Noah pulls into a space in front of a little Italian restaurant and cuts the engine.
“I feel like a fool.” He pushes back his hair and turns his body so he’s facing me.
We need a re-do. That’s what my mom calls it when one of us says something we don't mean, usually when we’re hangry. We start the scene or conversation over, and it’s like the prior one never existed. Placing my hand in the space between us, I smile. “Hi, my name is Ember Dane.”
Noah squints and his eyebrows scrunch together.
My outstretched hand shakes the air, and Noah gets the idea. He places his hand in mine and says, “Noah Sutton.”
“It’s nice to meet you Noah. Aren’t you glad we live in a Utopian society where money doesn't matter? Where all that matters is how kind we are to one another?” Our hands fall to rest on the console, but I’m not finished talking. “Noah, I don’t come from money, but that doesn't mean you should be embarrassed that you do. It’s okay with me if you talk about Gretchen. You can tell me about your gardener too, if you have one. Money is nice to have, but it doesn't dictate how happy we are. What brings you joy, Noah?”
“Soccer. Running on the field, and feeling my legs burn. After I’ve been playing for a long time my breath feels thicker, like it’s working harder to come out. And—”
He tears his gaze from me and out to somewhere on the street.
“Go on,” I urge.
“I like the games,” he continues hesitantly. “The crowd. Their enthusiasm. Bleachers full of people yelling my name.” He looks back at me, worry in his features. “Is that shallow?”
“Not at all. There’s nothing wrong with being recognized for your passion.”
“If only Stanford would recognize me.” He shakes his head. “It’s too late now though. They’ve already made their choice.”
“It’s still spring.” I don’t understand, but that’s not surprising. I don’t watch sports, and I have no idea how recruiting goes.
“The guys they want on their team next fall were picked at the beginning of this school year.” Sadness isn't even the right word to describe what he looks like he’s feeling. Maybe heartbreak? “This season is it for me. I’ll start telling people I used to play in high school. Then time will go on and it will change to I played growing up.”
His eyes swim with emotion, hopelessness and anguish brushing the surface. And when I see that, I understand. He’s mourning a dream. From the moment I looked into Noah’s eyes, I knew there was more to him than a letter jacket and the most perfect hair on the planet.
“I’m so sorry.” Our hands are still wrapped around each other, so I pull one free to rub his arm.
“You make it better.” Releasing my hand, he uses both of his to cup my face. “You’re magic.”
He leans in and softly brushes his lips on my cheek. I feel the hot breath of his gentle sigh, and the dragging of his lips across my skin. Before he can reach my lips, I’ve turned toward him, meeting him. I feel his smile, and then his need. Grateful, hungry kisses, and I feel like I’m floating.
When he pulls back, I miss his touch. My core is warm and my limbs feel like they’re charged with electricity. I want more, even though I’ve never had more.
“Wow.” He clears his throat, but his lips are curled into a satisfied smile. “I don’t know about you, but I just worked up an appetite.”
A deep breath slides through me, slowing my heart rate to a less frenzied pace. I reach for my purse, hook it around my shoulder, and point a warning finger at Noah. “Don’t be scared off by how many ravioli’s I can eat. I chased a crazy toddler around for six hours today.” I can eat a ton of ravioli even when I’ve done nothing but be a couch potato all day, too.
“Let’s get you fed then.”
We walk across the parking lot, and he pulls me close to his side. Dipping his lips to my ear, he whispers “Soccer isn't the only thing that brings me joy.”
“No?” I grin up at him.
“Nope.”
He pulls me in again, just before we reach the entrance. His kiss tastes like everything I want. Devotion and yearning, love and lust. The gotta-have-it-or-I’ll-die feeling I read about in romance novels. And magic. Before Noah, I didn’t realize magic had a taste. But now I know it does. It tastes like longing. Fascination. Magnetism. A blend where flavor meets feeling, swirling and mixing until they combine into one powerful experience.
