18
OLD MO’S SUGAR House is a hit from the beginning.
For one thing, the entire exterior is painted in three separate shades of frosting pink. It’s a little grungy from the passing of time, but still looks like the setting of my childhood dreams. It’s the same kind of fare as Ray’s or the Atomic Café, and the same kind of no-nonsense service.
If you were out of touch enough to ask for a latte here, I’m sure you’d be the proud recipient of a nice bless your heart from the staff.
When our server drops off our dangerously hot plates, I catch Hayden’s gaze traveling straight past his steel-cut oatmeal to my gravy-doused biscuits and short stack of pancakes.
“You look like a wistful war bride right now,” I tease him, “watching at the window for your baby to come home.”
“What?” He looks up abruptly, blinking clear of his biscuit haze.
“Would you like a bite?” I offer.
“No,” he says, “that’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I really don’t mind.” I push the bowl of biscuits toward him.
“Maybe just a bite,” he says, and retrieves his silverware, neatly cutting a small hunk from one of the biscuits, swooping it over his plate, and popping it between his lips.
His eyes go glassy. He makes a little hum in his throat. I lean forward and scoop the rest of the biscuit he cut into onto his plate. “Wow,” he says
finally.
“Good?” I ask.
“Very,” he says.
“You know what I bet would make it better?” I ask.
“What?”
“Pink food coloring,” I say, sawing into my pancakes.
He snorts. “I don’t think that has a taste.”
“Maybe not, but it would have an impact. I’d feel the pink.”
He grins crookedly, and my heart leaps. “You’d feel it? What does pink feel like?”
I think for a moment. “I think it’s, like, the giddy part of a sunrise.”
“The giddy part of a sunrise,” he repeats.
“Yeah, you know how sunrise mostly just makes you feel like…awed,
or moved? Like it feels profound?”
“No,” he says.
“Well, for me it does,” I say. “But there’s a moment when everything’s just all pink. Pink-lemonade pink. And it feels almost silly. Like the sky is playing. It’s a color that I’m shocked can be in nature. But since it can be, I really see no reason why it couldn’t also be in biscuits.”
He laughs, shakes his head to himself as he stuffs another bite of biscuit
into his mouth.
“What?” I say.
“I’ve never once thought the sky seemed like it was playing.”
I shrug and sip on my coffee. “You think I’m being ridiculous,” I say, half statement, half question.
“I think you live in a world that’s more interesting than the one most people live in,” he says, and just as my heart starts to sink with disappointment, with a kind of loneliness, he adds, “and I wish I could live in it too.”
I feel myself beaming. “I’ll take you sometime.”
“I’d like that,” he says.
• • • AFTER BREAKFAST-FOR-DINNER, IT’S clear neither of us wants to go home yet, but it’s just as clear that neither of us is going to suggest going back to my house. We can be friendly, if not merely professional, as long as we’re somewhere public.
We walk for a while around Old Mo’s, but there’s nothing cute or quaint here—we’re trapped back in an industrial complex much newer than the diner. When we get to our cars, I say, “I know what we should do now,” and his expression is so dubious, I can only assume he’s bracing himself for a pitch that we chug a vat of pink food dye and have sex in his car.
I step away from him, toward my own rental parked two spots over.
“Follow me,” I call, unlocking the car.
He doesn’t ask any questions, just nods.
I remember the day he hesitated to shake my hand at Margaret’s house, and the change from then to now makes me go so warm I have to blast the air-conditioning on the ride over.
• • • HAYDEN FOLLOWS ME through the dark, up the wooden platform through the grassy dunes to the beach proper.
“Are you sick of the beach by now?” I ask, given that we’re only a half block from the Grande Lucia here.
“I haven’t really been,” he says. “I’m not a huge beach person.”
I slant a look at him. “It’s hard to be a beach person when you’re not a shorts person.”
“Good poi—fuck! Shit!” He lurches sideways on the platform, grabbing me bodily and hauling me against the railing.
“What! What!” I yelp, eyes skittering around the path ahead of us. A tail slithers over the side of the walkway, disappearing into the dunes.
“It’s just a little snake,” I say, trying to be soothing.
“I hate snakes,” he says.
“I thought you grew up playing in the woods,” I say.
“I did,” he says, “and every time we came across a snake, I had to completely disassociate and pretend it wasn’t happening so the kids I was hanging out with wouldn’t find out.”
