by JA Huss
“Because you… tried to kiss her?”
I’m still holding her hand. And she’s not trying to pull away. “No. Because I told Vann I fucked her in the alley behind Sick Boyz and she… well, she didn’t like that.”
“What did Vann say?”
“You know.” I wave my free hand in the air. “He was all understanding and shit. Since he was busy fucking you inside Sick Boyz at the very same moment.”
“Oh.” Soshee laughs and covers her mouth with her free hand. And is it weird that we’re still holding hands? “Well, then.” She shrugs. “I guess it’s all out in the open.”
“I guess it is.”
“And you’re what, done with Fort Collins? Gonna go home now?”
“Not now. Now, I’m gonna put it all behind me and… I don’t know. I’m kinda hoping I can spend the day with you.”
“With me?” She brightens. And I have to admit, I love her brightness. “What should we do?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you want. What do you usually do on Saturday mornings?”
“Hmm. My regularly scheduled Saturday mornings might not work.”
“You stalk him, don’t you?”
She winces. “If I say yes, does that make me totally pathetic?”
“A little?” I laugh.
“OK, then. My answer is no. I usually spend Saturday mornings with hot guys from Key West.”
“Really?”
“Truly.”
“Guys like me?”
“Guys just like you.”
“And what do you do with them?”
“You know. Little bit of this, little bit of that.”
I fold my other hand over hers and squeeze it a little. She looks at her hand. Then her eyes track up to mine. “You want to have a date today, Soshee? Put the past behind us and like… move on and shit?”
“Only if you’ll agree to be my trophy boy and let me parade you all over town and make all the local tramps jealous.”
I guffaw. “Deal.”
“Deal?”
“Such a deal.” And then… then… I don’t know what comes over me, but I bring her hand up to my lips and I kiss her fingertips. All of them. One at a time. So they each get their own well-deserved attention.
She stares at me as I do this, unblinking and still. I let go of her hand and wait for her reaction, my stomach going a little wild and crazy with the anticipation.
“OK,” she says, a little bit breathless from my cool, flirty romantic gesture.
I stand up and wink at her. “I’m just gonna jump in the shower real fast and then we’ll get this date started.”
She places both hands in her lap and bunches her shoulders up to her ears. “I can’t wait.”
Soshee talks to me the entire time I’m in the shower and even though I’m not a talkative guy—like at all—and even though I can’t really understand a word she says over the sound of the water, I kinda like her constant chatter.
It’s something new for me. I’ve lived alone in my cottage on the same street I grew up on since I was twenty-five. I have never lived with a girl. Other than my sister, of course. And she left home at eighteen for college and never moved back, so she hardly counts.
I rarely let girls sleep at my place. In fact, I rarely bring them back to my place at all. I do hookups. And I don’t really care where those hookups happen. So there is almost never a discussion between the girls I ‘date’—if you can call it that—about coming back to my place.
So I smile the entire time I’m washing up, picturing Soshee out there in the rental apartment, helping herself to—well, whatever the fuck she wants. It’s not like anything in this place is mine. I have one suitcase and that’s it. So what do I care if she wanders around while I’m not looking?
I linger in the shower, enjoying the hot water pouring down my back. I didn’t get much sleep last night—maybe two hours? But that’s nothing new. I haven’t slept more than two hours a night in months. Not since Rosalinda came back into my life and tipped me sideways on my axis. Whatever the actual number is, it wasn’t enough and I should be exhausted. I should feel heavy from all the weird shit that happened yesterday.
But I don’t. I feel refreshed and ready to spend a whole day with this red-headed siren. A whole day that has nothing do with stalking our exes.
I shut the water off, reach for a towel, and wrap it around my waist as I step out of the shower and head towards the bedroom where Soshee is still chattering away, her back to me as she riffles through my suitcase.
I chuckle. I can’t help it. The one thing that’s mine here, and she’s got her little hands all over it.
“What are you doing?”
She whirls around, surprised, holding up a t-shirt that says ‘Dumas Romantic Boat Tours.’ “Stalking you.” Then her eyes travel down my bare chest to the edge of the towel that dips just below the cut muscles of my hips. They pause there, then travel back up and meet mine.
I wait for the blush that never materializes.
This girl is confident.
Instead she smirks at me. “Damn, Tony. What did you say you did again? Because”—she points a polished red fingertip up and down my body—“that is quite the physique you have. And this shirt here is a tantalizing clue to a most delicious mystery that needs solving immediately.”
Her eyes dance with delight as she says all that. And her little tennis skirt swishes as she cocks a hip.
I’m the one who blushes. Maybe. No, I take it back. I don’t blush. But… yeah. Soshee Ameci is fucking sexy. Vann Vaughn is a dick. A blind one, at that. “I own a romantic sailing charter service down in Key West.”
“I’m sorry. A what?” She appears thoroughly confused.
“You know, like… fucking sunsets on the water and shit.”
She giggles. But it only takes another second for that giggle to turn into a guffaw. “Hold on,” she says, placing a hand over her heart and catching her breath. “Let me get this straight. You, Tony Dumas, own what? A… sailboat? And you charter couples around the tropics looking for romantic sunset moments?”
