So, for the past year, I worked on it. I took medicine and went to therapy and exercised and tried hard. I felt stable, but I still felt empty most of the time. It was like something massive was missing. I could drag my sorry ass out of bed most days, but I wasn’t sure of the reason why I did so. I was grateful that I was no longer driving around looking for railroad tracks, but I wanted to feel something. Depression had robbed me of most feelings. The main thing that I felt these days was numb. Maybe with my new “healthy sexuality” homework, I’d start to feel more than that.
Looking out at the sparkle of the water and the white of the waves as I drove, I decided to just enjoy that moment of this nearly perfect morning. It was beautiful. I had a whole day ahead of me. It was going to be okay.
Actually, it was going to be better than okay. For the first time in a long time, I noticed my surroundings, not just going around trapped inside my head. Seeing the sunshine and the ocean, I realized that I was truly starting to feel better.
With the help of my friend Google Maps, I found Southwinds Coffee, and parked in the spacious parking lot in Ventura near the courthouse. The coffee shop had big windows with black trim and a nice vibe—comfy, hip, and not too pretentious. Upbeat music played, but not too loudly. Good coffee shop smells. There was also enough space to spread out with a laptop. I noticed a lot of people working in little alcoves, with handy plugs spaced in the baseboards all over the place. A nice touch.
I stepped in line and waited to order, juggling my purse and briefcase with my laptop and files, absorbed with checking my phone. I was trying to look busy and important. I meant, dammit, I was busy and important. That was why I needed to check Twitter.
As the line moved steadily forward, I looked up. It was almost my turn. I grabbed a yogurt out of the cold case and shoved my phone into my purse. I put the yogurt down on the counter, looked up to order, and locked eyes with the most stunning set of greens I'd ever seen.
Without meaning to, I held my breath, staring into these sunny, intense eyes. I noticed that the vibrant green was flecked with gold, and the irises were warm and inviting. The eyes smiled, and I could not help but notice that there was apparently a mouth on this face. The most lush, pouty lips that I had ever seen smiled along with the eyes.
"May I help you?" the lips asked in a husky, sexy, low voice. How had I not heard that voice while I was waiting in line?
Help me. Yes, please help me. What was I doing here? I forgot. I was mesmerized. My mental hard drive was also wiped of any rational thought. My brain shut down. Failed me. Damn brain. Green eyes. Pouty, smiley lips. Husky voice. Help me.
Help me!
My world quieted down and closed up. I couldn't hear the music of the coffee shop or the chatter behind me. I couldn't smell the good morning coffee shop smells. All I could do was stare.
The lips grew into an even bigger grin and I shook myself slightly, grinned reflexively, and noticed the man behind the eyes and lips.
Golden, surfer boy curls crowned a tan face. High cheekbones, a strong jaw—damn, a good jaw, and a smattering of freckles. And, Lord help me, dimples. Two.
Holy hell, he was gorgeous. And familiar. I got the feeling that I’d seen him before.
He’d been leaning over the counter at my height, but now he stood up, still smiling at me, at full height. Um, dimples. Brain still not working, only focused on dimples. Then I noticed that wow, he was really tall. And lean. His black Southwinds Coffee apron wrapped around his narrow hips. He wore a short sleeve button-down shirt in faded plaid over a white t-shirt and his biceps bulged. No immediate tattoos visible.
I’d never seen a more beautiful man in the flesh. Manflesh. Now there's a word.
"Anything besides the yogurt," he asked slowly, gently, as if there weren't twelve people behind me in line. His name tag said Ryan.
Recovering with a snap, I finally said, "Yes. A latte, please."
He smiled and pulled a cup out, writing on it. "Regular milk?"
“Nonfat." He checked the box.
"And a name?"
"Amelia," I breathed.
He is the sun, I thought. He had a massive gravitational pull. I couldn't help but be drawn in by those gold flecks in his intense, but smiling, eyes.
Giving himself a little shake, as if he was dazed, too, he wrote my name on the coffee cup and handed it to the barista.
