Welcome to summertime in Florida.
She glanced over at her best friend. Even a potential rainstorm couldn’t dampen the infectious fervor or the expectant look on Alex’s face and she supposed it wouldn’t be fair if she rained on her parade either. So Dylan plastered on her best smile and twined her arm in Alex’s, letting her lead the way.
They passed the meager beginnings of the bonfire, which would grow into a mound taller than their heads by the time the sun set. Patches of colorful umbrellas, scores of towels and even a pup tent littered the hills of valleys of the dunes. They weaved through the drifts, walking past several volleyball nets and small groups of high school cliques. Most of her classmates Dylan recognized, but there were much more than 150 or so odd kids in her class. Among them, she saw faces from years past, a scattering of last year’s graduates, some older brothers and sisters. This annual tradition was famous and infamous enough to lure them back, no matter where the birdies had flown to.
Alex tugged her further down the beach, tanning bodies seeming to stretch for miles, with nary the time to wave at returning friends and familiar faces. Several hibachis were belching out smoke into the late afternoon air, sending aromas that were making Dylan’s mouth water. The girls ducked underneath the now-vacant volleyball net, cruising down the beach faster than Dylan really wanted. This was becoming more of a forced march than socializing.
They neared a group of Dylan’s friends from the school paper, including Robert Smithson. Always the consummate shutterbug, his camera was hanging around his neck, even out here in the sweltering heat. Seeing Dylan, he raised his hand in greeting and smiled broadly, but instead of stopping to ‘mingle’, Alex propelled them onward and past the confused photographer.
“What the hell, Alex?” Dylan exclaimed. “I wanted to talk to him.”
“We’re almost there.” Was the only response she received as if Alex hadn’t even heard her admonishment.
“I can’t believe you are getting so worked up over some guy, who’s probably an out-of-towner, or maybe a perv from Miami or Orlando.” Dylan’s voice was strained from the patience she was rapidly losing. She loved her best friend dearly, but this was getting to be too much. Whatever bee had crawled down Alex’s shorts needed to be swatted.
Dylan had become so irate that she wasn’t even aware that Alex had halted their forced march until she ran into her. Annoyance pursed her lips but died there when she saw Alex’s blank expression staring into the crowd in front of them.
“There. There he is.” Alex said in awe as if she was a witness to the second coming and Dylan turned to look where she was looking. In the midst of a sea of classmates, he stood, towering over them. The stranger. The guy that Alex had been so gaga about.
Whoever he was, she had never seen him before, because if she had, she wouldn’t have forgotten him. It was easy to see why Alex had been so instantly smitten with him and even easier to see why he had collected so many groupies so quickly. Even with her reservations, Dylan could feel his allure.
He stood shoulders over his admirers and was taller than most of the loose conglomeration of boys that had also gathered. His light brown hair waved and curled a little from its dampness, strays held aloft by the ocean wind. Loose strands of it hung low over his brow and threatened to eclipse his large, round eyes.
Yet, it wasn’t the puffy, sun-reddened cheeks or the cute, button nose that caused Dylan to stare. Nor was it his animated mouth that seemed to speak volumes around their words. What captured the young woman’s attention and held her in their gaze were those eyes, those incredibly deep, expressive eyes.
They were like glints of crystals, colored a deep blue with tiny flecks of gray in a sea of white as if the high tide was reflected in them. They danced around from person to person as they spoke, almost of their own accord. They bespoke a happy jocularity and excitement like he was a kid at FAO Schwartz for the first time, overwhelmed by the aisles and aisles of floor-to-ceiling toys. They were inviting and accessible, sparking with limitless life and infinite joy.
Entranced, Dylan couldn’t take her eyes off of him. She barely noticed the giggles from the crowd as someone made a funny and the rest responded. She only noticed the creases that appeared in the corners of his eyes when he laughed.
