by J. L. Mac
“Of course.”
***
We enter a small shop that has what appears to be a hand-painted sign reading “Bill’s Beer and Bait.” There isn’t much to the place. It’s exactly as the sign says. Mostly beer and other drinks on one side of the store with assorted fishing supplies on the other. Behind the counter is an older man with a look on his face that tells me the deep wrinkles marring his cheeks and forehead are likely from a lifelong shitty disposition versus laughing. He’s balding and has a hefty gut rubbing against the counter. He looks none too pleased to see us.
Zander quickly makes a few selections, moving from shelf to shelf, and then heads to the counter with me in tow. “How’s it going, Bill?” he asks curtly, fishing his wallet from the back pocket of his tattered jeans.
Bill huffs sarcastically while he loads the items into a bag. “I’d be better if that daddy of yours would actually do his job,” Bill mutters in his southern drawl from behind the cash register, punching keys forcefully with his fat index finger.
Zander waits patiently to pay, saying nothing to the man who is clearly insulting him.
“37.26.” Bill taps a key and looks to Zander for payment without an ounce of customer courtesy. I’m unsure of what the tiff is between these two, but whatever it is, it clearly doesn’t rile Zander much, and if it does, he’s really good at hiding it.
Zander pays, then grabs the paper sack off the counter and stuffs the receipt in his pocket. I watch as he and the storeowner share a less than friendly silent exchange. Even through his passive appearance, Zander has this, this energy or something radiating from him. It screams “don’t fuck with me” to everyone else and purrs “come closer” to me. He doesn’t have to say a word and yet, somehow, I can tell what he’s thinking. I imagine Bill feels it too. I can’t imagine anyone could be in his presence and not pick up on whatever this silent brooding thing is.
“I can’t believe I was on that snake’s side,” Bill mumbles.
Zander turns towards the door, paper bag in hand, and I follow.
“Have a nice day, Bill.” Zander tosses over his shoulder, lacking sincerity.
I turn just in time to see Bill sneer at Zander’s farewell remark. I linger for a beat just inside the entrance to the small store. “Fuck off, Bill,” I chime from the door, like I just confessed my undying love for him.
Bill mumbles under his breath like old men do and we leave him to it.
Once we’re back on the sidewalk and walking at an easy pace back towards his Jeep, Zander smiles wide, melting my insides a little. Okay, a lot.
“What?” I ask, taking four steps per his two steps.
Zander shakes his head, looking down. “You. That’s what.”
“Elaborate.”
“Why would you say that to that crotchety old bastard?”
“Um, he was a dick?” I answer, sounding more like a question than a statement.
“Yeah, but he was a dick to me. Not you,” he adds.
“Yeah. So?” I shrug.
Zander shakes his head some more, chuckling under his breath.
“Sometimes I let off steam by acting like an asshole to people around me,” I admit, ashamed of my less than honorable actions.
“I get that. Trust me, I get that.” Zander nods, looking lost in thought.
I had thought about explaining myself, but it seems that it’s unnecessary. He understands, I guess. He’s the first person that hasn’t given a look of pity or disapproval when they witness my snide remarks firsthand. Most everyone cringes and looks at me like I’m some errant child. It’s so hard for people to understand that I’m angry at life, not any one particular person.
He doesn’t bother trying to explain what was at the root of the unfriendly exchange. I’m not too sure that it’s any of my business, but curiosity wins out over propriety.
I replay the unpleasant exchange in my head while we drive in comfortable silence. Why would that guy have a problem with Zander’s dad? He hasn’t even mentioned much about his family to me. After milling it over in my head, it does seem peculiar that a heart transplant recipient wouldn’t have family breathing down his neck all the time. I can’t get a moment of peace from my family and friends and somehow Zander has found a way to completely isolate himself. I have to admit that it makes me a tad jealous and even more curious about this enigma that is Alexander McBride.
McBride?
His name sounds so damn familiar; it’s like a connection between the man and the name is just on the tip of my tongue. I make a mental note to search the internet for more information at some point. Google will shed some light on the reason his name sounds so familiar.
