by Sivec, Tara
“I figure it’s best to begin a date by dumping all your baggage out right away, instead of carrying that heavy shit around with you for months.” He shrugs, his arm rubbing up and down against mine with the motion and making the back of my damn neck tingle this time.
“So, what’s the plan for tonight exactly, now that I know everything about you? We’re just going to… ride the ferry?”
Bodhi shrugs again. “I don’t know. But I do know I’ve only gotten to ride the ferry once so far, it was fun as hell, and I wanted to do it again with the hottest girl ever. We can play the rest of the night by ear and do whatever.”
“That sounds awful,” I complain, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach when he calls me the hottest girl ever. Pushing away from the railing to reach into my black crossbody canvas bag that says I don’t put out with a picture of a fire extinguisher that has a big X through it, I grab my spiral planner, flipping it open to today’s date. “No offense, but you didn’t strike me as the type of person who would plan a date, so I put together a schedule. We already missed our allotted time to have coffee at Island Brew, so we can just skip to the dinner reservation I made for us at this really good Italian place on the mainland, and then at 8:27, I have us down for—Hey!”
Bodhi snatches the planner out of my hands, holding it high above his head when I repeatedly try to grab it back, until I look like an idiot for jumping up and down, because he’s at least six inches taller than me.
“You seriously planned out our entire date, down to the minute?” he asks with an amused smile on his face. Since he doesn’t seem to be making fun of me at the moment and just looks curious, I decide against lighting his shirt on fire. “Are we now at your baggage part of the evening, or is this just another cute little quirk you have?”
“I don’t have cute little quirks,” I mutter, punching him as hard as I can in the arm and making him chuckle when he still doesn’t give me my planner. “Or baggage.”
Liar, liar, let’s set this whole ferry on fire!
When my murderous stare just makes Bodhi’s smile brighter, I finally give up trying to get my planner back, and he finally stops trying to hold it out of my reach. But he still doesn’t give it to me and moves it behind his back, the hot, annoying bastard.
Bodhi just keeps staring at me with one of his eyebrows quirked until I can’t handle the silence any longer, and I finally throw my hands up in irritation.
“I just like having a plan, okay? Punctuality is important. And I never forget anything because of that planner. Not a birthday, or an anniversary, or a milestone, or an event, or my work schedule, or to go back and pick up something I dropped off when I said I would be right back from….” I trail off, not even realizing I was getting worked up and my voice started getting louder and louder.
Bodhi slowly pulls his arm out from behind his back and hands my planner to me without a word, and I snatch it from his hand and hug it to my chest.
“It’s stupid.” I roll my eyes, looking out at the water and the sun setting in the distance.
“Let me be the judge of that,” Bodhi says quietly, his gentle voice and just this… comforting presence he has about him making me feel like I can tell him anything and he won’t judge me.
I look back at him as he pulls a vape pen out of the front pocket of his shorts and starts to bring it up to his mouth, pausing for a second and holding my stare.
“Does this bother you? I won’t do it if it bothers you,” he asks, wiggling the pen in his fingers that I know damn well, even after just meeting the guy a few hours ago, does not have a flavored nicotine cartridge in it.
I glance around the completely empty top deck of the ferry while everyone else is down on the lower deck, where the snack bar and the actual bar is located.
“Your body, your choice.” I shrug, looking back at him. “Doesn’t bother me at all.”
“You’re a pretty awesome chick, Tess Powell.” Bodhi smiles at me before taking a hit of his pen, making me return his smile and shake my head at him.
“When I was six, my parents dropped me off at my great-grandmother’s house here on Summersweet to go to the store, and I’m still waiting for them to come back and get me,” I speak quickly and with a sarcastic smile, because it’s easier that way, making Bodhi choke a little on the smoke he just inhaled. “I guess that’s why I’m such a freak about using a planner and organizing my life down to the minute. I don’t want to forget anything, ever. No matter how big and no matter how small. I like having a plan and sticking to it, because that’s the mature and responsible thing to do when you’re an adult. And don’t go feeling sorry for me or anything, because I had a good childhood after that. My grandma was pretty awesome up until she died a month before my eighteenth birthday, leaving behind her credit card debt and her cottage that has been refinanced so many times I will probably be seventy before everything is paid off. But I love my job, and I have awesome friends that are my family by choice, which is a lot better than having stupid blood relatives anyway. So there you have it; there’s my baggage. Would you like to jump overboard now, or should I push you?”
Bodhi just keeps smiling at me as he closes the distance between us, making my heart beat faster in my chest when he reaches up and cups my cheek in his palm, gently rubbing his thumb back and forth while he stares down into my eyes until I just want to grab onto his shirt and yank his mouth down to mine.
