Spring Fling, page 9
She paused for a moment and looked out the window towards the beach. The sky was clear, and the Sun was already shining down on the sandy shores in bright bursts. She smiled, knowing that what she was going to suggest was risky. Stupid, even. But at this point, with all of the other changes she was making in her life, what was one more?
“Hey,” she said, turning to him with a sad sort of smile. “What if we just decide to make the best of this whole situation until you hear back about your car? I don’t know about you, but I had more fun yesterday than I’ve had in a long time.”
The darkness in Jim’s eyes seemed to fade and sparkle away as his cheeks pulled into a grin.
“What did you have in mind?”
***
Monica borrowed a foldout umbrella from the side of the house and two beach chairs and set out to create a shady hangout for her and Jim down at the beach. They both decided on having an easy, lazy day; Jim rested and stared out at the gulf while Monica attempted to finish the paperback she had been reading. They sat together quietly, just enjoying the peace of the beach that they had both been so drawn to in the online vacation rental ads. Just Monica, Jim, and the occasional seagull crying out overhead.
Jim dozed in and out that day, and though Monica could usually read a book in a day, she was having a hard time concentrating on this one. She was keenly aware of just how close she and this man had become and how quickly. A man who, by all accounts, she had hated up until the last thirty-six hours or so. Sitting quietly on the beach next to him felt just about as natural and normal as brushing her teeth or riding a bike. In a very short amount of time, she realized just how much she actually liked Jim and how much she liked being around him. She was becoming attached.
Just after two p.m., Jim was startled awake by a long-awaited phone call from Panhandle Vacation Rentals. Monica listened intently to the phone call while trying not to be too obvious all at once. She didn’t want Jim to go just yet.
“The rental company couldn’t find anyone to get out here to lift that tree off my car until Saturday,” he said, yawning and stretching in his chair. “I guess there was a lot of damage around town from the storm and a busted car is low on the priority list for the only guy in town that can haul trees away.”
“Oh,” Monica said, trying to look indifferent. “Guess that means you’re stuck here tonight, too.”
“Guess so,” Jim said, a smile creeping in at the corner of his mouth. “I’m feeling a lot better now. It’s a good thing I only had one oyster,” he chuckled.
Monica made a face.
“Oh, no,” he said, prodding at his mouth. “Ugh.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I just realized I didn’t put my Invisaligns back in last night,” he said. “Man, I hate those things. They’re so uncomfortable.”
“What do you need them for? I like your teeth as they are.”
Jim rolled his eyes.
“What do you think? My ex thought I should get them. Said they would help make me look more professional.”
Monica screwed up her expression in a displeased pout.
“If you hate them, then don’t wear them,” Monica said, her eyebrows meeting in the middle. “Listen, Jim. I know we don’t know each other that well, but you seem to tolerate a lot of things that make you uncomfortable.”
“Like what?”
“Well, the Invisaligns, for starters. Your car. Your job.”
Jim pressed his lips together in a thin line and breathed in deep.
“You don’t need permission to quit doing something that you don’t like to do.”
Jim exhaled slow and steady giving off an expression that she couldn’t quite comprehend. Was it confusion? Relief? He finally smiled and nodded, then stared back out into the water in thought.
“Isn’t it weird how we seem to be the only people on this stretch of beach?” Jim said. “This entire week I haven’t seen a single person on this beach but you.”
“That’s not so bad, is it?” she smiled at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “I know what you mean, though. It’s been very… private out here, especially for spring break.”
“Well, I love it,” Jim said. “Feels like our own little private hideaway.”
Our own, Monica thought to herself. Her heart skipped a little at the thought of something belonging to them both.
“I’m actually starting to get a little hungry, if you can believe it,” Jim said, shielding his eyes from the sun hanging high overhead. “I saw a fire pit and a grate back there, and I have a couple of steaks that need to be cooked.”
Monica shook herself from her thoughts and smiled back at him.
“I think I still have enough lettuce to make a salad,” she offered.
“I’ll go get it started, then,” he said, rising from his chair.
“Sounds good.”
Jim folded up his beach chair, then looked up at the umbrella. Monica shielded her eyes again from the Sun, high overhead as he stood next to her, motioning at the beach gear.
“Want me to bring these back up?”
“No, thanks. I got it. I want to stay here and read my book a little longer.”
Jim nodded and gave her another one of his finger gun salutes before he started back up the beach. He glanced back over his shoulder at her as he advanced towards the house, his sandals kicking up sprays of sand behind him. The creaky two-story rental by the sea peeked back at her through the pines, and it made her sad to think she would be leaving their little oasis in less than twenty-four hours. Despite the smelly well water, outdated kitchen, and questionable floorboards and stairs, the creaky old house and its unexpected inhabitant had grown on her. For a brief moment, she fantasized about staying in the little beach town with her newfound friend for good.
Monica brushed off the notion and then brushed the sand off the top of her thighs and tried to lose herself in her book again. But every time she started at the top of the page, her eyes glazed over and her mind trailed off to the sweet, soft man she was slowly discovering. With every turn of the page, her head turned back toward the house… back toward Jim.