Dylan kept watching him. She couldn’t deny that this stranger was definitely a delectable piece of eye candy, but she’d never been the kind of girl who was easily seduced by sweets. They were always a momentary sugar rush, followed by a hard crash, usually of epic proportions. Yet, even she liked to have dessert once in a while. Beside her, Alex seemed to be gorging herself at the buffet.
Her best friend hadn’t budged an inch, either too timid to get closer or too entranced to move. Dylan wasn’t sure which. She was staring at the new boy like a short, squat alien had waddled in their midst, wanting to phone home and asking for Reese’s Pieces. Her eyes were glazed over and she was fairly certain that she could’ve smacked Alex on the back of her head without much of a reaction. She would have chuckled at her if she didn’t feel a twinge of the same compulsion.
She began to push both of them through the loose crowd, eager to get closer and gain a better, unrestricted look at this newcomer. Her classmates surrounded them, each one with a zombie-like expression on their faces like she and Alex had wandered into a religious revival. The inner circle consisted of the vapid cheerleader squad, who were ogling the stranger like a piece of fresh meat and they were starving. As Dylan nudged up behind them, she understood why. The eye candy became a seven layer chocolate cake. With a dollop of whipped cream on top.
His smooth, lightly tanned skin was stretched tautly over his angular shoulders and muscular chest like it was a tight shirt. His arms were long like most tall guys she knew and would normally be defined by wiry biceps on most boys, but she saw that they were quite bulging. His six pack abdomen was clearly defined like they’d been drawn on and ended at the V that trailed down into the board shorts he was wearing. His legs started at the cuffs of his trunks and seemed to travel downward for miles, accented by the thick brown hair on them that was slowly drying in clumps. Adding his physical perfection to those classical facial features and this Adonis had the look that very few men were born into and that many others tried to emulate, usually with poor results.
Dylan couldn’t stop herself from being spellbound. She wanted to meet this guy. Needed to, she amended.
And then she saw Jordan, standing right beside the new guy and matching him for height, but somehow seeming shorter, less present. He would be their in. She tore her eyes away from the perfection and saw the glaringly obvious interest on Alex’s face as well. It couldn’t have more obvious if she’d had a line of drool hanging from her bottom lip.
She raised her hand to get Jordan’s attention and, on seeing them, he waved them over. Pushing both of them through the tight knot of blonds and brunettes, she noticed and ignored the looks of hate aimed at them. The other girls definitely didn’t want any more girls there to divide the young Adonis’s attention.
“Dylan, Alex, this is Jaron. Dani Latham’s older brother, Dennis, met him while he was checking out colleges.” Jordan announced as soon as they stopped beside him. Dylan turned her eyes up and began to mouth the word ‘hello’. Then a funny thing happened to her.
The young man introduced as Jaron turned his head towards her and his eyes fell directly upon hers and into her and through her. There were no people or distance to separate them. He was looking at no one else but her and she him. The space between them became the breadth of the cosmos and the wisp of a breath at the same time. Everything, yet nothing, existed between them.
For a second and forever, she plummeted into the never ending, expansive depths of those dark pools of blue. She was lost in them, consumed by them, drowning in them like an anchor had been tied to her ankle and was dragging her further down into an unknown abyss. Yet, there was no panic or dismay. Instead, she felt connected, belonged, safe. She felt home.
As much as she wanted to swim in those bottomless pools forever, she couldn’t, for fear of losing herself completely. So she pulled her eyes away and felt the immediacy of loss in her gut like a kid having his cookie taken away before the first bite. Reality snapped back into place with the abruptness of crashing into a brick wall at 80 mph. The quick thumping bass of her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. Her breath hitched in her throat, caught there like a lightning bug in a bottle.
Who is this guy? What just happened?
Somehow Dylan kept her poise and smiled broadly, taking the hand offered her. She met his eyes again, keeping firm control over herself. She was unnerved and confused enough not to want to repeat whatever it was she had experienced. She could still feel the gravity of them, though, pulling at her.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
His smooth, velvety tone had a hint of deep roughness to it and she watched him lift her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles lightly. The act was so antiquated and old fashioned that she almost giggled like a school girl. She was so caught off guard that she barely squeaked out a ‘You, too’.
