Heart racing, I stared at the front of the motel – the first one we’d come across since leaving the animal hospital.
Caden said something beside me. I wasn’t ready to look at him, to ask him to repeat himself so I could hear. I needed to digest what I was doing for a moment.
The Happy Traveller sat there in the bright sun, its signage like something from the 1950s, the illuminated Vacancy sign announcing there was a room waiting for us. It didn’t look like a dive, it looked . . . dated. Tired.
Was this where I was . . . where we were . . .
Oh boy.
“Okay,” I said, opening my door with a gusto that belied how nervous I was feeling. “Let’s do this.”
Caden’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, halting my rather manic exit from my car. I fixed my gaze on his face, pulse beating in my throat like a butterfly that had overdosed on Ritalin.
“Why are we here, Chase?” he asked.
The question sent a tight finger of tension sinking into my tummy. It also seemed to steal any ability I had to form an answer.
A slow smile pulled at his lips. I watched it, my throat so tight I could barely breathe.
“Y’know,” he said, his grip on my wrist loosening, “in all the times I’ve come over here to see Brendon and Amanda and Tanner, I’ve yet to go to Disneyland.”
I frowned. And blinked. All at once.
Caden smiled wider. “I really think we should go to Disneyland. My treat? What do you reckon?”
“Now?” The word came out as a croak.
He nodded, releasing my wrist completely. “Let’s do it. I’ve wanted to go on the “It’s A Small World” ride since I was five and every time I mention it to Bren he shakes his head and walks away from me for some reason.”
My tummy fluttered. I looked up at the Happy Traveller’s facade, taking in the shadowy interior on the other side of the grimy glass, the dated décor, the receptionist who . . . yes, was wearing hair curlers.
I turned back to Caden. Disneyland. Or a motel room trapped in the 1950s.
Or dinner with Donald . . .
“You can laugh at me when I scream on the rollercoaster,” Caden said, his smile growing playful. “And I will scream. It’s probably a good thing you can’t hear me that well.”
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it.
I make jokes about my hearing all the time. Why wouldn’t I? If nothing else, it really ticks Dad off.
I’ve also been known to use it to my advantage when asked to do something I don’t want to do. When I was a kid, I got out of so many arguments with my parents for not doing chores by pretending I’d never heard the initial request. It took Mom until I was thirteen before she caught on to what I was doing. I’m pretty certain Amanda might have tattled on me, as big sisters are wont to do.
Even now I can bluff Dad with a confused look if I don’t feel like answering a question he’s adamant on asking. Questions like, when was I going to do something with my life, when was I going back to college, why would I throw my life away working in a pet shop . . .?
When it comes to my defective hearing, I’m okay with making fun of it, or making it work for me. But until right this very moment, no one in my life apart from my mother, my sister and my brother-in-law had ever made fun of it. People either tip-toed around it like it was a subject too fragile to mock, or were aghast when I joked about it. They did it out of some kind of misguided sense of compassion and tact, I’m sure, but they still did it. Having Caden make a joke out of it . . . yeah, it was incredible. I know that probably makes no sense, given how irritated I was with the way the temp back at the animal hospital treated me, but it made me feel . . .
Normal.
By poking fun at my bad hearing, Caden O’Dae had made me feel more normal than I had in I don’t know how long. He’d put it out there, in the same way someone would tease a friend about a bad haircut, or a poor choice in clothes.
Tears filled my eyes. Holy crap, I was actually laughing so much I was crying. When was the last time that had happened? Had it ever?
Wiping at my cheeks with the back of one hand, I yanked the car door shut with the other. “Disneyland it is,” I said, grinning at him.
“I am so getting a photo with Goofy,” he said.
“You are goofy.”
He preened.
I laughed again, rolling my eyes as I pulled away from the Happy Traveller.
