by JA Huss
“You know. Back then.”
“I told you about my parents?”
“Yeah. Dive shop. Grew up there. Swimming with dolphins. Mom”—he points to me—“Silvia. And Dad, Jack.” His eyes are bright now. Like he’s really happy with himself. “And your brothers.” He squints his eyes. “Alonzo.” Pauses. “Tony. And…” He snaps his fingers. “Luke.” Then he pauses again. “Weird fucking combination of names. Where the hell did Alonzo come from?”
“My grandpop,” I say. “But we call him Lonz.”
“Yeah,” Jesse says, leaning back in his seat. “Yeah. I remember that now. Your grandpop. And fuckin’ Lonz. Never met a Lonz before.”
“You looked me up in there, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“You Googled me.”
“No,” he says.
“Then how do you remember all that? Last night you had no idea who I was.”
“I dunno. It just all came back, I guess.”
“Liar,” I say. “I’m totally gonna Google your family and be all, ‘Hey, Johnny. How’s Samantha doing? Hey, Joey. How was your trip to Easter Island?’”
He laughs. “You’re insane.”
“What? That’s what you just did.”
“There’s no Samantha. And I’m one hundred percent positive Joey Boston doesn’t even know where Easter Island is.”
“Not the point. You’re cheating!”
He leans over into my personal space. Way too close, in fact. But he slides his sunglasses up onto his head, places a hand on my cheek, and says, “Emma.”
“What?”
We stare into each other’s eyes. Those goddamned blue eyes look like the ocean outside my window right now.
“I’m not cheating,” he says. “I just remembered, that’s all. You made a big impression on me. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain.”
I start shaking my head, but his palm is firm on the side of my cheek. And then he leans in even closer and says, “Besides.” He kisses me. Softly, right on the lips. Little bit of tongue. Just the right amount to encourage that tingly feeling building in my stomach. And whispers, “I can’t cheat. Because this isn’t a game,” right into my mouth.
He pulls back, slides his sunglasses down over his eyes, and says, “Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - JESSE
I don’t know why I’m not nervous about meeting the Dumas clan, I’m just not. I have this weird feeling. This strange new belief that I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
I get it. I get it. Last night this crazy bitch bought me in an auction, drugged me, kidnapped me, tied me up, released me, and then roped me into this entire day of mysterious jet travel and Barbie and Ken mini-rolls.
But I’m having a blast.
Serious fucking blast.
Just being here again. On Key West. The beach, the ocean, the sand and maybe… just maybe we find a sailboat and… nah. I won’t even go there yet. It’s not even necessary.
I have Emma. And I’m gonna meet her fam.
I’m fully prepared to throw with her brothers. That’s what brothers do, right? I’m pretty sure it is. Hell, if Zach was a girl instead, I’d be throwing with every goddamned asshole who tried to date him. Her. Whatever. My point is, I’m ready to prove I’m down with those Dumas brothers. That’s all I’m saying.
Did I ever come back here? No. I didn’t. Never came back. And sure, part of that was because after my uncle died I had Zach around and I was partying almost every day. The missing trust fund. Johnny and Dad whispering secrets all the time, Joey… well, I have no clue what Joey was doing but I’m pretty sure he was fucking girls.
“This is a bad idea,” Emma says when the limo rolls to a stop in front of her parents’ dive shop.
I’m about to tell her to chill, I got this. But a woman comes rushing out of the dive shop waving her arms and yelling something I don’t catch until I open the door and start getting out of the car.
“Emma!” the woman says. “Where did you go?”
Emma gets out behind me, looking cute as fuck in her little Daisy Dukes and pigtails. “What are you talking about, Mom?”
“You pulled up and then left! I thought you were kidnapped!”
“Mom, I was in my own car. You can’t get kidnapped in your own car. I wasn’t kidnapped.”
I laugh. “Actually, you can get kidnapped in your own car, Emma.”
She shoots me a look that says, Don’t, then says, “We had to make a stop before we got out. That’s all.”