How much time passed? Hours? Days? I wasn't sure. I'd lost all sense of time locked in his gaze. I couldn't believe I was actually thinking that romance novel shit, not that I read romance novels, but it was true. I lost myself in his beautiful eyes.
He added up my total on the cash register and I handed him my debit card and he swiped it. As I grasped the card, my fingers grazed his and I felt a pulse go through my body, lodging between my legs.
Holy hell.
That did not just happen. But apparently it did. I stuck the card haphazardly in my purse and waited as the receipt printed.
Time passed. People grew old and died. Planets were born from stardust.
He handed me the receipt and I realized that it was time for me to move. Too soon. I wanted an eternity with him and I didn't even know him.
The noise of the coffee shop came back to life and I became vaguely aware of the dozen people pressing in behind me, needing caffeine. I was also vaguely sorry for coming between them and it. Okay, not really. It was every man or woman for himself or herself as far as caffeine goes. I was just sorry to leave the Sun God. I ducked my head and grabbed my yogurt, walking to the opposite side of the huge espresso machine to wait for my coffee.
I glanced over at his profile while he waited on the next customer, his hips pressed into the counter. I couldn't help it. He was beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, a hunk. My thoughts were overwhelming: I was drawn to him like crazy and I wanted to lick him, suck him, caress him, feel him, and have him make me forget about NARS ORGASM blush. I’d never felt this sort of attraction to any other person.
I’d not felt feelings, real feelings, in a long while.
He stepped back to allow the cash drawer to open and then I saw it.
Under his apron. Unmistakable evidence of his arousal. Shit. He was hard. Instead of thinking that he's a perv, as would be my natural snark, I thought, "Git me some, STAT."
I tried not to stare but I did it anyway, then looked away. I looked back. He adjusted himself and leaned up against the counter, once more. I looked away again, and kept looking away, until I couldn't help myself. I caught a glance after the barista handed me my latte.
Still beautiful.
I turned and picked a table, walking to an empty one in an alcove out of sight of the counter and Mr. Sun God. I set down my laptop, files, and purse, and sat. I breathed. I slumped back.
What the fuck just happened?
It took me a bit to recover. Finally, I opened up my laptop and started working. Although I did some real work while sipping my coffee, I couldn't help but sneak in a few searches.
According to the ultimate authority, Dr. Google, after three or four months, women who use antidepressants and have trouble finding an orgasm, may be able to do so again.
I'd been on antidepressants for a year. And only one inept man in my bed during that time. It was time to test the waters. Time to rescue my orgasm from the drugs. Or from wherever it had been hiding.
Happy Trail
I SOMEHOW MANAGED TO survive in the coffee shop for an hour or so, going through files, and actually getting some work done. I didn't believe it was possible with Ryan the Sun God there, but having picked a spot where his gravitational pull was not so strong, I found myself absorbed in my work.
It helped that the Yelp reviews were right. The coffee here was unbelievable. I was a caffeine addict and had sampled my fair share of the drink, but this stuff was quite simply the best that I’d ever had. It left every other coffee shop behind.
In my workaholic state, I hadn't noticed that the place had cleared up. I’d noticed pretty quickly,
however, that Ryan was going around the tables, picking up dishes and cleaning with a white dishtowel, wiping off tables.
So I thought, maybe I'll wait for him to come to my table.
But then what would I do?
Checking the clock on my phone, I realized that I had a little over twenty minutes to get to the courthouse, which was only a few blocks away, so I decided to pack up. I slid my laptop into my briefcase, and put away my files. I packed them up neatly. Then I looked through them again to make sure that I had everything. Then I checked my phone. And Twitter. And my email.
Okay, so I stalled a little. I wanted to talk to him. Even though I figured that I would be stupidly mute in his presence again, I still could not help myself.
I knew that I should be a badass, confident woman, and go find him myself, not wait for him to come to me.
Yeah, I would get right on that. In another life.