It took us over an hour to get to Anaheim, and another twenty minutes to find a place to park. In that time, Caden sent a few texts to his family back in Australia using my cell. At some point I was going to have to take him somewhere he could get a US SIM, but he said he wanted to go to Disneyland first. He also took a selfie with me in the background and sent it to Brendon with the explicit instruction he show it to Tanner.
He wouldn’t show it to me. I suspect he was pulling some kind of face in it. The one thing Caden had never been shy about teasing me over was my driving technique. Mom says I have two speeds: off and hypersonic. Hey, when I want to be somewhere, I want to be there. Is there anything wrong with that?
As we walked toward the main gate of Disneyland surrounded by swarms of people, the urge to take Caden’s hand, to thread my fingers through his, flooded over me with such power my stomach clenched.
As if aware of my thoughts, and without looking at me even once, he took my hand in his. Just like that. Like it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do.
My stomach clenched again. So did other parts of me. Swallowing, I adjusted my fingers until my palm pressed perfectly into his, and returned my attention to the entry gates ahead of us.
We were almost at the ticket booth when my cell vibrated into life in my pocket. The noise level was too loud for me to hear the accompanying tone so when I withdrew it with the assumption it was either Mom or Dad wanting to talk about my plans to stay in LA, I wasn’t prepared to see the text from Donald.
Do you know what I’m thinking? We should go to Disneyland tomorrow. Together. What do you think?
I stumbled to a halt, staring at my cell. What the hell?
Jerking my head up, I scanned the crowd around us. I don’t know why. Did I really think I’d see him here? But still, what were the chances of Donald suggesting we go to Disneyland together on the very day I was going with Caden?
Disneyland? How many times had I ached for him to take me somewhere public and he never would, and now he was suggesting Disneyland? Together?
What. The. Hell?
No, change that. What. The. Fuck?
“Everything okay?”
I turned to Caden, pulse faster than my liking. “Yeah,” I said, my smile feeling brittle. It was just like Professor Douchebag to screw me up like this.
Reminding myself that I’d decided he was not going to do this to me anymore, I smiled at Caden again. This time, however, it felt more real. More relaxed. “It’s all good.”
He studied for a moment. His eyes flicked to my cell for a split second, a frown on his eyebrows, and then he returned his attention to me. He nodded. “Of course it is. You’re with me.”
I laughed. A genuine one. Caden’s habit of making light of everything often rubbed me the wrong way . . . but just as often it was exactly what I needed.
I tried to pay, but Caden wouldn’t let me. “What don’t you understand about my treat?” he asked, sliding his credit card under the security glass at the ticket booth.
The park was busy. And I mean busy. Warm and sunny day busy. Every ride had a line that stretched forever. Thank God I used the brains my father was so disappointed I was wasting, by setting up a Disney account and downloading an app that gave us the legal right to push in (AKA, the FAST PASS!) while we were waiting in line to buy our entry tickets.
As it was, even with that we still had a wait.
Standing in a line at a theme park is not something I’m good at. It has nothing to do with being impatient – well, not that much – and everything to do with th
e fact I’m standing in the middle of a group of people in a rowdy place where everyone is shouting over everyone else, which turns what little sound I can hear into a mess of jarring noise that scrapes against my nerves and makes me as irritable as all hell. The same goes for waiting in line at the movies, what few concerts I go to, at the cafeteria at college, in bars . . . Basically, me and waiting in line don’t go well.
Waiting in line with Caden, however . . . We didn’t talk, there really wasn’t a point given the level of noise around us, and I didn’t want to sign, but just standing beside him, just feeling his palm on mine . . . it was a whole different experience.
Sometimes we ate ice cream. In the line for Small World, I kept stealing licks of his while he was gawking at everything around us. It wasn’t until I went in for the millionth surreptitious lick, that he surprised me by dabbing the tip of my nose in peppermint chocolate-chip ice cream, and I realized he’d been aware of what I was doing the whole time.
He laughed loud enough at my stunned reaction that not only did the people around us inch away a little, but I heard it clearly over the noise of the park.
Heard it. Felt it. All the way to my soul.
