Fox (Bodhi Beach Book 1)

by SM Lumetta

  I tilt my head and offer my best “Really?” face.

  “Okay fine, I actually don’t know what you’re saying when you come. Kind of like speaking in tongues, I guess. I see how I could do that to you.”

  I watch him comfortably stretched across the sofa arms along the sides like some sort of pimp. I shake my head and plop down in the first chair I come across. “Well, for all your sexual posturing, you’d think you’d have super sperm in addition to your indestructible liver.”

  “I do,” he says, half serious. He sits up suddenly. “Don’t I? Wait, are you saying?”

  “Riding the crimson wave, my friend. No go this month.”

  “Shark week?” he asks.

  “Like a stuck pig.”

  “Ohh, come on!” he cries, making a face.

  It makes me laugh and feel a little better. I think. Until I start crying. Shit.

  “What? Wait, why are you crying?”

  “I’m not,” I say with a whine. “Really, I’m fine.”

  Before I realize, I’m full-on sobbing. Damn, these hormones are the worst. I didn’t even notice him kneeling in front of me until his hands loosely grip my knees. I startle just a bit and look at him, a bit surprised. His eyes are soft and genuinely sympathetic.

  “Hey,” he says softly. “How about we don’t think about it?”

  “What?” I look at him like he’s suggested human sacrifice as opposed to denial. “Are you nuts? That’s not how women work. Don’t you realize we overthink everything? Shit like this is always on our minds!”

  He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “No, that’s not what I mean.” He stands up and goes to retrieve a box of tissue from the bathroom. When he returns, he sets the entire box in my lap. Smart man.

  When I stop honking my horn like a seagull, he’s looking at me as if to ask, “Are you done yet?”

  A bit sheepishly, I wipe my eyes with another tissue and ball them all up in my hand. “I’m good, thanks.”

  He nods, leaning back against the breakfast bar. “As I was going to say, I was planning to head up to Big Sur for a weekend of waves and relaxation. The guys and I want to leave on Thursday night. Jonah’s coming, and possibly Samson and Doc. You should join us. Take your mind off things.”

  “Sounds like a boys’ weekend,” I say, hating how meek and whiny I sound right now. I’m asking Beaufort if I can stop with these hormone drugs. She’ll probably say no, not if I want to make an honest go for this preggers deal. She likes to torture me. I mean, I’ve agreed to cut out alcohol. Not that I’ve managed to do so completely, but I’ve minimized intake. If she had her way, I’d have to go on a crazy-healthy eating plan, too. I told her if she’s going to insist I pop hormones like mood swing mints, then I’m going to have some goddamn comfort food. I believe she saw the psychotic truth in my eyes and dropped the subject. For now.

  I clear my throat and breathe into my diaphragm so I don’t sound twelve again. “Why would you want me along for that?”

  “Pfft!” His eyes roll as he makes the raspberry sound. “You’ve always been an honorary dude.”

  My resulting facial expression is somewhere between a grimace and a smirk. A smirmace. Grimirk? Anyway, it feels awkward. “Bullshit.”

  “Whatever, don’t believe me. Did any other girl get invited to Jonah’s bachelor party?” At my silence, he grins. “That was not a one-off occurrence. Admit it. You’re a dude.”

  I snort and fight my smile. More awkward smirmacing. I shake my head to clear it. “Did you find a penis down yonder in the last few weeks?” I ask, gesturing to my crotch region with the requisite “V” hands.

  Fox closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. Clearly, the man is after switching careers to acting with all his dramatics.

  “I’m sorry, Brando,” I begin, “I may work for a production company, but I do not, in any way, have any pull with casting decisions.”

  “Sometimes you’re absolutely impossible,” he says.

  I wink at him. “You love it.”

  He smiles again, bigger. The smile is so genuine it can melt panties from miles away. I admit, secretly, to myself and immediately deny, that I would jump him if I weren’t riding the crimson wave.

  “So you’re coming?” he asks, immediately amending the question. “WITH! You’re coming with?”

  It doesn’t matter, we both crack up. I sigh, feeling better than I did when I walked in here. “How about we play some Kombat, you drink your motherland beer, and I’ll think about it?”