7
Noah
“Are we ever going to meet this secret girlfriend of yours?” My mom gives me a look.
“Wait, what?” Brody pauses, a bowl of sautéed green beans held in mid-air. I swipe them and add some to the empty spot next to my roasted chicken.
“You have a girlfriend?” Brody roughly grabs for the dish, and a few green beans fly onto the table. “Didn’t you and Kelsey break up two seconds ago?”
“We broke up three weeks ago, but you’d know that if you came around more.”
Brody tucks into his plate instead of responding. I know he’s irritated I haven’t filled him in, but I’ve been spending every minute with Ember that I possibly can. It has been two very glorious weeks since we went on our first date.
“Well, Noah?” Mom has her dark eyes zeroed in on me.
It’s not that I don’t want my family to get to know Ember. It’s more that Ember is important and all-consuming. She has absorbed every part of me. With her quiet understanding and infectious personality, she slipped into my soul. I’ve seen her every night since our first date. Even on the nights she works. Those nights might be my favorite, because she only has fifteen minutes between her shift ending and when her mom wants her home. On those nights, she kisses me with something she called reckless abandon. I laughed when she said it, and she told me the phrase is cliché, but she finally understood what it felt like.
In a short time, Ember has become my world. I’ve been keeping her to myself because I don’t want to share her. It’s that simple.
“Soon,” I mutter, looking down at my plate. Never, I want to say, even though I know that’s impossible.
“This weekend.” My mom gives me a pointed look. “Saturday dinner. Got it?”
I nod. My stomach knots. My mother loved Kelsey, but she might not feel that way if she knew Kelsey cheated.
Ember and Kelsey couldn’t be more different. Which pretty much guarantees my mom won’t like her.
Fuck.
I lean over my plate and eat quickly, then leave the table as soon as I can manage. I need some air.
I should have known Brody would head straight for me. So much for being alone.
“What are you doing out here?” His voice reaches me before he does. I’m glad it did, too, otherwise I might have pissed myself.
It’s quiet out here, and dark. I’m only a quarter mile from the house, but it’s far enough that the outside lights don’t penetrate the space. The vineyards are in the distance. The grass is overdue for a cut, and the wind makes faint whistling sounds as it zooms through it. On the right side of the property is a line of massive trees, their bare branches outlined in the moonlight. In the light of day I can see the trees have new green leaves that haven’t fully unfurled. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time out here at night, and I’ve never been sure whether to call it eery or peaceful.
Brody slides besides me onto the top of the picnic table.
“Kind of creepy out here at night.” He surveys the scene as he leans sideways and digs into his jacket pocket. After pulling out two beers, he hands one to me. “What’s up, little brother?”
For a moment the only noise is the sound of tops popping.
I shrug and take a drink. My dad’s beer is way better than the crap my friends have at house parties.
“I’m not Mom.” Brody nudges me. “You can talk to me about your girl.”
My mind swirls with thoughts, but none of them make it into a coherent sentence and out of my mouth. How am I supposed to tell my big brother that it’s taken me only t
wo and a half weeks to fall harder for Ember than I ever did for Kelsey? He said it himself at dinner. Didn’t you and Kelsey break up two seconds ago?
“Okay, I’ll talk instead.” Brody sets his can down between us and props his elbows on his knees. Chin resting on an open palm, he looks out at the dark vastness before us. “I met someone too. Alyssa.”
I look at him, surprised. Brody doesn’t do serious. He never has. And I mean never, even though plenty determined girls have tried to change his mind. I’ll never forget the day he stood in my room and told me the cardinal rule of girls: Tell them what they want to hear. He followed it up with: And always please them first. My fourteen-year-old brain wanted to explode.
“Do you like her?” It’s a stupid question, but I’m not sure what to say.
“I love her.”
I nod, trying not to show my shock. “That’s great. You should bring her to dinner on Saturday. Take a little heat off me.”