And in feeling it, a warm sense of contented happiness swelled through me.
Confession time: I know “It’s A Small World” is one of Disneyland’s most iconic and beloved rides. I know it’s a symbol of what Walt wanted the people of the world to believe, I know it’s got more nostalgic importance than anything else at Disneyland, but man, as we spent the eternity that ride lasted, sitting in that creaky little boat and jerking and jolting our way past singing animatronic display after display I’d never been more glad to be Hard of Hearing. If I’d been wearing my hearing aid, I would have taken it out and thrown it in the murky water.
I did my best to hide my grumpiness from Caden. He sat beside me, watching those creepy robot-children sing and dance, hardly blinking, both his hands holding one of mine. A rhythmic vibration flowed through his thigh, pressed against mine, and it took me a while to realize he was tapping his foot to the song I mercifully couldn’t hear that well.
We were halfway round, the “children” of Chile chirping about just how damn small the world was, when he turned to me, released my hand and signed Holy snapping duck shit, this world isn’t small enough! Think if I jumped I could swim away from this madness?
I laughed so much our boat rocked.
After that was finally over, we pretended we were Indiana Jones on the ride of the same name; followed that up with a crazy push-shove exploration – along with what felt like a thousand other park goers – of a massive artificial tree attraction based on the movie Tarzan. Caden told me there was Phil Collins music being piped through hidden speakers all the way throughout the attraction. Not for the first time I found myself ticking off another perk of being defective.
When we were back on the ground, once again in the thick of the crowd, with the sinking sun painting us in golden heat and stretching shadows, I consulted the map of the park, working out if we had enough time to go on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride before we were due our turn on Space Mountain. I was chewing on my bottom lip, ignoring the people bumping into me, when I felt a warm hand slide over the back of my neck and warm lips press to my one working ear.
I stiffened at the unexpected contact. And then I heard him. Softly, almost inaudible but there all the same. Whispering.
Caden O’Dae was whispering in my ear. Whispering the lyrics to the Phil Collins song about always being in his heart.
I heard the words. I heard Caden’s voice. I heard his whisper. His voice played with my senses. His fingers played with the hair at my nape. His breath played with my flesh. His beard tickled ear.
It was so nice. So perfect. So normal. He was whispering in my ear, just a normal kind of thing a guy would do with his girl . . .
I turned to that whisper, that breath, the back of my head moving in the gentle cup of his palm. I found his eyes, and gazed into them. And then cupped his bearded jaw in my hand and brushed my lips over his.
For a heart-stopping second I felt him stiffen, and then we were slammed into by a shouting, laughing teenager wearing a UCLA T-shirt and mirror sunglasses, and whatever was going to happen next didn’t.
What did happen was that the teenager, who towered above me and was almost double Caden’s size, grabbed at my shoulders with a laughing grin, said something that may or may not have been an apology, and then directed his mirrored sunglasses at Caden.
I watched Caden shake his head with a smile, waving his hand in an it’s okay way. No worries, his lips formed, the rising noise of the crowd destroying any hope I had of hearing his voice. It’s all good.
I felt his chest vibrate with the words though, my shoulder pressed as it was by the UCLA teenager, against his chest.
It wasn’t all good. We were having a moment. An intense moment. And now we weren’t having that moment. And while I should have been thrilled by that, I wasn’t. I was disgruntled and confused and exasperated and . . . and . . . flummoxed.
Flummoxed, a word my father had thrown at me over and over when I’d dropped out of college.
I’m flummoxed, Chase, why you’re doing this.
I’m flummoxed why you’re quitting like this.
I’m more than flummoxed by your behavior, missy.
That last one had started a fight that had raged for weeks, ending only when I quoted Malcolm X at him, (“Just because you have colleges and universities, doesn’t mean you have education.”) and Amanda stepped in to stop him saying something we both would have regretted. Dad loves me. He really does. He’s just a control freak who has high expectations. And issues with a daughter who doesn’t function the way she’s meant to. And who doesn’t believe academia is the be-all-and-end-all.