But… Emma’s mother isn’t looking at her anymore. She’s looking at me. “Who is this?” she asks, eyebrows waggling at me in what is clear older-woman innuendo.
I wiggle back because that’s what you do. “I’m Jesse Boston. Emma’s boyfriend.” And I do not have one ounce of guilt when I say it.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Emma says quickly. “Just a friend. We’re on a day trip.”
“Day trip?” her mother asks. “No. You’re staying the weekend now, missy.”
“Mom, I wish I could but—”
“We’d love to stay the weekend,” I say, then take Emma’s hand. “But we don't have a room and—what?” I’m looking at Emma and she’s making one of those slicing motions across her throat with her other hand. Like she’s totally gonna kill me.
“Room?” Mrs. Dumas says. “We have a whole street full of cottages just a few blocks over. You can stay there.”
“Oh,” I say. And I get it. Emma was telling me to shut up with that gesture. Not that she’s gonna cut my throat.
Though she might do that next. Because Mrs. Dumas is pulling me inside, yelling, “Jack! She came back! Don’t call the police!” Emma trails behind me, helpless. And for a second I think… maybe I should’ve been worried?
Nah. Then I laugh.
“This isn’t funny,” Emma hisses.
“It was your idea,” I mutter back.
“Emma?” Her huge father appears from a back room on the other side of the counter. “You’re not kidnapped.”
“Funnily enough,” I say, “I was kidnapped last night.”
“What?” everyone says.
“Kidding,” I say, extending a hand to her dad. He’s like six foot five, two hundred fifty pounds, easy. And his hand makes mine look like a child’s.
I’m not a small dude. I’m almost six two. Little bit leaner than the head of this clan here. But I can hold my own.
I think I can, anyway. Until the screen door swings open, bangs against the wall, and three leaner, let’s just call them super-muscular, Dumas clan members barge in.
“Who kidnapped Emma?” the first one says. Then stops. Because obviously no one kidnapped Emma. He’s got to be a full inch taller than his father. Tattoos all up and down his well-tanned arms and chest. Did I mention he has no shirt on? He doesn’t. He’s also holding—wait for it—a barracuda. Yup. I’m pretty sure that’s a barracuda.
While I’m picturing myself being beaten to death with a dead barracuda, the other two, equally as muscled up and mean-looking as this here first one—who I predict is our friend Lonz—stand next to him and fold their arms across their chests in a way that makes their biceps pop out like cannons.
I wait for the pec flex. The way I did back in the jet. But they are not fucking around. They are dead-ass serious.
OK. Yeah. I definitely cannot take the Dumas brothers. Maybe if Johnny and Joey were here, and Zach, and five or six of their closest friends… we might have a chance.
“She’s fine,” I say, laughing nervously and holding up both hands in surrender. “Just a little mix-up.”
“Who the fuck is this?” the big one asks.
“Mouth, Alonzo,” Mrs. Dumas chastises.
How did I know he was Alonzo? Um, maybe because he’s just what an Alonzo looks like?
Anyway, there’s like twenty minutes of bumbling explanations. Alonzo, Tony, Luke, and good old Jack decide they will not kill me, or beat me with a barracuda, once
Emma and I explain—several times—that we just needed to pop over to the shops because I needed to buy a shirt.
That was awkward.
But ten more minutes of sidestepping the fact that their sweet, little pigtailed sister sucked my dick like a fucking porn star in her jet bedroom and then used my shirt to wipe my come off her tits, and we’re all back on the same page.
In fact, we’ve agreed to stay the entire week in one of their cottages. Emma just nods at her mother as this arrangement is made, all the while waggling her eyebrows at me. And I can’t figure out if she’s innuendo-ing me for a whole week of sex in this cottage, or telling me that we’ll be back on that jet tonight and to just play along.
Either way, I am bulldozed over by these people. Completely flattened like a pancake.
And I love it. I love every fucking minute of it.
But something else becomes abundantly clear during all this craziness.
She wins.
I cannot compete.