His lips left her fingers and she felt a deep desire flush through her face and spread through her entire body. All around them, the other girls swooned at the gesture, casting moon eyes at him, wishful glances at each other and jealous glares at Dylan.
As he lifted his head from her hand, their eyes met for the briefest of moments yet again. The pull of them was undeniable, seemingly inescapable, and Dylan almost allowed herself to be swept away in them again, uncaring what it might mean.
Then, just as swiftly, it was gone. The young man broke visual contact and turned towards Alex. He reached out and grasped her hand as he had Dylan’s. leaning in to press his lips against her fingers. She felt Alex’s grip tighten on her arm and saw the stranger’s lips leave her best friend’s fingers. A quick glance at her face and Dylan could see that Alex was reveling in the attention, while she had been unnerved by it.
“Jaron was just telling us about where he’s from.” Jordan said, further interrupting the spell, and beamed widely, seemingly under the new boy’s charm as well.
Collectively, as if of one mind, the crowd moved and jockeyed for position to listen. Dylan felt herself get shoved and elbowed as the cackling of hens tightened the circle around the rooster in their midst, pluming and preening their feathers. The pompous display of estrogen made her want to retch up her breakfast. Any other circumstance, she would’ve stormed off in disgust, but, because of that waning feeling she had felt when Jaron had locked eyes with her, she stayed.
“Well, my country isn’t very big. It’s only a small island nation with fewer people than many of your American cities.” Jaron began, his voice washing over the mob like a warm breeze and quieting them into submission. “We have only one city, our capital, where my father rules as monarch.”
A coordinated gasp escaped a few of the girls as they realized what that meant.
“So, you’re a prince?” One of the girls closest to him ventured.
“In a manner of speaking, yes. But our government isn’t quite the monarchy that you’ve read about in your history books. Our king is voted into office to serve for life unless he chooses to retire or becomes too infirm to rule. When that happens, many times the oldest son will get voted into office but succession is never a sure thing. And, since I have an older brother, it would be his responsibility, not mine, to run for the office held by our father, and our grandfather before him, if he wished.”
The cheerleader who had asked the question inched closer and began to run her fingers up and down Jaron’s arm, tracing the lines of his muscles. She looked like she was minutes away from climbing his well-built frame and mounting him right then and there. Not to be outdone, the girl on the other side of him lifted his arm, draped it over her shoulders and scooted down under his embrace, pressing her scantily clad breasts up against his side. Distracted by the attention, Jaron stopped his story and began to look a bit uncomfortable from the girls’ flirtatious interest.
Jealous heat and cold disgust swelled inside of Dylan as she watched the pretty girls throw themselves at Jaron. As much confidence and swagger that she exuded, she knew she could never compete or compare with them. Nor did she really want to. Boys that looked like Jaron wanted girls like them: long, lean and loose. They didn’t want strong, independent and intelligent. It was just a fact of high school life and she quietly yearned for college and academia.
It stung to be faced with her own shortcomings. This prince may’ve piqued her curiosity and she still felt unsteady from whatever she had experienced, but it wasn’t enough to offset the reality. She was out of her league and it was time to make an exit.
She turned to Alex and nudged her. “C’mon. I’m done with this beauty pageant crap.”
“I’m good. I’ll meet you later.” Her best friend responded absently without taking her eyes off of Jaron. The charismatic spell the young man weaved had enraptured her and Dylan doubted a bomb could have moved her. So much for female solidarity. It was disappointing, but she supposed she couldn’t blame Alex for wanting to stay.
“So, if you’re from another country, where did you learn English so well?” She heard Jordan’s deep voice behind her.
Dylan could hear the gentle laugh from Jaron’s mouth. “Our ancestors came from the European continent centuries ago so it was and still is our native language. Plus, we have satellite and the internet. We watch a lot of American television.”