“My dad left in the middle of my high school graduation, while I was giving my valedictorian speech, to go to the dance recital of one of his clients’ daughters.” He smiles down at me even as he tells me this shitty story.
“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 go
ddamn 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.”
“After you tried it, of course.” Bodhi snickers, tossing a handful of popcorn in his mouth, and then tossing a handful over the railing and into the wind for some low-flying seagulls.
“Of course. I was super pissed my grandmother didn’t go up in flames when she yelled at me for spilling a bowl of cereal a few months after I’d been living there.” I shrug. “That movie also taught me a very valuable lesson—that if you can’t get mind-fire to work, actual fires should always be lit outside, and not in the middle of the living room carpet just for funsies.”
Bodhi laughs, and the sound makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, which just annoys me, and I aggressively shove too much popcorn in my mouth, making me choke on a few kernels.
“Anyway, after they walked out of my life, I kind of got obsessed with the idea of fire,” I tell him after I finish almost choking to death on popcorn, being more honest with him about my love of fire than with anyone else in my life, including my best friends. They just think I’m bat-fucking-shit crazy and they’ve accepted it. “Whenever anything would annoy me, I started writing it down on a piece of paper and then lighting it on fire. I hate math. I hate people. Tucker Shoemaker doesn’t like me back. I hate people. I have daddy issues. I’m never drinking tequila again. People…. And so on and so forth. It was like watching all my troubles just magically burn away until they were gone, and it helped me stop worrying about them, or dwelling on them, or being annoyed by them. I don’t know; it feels weirdly therapeutic, and I’m sure a psychologist would have a field day with me, but whatever.”
“Let it all burn, my little firestarter,” Bodhi says softly, while I stare up at him, wondering where in the hell this man came from.
“I am definitely sleeping with you tonight,” I inform him as we both lean over the railing and toss popcorn to the seagulls while the sun sets out over the ocean.
“Excellent.” Bodhi nods with that adorable, lopsided smile. “Good thing I put on clean underwear.”
CHAPTER 7
Bodhi
“O Come All Ye Firemen.”
Present day
“The womenfolk are all at Sip and Bitch, and I was promised a goddamn good time. Someone better get off this stupid video call and start showing me a goddamn good time, or I’m getting my baseball bat from my golf cart.”
“Oooh, look at this! I’m on Pinterest and found The Top Twenty Most Romantic Ways to Propose at Christmas. I’ll just read them off one-by-one, and you shout when one of them tickles your fancy.”
“Instead of Sip and Bitch, I’m gonna call this Drink and Dicks, because you’re all being a bunch of namby-pamby little dickwads.”
“You need to have some respect and stop proposing during or after a sexual activity. If you wouldn’t have left the island, you could have done it for national television last night when ESPN was here. She would have had no choice but to say yes, knowing mill
ions of people will be watching when it airs tomorrow night.”
“Number one, spell out the words ‘will you marry me’ with Christmas stockings. Okay, that’s pretty fucking cute. I could whip up some sparkly ones and overnight them to you.”
“Can the Golden Girls stop yammering about this Hallmark bullshit and drink some beers already?”
“I’m telling you, go big or go home. Birdie still tells everyone who will listen about how I proposed on the 18th hole of that televised golf tournament. ESPN wanted an update on you anyway, so I can have them call you to do a quick video interview that they can add to the special before it airs, and you can propose to her then.”
“Number two, write out the words ‘will you marry me’ with Christmas lights. Good, but not sparkly enough.”
“Can you work out some kind of pyrotechnic display for the video call? ESPN will eat that shit up.”
“Yes! Fireworks! Those are super fucking sparkly! Where was I? Number three or number four?”
“Back in my day, you didn’t ask a woman to marry you. You told her you were getting hitched.”
“No one gives a shit what happened back in 1910, Murphy. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Don’t hit me!”
“Number three, hire carolers to serenade her some fun Christmas hits such as ‘We Wish You’d Merry This Guy,’ ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Groomsman,’ and ‘Hark the Herald Wedding Rings.’”
“I agree with the older gentleman.”
A scream unlike anything I’ve ever heard comes out of me and echoes around the living room of The Redinger House, and my cellphone goes flying out of my hand, when Sheldon suddenly inserts himself into my FaceTime call with Palmer, Shepherd, and Murphy in a quiet voice right by my ear.
“If you need some rope to make sure she doesn’t run away when you tell her what to do, I’ve got some in my trunk,” Sheldon finishes.
When my heart rate finally drops back down to normal, I look over my shoulder from where I’m lounging on the couch to sigh at Sheldon, who just seems to pop up out of nowhere all the freaking time. When I got to the end of the breakfast buffet table this morning after I’d filled my plate, I turned around to go to my table and bam! He was two inches away from my face, asking if I had any zip ties in one of the many pockets of my black cargo shorts.