As if reading my mind, Zander peeks over at me in the passenger seat. “Penny for your thoughts?”
I shake my head from side to side, doing my best to pretend like my mind isn’t racing with an entire line of intrusive questions.
“Okay. Okay,” he says with a smirk on his lips, holding his free hand up in mock surrender. “I get it. I can appreciate the need for privacy.”
We round the corner and cross the road nearing Zander’s stretch of beach. Our silent drive comes to an end once we are back at his beach house. We climb the stairs and he leads me to the wet bar off of his living room. Pulling out a stool, he prompts me to sit.
“Red okay?”
“Red wine is perfect.” I slide myself onto the cool high gloss barstool and watch as he moves fluidly behind the bar, pulling everything he needs from cabinets and drawers. He pours my glass of red wine and cracks open a bottle of water for himself, pouring it over ice in a glass tumbler.
Seeing him so focused and attentive like this awakens that nagging primal desire that dwells deep down. For the millionth time, I resent my stupid female body for finding him so attractive. I resent him for being so attractive. It makes me angry at myself and a little bit more convinced that I may be truly insane. I’m off my goddamn rocker.
***
When he said golfing, I hadn’t pictured this. He’s just pulled his man toy Jeep into the parking lot with a marquee that reads, “Adventure Island.” The letters are all lit up in a rainbow of colors. I scan the property to confirm that Zander has brought us to a teenage hangout and not a country club. Miniature golf obstacles dot the property, including a windmill, a mini cottage, and a crocodile with its mouth snapping open then shut. On the opposite side is an oblong racetrack complete with go-karts made to look like drag racers. It’s hilarious. I definitely didn’t expect Zander to come “golfing” here. A smile breaks out across my face as I turn in my seat to face him.
“This seems—ah—pretty legit for a former professional golfer,” I croon sarcastically, nodding my head.
“I’m retired,” he reminds me. “And I’m a heart patient. I have no real social life thanks to my fucked up family. I take what I can get.” He shrugs, boasting an absolutely acerbic grin that has me regretting pulling away from him back at the motel room.
“You’re serious?” I’m confused by his comment about his family and the only thing that I can imagine is that his family is as stifling as mine, but maybe they do it from afar? It’s difficult to believe that though. If they were the smothering type like mine, they’d be at his side all the time or at the very least, calling, texting and Facebook stalking him. I ditched all social media a long time ago. It was just too much.
“Of course. I know the owner. I come hang out sometimes.” He shrugs his defined shoulders again, distracting me from my thoughts. His body as a whole is distracting. He isn’t bulky, but he’s tall, lean and sculpted. It’s difficult to imagine a heart patient as anything more than a pale, feeble-bodied person in a hospital gown, but Zander is quite the contrary. It’s obvious to me that he takes care of himself and keeps himself in order. It makes me happy to see. “Shall we?” he asks, opening his door to get out of the Jeep. I smile and nod as he rounds the front, letting me out. I’m glad that I wore capri pants and flats. Horsing around like teenagers isn’t a dress-friendly activ
ity.
“So you’re telling me that the former pro golfer plays putt-putt and races around the track in go-karts?”
“I get my thrills where I can.” Zander’s smile is an attack of the most gorgeous kind. Every brick of the wall that I’ve formed around myself seems brittle when he smiles at me like that.
He leads the way to the first hole of the course. There are two putters and two golf balls sitting there, waiting for us.
“Don’t we have to pay or something?” I glance around, looking for a line or a desk or something.
“Nope. Just us for a while.” Zander sets a fluorescent yellow golf ball on the green then holds a putter out to me.
“What? How?” I idly take the putter, staring disbelievingly at Zander the entire time.
“Asked a favor.” He shrugs and holy fuck. I’m an oozing puddle of congealed estrogen and all things girl.
“Wow. You know how to make a woman feel special,” I admit, stepping up to the ball that he has set up for me at the first hole.