Brody barks a laugh. “No way. Saturday is all about you. And it’s too bad I won’t be there to see it. LA trip.” He lifts his hands and shrugs quickly.
I groan, rolling my neck in a circle and rubbing the back of it with one hand.
“Now it’s your turn. Talk,” Brody orders in his superior, I’m-the-older-brother voice.
Given what he said at dinner, I figure it best to start by explaining what happened with Kelsey. “It was some guy she met in Cancun on spring break. Unoriginal, I know,” I add when Brody raises his eyebrows. “She could’ve done better than that, right?”
Brody chuckles, and I can’t believe I can even make a joke of it now.
“Mom doesn’t know Kelsey cheated, and I want to keep it that way.”
“You don’t owe Kelsey that.”
“I know, but I don’t need to smear her name.”
Brody eyes me suspiciously. “You’re being really zen about your girlfriend of six months cheating on you.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” I clarify.
Brody waves his hand dismissively. “Enough with Kelsey. Let’s get to the good stuff. Who is your new girl?”
I halt. The words were flowing a minute ago, and now they’re jumbled in my head again.
“Stop thinking. Just say it. I can tell it’s serious.”
Running a thumb over my lip, I think of this afternoon with Ember, before I had to be home for dinner. She’d stayed at the library and read articles on the internet while I was at soccer practice. When I finished, she met me at my car and I drove her home. That was all the time we had.
In the car she confessed to having applied to six different colleges, just to see if she’d get in. She got in to five so far, all out of state. The last one is the same place I’m still waiting on. Stanford.
“You’re going to see a sixth letter of acceptance,” I’d stated confidently. Inside, I wanted to cry. How had I not thought that far ahead? Mere months separate us from fall. The possibility of us going to different colleges just doesn’t seem real.
Thinking about our conversation upsets me, so I open my mouth and tell Brody everything. Even about the lake and how I met her. He laughs hysterically when I tell him how annoyed she looked when I pulled her out.
“Here I was, thinking I was some knight in shining armor on a white horse, and she gave me this look that screamed beat it.” I laugh too, and shake my head, remembering Ember in that soaking wet blue dress and the irritation in her eyes.
“Where is she going to college?” Brody asks.
“Well…” I pause, thinking of what Ember told me in my car this afternoon. “She’s been accepted at five places, but they’re out of state and a little out of her price range.” Technically, she said she’d never be able to afford anything but community college, and even then she’ll need financial assistance.
He gives me a bewildered look. “So why doesn’t she go somewhere in-state?”
Oh. This is how Ember must feel when I thoughtlessly assume she can do something without considering the money it takes to do it.
“Her family isn’t well-off.”
“Gotcha. Sorry.” He claps my back. “What are you doing about college?”
“Still waiting on Stanford. I’ll try-out for a walk-on if they don’t recruit me.” I shrug. I hate that idea. I know it’s my ego talking, but I can’t stand the idea of not being sought out. I don’t mind working hard, but being chosen is the best feeling in the world.
“Would Ember be able to go to Stanford? Scholarships, financial aid, all that?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. It’s an awkward subject.”
He nods and falls quiet. I wish I could snap my fingers and make everything work out for us. Until talking to her this afternoon I hadn’t even thought about us going to different colleges… Or her not going at all. I’ve been too busy falling in love with her to dip my toe in the pool of reality. The idea of not being with her makes me sick inside.
“Ember’s better than the rest, Brody.” My voice sobers when I admit this.
Brody shakes his head. “Not better than Alyssa.”
He reaches out a fisted hand and I pound it. We sit back and finish our beers in silence.
Maybe Stanford not picking me up is a blessing after all. Maybe Ember and I can be one of those couples who stay together forever. I can take over the vineyard. We can get married, and at our wedding people will talk about how we were high school sweethearts. We’ll have kids, grow old, and I’ll have her breakfast ready before she wakes up in the morning, and we’ll do old people things, like garden and golf.