While I was busy trying not to hyperventilate, I looked at my phone. Damn. No new messages from twenty-three seconds ago. And there he was, two feet away from me.
"Everything okay?" he asked with a smile, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows. And once again my mind left the premises, and I stared blankly at his sensual mouth. And lips. Teeth. Smile.
Wait. He asked a question. Normal people responded to questions.
This impassiveness was not normal behavior for me. Being asked a question was normal. Answering it was normal. Being snarky was normal. Being stunned by a man, so not normal.
I rallied and said, in my most loquacious manner, "Yeah."
Then I rallied again and said the most banal thing to ever come out of my mouth: "The coffee is really good here." And then I cringed, and waited for the blowback from him when he realized that I had nothing intelligent to say.
Surprisingly, he looked even brighter. "I source it from small, family farmers in Kona, and roast the beans here. You gotta have a passion, you know?"
Passion. What did he mean by passion? I didn’t have passion in my life.
But maybe passion was what I really needed?
"Passion," I said out loud without meaning to.
Now he was a foot away from me and I could smell him. Damn, he smelled good. Clean, but musky. Mansmell. Now that's a word too, I thought. Manflesh and mansmell.
He lowered his voice and said the sexiest thing ever: "I'm all about passion. And coffee is not my only one."
So if there had been any question before, he had me. I wanted to know about all of his passions and I wanted to know, like, yesterday.
Then I thought about what else he said. Was he the manager? Why was he wiping down tables if his job is to source coffee?
"You source coffee?"
"Yeah." So he was loquacious too? Good to know. He didn't elaborate, but raised an eyebrow in invitation. "Come back. I'll show you more."
All I could think about was what "more" of him I wanted him to show me. It was mostly located under his black, Southwinds coffee shop apron, although the exposed body parts looked damn fine, too.
The snob part of me—sorry, but there was one—wanted to know what I was doing flirting with a coffee shop manager. Slumming it. Yeah, I could be a real bitch. Sorry, not sorry.
The part of me that was throbbing between my legs did not care.
I nodded. "I'll come back. I have to get to court right now but I have a trial next week and will be down this way." Damn, girl. I said more than three words at a time to him. High five!
"Then I expect to see you here every day next week at Southwinds, Movie Star." Movie Star? Oh, then I blushed. And other places on my body suddenly became wet. How could he do this? Perhaps since he radiated heat, parts of me were melting.
It was dawning on me that after depression it was so nice to feel something, anything, but it was especially nice feeling these erotic sensations caused by this hunky man in a coffee shop.
I forced myself to look back at him and he looked at me curiously, like he really wanted to know whether I would come back to the coffee shop. I had to be back here all next week for trial, but truthfully, and lawyers are in the truth business, I'd figure out an excuse to come back anyway. It was going to be hard to keep my mind on my work instead of thinking about the solar system all week. But I could do it. Maybe.
"Okay," I whispered.
COURT WENT AS WELL as it could, and I left the courthouse, starting the final countdown until the trial the following week. Because it was lunchtime, I decided to grab a burrito from Johnny's for a late lunch, and brought it to the parking lot by the beach in Ventura. I pulled my convertible up to the surf-side pay lot and parked between a cool, old Ford pickup truck and a restored VW bus. Although it was normally windy in the afternoons, it was comfortably breezy. I put down the top of my car, and unwrapped my yummy goodness of simmered beef and cheese in a hot tortilla. A habit. These days it seemed that the only pleasures I got were from food.
I took a bite and watched the bicyclists, walkers, joggers, runners, and roller bladers go by on the paved path that wended its way between the parking lot and the beach. Picnickers lingered nearby on a grassy bluff beyond the walkway, before the rocks and sand, playing loud reggae music. Six seagulls plotted an attack on the picnickers' cheese puffs, by slowly surrounding them and hopping forward furtively. The slight wind through the evenly placed palm trees made them sway. I had a good view of the surfers. The waves came into shore, small and regular, and there were plenty of surfers out on the waves. The sun sat overhead, although not directly, and it made the water sparkle. Just the place to relax.