“Not women. Just you.” Even his short and choppy Zander McBride style explanation has me swooning. I’m in deep. “Okay. Get ready to lose to a golf master,” he quips, popping his neck and straightening his shirt, feigning cockiness.
“We’ll see about that!” I smile at him, feeling so damn girly. It’s disgustingly sweet.
And incredible.
***
Eight holes into the nine-hole course, it’s blatantly obvious that I suck at mini golf. Badly. So. So. Badly. Zander has had to hunt down my ball in the landscaping three different times. The only upside to my severe lack of skill with the putter has been Zander’s laughter. He’s been in stitches nonstop as he traipses off to retrieve the golf balls that have made their way into various bushes.
He bends over and places the ball on the green at hole nine for me. I’m so glad this part of the day is about to be over. I’m a sore loser. I’ll admit it.
“Need lessons in putt-putt,” I mumble, doing my best to “visualize the putt,” as Zander suggested. What the fuck does that even mean? He might as well have been speaking Greek. I nodded, then missed the shot so many times I snatched up the ball, marched right over to the hole, and dropped it in. Zander, of course, doubled over laughing. It was worth missing the shot. All eight of them.
“Well, if you need lessons…” he says from behind me in a deep voice that seems to caress every inch of me.
I turn my attention to him. All laughter has ebbed away. A lusty look has filled his eyes and my stomach flutters delectably. “I guess I do,” I mumble, barely loud enough for him to hear.
He leans his putter against the hand rail beside him and steps up behind me. “Don’t think. Just feel.” His breath sweeps across the shell of my ear, making me want to say “huh” just so he has to repeat himself. His defined body moves close up against my backside. I have to fight my natural reflex to push back against him. His hands grip me by the shoulders and squeeze my muscles almost like a massage. His hands run down my arms from behind, effectively encasing me in him, my much smaller frame like a shadow beneath his. His fingers wrap gingerly around my hands and make adjustments to my grip as he goes. One hand falls away, splaying across my sternum just beneath my bra. I gasp at the intimate touch. Zander rights my posture and then runs his hand down my back. He taps his fingers low on my inner thigh, motioning for me to spread my legs a little. I adjust myself with his help. All the while he’s holding his other hand over both of mine, still gripping the putter.
“A little goes along way,” he breathes into my ear, this time much closer. So much closer that I’ve forgotten the damn golf and hole nine and the world. His hand joins my two and his one on the grip of the putter. He squeezes gently. I close my eyes and end up holding my breath. The putter swings back then forward almost like a porch swing. No stopping. Just one fluid movement. I open my eyes just in time to see the wretched ball drift easily over the AstroTurf, slowing as it nears the cup then falls in with a “plink.”
Zander takes the putter from me, sets it with his, and turns me to face him. “So simple you don’t even have to try. Just gotta let it happen.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
“Because it is.”
My own guilty conscience rears her ugly head, snapping me out of my Zander-coma. Images of Jake flit through my mind and it’s a slap in the face. I step away from Zander, disappointed in myself not just for my internal tug-of-war but for wanting him so badly that I can nearly taste him. Zander makes no response to my sudden retreat. He just eyes me carefully, which only heightens my disappointment. This isn’t fair to him either. It’s not fair to Jake at all, but Zander doesn’t deserve this tension, this desire then a cold shoulder, but I just can’t go there with him. It’s wrong.
“I know you feel this.” His words are simple but weighted. Zander steps closer to me. “You feel it like I feel it.”
I swallow hard searching my brain for the right move. A subtle nod is all I can come up with.
“Tell me. Say it,” he orders in a voice laced with pleading.
I can’t refuse him. I don’t want to refuse him. I’m so confused. So mixed up. So lost. “I feel it.”
“Tell me you want this like I do.”
“I want it.”
“Please don’t go back to Atlanta yet.”
“I’m not going. Not yet.” I make my promise and look closely at Zander. I see myself in him, I think. I know how lonely I am most of the time and it occurs to me that Zander is lonely too. I know the look. I know how it feels and it seems that when I’m talking to him, when I’m near him, the companionship that passes between the two of us is medicating. He pacifies a pain that being alone has brought me and I think I give him the same. Or something like it.