I’ve probably spent a lot of my life flummoxing Dad, but here I was, being flummoxed.
It was a weird emotion. I didn’t like it.
Huffing out a breath I suspected some might label petulant, I shrugged off the teenager’s hands on my arms and began weaving my way through the throng. The noise – a messy soup of indistinct sounds – scraped at my nerves. I frowned, hugging my ribs. The deeper I moved into the thick of the crowd, the more the fuzzy rumble assaulted my one working ear. I pressed my palms to the sides of my head, over my ears. It’s a ridiculous thing, I know, a person deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other covering her ears, but the noise was driving me crazy.
It wasn’t loud, it never is for me, not unless I’m wearing my hearing aid. It was just . . . there: a chaotic mishmash of sounds with no definition, no clarity, nothing. Just noise.
So much noise.
So much—
A firm hand curled around my wrist, bringing me to a gentle halt.
Caden. I didn’t need to look to know. I was already more familiar with the feel of his skin on mine than anyone else I knew. Standing still, I closed my eyes and inhaled as deeply as my lungs would allow. I counted the thumps of my heart – a strong rhythm in my chest beating faster than it should – and then opened my eyes and looked up at Caden.
Worry filled his face. He’d removed his sunglasses so I could see his eyes. I think we should leave the park he signed, lips moving as he spoke the words as well. This is not good for you.
I tried not to bristle, but failed. “I’m fine,” I said, letting him hear my irritation.
He studied me, expression unreadable.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, signing it this time, moving my fingers a little snappier than needed.
He pulled in a slow breath, closed his eyes for a second and then looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said.
A lump filled my throat. “For what?”
“Being over protective,” he answered.
I swallowed. “Don’t do it again,” I said, keeping my voice calm.
My head was whirling. He was making it harder and harder to stubbornly keep him from being a contender for “relationship
” category. Having sex with him was one thing. Falling for him . . .
I’ll do my best, he signed with a grin.
I snorted out a laugh and rolled my eyes. “Let’s hit Space Mountain,” I said, raising my voice so he could hear me over the crowd. “I want to feel your scream vibrate through my body.”
I don’t know if that was the equivalent of flirty-talk for a Hard of Hearing person, but it sent a little lick of excitement through me the second I said it.
Caden grinned, although concern still lingered in his eyes. “I’m going to make your whole body quiver,” he countered.
Another lick of excitement snaked its way though me, and this time my nipples got in on the act, puckering into tight points in my bra. A fluttering tension bloomed in my belly, part nerves, part anticipation.
“Race you there,” I blurted, now so totally flummoxed I think I’d moved into bamboozled cluelessness.
Before he could respond, I spun on my heel and bolted, ducking and weaving through the crowd like the star quarterback I wasn’t, my whole body already quivering in ways I hadn’t prepared myself for.
Oh boy.
Caden
I screamed. Loudly. And often.
I am a rollercoaster junkie. I’ve been on every rollercoaster Australia has to offer and screamed my way around them all. It’s a very specific scream, my rollercoaster scream. If you took a scream of sheer terror and fed it into a universal translator set to laughter, that’s what my scream sounds like.
Rollercoasters are adrenaline-charged fun. They are, I was discovering, even better when ridden with Chase. She laughed the whole way around Space Mountain. An open-mouth, head-thrown-back, completely and utterly uninhibited laugh. It was incredible. I loved it.
I loved her.
She was a prickly mess, a rollercoaster of emotions wilder and more unpredictable than any of the ones we’d ridden here at Disneyland, but I loved that about her as well. Maybe I was a glutton for punishment, or too romantic for my own good, but it was what it was. Riding Space Mountain with Chase was one of the best rushes of my life.
When it was over, when the ride came to a juddering halt, I gave her a wide grin, my heart crazy, my pulse the same and said “ So? Was that good for you too?”
Undeniable (Always Book 3) Page 9
