All The Ways You Saved Me

by Jamie Howard

  I slipped my tongue in her mouth, tasting the light and sweet coffee I’d bought her on the way here in an effort to win back some points for waking her up so early. She tugged my bottom lip between her teeth, giving it a nibble. My fingers crept up over her hips, slipping underneath the hem of her shirt. When my cold fingertips touched her warm stomach, she shivered, goosebumps tracing a path up her torso.

  A tiny blob of orange paint dotted her earlobe. “I never even stopped to ask if this is what you wanted. I mean, I know you want this”—she gave a meaningful glance to the very obvious evidence of that statement—“but your first time should be something special. Maybe it shouldn’t be in some crappy old car with barely enough room to move. I want it to be . . . all the things it wasn’t for me the first time around.” She lifted her shoulder in a half shrug.

  “Hey.” I cupped my hand around her cheek, pinning her eyes with mine. “It doesn’t matter where we are, or whether this happens right now or a year from now. This is special because it’s you. Anything else doesn’t matter.”

  Her eyes shone—with love, with tears, with happiness—I couldn’t tell. She brushed her lips against mine again, the words “I love you” whispering in the space between our mouths. Her hands were everywhere, and so were mine—touching, teasing. The heat swirled around us, fogging the windows and making the world disappear.

  I’m not sure who moved first, but all of a sudden we were moving together. It was clumsy and awkward, all heavy breaths and stifled groans, with not quite enough room for everything to be comfortable. My knees pressed against the back of the passenger seat, and her hair brushed against the roof. And for all its imperfections, for all the ways it wasn’t the picture of perfection, it was my perfect. And I wouldn’t have changed a damn thing.

  Chapter 17: Bianca

  “So, where are you guys going today?” Harper’s voice boomed over the speaker phone from where it lay on the bathroom counter. I ran another section of my hair through the straightener. It was amazing how chopping off nearly a foot of hair cut my getting-ready routine in half. I was down to thirty-four minutes from alarm to out the door.

  “Don’t know. The only information I have is that we’re driving somewhere and won’t be back until late tonight. Speaking of, hold on.” I laid the hair straightener down and rummaged through the medicine cabinet for my Dramamine. I downed two and stuck a few extra tabs in my pocket for good measure.

  “Tell me again what he said at dinner last week,” Harper said.

  I rolled my eyes in the mirror, running ChapStick over my lips. I’d never been a big fan of lipstick (too bold) or lip gloss (too sticky), so I always defaulted to the simple choices—ChapStick, other lip balms, au naturel. “Haven’t we already gone over this like a thousand times?”

  “Humor me.”

  “He said, ‘I don’t date.’”

  “And he looked at your boobs?”

  “He looked at my boobs.”

  “God, this guy makes no sense.” A horn blared from the other end of the phone. “Stay in your own lane, asshole!” I pictured Harper flipping off the other driver as she sped by. “Out-of-state drivers, seriously, they need their own freaking lanes or something.”

  Stepping back, I took a look in the mirror—a comfortable pair of jeans hugged my butt nicely and a slouchy off-the-shoulder black top bared a hint of my collarbone.

  My phone vibrated, Ian’s text message scrolling across the top of the screen, letting me know that he was here.

  “Ian’s here, I gotta go.”

  “All right, talk to you later!”

  Scooping up my purse, I scooted out the door and locked it behind me.

  Ian rolled down the window of his Range Rover and gave me a quick wave when I got outside. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I replied, buckling my seatbelt. “So, are you going to give me any clue as to where we’re going?”

  He shook his head, turning to look at me. He had on a pair of shiny silver aviators, and my reflection loomed large in front of me. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  I huffed and folded my arms across my chest.

  “This is killing you, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He chuckled. “Going into this unprepared. You showed up last week at Brady’s with your dinner choice already picked out. Don’t think I didn’t notice. You looked up the menu, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.” I sunk a little lower in my seat.

  “Why?”

  Shrugging, I shifted my gaze out the window. I focused on something stationary in the distance, trying to give the Dramamine its best shot. “I just like to be prepared, know all the facts before I get into anything. Forewarned is forearmed.”

  “It was dinner, not a tactical strike.”

  I might have taken offense at his poking were it not for the teasing note in his voice. Shifting in my seat so I faced him, I caught the smile that stretched to both corners of his mouth. It was hard to even feel a little bit mad at him when his grin was so infectious. I felt myself returning his expression against all odds.

  He drove with his left hand on the top of the steering wheel and his right arm resting against the center console. His short-sleeve shirt left his forearm and the lower edge of his bicep bare. I scooted closer, studying the intricate designs that wove across his skin.

  “How many tattoos do you have?”

  He glanced down at his arm, then back at the road. Another turn put us out on the highway, and as the road opened up, we started cruising.

  “Would you believe me if I said I don’t know?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “How can you not know?”

  “I stopped keeping track somewhere after thirteen. Didn’t really seem to matter.”

  I leaned my arms on the console, lacing my fingers together so they didn’t do what I really wanted them to and trace over the outline of every image. The urge to get to know him, to peel back the carefully constructed layers to see what lay beneath, was one I couldn’t resist. “Do they all mean something? Or, do any of them mean anything?”