I start forward again, and his arms come around my waist, pulling me back toward him. “It’s fine,” I say, wiggling out of his grip. “It’s gone.”
“It might just be waiting to strike right over the edge,” he says.
“It’s not,” I tell him.
“How could you possibly know that,” he says.
“I know,” I insist. “Can’t you disassociate and pretend that didn’t just happen?”
He shakes his head. “It won’t work. I’m not afraid of humiliating
myself in front of you.”
I feign offense.
“I just mean, I can’t imagine you making fun of me for it.”
A smile uncurls over my lips. “Well, I’m willing to try, if that helps.”
“Your heart won’t be in it,” he says. “It won’t work.”
“Well, we’re almost to the water,” I point out. “Let’s just run.”
“You’re wearing a skirt,” he says.
I’m sure I have a full-blown Cheshire cat grin now. “Are you worried for my virtue here?”
“I’m worried for your ankles,” he clarifies. “I don’t want you getting bitten.”
“I won’t get bitten,” I promise, and start forward again.
“No, no, no.” He hurries after me, bending and sweeping me off my feet and into his arms.
My yelp of surprise becomes a breathless laugh as he essentially runs past where the snake disappeared, as close to the opposite railing as possible, then moves back to the dead center of the walkway. I try to tell him he can put me down, that he doesn’t have to do this, but I’m laughing too hard.
As we reach the beach, he slows, the grass and any hidden reptiles now in the rearview.
“I can’t believe you risked your ankles for me,” I tease, the moon
glowing behind Hayden’s head.
“I’m wearing pants,” he reminds me.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if I’d gotten bitten,” I say.
“I would’ve blamed me.” He comes to a stop and bends a little to pour me back onto my feet. His forearm brushes up my thighs in an electrically charged way, slipping under my skirt in the process and leaving me shivering and weak-kneed by the time my feet meet sand.
“Sorry,” he says thickly, reaching out to pull my skirt back into place, and the light tug of his hands on the fabric doesn’t have the cooling effect I’d guess he’s hoping for. Instead we wind up standing chest to chest, the dark humming around us, like we’re two tuning forks vibrating in resonance.
I start to panic, because the more this happens—the more we find ourselves acting like something other than friends—the less likely that I think it is he’ll keep being my friend, and even though it’s only been a couple of weeks, I would miss him.
“Should we go down to the water?” I ask, a little too loudly, and turn on my heel to start trekking that way without even checking that he’s following.
He is, of course, and with his long strides, he comes even with me almost instantly.
We stop just before we reach the edge of the ocean and sit, our legs stretched out across the sand, eyes on the dark horizon.
“What’s your life like?” I say. “Back in New York.”
He looks over at me. “What do you mean?”
“I just only know you in this bubble,” I say. “It’s kind of strange.”
He thinks for a minute. “Well, I work a lot.” His eyes flick back to
mine. “As I’m sure you do.”
I nod.
“I’m busy all the time,” he says.
“Do you like it?” I ask.
His head cocks to one side, his lips parting. “I like being busy with work,” he says. “But sometimes the pace gets to me. Or maybe it doesn’t, but then I come someplace like this and…” He holds an arm out toward the
ocean.
“It’s nice, right?” I say.
“I used to think I’d get so bored if I lived anywhere else,” he says.
“Which is weird because I actually loved growing up in the middle of nowhere. Other than the whole mayor’s-family-under-the-microscope thing.”
“Me too,” I say. “I mean, small towns definitely have their drawbacks.
Especially when it comes to gossip. But I love the pace here.”
“And LA?” he says.
“I love it there too,” I say. “I mean, the food’s great, and it’s sunny every single day, and I’ve got a good group of friends there.”
“Did you always want to end up there?” he asks.
“I did,” I admit. “I started writing to deal with the stuff going on with Audrey, and then, unrelated, I was always obsessed with Hollywood. I loved magazines, but my parents would never spend money on them, so I’d literally just sit in an aisle of the grocery store and read about clothes and beauty trends and celebrities. My mom was always so annoyed when she found me. She’d have been waiting for me at the checkout for a while, and I’d still have to go put the magazines back.”
“Well, at least you were polite enough to reshelve,” he says diplomatically.
“Oh, you’ve got to reshelve,” I agree. “What about you? Was New York your dream?”
“I didn’t really have a dream,” he says. “If anything, I think I assumed I’d be a mechanic, because my best friend’s dad was one, so we were constantly working on his shitty VW van. But my parents really, really pushed college, and then I got into Purdue, which was a shock, because I only really did well in school the last two years. And then I got into writing my freshman year and stuck with it. Got an internship in Chicago after graduation, and that turned into a staff writer job.