“Want to have lunch at my place?” Zander’s voice is still lusty and pleading. He makes me want to give him everything I can’t if it means it will make him smile.
“As long as you don’t try to feed me enchilada casserole.” I give him a small smile, hoping that it will please him like his smile pleases me. If my suspicions are even anywhere close to correct, then earning a smile from someone like him, like me, is definitely pleasing. It’s a small victory in a war against the worst parts of life.
Zander’s hand closes around mine and pulls me toward the parking lot. He doesn’t say anything and neither do I. I try hard to focus on him instead of my same old demons. I find myself wondering why he’s so alone down here in his beach house. I don’t understand why he wants to be so closed off to the world. I can understand the need for isolation, though. Who needs to be around people when the crowd of thoughts in your head keeps you pretty busy?
Zander stops in his tracks, causing me to stop too. I look up at him to see his nostrils flaring. His jaw is tight and his eyes are brimming with anger. I follow his gaze to find him staring at a shiny black Lincoln parked across the lot from where his Jeep is sitting. Zander squeezes my hand in his then releases me.
“Stay right here, Sadie. Right here,” he reiterates in a serious, dominating sort of tone.
I can’t do anything but nod. I watch him stride quickly over to the vehicle. I can barely see the window roll down around Zander’s frame. He braces his palms against the top of the window and leans down to talk to whoever is in there. I can’t see who it is. Zander lifts one hand from the top of the window and it looks like he’s jabbing his finger at whoever is in the car.
“What the hell?” I mumble just as Zander turns on his heels and marches back in my direction. The window begins sliding up and I catch sight of a man in a suit just before he disappears behind the dark tint.
“C’mon,” Zander huffs out, taking my hand in his again.
“What was that?” I ask without hesitation, glancing back over my shoulder one more time as he pulls me to the Jeep. If Zander is involved in something shady, I refuse to have any part of it. He doesn’t seem like the criminal type, but how in the world do you explain that gangster-
looking shit that just happened in the parking lot of a place called Adventure Island? It’s not like we were at the grocery store or a bar or something and just happened to run into someone he knows. No. Whoever that person was, they came to find Alexander McBride.
“No one. It’s nothing,” he grumbles with his jaw still tight, displaying a ticking muscle that tells me that it was definitely something.
He helps me in his Jeep and stalks around to his side. He slides into his seat and the Jeep revs to life. I glance across to him. I can see him taking deep breaths. He’s trying to calm down.
“Zander, I don’t care what you have going on with whoever that was, but I won’t be caught up in anything illegal or anything.”
The wrinkle between his knit brows relaxes and a small smile lifts the edge of his mouth.
“You think I’m some kind of criminal?” he asks, not doing anything to hide to amusement in his eyes.
“Well…” I shrug, looking around and trying to think of something to say.
“No, Sadie. It’s nothing for you to worry about. I promise.”
“Okay,” I say softly, catching Zander looking nervous. And it is. It’s okay. I don’t know why he’s nervous and I don’t know what the hell the deal was with the black car, but I trust him. I don’t have any reason to and I don’t know exactly why I should trust him, but I feel more safe in his company than I’ve felt since the night that ruined my life. I feel safe and not nearly as lonely as I normally do.
My eyes face forward and I watch as his Jeep eats up the road ahead of us. Thoughts of going home at some point enter my mind and I don’t like it. At all. Knowing that Zander, the man who got Jake’s heart, is down here all alone is an unwelcome fact. What if something happened and he needed help? Who would be there? A chill runs through me when I think about something awful happening to him. I’d lose him and Jake all over again. That heart that I loved to listen to, with my ear pressed to Jake’s chest, would be gone forever, and Zander, a familiar stranger who has captured my affections so easily would be gone too. He’d be another person to mourn. He’d leave and take my Jake’s heart with him on his way out. Sudden tears sting my eyes and I fight hard to keep them at bay. I’m so tired of fighting. The lighter side of life is so much better than the fighting side.