  He nodded, slowing the car just enough so we could roll through the toll. The sign blinked back “E-ZPass Paid,” and we were on our way again. With him facing forward, I almost missed the subtle shift in his expression, his mouth flattening out and losing its warm curve. “Yeah, they all do.”

  I didn’t want to push my luck and ruin the day before it even began, but I let my curiosity get the best of me. “Will you tell me about one of them?”

  He hesitated for so long that I thought he might be ignoring me, pretending he didn’t hear my question rather than flat-out telling me to mind my own business. I flopped my legs back over to the other side, straightening myself in my seat. Nothing with Ian was easy, and I was starting to wonder why I even bothered. Everything was a struggle, a push and pull to find out the tiniest details about him. It was exhausting, discouraging . . . disheartening, even. Ian was the epic oyster I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to pry open.

  “Was there a particular one you wanted to ask about?”

  The answer came to me immediately—the hummingbird. How could I not be curious about the one, single tattoo on his left arm? Of every image I’d seen, that one was treated with a level of detail that far surpassed the others. It was so intricate, so vivid, that I was sure the wings would flutter any moment now and it would take off from the underside of his wrist and flit away. Maybe it was because of that alone that I didn’t want to ask about it, somehow intuitively knowing that he wouldn’t want to talk about that one.

  I directed my gaze back out the window, watching as the scenery passed by. “You pick.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him relax, his fingers unclenching from their death grip around the steering wheel. He gestured down with a tip of his head. “The blue daisy, right there? I got that one for my mom.”

  I glanced over, my eyes tracing over the spot at the inside edge of hi
s forearm where the daisy bloomed. It was a bright, vibrant blue, like the color of a blue jay, with tiny hints of jade and flecks of yellow highlighting the petals. You’d think a flower would look strange on a guy, too feminine maybe, but on him it just seemed to fit, blending in with his other designs seamlessly. “Her favorite flower?” I asked.

  He nodded, shifting his gaze to the side mirror before moving into the fast lane.

  “And does blue happen to be her favorite color?”

  “No.” He laughed. “Her favorite color is purple.”

  I stretched out my legs in front of me, crossing them at the ankles. “Ah, and a purple flower was just a little too much for you?” I teased.

  “Hardly.” Shifting in his seat, he relaxed back into the black leather. “In fact, if I remember correctly, she said something like, ‘For God’s sake, Ian, if you’re going to permanently mark your body with a flower, at least make it blue, make it a manly flower.’”

  His imitation of his mother was priceless, with his voice creeping up a few octaves and infused with an exasperated tone. I couldn’t stop myself from laughing, and soon he was laughing too. I only stopped when a laugh turned into a yawn, and I hastily covered my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “Tired?” he asked.

  “A little. I had the late shift last night.”

  “Take a nap. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

  “You sure?” Another yawn snuck up on me, making my eyes water. “I can keep you company if you want.”

  “Sleep. I’ll be fine.”

  It seemed rude to sleep while he was driving me to some mystery destination, and if I was asleep I wouldn’t be able to watch where we were going, look for clues. But sleepiness fogged my eyes, and it would be even ruder to fall asleep later during whatever he had planned. Giving in, I lowered the seat back and curled up on my side. I thought, maybe, now that I was drifting off to sleep, he’d turn on the radio and fill the silence, but he didn’t. I fell asleep to the drone of the tires eating up the ground beneath us.

  The car came to a stop, and I cracked my eyes open. Surreptitiously, I wiped the corner of my mouth with the back of my hand, erasing all evidence of the small strand of drool. I ran a hand over my hair as I sat up, snapping the seat back into an upright position.

  We were in a small parking lot, Ian’s Range Rover squeezed between two other cars. The streetlights were just beginning to flicker on, their light still nearly invisible in the sunset.

  “Where are we?”

  “You’ll see.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and reached for my purse. His hand landed on my shoulder at the same time mine gripped the door handle.

  “Hold on a sec.” Twisting around, he stretched toward the backseat. His shirt rode up to just below his belly button, exposing a thin, dark line of hair that disappeared underneath his waistband. Yum. A bag rustled behind me, before it was dragged up onto the center console. Dipping his hand inside, he pulled out another pair of aviators.

  “Here,” he said. I held very still as he aimed the sunglasses for my face, his eyes scrunching at the corners as he settled them over my ears. “And . . .” he added, reaching into the bag one more time. This time he came out with a black baseball cap, which he slipped on my head and pulled down the brim. “There.”

  “Ummm . . . are we robbing a bank tonight or something?”

  He flashed me a smile, readjusting his own hat on his head. “Nothing illegal, I promise.”

  “So what’s with the . . .” I pointed in the general area of my head.

  “Well, you said that you were trying to keep a low profile, and since we’re going to be out in a crowd of people tonight, I thought this might make you feel a little more comfortable.” He shifted his gaze away from mine, giving his shoulders a quick shrug. “You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to.”

  I laid a hand on his arm, giving it a squeeze. “Thanks, Ian, that’s really sweet of you.” I sent another glance out the window. “Can we get out now?”