Chapter Sixteen
“Who do you think used to live in this house?”
Jim looked up at Monica from his salad and thoughtfully chewed on a piece of cucumber as Monica poked at the flames in the fire. The Sun was beginning to dip into the gulf, and a chill had returned to the beach, whipping up and down the shore and into the treeline. Jim shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie, and Monica pulled her sweater around her shoulders, both of them grateful for the fire.
“I can’t even imagine,” she said, putting down her plate. “Must have been someone rich, to have such a large house back then. Maybe a doctor or the town mayor.”
Jim chuckled to himself.
“You know, when I first got here, I thought the place might be haunted. Seeing your shadow from the bathroom scared me half to death.”
“I thought it was haunted, too!” she laughed, then looked up at him with heavy, guilty eyebrows. “I never did apologize for punching you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I get why you did it,” he said, staring back at the house. “No one ever has to worry about whether or not you can take care of yourself, though!”
They both snickered to themselves nervously and shared a moment of silence, listening to the crackle of the fire and the soft roar of the waves as the world grew dark around them. Jim’s eyes flicked to the nearby pool deck and the dormant hot tub that had remained unused the entire week.
“You know,” Jim said, catching Monica’s attention. “We haven’t used that hot tub once since we got here.”
Monica laid down her fire poke stick and craned her neck toward the pool deck.
“Oh, yeah. I wonder if it even works.”
Jim snort laughed.
“It’s entirely possible that it doesn’t, knowing this place.”
“You know, I had this grandiose idea of spending every night in that hot tub, sipping prosecco with my friends,” Monica mused.
“Yeah,” Jim sniffed, thinking of his great plans to win back his ex. “I was looking forward to using it, too.”
“Let’s go check it out,” she said, grabbing their dinner plates.
Monica followed Jim up the path toward the illuminated pool deck and took their dirty dishes into the house. When she returned, he already had the padded lid lifted off of the hot tub and was reading a set of laminated instructions on the side of the pool.
“I just have to turn this knob and… there!”
Jim smiled at her triumphantly as the chlorinated water began to bubble like a cauldron.
“It’s already hot, too,” he said. “I can’t believe we forgot about it this whole time.”
“It’s been a weird week,” Monica shrugged. “I’ll go get some towels.”
Jim sucked in a deep breath of air, and he could feel his pulse speeding up at the prospect of sitting in a hot tub with his hot and now definitely not hostile accidental roommate. Even though they barely knew each other and up until, like, yesterday, he was pretty sure she hated him, Jim found himself falling for Monica Suarez — and fast. Sure, she was pretty and fun and full of life. She had taken even care of him not once but twice, but he still wasn’t even divorced yet, not technically. Even if he was technically no longer married, Tuscaloosa wasn’t exactly a hop, skip, and a jump from Atlanta. Dating Monica — if that was a possibility — wouldn’t be easy long distance, though if he was honest with himself, he probably wouldn’t be living at the house he and Julie shared soon enough. He was getting ahead of himself, though. For now, he just needed to hurry up and get in the water to hide his lumpy body, and before Monica changed her mind.
Just as he eased himself in the scalding hot tub, Monica returned to the pool deck with two towels, a pink bottle of champagne, and two glasses. She shivered in her animal print bathing suit against the wind and hurriedly slipped into the water. Jim tried his best not to stare.
“You don’t have to have any,” she said, waving the bottle of champagne. “It’s pretty sweet and girly, and you’re probably still not feeling great from last night.”
Monica cringed apologetically as she unpopped the cork.
“I just… it’s our last night here, and I was hoping to share this with friends. I guess I’ll have to settle for you.”
“Ouch,” Jim said playfully, accepting a glass of the pink champagne. “So we aren’t friends?”
“Well, we’re certainly not enemies,” she said, raising her glass. “To our last night in the creaky old cottage by the sea. May the Panhandle Vacation Rentals company never double book her again.”
“Cheers.”
They clinked glasses, and Jim winced as he sipped the sparkling wine, trying to relax in the roiling, steamy water. He hunched his shoulders awkwardly, attempting to look normal as he shared a hot tub with a woman he was clearly attracted to. He knew it wasn’t wrong to be half naked and sharing such a personal intimate space with a woman that he was attracted to, but after being married to someone else for so long, it seemed somehow inappropriate. His ex had done a damn sight worse than that. Still, he couldn’t deny that just looking at her through the steam and bubbles and soft light stirred something inside him that had been lying dormant. It was the same feeling he had on stage with the karaoke mic in his hand. It was the same feeling he had in the swamps capturing haunting images with his camera. Being near Monica made him feel alive.
“Jim,” she said, breaking his dreamy haze.
“Hmm?”
With the bottle of prosecco in one hand and her empty glass in the other, Monica edged over next to Jim on his side of the hot tub. She refilled his glass, of which he had only taken two sips, and refilled hers. She took a big gulp of her sparkling wine, blinked, and cleared her throat.
“I like you.”
Jim stopped breathing for a moment, then sat up straight and threw his shoulders back.
“I don’t….”