The words were drowned out by laughter as she backed away from the fray and the mob folded in around her. Dylan elbowed and squeezed her way through the crush until she finally emerged from the claustrophobic cocoon of swimsuits and flesh. The beach opened up before her. The ocean wind swept through her hair and pulled at her sarong. The sun’s heat beat down on her again. Herons and gulls squawked overhead as they fought against the wind and she began to move away from the crowd.
She glanced behind her, a silent hope in her thoughts that Alex had changed her mind, but Dylan could still see Alex’s curly locks in the throng, obviously and hopelessly enthralled by this mysterious prince. She couldn’t help but feel a little let down by her best friend’s hormonal slavery.
Alone, she began to wander off. She walked in a daze with her arms crossed around her middle. She wanted to just forget about this ‘Jaron’ who had so entranced herself and her best friend, yet her mind was not cooperating with her. Just the thought of him brought back that heady feeling she had experienced.
Dylan Roberts zoned out again, her mind a buoy tossed about in a storm. Her descent wasn’t as deep or as penetrating as it had been before, but that didn’t make it any less consuming. She could still feel the memory of being drawn into those eyes as if he was standing right before her at that moment. Like a blanket on a cold winter’s night, his presence wrapped around hers, merged with hers in a sort of mutual osmosis, one being, not two.
It had made her feel…different, but in a good way. Almost complete, was the only words that described it and seemed to make sense to her. It was like a huge piece in her had been missing all these years, but she hadn’t known it had been absent. But, somehow, for some reason that she yet to fathom, this boy she had just met possessed that chunk of her (soul?) that she hadn’t realized wasn’t there. She knew what that feeling was called, love at first sight, but she didn’t believe in such romantic, mystical notions.
It was all so very confusing.
This was her, Dylan Roberts, logical, intelligent, independent, strong. She needed no one to complete her. She was complete all on her own. As she always had been. Yet…
In her mind’s eye, she could picture herself back there on the beach with Jaron, except everyone else was gone. The surf still beat against the sand rhythmically. The wind kept up its relentless tugging at her hair and sarong. But she barely noticed any of that. The only thing she cared about was the boy walking up to her.
Mere inches apa
rt when he stopped, she tilted her head and gazed into those soulful eyes, filled with the universe and expansive enough to get lost in forever. She felt his hand wrap around her waist and bring them closer together. His fingers buried themselves in her hair, while his other hand lay gently on her hip.
Her own hands explored the hard muscles of his back and she became acutely aware of how little either of them was wearing. But the concern was fleeting as Jaron bent his head down and brushed his lips against hers.
The imaginary kiss was tentative at first, almost exploratory, like he wasn’t sure she would want him to do this. But she did want it. She wanted it more than anything else she could think of.
In response, she pressed her own lips against his, roughly, her lips parting to allow their tongues to touch. Fire and heat erupted from deep inside her as their kiss became filled with passion and desperate need. Her eyes fluttered shut as she became enveloped by the desire she felt in her body, all the way through to her soul.
“Watch it, you klutz.”
Like someone had thrown a bucket of freezing water on her, she came back to her senses abruptly, her fantasy vanishing like dust in the breeze. Her eyes snapped open and, not watching where she was going, she realized that she had smacked right into the broad chest of one of the football players. The impact sent her spinning away, almost hurling her to the sand.
She muttered an apology with nary a glance at who she had run into and hurried past him, embarrassed and confused. Despite the warmth of the summer sun, she wrapped her arms around herself like she was chilled and walked on, consumed by her own thoughts, but now keeping her eyes on where she was going.
It only took a few minutes until she crested another dune and saw their umbrellas in the distance. Seeing them comforted her, a safe haven from the weirdness that the day had become. She’d go back to her book and get lost in the Overlook, try to forget about Jordan and Derrick and this stranger. She had accused Alex of being enslaved to her hormones, but, in all honesty, she was just as chained to her own.
From the Blue Page 7