Emma Dumas’s bossiness blows mine out of the water.
It’s not her huge, overreacting, overprotective family, either.
I’m just… I’m falling, man. I’m falling fast. Hard. Like just jumped off a two-hundred-story building kinda hard and fast.
And getting kidnapped by her last night might be the best thing that ever happened to me.
“OK, listen, Mom,” Emma says. “I will come back in a few days but I really do have something important to do on Monday, so—”
“What’s more important than visiting your family? You never come home anymore. It’s like you abandoned us.”
“I was here two months ago.”
“Two months.” Her mother sighs. “You should be here every weekend for Saturday dinner like your brothers. Look at their busy lives. And they still manage to come over for Saturday dinner.”
“You guys all live on the same street.”
“What’s your point?”
“I’m in the city. Three hours away by jet. I think my point was pretty obvious.”
Her mother looks at me. “Saturday dinners have always been sacred in our house.”
I nod at her. “Sure. Yeah. I think everyone should have Saturday dinners.”
“Oh?” her mother says. “Does your family do Saturday dinner? Or Sunday dinner?”
“We don’t do dinner.”
Her mother, for serious, gets this really confused look on her face.
“You know… well. My mother… disappeared when I was a kid and my father did his best, but… yeah. We don't do dinner.”
Emma’s doing that little slicing-her-throat motion again. But her mother says, “I’m sorry, did you say your mother disappeared? Who took care of you?”
“Oh, mostly my older brother, Johnny.”
“Well, we’ve had a nice chat,” Emma says, interrupting. “But we’ve got plans today on the water. So we gotta get going.”
But her mother isn’t done yet, because she says, “Would you like to come for Saturday dinners, Mr. Boston?”
I brighten. “Uh… OK. Sure. Yeah. Actually that sounds fun.”
“No,” Emma says. “We’re not even dating, Mom. He’s just… ya know. A thing.”
Emma’s mom side-eyes her for a moment, frowning. Then looks at me again. “Does she always boss you like that?”
“Mom,” Emma starts.
But good ol’ Mom puts up a hand and continues. “She’s always been so sassy. Don’t let her scare you away with her sass.”
I glance at Emma and beam her a smile. “I kinda like her sass.”
Emma’s face goes a little Bright Berry Beach Pink as she shrugs. “What can I say? I’m sassy.”
“She’s bossy too,” her mom continues.
“Really?” I ask. “I hadn’t noticed.” Emma shakes her head.
“Yes,” her mother says. She’s just not letting this go. “She’s very bossy, Mr. Boston.” Then she hesitates and laughs. “Oh, that’s cute.”
“What’s cute?” Emma asks.
“Mr. Boston?” her mother says. “Sounds a lot like Mr. Bossy to me. Maybe you’ve finally met your match, Emma?”
I glance at Emma and take her in. All the ways I’ve seen her over the past twenty-four hours or so. All the ways I remember her back when we were here, on this island together. She is quite something. She was always quite something.
“It’s a pretty even match,” I say. “In fact, the very first time we met she was working the shaved ice stand in Mallory Square and she bossed me into buying a souvenir cup.”
Emma stares at me for a moment. That perfect pout of a mouth—the one that always looks like someone is perpetually disappointing her—lifts up just the slightest bit. She says, “How do you remember that?”
“I told you. You made quite the impression on me.” We lock eyes for a moment. In fact, we have a moment. One of those memorable moments. One I might want to think about forever. One that might just change my life.
But it’s interrupted by Emma’s mom. “Now you don’t have to come every Saturday night like my boys, Mr. Boston,” Emma’s mom says. “But I would appreciate it if you could have a regular schedule so I know how much food to make. So would you prefer the first and third Saturdays? Or the second and fourth? Sometimes there’s a fifth, but not often. So I’ll let those slide.”
“Mom,” Emma says. “This is Jesse Boston, for fuck’s sake.”
“Mouth, Emma,” her mother snaps.
“He’s not gonna fly down here twice a month to have dinner with a strange family.”