  “How ’bout I beat you at Kombat, and you just agree? We both drink the awesome beer—I know you love it, too—and I’ll order pizza?”

  His eyes narrow when I simply purse my lips. I resort to chewing on one of said lips. I don’t know why I’m conflicted, exactly. Perhaps it’s that he truly wants me to go. And that does something to me. Something I’m not willing to address.

  “Come on, Lolls,” he says, drawing out the on. “A weekend off from everything is exactly what you need to reset your system and relax. Trust me, I’m a nurse. We know these things, and I’m supersensitive to this shit.”

  I shake my head, smiling mutely. I take a deep breath and look up at him. “I’m all sad, and you wouldn’t let me beat you?” I ask, batting my eyelashes ridiculously while jutting out a pouty lip.

  He scoffs, popping his hands on his hips. “What do I look like to you? The director of the Make-A-Wish Foundation? You want Disneyland, you signed up for the wrong club.”

  My chest jumps with a quiet delight and his eyes go wide with scorn. He looks like my third grade teacher right now. Except hot. And younger. And not an asshole. Well, kind of an asshole.

  He ticks off his terms on his fingers. “Kombat. Pizza. Beer. Weekend. You in or what?”

  “Greek?”

  “Meat lovers.” He winks, the cheeky fucker.

  I shake my head. “Make it a Sicilian with sausage and you’ve got a deal.”

  “Ahh,” he says, holding his hands over his chest like he’s been shot. “A girl after my own heart.”

  The audience just better keep its damn mouth shut.

  My bag is way too big and way too full for a couple of days and a few nights in Big Sur. In fairness, my wetsuit takes up a lot of room. Also in fairness, I don’t need four bikinis. Pretty sure Fox doesn’t care what I look like in a bikini, having seen me totally and frequently naked in the past several weeks. I have no desire or need to impress Jonah or his wife, Rae, for any reason. In fact, Miss Moon Glow hippie child would probably rather swim naked, but I don’t think the beach we’re going to is private. That sounds as though I don’t like Rae, but I swear I do. She’s a very kind and sweet person, and generally, hella laid-back. I get along with her just fine. I can simply do without having my horoscope announced every time I see her. It’s her obsession.

  I was, however, kind of looking forward to having a more guys less girls kind of weekend. Burping, bad jokes–usually toilet or raunchy sex humor—and sleeping whenever and wherever. Unfortunately Doc had to bow out due to work, and Samson got food poisoning. Probably because the man refuses to properly refrigerate dairy like normal people.

  “You ready?” Fox says as he walks in my front door. “Bus is leaving, doll.”

  “I’m not a doll,” I say, setting up his joke for him.

  “Yes you are.” His voice takes on that “oh, you know this one” tone.

  “A voodoo doll!” we say in unison, both our mouths left to hang open in faux shock. He laughs. I wink and smile. It’s comfortable. It’s normal.

  Good. This weekend will be good. He’s right. I need to relax, and just because it’s not the original plan doesn’t mean it won’t be exactly what I need.

  “All right, Kahuna,” I tease him. “Let’s rock and roll.”

  He picks up my duffel and I sling the backpack over my shoulder and pick up the small cooler I packed. I stop to lock the door and follow him down the path to Jonah’s Wagon. And yes, it’s “The Wagon.” It
gets a name because it’s a classic “Woody” station wagon with the wood paneling on the sides. Watch any sixties’ surf movie and guaranteed, you’ll see at least one set of dudes driving one. I smile at all our boards mounted on top of the car.

  “Sophie!” Rae pokes her head out of the passenger side. “I did all our star charts last night—this weekend is going to be so dope.”

  The audience is rolling in the aisles. Their sense of humor is cruel.

  When we pull up to the rental house, I’m surprised and delighted to see how big it is—from what I can tell in the dark, that is—not to mention how much space there is between lots. The land is rustic and looks exactly like a weekend cabin should, save that the house is way larger than any cabin I’ve ever seen. This is a cabin mansion. A cabsion? I need to stop splicing words in real life. Nothing good ever comes of it. My smurfer joke could have gotten someone killed. I splice scripted words and audio in fake life, also known as work. That’s all I’m allowed. I can only be good on one side of the fence. Apparently, that’s the fake side.