“I didn’t really plan on ever leaving, but a better job came up in New York, and I’d just gone through a breakup, so I figured it might be good to get away for a while. My best friend from college lives there too, so that’s been nice. Watching him get married and have a kid.”
I beam at him. “Are you Uncle Hayden?”
“Of course not,” he says sternly, “I’m Uncle Nayda.”
I let my head settle against his shoulder as the laugh ripples through me.
“Oh, excuse me,” I say. “I should have guessed.”
His chin tips down and he smiles, his mouth so close to mine, his eyes soft. After just a second too long, he says, “Do you ever come to New York?”
“A few times a year,” I say. “What about you? Are you ever in LA?”
“Not often,” he says.
I nod. We go on staring into each other’s eyes until it feels like I can’t any longer, not without brushing my mouth up over his full bottom lip, tasting him, feeling the heat of his tongue.
I pull away and lie back, staring at the sky and waiting to catch my breath. “What happened with your ex?” I ask, and this is a far more successful dousing of the mounting ember between us.
His brow rumples as he gazes over his shoulder toward me.
“The one in Chicago,” I say. “Before you went to New York.”
“Ah.” He turns back toward the water. “Piper.”
“Piper,” I accidentally repeat aloud, and hope he can’t hear the mix of desperate curiosity and (hopefully subtle) jealousy in my voice. “What happened with her?”
He clears his throat and takes a beat before answering. “We worked together. I mean, we were already dating before she started working there.
Since college. But we’d been working together for two years when we
applied for the same promotion.”
“Oh, shit,” I say. “Did you know?”
He looks back, a completely unconvincing smile on his lips. The expression, though small, makes him look a little feral. “It was my idea. I was applying, but I thought she might as well too. And then I got it, and
things fell apart between us really fast. So I found a different job, quit that one, thinking they’d promote her instead and we could…I don’t know, go back to how things were. But instead they promoted someone else, who had started there four months before her, and everything got worse.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “That sounds horrible.”
“It was years ago now,” he says. “But honestly, it was the last serious
relationship I was in.”
“Really?” I say.
His head cocks to the left. “I find it hard to believe that’s surprising.”
“Well, it’s even harder picturing you casually dating,” I say.
“I don’t, much,” he says. “Just feels like work.”
“Do you get lonely?” I meant it in the most innocent way possible, but as soon as it sneaks out, I tingle with embarrassment.
But he just studies me seriously, like it’s a perfectly normal thing to ask someone you very clearly want to sleep with. “Sometimes I…” He hesitates.
“You can tell me,” I say, almost a whisper.
His jaw muscles leap. “Sometimes I just miss this. Being close to someone. Being touched. Not just sex, I mean.”
The tingle on my skin turns inward, my veins whirring eagerly now. I pat the sand beside me meaningfully. He doesn’t move for so long that I’ve already accepted he’s not going to join me by the time he finally does lie back, his long body rigid and hyperaware. Slowly, watching his face for a reaction, for any sign that it’s too much, I shift closer to him, rest my head in the divot just inside his shoulder. I set one hand on his chest, and it expands with a deep breath, the muscles down his flank seeming to relax between us.
He sets one hand over mine, dwarfing it, and even though we’d already been touching so many places, incidentally, this purposeful contact makes me pleasantly shiver. His eyes flutter closed, his dark lashes kissing the tops of his cheeks.
“I love this,” he rasps after a second, in a rush, like the thought went straight from his brain to his lips, and judging from the way he tenses as
soon as he’s said it, I think that might be exactly what happened.
“I do too,” I whisper back, and this soothes him. I let myself wiggle closer, his other arm snaking under my back to curl around me. I move a little, restless, and he squeezes my hand under his as he shifts too, turning onto his side, our arms and limbs rearranging until I’m on mine too, the medium spoon to his big one.
I can feel his heartbeat against my shoulder blade, and now his hand is draped over my stomach, lightly atop one of my own. I take a deep breath just for the excuse to feel more of the wall of him behind me. “I love this,” I admit, nestling back into him.
“Me too,” he whispers right beneath my ear.
He’s hard against my back, and I will myself not to move around too much, but it’s an effort. I feel antsy, exhilarated. His next warm breath makes me bow, and his hand folds over the top of mine, not touching me himself but touching me all the same.