“Uh,” I say, holding up a hand. “I’d actually love to come. Thank you, Mrs. Dumas. I’ll take second and third, if that’s OK.”
She walks towards me, pats my cheek as she beams me a smile, and says, “That’s perfect. And you’re very welcome. You should bring your brother Johnny too. I bet he’d like a nice home-cooked meal.”
I take a moment to picture Johnny down here having dinner with me and then unexpectedly laugh. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll bring Johnny.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - EMMA
After that awkward moment, I usher Jesse outside the dive shop and say, “This way.”
“What are we doing?” he asks. “We didn’t even grab equipment.”
“Would you just let me handle things?” I say.
“Would I just let you? You’ve been handling them all freaking day.”
“I am the boss,” I say, then glance at him to see if he finds that funny or annoying.
He catches my look, so I quickly shift my eyes, and grin. Funny, I think.
“I’m gonna call you Little Miss Sassy from now on. You sassy little—”
“Oh, my God. Shut up already.”
“—bossy girl,” he finishes. “Which, by the way, I can’t find it in me to hold that against you.”
“No?” I ask, looking both ways so we can cross the street to the marina. “Why’s that?”
“Because holy fucking shit. Your whole family is nothing but a bunch of bossy bossers.”
I can’t help myself. I chuckle at that. “You only got a spoonful, buddy. I hope you don’t really plan on showing up for dinner because you’re gonna get a heaping helping if you do.”
“I kinda liked it.”
“Which part?”
I glance over at him just in time to see him shrug. “All of it, I think. You forget, I didn’t have a family like that growing up. Hell, I don’t have a family like that now. Joey is always off doing—whatever the fuck it is he does. Parties, I guess. Fucks girls. But he’s always doing it somewhere else. Ya know? Trying to avoid the tabloids, maybe. Not that he has to worry about that. They only care about me for some reason.”
“And Johnny? You told my mother you were gonna bring him with you. She takes everything literally so in two weeks when you show up for Saturday dinner, he better be with you or you’ll get an earful, mister.”
“I honestly don’t even know if he’s alive.”
I scoff.
&
nbsp; “I’m fucking serious. I haven’t seen him in forever. Years, actually.”
“Jesus Christ, Jesse. You need to go check on him.”
“I think he’s OK. I was up on Joey’s floor yesterday morning looking for a tux for the auction and I heard noises up there.”
“What kind of noises?”
“Like pounding and shit.”
“And you didn’t go check?”
“No. It’s Johnny.”
“What if someone got into his place and they were like… fighting to the death?” He laughs at me. “I’m serious.”
“It’s Johnny. OK? He can take care of himself.”
“Well, you guys are weird.”
“That’s my whole point. I’m weird and you’re normal. I wanna try normal for a while.”
I scoff again. “Jesse, you just committed to Saturday dinner in Key West two weeks a month for the rest of your life. Good luck getting out of it now. And by the way, I’m not coming with you. So if that was a plan to have two dates a month with me, it’s gonna backfire.”
“Fine,” he says. “I don’t need you.”
“I don’t need you either.”
“Where the fuck are we going?” he asks, just as I lead him onto a long dock. “And how did you make all these arrangements, anyway?”
“Pffffffft. You slept forever on the plane. I had plenty of time to plan this.” I side-eye him as we walk down the dock. Not turning my head because I don’t want him to see me side-eyeing him, but I’m curious to see his reaction.
He’s looking around. This is the dock for the big boats. I was just trying to show off when I made these arrangements. Show him who had the bigger boat in their pants. But now that I think about it, this will actually be a nice surprise for him.
He lets out a sigh as we walk up to the trimaran. “Jesus Christ. You’re taking me out on this?”
“You don’t like it?” I ask.
He shoots me a look that says, Are you on drugs? I love it. “Corsair 970. Is this yours?”
“Do you think it’s mine?” I chuckle.
“You did buy a Huracán this morning to one-up me.”
I poke a fingertip into the center of my cheek and say, “I did do that, didn’t I?”