  It takes us all of ten minutes to unload the car—save the boards. They can wait until morning. We congregate on the deck with the first cooler of beer, cider, and sodas. There’s a fire pit—legal, no less—just off the deck, so Jonah and Rae check the side of the house for a woodshed. I listen to the waves crashing not twenty yards from us and smile. When they come back with a lumber score, I realize we need snacks. Fox joins me in the kitchen to dig through the groceries and see if we remembered s’mores fixings. He pulls out peanut butter cups.

  “That’s not right,” I say. “We need Hershey’s Bars.”

  “The peanut butter cups are only for higher class taste buds,” he reasons, adopting a smarmy, infomercial-esque pose. The package of candy is underlined by one hand and held up by the other. I flap a hand at him.

  “You’re awful,” I say, but the amusement in my voice says otherwise.

  He chuckles to himself while pulling out the rest of the necessary items for s’mores.

  I grab the marshmallows. “What the hell?” I ask accusingly as I hold up the bag and point to the word vegan.

  “Don’t look at me,” he says.

  “These are Rae’s, aren’t they?”

  The way he bites his lips looks like he’s trying to stop himself from smiling, and thereby gives away the truth.

  “Are the goddamn chocolate bars vegan, too? The graham crackers? This is about nostalgia, here. And tradition. With brand names and preservatives! No artisan this or organic that!”

  When my voice cracks, so does he. He busts a gut for at least a full minute before stopping to address the issue. “No, Lolls. The truth is, vegan marshmallows were all they had at the store.”

  “Where did you go? Hippies ‘R’ Us?”

  “No, smart-ass. Zerbo’s.”

  “You bought stuff for s’mores at a health food store?”

  “It’s California, woman; half the grocery stores are health food stores,” he argues, weakly, I might add.

  “Bull. Shit.”

  Right at that moment, Rae comes into the kitchen and picks up the bag. “What the fuck? Vegan marshmallows? I wanted straight-up chemical puffs.”

  And then I lose my shit. Laughing, of course. Rae almost immediately joins me, tossing our PETA-approved sugar puffs on the counter. Fox is a holdout, but folds just before Jonah joins us around the kitchen island.

  “Did you guys break into the weed already?”

  I nearly pee myself I laugh so hard. Oh yeah, this is going to be a good weekend.

  I toss and turn after settling down in my room. I realize after a while that I’ve grown used to sleeping with Fox. Not the sex part, though I’m certainly getting used to that, too, but the sharing my bed with him while we sleep. That certainly wasn’t the intention, but after that first time that turned into a marathon—which turned into a sleepover because neither of us had to be anywhere until the next afternoon, it was just comfortable. And come to that, it hasn’t been unusual for Fox or I to spend the night at the other’s place in any given situation. Of course, it’s usually on the couch or in a spare room.

  As I finally start drifting off, my thoughts bend around our relationship. If I’m being totally honest, the sex is really good. I mean, stellar. I’m enjoying it more than I should, and I’m starting to see it as more of a friends-with benefits-situation. Because we’ve been having a lot of sex. Which would be fine, if I had no end goal.

  Obviously, that is not the case here. I have an end goal—a very specific, demanding, life-changing end goal. And that end goal could take the “benefits” part of the equation away entirely while blasting the “friends” part to smithereens. Neither of these options is incredibly appealing, but most of all, I do not want to lose my friend, and I can’t deny I’m getting very attached to our arrangement.

  That’s it, I tell myself. This weekend? No sex. Just Fox and Lolls as we’ve always been. No problem.

  Having made my decision, I take a deep breath and listen to the surf crashing on the beach through my open window. I watch the curtains softly billow and flag around the mild breeze and feel my eyelids droop, my body sag into the perfect mattress. My eyes close and my mind is splitting dreams with my prior train of thought when the very real creak of my bedroom door alerts me to an intruder.