Yeah.
YEAH.
Fuck you, Stanford.
I don’t need you.
I have Ember Dane.
And we’re meant to be.
Turns out, Ember doesn’t share my hesitance about Saturday night dinner.
“That sounds great.” She smiles and nods happily, stretching out on her twin bed in her small room. I look over at her sister’s bed. I made a fool of myself when Ember brought me in here tonight and I asked why she had two beds in her room. Ember laughed and kissed me, pulling back once to mouth the word privileged.
I laughed too, and then resumed kissing her. My lips on hers has quickly become one of my favorite pastimes. It ranks somewhere close to soccer. Hell, it may even surpass it.
Ember was the one who pulled away first, gasping for breath. She giggled and placed a hand over her heart. That’s when I told her about my mom’s dinner invite, and her eyes lit up in excitement.
“You should come early. I’ll show you around the property.” I’ll have to get a crash-course from my dad first. He’ll probably die of shock that I’m showing interest.
“I’ve never been to a vineyard before.” Her voice is dreamy.
From my back I roll to my side, pushing up onto an elbow and peering down at her.
“Are you dating me for my vineyard?” I wiggle my eyebrows.
“Ding ding ding!” She pokes my chest as she says each word. “We have a winner!”
Dipping my head, my lips suspended millimeters above hers, I whisper “I’ll take my prize now.”
Ember doesn’t wait for me to lower my lips. She lifts up, and with a hand cupping the back of my neck, pulls me down with her.
I love this about her. Willing, wanting, and not at all embarrassed by it.
I kiss her until my lungs nearly burst. She kisses me until her cheeks are scarlet and her body trembles. My hand moves down to the hem of her shirt, and I feel her sharp intake of breath when I grab a fistful of fabric and lift it. I make my way down her torso, kissing her exposed neck and collarbone as I go.
My goal is to start at the belly button and make my way up to her breasts. Every time we kiss she presses them against me, and it’s been killing me not to be able to touch them and taste them. This is the first time we’ve been alone, and the first time we’ve been horizontal. It’s like her body is a display window of confections, and I’m a kid with a fistful of money, just waiting to be let in.
&nb
sp; I lift her shirt higher, but I’m distracted before the fabric can ascend her breasts. On Ember’s right side and extending across her ribcage, is a tattoo.
“When did you get this?” My fingers trace the exploding dandelion, following the little pieces that float onto her ribs. It’s mesmerizing…and sexy.
Ember props herself on her elbows and looks down at me. Over the swell of her breasts I spy her face, eyes hooded and pink lips parted.
Lowering my head, I kiss her tattoo, then trail my tongue over it, leaving goosebumps in my wake. What is it about her having a tattoo that is making me want to ravage her?
“Last September,” Ember pants, lying back down. Her hand runs through my hair. “On my eighteenth birthday.”
“I like it,” I say, my words muffled by her warm skin.
I know my plan was to explore her breasts, but my hand seems to have a mind of its own. It’s trails down, over the flatness of her stomach, and dips beneath the waistband of her sweats. Skimming along the smooth skin between her hip points, my hand rides her rapid breathing like a wave.
She’s sweeter than frosting, spicier than gingerbread, and every cell in my body is screaming at me to devour her.
My hand drifts lower, lower, lower.
Go slowly. It’s our first time together, and I want to cherish it.
I bring my mouth to hers and kiss her deeply, drinking in the girl who splashed her way into my life, and proceeded to soak my whole being.
Heat radiates from between her legs, searing the palm I have held an inch above her.
I can’t take it anymore.
I can’t take the tip of her nose running up and down my neck. The arch of her back and the soft, mewling sounds she makes when I kiss her.
“Look at me,” I say, and her eyes slowly open. I want to watch her face the first time I touch her.
My open palm drops a heavy inch. Moisture and warmth coats the underside of my hand the second I touch her.
Magic Minutes (The Time Series Book 2) Page 6