“I like you, and I want to kiss you,” she said, putting down her glass. “But I need to know that it’s okay. People can say what they want about me, but Monica Suarez is no homewrecker.”
Jim’s eyes trailed to her lips, her neck, her collarbone. He didn’t know why this woman, who could have had her pick of men, would choose someone as boring and completely disinteresting as him. She brought a warm, soft hand to his face and stroked against the scruff of his cheek, and he fought the urge to close his eyes and relish the sensation. It was that same caring touch that he had been missing for so long and was now finding so easily at the hands of someone he would never expect. There was no reason to question it anymore. It felt right.
In that moment, something took hold of Jim, something deep seated and buried under years of bullying and being treated like an underdog. Life returned to his dead weight limbs as he wound one arm around her waist through the steamy water and guided his other hand through her hair.
“Hell yeah, it’s okay,”
Cautiously, Jim leaned in and kissed Monica squarely and firmly on the mouth, his breath coming in hard and fast as their lips met in the steamy atmosphere. He pulled back to make sure that this was real, that this was really wanted. When she smiled back and pulled him in, he knew that not only was it okay, but it was real.
Down below, the waves of the beach crashed as they collided together again and again in their own private oasis as a navy blue sky dotted with stars shone overhead. Inside the house, Jim’s phone buzzed on the nightstand upstairs, but he was far too busy to hear it or to care. He was lost in a waterfall of dark curls and the soft, warm lips of the meanest, kindest stranger he had ever met.
Chapter Seventeen
Jim Martin was one helluva kisser.
Monica had made out in a hot tub before, but that was in the eleventh grade at a house party held by her friend, Jacqui. Willie Arnaut had been a good kisser, too, for a seventeen-year-old, that is. But this. This moment with Jim was like nothing she had ever experienced in her adult life before. Then again, she had never made out with someone she previously hated before, either.
After what seemed like an eternity of kissing and splashing and groping, Monica pulled Jim from the hot tub back through the house and into the downstairs bedroom. She’d had her fair share of one night stands before, and even though her plans for the new and improved Monica here on out didn’t include sharing her bed with random men, this felt different. She tried to forget about just how far Tuscaloosa was from Atlanta as they lost themselves in each other. She tried to forget just how hard it was going to be in the morning, when they had to say goodbye and return to their respective lives. All she wanted to remember was Jim and the scruff of his beard at her neck, the weight of his strong arms around her, and the soft buzz of his breathing as they drifted off to sleep.
***
It was the sound of a honking horn followed by a rapid succession of bangs that woke Monica the next morning. Soft sunlight poured into the bedroom, and Jim snored loudly in the queen-sized bed next to her, oblivious to the chaos going on just outside their back door. Monica didn’t have time to wax poetic about the night they had just spent together or even enjoy a morning snuggle. Someone was clearly intent on robbing her of that.
“Jim! Open up!”
A woman's muffled voice echoed through the house as Monica peeked out down the hallway toward the rear of the house. Through the glass panes, Monica could just make out a short blonde woman, her balled up fist angrily pounding at the window.
“Jim! What the hell happened to the Acura?”
Oh, no.
Monica scrambled for her clothes and quickly slipped into a nearby maxi dress as Jim continued to snore in the bed. She huffed and grabbed him by the shoulders in an attempt to shake him awake. Finally, his eyes flew open and he sat up in bed.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone here for you,” Monica hissed, throwing him his shirt and shorts. “I think you better go to the door.”
Monica exited the bedroom and headed hastily toward the kitchen in desperate need of coffee as a still-groggy Jim ambled down the hallway to answer the door. Monica had a good guess of just who might be at the door and no interest in intervening. Still, she needed her morning jolt of caffeine, and it was her rental house just as much as it was Jim’s. She wasn’t going to hide, no matter who had unexpectedly called.
“There was a tropical storm. The guys are supposed to come today and move the log and the car,” Jim explained, his voice echoing through the back of the house.
Quick footsteps clacked along the hardwood floor with larger, thudding footsteps following closely behind. A tiny, well-dressed blonde woman burst into the kitchen with an expression that could only be described as pure disgust.
“This place is a real dump, Jim. It stinks like eggs,” she said. The woman turned her attention to Monica. “Oh, hello. Is this the restroom?”
The woman turned and disappeared into the bathroom before Monica could even answer. Jim followed behind looking wild eyed, his mouth agape.
“Julie?” Monica asked, pushing the button on the coffee maker.
“I don’t know how… why….” he said, rubbing his temples. “I’m so sorry. I’ll get her out of here.”
“She seems lovely,” Monica deadpanned.
After a few silent moments, followed by the sound of rushing water, Jim’s ex-wife breezed out of the bathroom. Monica and Jim stood in a daze as she placed her purse on the kitchen island, as though her presence there was the most natural thing in the world. The woman began to rummage through her Coach bag and produced a cell phone, then dialed a number and held it to her ear.
“Julie, what are you doing?” Jim mumbled.
“It’ll be just a minute, I’m going to have Charles settle everything,” she said and looked over at Monica. She flicked her wrist and pointed at the coffee pot. “Be a dear and pour me a cup of that when it’s ready? I take it black.”