He moves my hand up higher, brings it fully over my chest with a groan into my ear. I push myself back against him, and he skims higher, reaching the neckline of my shirt, letting me pull it down myself, his warm breath feathering down to dance along my bare skin. His hand tightens around mine, gripping me without gripping me. I press back, trying to find the friction between us, and he takes the opportunity to guide my hand lower, pulling the neckline down until my left breast is exposed to the moonlight.
“God, Alice,” he hisses. “We’d be so good together.”
I whimper as he sets my hand where he wants it, catches my nipples between my own fingers. “I want to,” I whisper.
“Not now,” he says. “If you still want to, after all of this…” He trails off as his lips brush the side of my throat, not quite kissing, just teasing.
He drags my hand down my center, all the way to my skirt. I squirm at the pressure between my thighs, but he keeps moving until he reaches the hem and then guides my hand beneath the fabric, settling my palm against myself. I grind myself back against him, and he gently cups me over my hand.
He swears, thrusts behind me, and the sensation shoots through my bloodstream like firecrackers. “We were just supposed to touch,” he
murmurs.
“Then touch me, Hayden,” I say.
His hand releases from mine and slides up over my chest, tight, kneading. I bite down on a cry as he pushes the fabric down again, and I arch back, desperate for his mouth to touch my bare skin. Instead he buries it safely in my hair, and does what I asked.
Touches me. Drags a thumb roughly over my nipple, then catches it between his pointer and middle fingers on a groan. I turn hungrily toward him, reach for his belt. He catches my wrist, stilling me. “I’m touching you, remember?” he says, gently removing my hand from the buckle. He sets it on the side of his neck, then slips his hand between my thighs.
I gasp at the smooth glide of his fingers over me, my legs parting. His eyes watch me drunkenly, and as I move myself against him, he swallows
hard, gravels, “You’re so wet.”
“I know,” I whisper.
He buries his face in my neck again, a frustrated groan vibrating through him as he slides his hand down the inside of my thigh, as if with great effort. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he says finally.
Surprise pulls a shallow, breathy laugh out of me. “Why?”
“Because I think we should go out,” he says. “Somewhere with a lot of people, and very bright lights.”
I’d personally rather be somewhere warm, dark, cozy, and private.
“I can’t.”
He stills for a second, then nods, his expression seeming to zip up, going from raw and intimate to cool and almost businesslike, despite the very unbusinesslike position we’re lying in. “Of course,” he says, as if he expected this, as if he’s the one who crossed the line when it was, as always, me.
“No, Hayden!” I grab his hand and pull it in between us. “I mean, I can’t. I’m going down to see my mom tomorrow.”
“Oh.” His brows flinch upward in surprise, then slowly settle into a furrow. “Is that stressful for you?”
“No, not really,” I say. It’s only partly a lie. Partly in that it is definitely stressful, but it’s also nice and fun and everything else, at intervals.
“It’ll be lonely here without you,” he says matter-of-factly, and I try not to melt into the sand, where the goop of my former body would never be entirely recovered.
“You could come with me,” I say. At the way he startles, I hurry to add, “Not like come meet my mom. Just, like, she’s always happy to have guests.
And her house isn’t exceptionally bright, but it’s not private because she’s there, plus a bunch of chickens, and—never mind. Just an idea.”
“Wouldn’t that be weird?” he asks, gaze narrowing. “I mean, how would we explain what…” He trails off, apparently unwilling to say the mortifying phrase what we are or the equally damning what’s going on between us.
But I meant what I said: “My mom’s an amazing host, actually. It’s one of her passions. I’ve brought home a lot of friends over the years. She’d
love to have you.”
He thinks it over.
“No pressure.” I sit up, a more respectable distance between us. “Just if you wanted to get out of town.”
He does the same, still silent, face serious and eyes watchful on the
waves.
My cheeks start burning.
“I don’t want you to invite me to be polite,” he says suddenly.
My gaze snaps toward him. “I’m not,” I promise. “And I really don’t want you to say yes to be polite.”
“You forget,” he says, “I never do anything to be polite.”
At my laugh, he reaches out and gently touches my lips, light and
fleeting. “I’d love to go.”
I beam back at him. “Good.”
And then, quickly, almost like he didn’t mean to at all, Hayden leans forward and kisses my cheek. “I’ll walk you back to your car,” he says,
starting to stand.
“You mean you’ll carry me,” I tease. “I hear there are snakes around here.”