I shrug. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“How the hell does that happen?”
“My parents, I guess?”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Nope. That’s not enough. Explain this properly because I don’t think I’ll be able to concentrate on our date if I don’t get this story.” She walks over to me, takes me by the hand, leads me to the bed, sits down, and pats the space next to her. “Sit. And spill.”
I sit. Mostly because I just want to sit next to her and not because I enjoy talking about myself. But being close to Soshee like this… it makes my brain spin a little more than usual.
“I’m waiting!” Soshee says. “Start talking.”
“OK. Fine.” I sigh and lie back on the bed so I can stare up at the ceiling and give myself a moment to try to put my very complicated life into something that resembles a neat little box.
Because I like this Poison Ivy girl. A lot. She’s smart. And interesting. And very sexy, of course. Plus, she’s a little bit sneaky. I like that about her. I could totally picture her as my new partner in crime. I think we’d make a very good team.
Which is ridiculous. I’ve known her one day.
Vann Vaughn is a dumbass. He has no idea what he’s missing. Soshee Ameci is fucking amazing. So I turn my head a little and look at her with a crooked grin. She’s positioned herself sideways, one leg bent at the knee, her knee touching my thigh.
I can feel that touch through the towel and it kinda… turns me on.
“Have you ever heard of Bright Berry Beach Cosmetics?”
She tilts her head at me like a confused puppy. “Yeah. I love their lotion. I wish we had a shop here in FoCo. But the closest one is down in Boulder.”
“Near your mom?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She laughs. “It’s like right down the street from her shop.”
“Hmm.” It’s kinda cool that I knew that. About
her mom, I mean. “Anyway. My sister is part owner of that company and—”
“Wait! What?”
“Yeah. My fucking sister…” I sigh. “She’s a freaking billionaire. Owns one-fourth of that company. The point is, she’s rich, right? And my parents own this dive shop.”
“Like… SCUBA diving?”
“Exactly. So we came into some money just as my sister’s company was getting off the ground—”
“‘Came into some money?’” Soshee makes air quotes.
“Exactly,” I say. But I eye her cautiously to see if she’ll say anything about what that implies.
“Got it. Keep going. This story is getting better and better by the second.”
I cock my head at her. “You’re not gonna ask questions about that?”
“About what? That you just admitted you’re kinda Mob? Pshhh. My last name is Ameci, OK? I know what’s up.”
“You don’t. But… we’ll get to that later. Maybe. So anyway, we get this money and started buying up houses on our little street in Key West. We started a vacation cottage business. And then Emma, my sister, she started sending us money once she had a few extra million and my brothers and I all started our own companion businesses near the dive shop. So I run the romantic sailboat shit. It’s mostly honeymooners. And my older brother, Alonzo, he runs the deep-sea fishing boat. And my little brother, Luke, he sells these water adventure packages. Waterskiing. Speedboats. Parasailing. Shit like that.”
“So how did you get stuck with the romantic sailing idea?” She laughs again, like she can’t believe that’s what I do for a living.
“Well, my first choice was the fishing. But Alonzo isn’t the type of brother you argue with and he got his shit together first. And I’m not into the adventure water sports. So”—I shrug—“honeymoon sailboat charters was all I could think of.”
She sighs. Heavily. Mockingly. And places a hand over her heart. “You’re so romantic.”
I laugh and then turn my head into the sun. It feels good on my face. I kinda miss Key West. Colorado has been sunny too, but it’s not nearly as warm. “You can laugh all you want,” I say, keeping my eyes closed. “But no one complains after they get off my yacht. I have customers who have been booking packages with me every year, without fail, for almost a decade.”
She flops back on the bed next to me, so close our upper arms press against each other. “I’m not laughing at you, Tony. I’m appreciating the complexity of what’s beneath your surface.”
I snap my fingers, turn my head, and open one eye to peek at her. “Like the hull of a yacht. You only see the top part. But down below there’s like… a fucking dining room and shit.”
She turns her head and lets out another laugh. “Exactly like the hull of a yacht.” She flops over on her stomach and presses her face into the soft comforter. “You’re kind of a catch, Mr. Dumas.”
I nod my head and close my eye. “I really am.”
“So how come you’re not hitched?”
“Hitched?” I ask, keeping my eyes closed. I could fall asleep right now, that’s how relaxed I am. A real sleep. Not just a nap. With her next to me. I would like to spend this whole day in bed with her, actually. Maybe fuck her. But maybe not? Maybe just… enjoy her. “Hitched as in… married?”
“Or at least dating. Someone who is not Belinda Baker, that is.”
I open both eyes and turn my head to stare at her. “I guess I just haven’t met the right girl yet.”
Soshee smiles at me, looking pretty relaxed and lazy too. “What’s she look like?”
“The right girl?” I pause for a moment, then smile and close my eyes again, feeling very, very comfortable. “Well… you,” I mumble. “Maybe.”
“Hmm. You have my mind spinning.”
“Good,” I say. “Misery loves company.”
“What?”
