of them even her own. Glancing down at her sexiest blouse, she realized he wasn’t kidding. Then again, if he’d had the chance to see Jessie walk in, Kendrick might have been a tad more understanding of why anticipation had her body straight out of whack and her nipples on high alert.

All the same, she busied herself with throwing away the boys’ trash, and her own, before ordering a diet soda to go from the surprisingly quick counter dude. She left an unreasonably big tip. He thanked her profusely all the way out the door. She settled, at last, on the shadiest picnic table, enjoying the fresh air breeze if not the unseasonable, even unreasonable, summer heat. All the same, Kendrick was right: she couldn’t go around showing off her excitement every time Jessie appeared. Then again, God help her breasts once Jessie showed up in the flesh. Sophie glanced at her phone, surprised to see it was almost three.

She sipped her soda absently, glancing across the street from the row of ice cream parlors and souvenir stands at Beach Break, the waterfront restaurant where Jessie worked. In no time, she would be breezing through the front door, ambling across the wide, clean paved street toward where Sophie sat.

And after that? Who knows, she thought, wriggling atop her wooden bench seat with the familiar tang of anticipation on the tip of her eager tongue. They had the whole summer to convince themselves this was real, and Sophie was nothing if not eager to do so, one kiss, one climax, one surf session at a time.