I knew that I needed to get back to the office and stay late doing trial prep, but sustenance was important, too. I was careful not to unwrap too much of my burrito at once, and was rewarded for my efforts by not getting any of it on me or my suit. I sipped my Diet Coke, abiding by the ancient girl law that required you to order a diet drink when you indulged in way too many calories from food. As I not-so-daintily inhaled my burrito, I watched as a group of surfers made their way out of the water.
The black, wetsuited bodies waded in the shallow tide, surfboards under their arms. They walked along the sand below the parking area, heading towards the rocks between the sand and the grassy picnic area.
I realized, as I watched a small group of four of them, that the body of one of them looked familiar.
Very familiar.
I held my breath. I realized that it was him. Of course, it was him. Sun God. Damn gravitational pull. I'd recognize those sunny, curly, shiny, dark blond locks anywhere.
Ryan walked out of the water, a Channel Islands short board under his arm, made his way carefully across the sand by the water, and gingerly up the rocks to the parking lot, which was up on a small bluff. He stopped at the patch of grass directly in front of my car, about twenty yards away. He hadn't noticed me, but I had a good view of him from my vantage point. He set his surfboard down carefully, and used the long cord on his back to slowly, oh so slowly, pull the zipper down on the back of his wetsuit, first taking out one arm, then the other, so that the wetsuit folded down. He was bare-chested.
Now there was a sight.
Golden skin. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist and hips. Surprisingly, no tattoos. He was lanky and lean, but defined. Wet looked good on him.
He grabbed a towel that had been left on the grassy area and ran it through his hair so that it was going every which way—making him even more sexy, if that was possible—and then he dried off his torso. Don't mind me, I thought as I stared. I was just perving on a coffee shop surfer dude. Nothing to see here.
His buddies joined him soon after, and he talked with them quietly, though I couldn't hear what he was saying with the sound of the waves and the seagulls and the reggae stoner music from the picnickers. At one point, he stretched his arms overhead and some more muscles popped. Yeah, that was nice scenery. Nope, not looking at his back. Nor his ass. Nope. Not me.
After a bit, he picked up his surfboard, his towel wrapped around his neck, and tu
rned away from the beach and toward me.
I got a shot of abs. Wow. His wetsuit hung down his hips and displayed the most beautiful surfer abs. They were taut, lean, and ended in a V, which went to, ahem.
Then he saw me and walked straight toward me. As he came closer, it was all I could do not to drool over the leather interior of my car. Holy happy trail. Right down below his belly button. Where his wetsuit was hanging. Yep. There. Did I mention happy trail?
I was definitely losing it.
"Amelia."
He remembered my name. That was a good thing because around him, I plainly forgot it. I also forgot my snark. And everything else. He smiled at me and then walked past, turned, and set the surfboard and towel in the bed of the truck next to me.
Seriously?
I’d parked next to the Sun God.
What were the odds?
After he set it down, he came back to me and leaned up against the driver's side of my car, where my arm rested on the door, since the windows and convertible top were still rolled down. His six-pack abs touched my knuckles and I flinched. His body felt cold from the ocean, covered in goose bumps. But oh my, he was a sexy man. He looked like an ad for Quicksilver or O'Neill or something, with his wetsuit folded down. Heck, he probably modeled for them for all I knew. I really wanted to get to know those abs.
Instead, I breathed out a "Hey." He looked down at me, his freckles popping in the sunlight, and grinned, with the towel still around his neck.
"Did you kill them in court?" Court? Court? What court?
Oh yeah.
I finally—finally!—remembered my swagger. Glory and hallelujah. "Yeah, pretty much. I killed it." I managed a grin. He looked at me with a question in his eyes.
"Good. As I suspected. Do you surf?"
"Nope. Just watch surfers." Okay, so now I was blatantly flirting. His grin grew, if that was even possible.
The Sun and the Moon (Giving You ... #1) Page 2