I sigh. “My mind has been spinning for months. I can’t fucking sleep. I haven’t slept more than two hours a night for months.”
“Because of Belinda Baker?”
I nod, but say nothing. Because after all the chaos of the past couple months, suddenly my mind feels… still.
Soshee sighs. “Well, she’s a lucky girl.”
“Why?”
“Because she has your full attention.”
“Not anymore,” I say. I reluctantly open my eyes to look at her.
“I hear you saying that, but there’s more to it.”
“More? Like what?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I wish I could, Soshee. I really do. It’s not… romantic. I swear to God, it’s not. I just… have these lingering feelings about her. And I don’t understand them. I’m not in love with her. And I’m not jealous of Vann, either. That’s not it. I’m just… really confused about her.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. Because if I knew what was causing this renewed obsession with her, I’d do something to fix it. Ya know? And move on. Go home. Get back to work.”
Soshee changes position so she’s on her side. She leans on her elbow and props her head in her hand. “Am I just a distraction to you and this little obsession problem you’re having?”
“No.”
“Just no? That’s it?”
“I know you don’t believe me. I get it. Everything about what I’m doing points to me repressing… something. And maybe that’s the case. But some secret hidden love for her? That’s just not it. I don’t see myself with her. I’m not picturing a future with her. I just need her to go away. And she won’t. She won’t get the fuck out of my head.”
Soshee stares at me, her green eyes bright and sparkly, like she slept like a baby last night after I left. “I don’t mind, you know.”
“You don’t mind what?”
“If you’re just using me.”
“What?”
“I get it. This is fun. But we’re strangers. And you’re going home very soon. Possibly tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow.”
“Then Monday.”
“I don’t know.”
“All I’m saying is… I’m no stranger to a one-night stand.”
“This isn’t a one-night stand. It’s not even night. We’re not drunk or even looking to get laid.”
“I’m just saying I understand, that’s all. One date. That’s probably all we’re gonna get, right?”
“What are you talking about, one date? This isn’t our first date.”
She laughs. “It definitely is.”
“No. We had our first date yesterday at lunch. And our second date last night. So this is our third date.”
“We can’t be on our third date when we’ve only known each other two days! And anyway, I don’t think stalking our exes over food counts as a date.”
“Why not?”
She slaps my arm. “Because. It just doesn’t.”
“We spent time together. We ate food. And drank wine. And talked. They all sound like dates to me.”
“Um… I think you’re conveniently forgetting how in between dates one and two we took time off to go fuck our exes.”
I laugh, then point at her. “OK. That’s maybe a little weird.”
“Maybe?”
“Fine. It’s unconventional. But I’m still counting them as dates.”
“Why? Because that makes this date three? And date three is the official ‘fuck date’?”
“Is date three the official fuck date?”
“It’s in the rule book.”
“I don’t think I play by those rules.”
“So you’re not going to fuck me?”
I stare at her. No. I gaze into her brilliant green eyes and get lost for a few thousand eternities before I pull myself back to reality and find the right words that need to come next.
“I’m not going to disappoint you, Soshee. Trust me on that.”
She gets up and extends her hand to me. “Trust you, huh?”
I take her hand and let her
pull me to my feet. And when I’m standing I realize that we’re very close.
Only inches apart.
I also realize I’m only wearing a towel.
I look down into her green eyes. Picturing myself kissing those cherry-red lips as I slip my hand up her flirty little tennis skirt. Imagine her moaning into my mouth when I do that.
“Yeah. Trust me.”
“Hmm. So are you going to kiss me now?”
“Now? No.”
“No!” She laughs. “What the hell! Why not? I’m sending all the right signals. Aren’t I?”
She looks a little bit vulnerable when she asks me this question. A little bit of the tough Italian Mob girl disappears. But only a little.
“I want to. Don’t get me wrong. But not now. That comes at the end of the third date. Your rules, remember?”
“Thought you didn’t play by them?”
“Eh. They’re growing on me.”
“Fine.” She sighs. “I can wait. But I’m going to leave you in charge of the date. And I’m not sure you’re up to the challenge.”
“Are you a challenge then?”
“Very challenging. I expect… mystery, mister. And intrigue. And maybe a little danger.”
“Well, you are Poison Ivy.”
She giggles. “That I am.”
“Oh,” I say, snapping my fingers. “Holy fuck. I almost forgot what I saw this morning while I was walking home from Vann’s house.”
“Wow. It must’ve been exciting to get you all perked up like this. I can’t wait to hear all about it. Tell me everything.”
I wince.
“What?” she asks.
“It’s not exactly romantic. But it is a mystery.”
“Just spill. I’ll deal with the date disappointment.”
I lean in to her. Put my lips right up to her ear until she shrugs up her shoulders from the chill I send through her body. “It’s a mystery, Soshee Ameci. It’s a dangerously intriguing mystery.”
She turns her head until our lips are just a few inches apart. I look down at hers. All red and glossy and… kissable.
I want to kiss her. Badly. Hell, I want to throw her down on that bed behind us and fuck her into Sunday.
But not yet.
Not yet, Tony.