  My body jolts awake as I twist my head toward the door in a quick motion. Fox’s smile screams “oops!”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “What are you doing in here? You won the coin toss for the king-size bed, ya prick,” I hiss, desperately trying to hold on to my sleepiness and my resistance to the temptation I have a feeling is coming.

  Coming.

  Ahh, shit.

  “Sorry!” he whisper-yells as he climbs onto my bed. “I just… we’ve been crashing together almost every night for a few weeks and, well, it’s weird without you.”

  “What have you done the past three nights?” I ask, simply trying to defend myself against wanting him to stay. We need this separation.

  “Flower jumps in bed with me.”

  “Do you spoon her? Poor girl,” I say, a giggle escaping. “That’s animal abuse.”

  “Give off. She paws my junk half the time while she dreams. ‘Run run run,’ ” he says, imitating her paws. “And then I get a rear leg kick to the jewels. You should be very angry with her. The nights I’m at home alone, she’s basically trying to murder your future kid.”

  A loud “Ha!” peals out of me. I immediately gasp, pull the covers over my face, and press my bunched-up fists full of fabric against my mouth.

  Fox throws himself on top of me. “SHH!!” he orders, but I can tell he’s swallowing his laughter.

  Unless he’s going to sit on my face—no, thank you—how does that help? “Sorry!” I say, my voice muffled.

  “We’ll be found out!”

  I tear the covers away from my face and look at him above me. “What does that mean?”

  His eyes move around my face so slowly and carefully.

  I forget all about what I had talked myself into before he barged in on me.

  “Unless you don’t care,” he says finally, almost suggestively.

  “About what?” I’m lost.

  His eyebrows knit together. “About us knocking the boots—”

  “No one says that anymore.”

  “—for the impreggernation,” he says, adopting a hillbilly accent just to be offensive while he ignores my commentary.

  Yet again, I question the intelligence factor of my sperm donor. “Oh. Yeah.” It’s true that I shouldn’t care if people know. Honestly, I’m still struggling with the fact that my lady parts are taking a seriously goddamn early retirement. That, and not wanting to explain it to people. Or maybe not wanting to wonder what they think. Or comments they might make. Or assumptions. About how I, um, feel. “But we’re not doing the deed right now. We’re talking. Although at the moment, you’re just my human shield from nuclear war or something. All because
I laughed.”

  But he doesn’t move. And maybe another reason I’m not ready to be open about this arrangement is Fox himself. I don’t quite know what to do about these feelings. But mostly because it’s none of anyone’s goddamn business.

  “Right, that brings me to the reason I came in here,” he begins, quieter than his earlier whisper-yell. He wiggles around on top of me for a second, propping himself up on his elbows. Then he amends with, “other than the sleeping.”

  I watch the tattoo under his arm stretch and feel a clench low in my belly. “Okay.” I pretend I don’t know where this is going. And I’m pretending I’m going to turn him down. Because I totally am. Strong-willed woman and all that. God, he smells good.

  He takes a breath. “Maybe we—wait, are you still in the middle of shark week or what?”

  I shake my head. “Communists left the funhouse yesterday.”

  He nods, making a face like it’s all very interesting, including a single raised eyebrow. If he wasn’t holding himself up, he might stroke his chin like Professor Plum in a game of Clue. “Maybe this is a practice weekend, you know? Gear up for the next round of baby making. Friends with benefits, like.”

  His face moves closer to mine and his breath washes over my face. Minty. He brushed his teeth. Why does that stupid simple fact give me tingles in my ying-yang?

  “Benefits like?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

  I know what it means. I’m just inviting the dirty. I like making him talk.

  His eyes trace my face and I swear I feel it. I feel it all over and in all the most important places. “It means,” he says slowly, enunciating though his tone is deep and low. It’s as if he’s speaking directly to my pussy pearl. “Friends. Who. Fuck.”

  My lips part, a sudden inhale kick-starts my quickened breathing, and I feel the telltale throb in my clam sandwich. Christ, the thoughts I have.

  Our eyes lock, volleying focus from one to the other as we debate silently with each other and with ourselves. Without even thinking about it, I remove my left leg from under him, which opens me up just enough for his body to fall into place even though we’re still divided by the covers.