  “Yeah, let’s go.”

  Slamming the door closed behind me, I took in a lungful of thick, salty air. As Ian came around the back of the car, I turned to him. “We’re at the beach?”

  “Yup.”

  We walked side by side out of the parking lot. Grains of sand filled every crack and crevice in the sidewalk, and a kid with low-hanging board shorts zipped by us on his skateboard, hopping off the curb and onto the rough asphalt.

  My eyes scanned around us, taking in the details. Wooden planks came into view, sloping up away from the sidewalk. “Not just the beach,” I said. “The boardwalk.”

  “Have you ever been before?”

  “Never. Have you?”

  “Tons of times. My grandparents used to live a few towns over, and we’d come down every summer for a week or two. I love it here.”

  “And here is . . .”

  “Wildwood Crest.”

  “And is there a particular reason that we’re here?” I tipped my head back to look up at him, the sunglasses slipping down my nose.

  He met my gaze, though I knew all he could see was his own reflection in the lenses of my glasses. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “You’re a control freak.”

  I barked out a laugh and felt the insane urge to stick out my tongue at him. I hadn’t done something that immature in . . . well, ever. Being around Ian made me feel lighter, like all the expectations and rules that hung around my neck like a chain-link necklace had been unclasped and thrown away.

  We climbed the ramp in front of us, emerging at the top into a crowd of people. The wooden boards, weathered from the ocean air, stretched out in either direction. Shops lined the inside edge, and the ocean sprawled out directly in front of us. There were so many smells in the air that my nose couldn’t settle on just one, from pretzels to pizza, suntan lotion to cigarettes.

  I tucked my hands in my back pockets and rocked back on my heels. “So, what first?”

  He ran a hand around the back of his neck. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  Ian took a few steps forward and peered off down the boardwalk. “How do you feel about pizza? The Olympic Flame makes some killer pies.”

  Immediate thoughts of carbs, calories, and saturated fat flooded my brain, but I shut them down. “I can do pizza.” I glanced around me. Hitching a thumb over my shoulder, I said, “I’m going to use the restroom real quick, okay?”

  “All right. Meet me at the pizza place.”

  I slipped into the bathroom and quickly emptied my bladder, only stopping to scrub my hands clean in my haste to get out of there; I wasn’t sure I had the right immunizations to stay any longer. The crowd of people was thick around me, but no one paid me any mind. A horn blared in front of me, and I scurried to the side as some type of train-like vehicle whizzed by me, shouting, “Watch the tram car, please!”

  Ian stood at the register, his wallet in hand as he passed over some cash. He turned to the side, looking at a man who appeared to be talking to him, nodding in response. Picking up a pen from the counter, he scribbled something on a napkin and slid it over to the guy, who smiled back. Whatever he said next had Ian shaking his head in a negative and turning back around.

  An old friend maybe? Someone asking for directions? I shook it off and darted across the last few boards before I got run over by whatever the hell that tram car was.

  “That for me?” I asked, popping up next to Ian.

  He flinched but tried to cover it with a smile. Passing me the paper plate, he said, “One plain slice and a bottle of water. Did I guess right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sure?”

  “Pizza’s not really my thing.” I followed him through the little restaurant, past two empty booths to the one in the back.

  “That’s blasphemy. Pizza is pretty much its own food group.”

  The conversation evolved from there as we compared no
tes on our favorite foods. It was no surprise that we were on completely different ends of the spectrum. As I recited a typical weekly menu at my parents’ house, he gagged in horror and downed another slice of pizza. He ate four of them to my one.

  Wiping his fingers on one of those flimsy paper napkins, he tossed it onto his empty plate. “Ready to get going?”

  “Yup.” Gathering up our plates and bottles, I dumped them in the garbage. We’d taken our time eating, and the sun had officially made its exit by the time we stepped back outside. Even without it, there was no shortage of light. Every store and stand glowed with it, the carnival games flashing vibrant colors.

  Everyone walked around us at a pace that rivaled that of the city. What was the rush? I took in everything that I could, my eyes bouncing from one thing to the other. It was a beautiful night. The air was warm with just enough breeze to ruffle my hair against the back of my neck. Ian was quiet next to me, his gaze, more often than not, studying the ground.

  We passed under a sign that said “Morey’s Pier” and Ian stepped in line at what looked like a little kiosk. “Wanna go on some rides?” he asked.

  “Are you coming on with me?”

  “Of course.” He shook his head at me like my question was ridiculous.

  “Then yes.”

  He paid again, and took the little credit card-like thing the cashier passed him. “Alright, Bianca, first ride is your choice.”

  “Hm.” I chewed my lip, letting one hand drift down to my hip. Rotating in place, I tried to see what was around. A mischievous smile snuck across my lips. I held out my hand and waited the ten seconds it took Ian to give me his. My heart shot off a confetti cannon at that small concession, though I tried really hard not to put too much stock in it. I tugged him along behind me, weaving through the bodies in front of me. I stopped once we reached the end of the line.

  “Really?” he asked. “The merry-go-round?”

  “What, you have something against that too?”

  He held up his hands, palms out. “Nope, the merry-go-round and I are on good terms.”