Jane Lark - I Need You

“A couple of hours.” I looked back at the road. “We can settle in, then get lunch.”

She laughed, a low half-choking sound that was almost a sob. “I forgot how hungry you get. You can stop for breakfast if you want…”

I threw her a smile. “Sorry, you’ll have to accommodate my appetite. I don’t eat like a bird like you do, but I can wait ‘til lunch.”

She’d fed me and Jason through most of our college years. In the shared apartment we’d had. The couple and the spare-part best friend––three had definitely been a crowd. But I’d still hung around them. I bet people had thought it weird.

I was weird.

Fucking crazy!

I’d always wondered if Jason knew. But he hadn’t said anything the other night when we’d got everything out in the open. I figured he’d have said something then if he’d known.

“I can’t believe you still wear that thing.” She leaned over and flicked the leather bracelet as my hand gripped the wheel.

How the hell did she not know?

I glanced at her, giving her a twisted, guilty smile, as something hard grabbed my heart. “Yeah.”

“I made you that years ago.”

“I’m just lazy, I can’t be bothered to cut it off.” I let a fake sound of amusement slip from my throat, acting as if it was nothing––like I had every other time she’d mentioned it.

She’d made it at high school. It had been the thing all the girls were doing at the time, braiding these silly leather bracelets and threading beads into them. It was before she’d been seeing Jason. We’d been fifteen.

Yeah, I had been wearing it that long. Pining over a girl that wasn’t mine.

But shit I can still remember the feel of her gentle fingers touching me as she’d tied it off, and it had done stuff to my cock. I’d liked her before, but that was the day she’d got me. It was like her fingers had touched my heart too. I’d had this burning need for her ever since.

I should cut the thing off.

I glanced over at her. Her hands were in her lap and she stared ahead. I didn’t know what to say to her. I was too anxious to hold a meaningless conversation and I didn’t want to quiz her, ‘cause I was taking her away to forget all the stuff that made her feel bad.

I said a few things and she answered, but then I couldn’t think of anything to add. She said some things and I nodded, not knowing what to say back.

In the end we were quiet most of the drive.

I was relieved when I finally pulled up in the apartments’ parking lot on the coast.

“Wow, this is nice.”

The ocean rolled up onto the miles of beach before the parking lot. This place just calmed me. I’d come here the summer we’d left high school and it had been the best therapy. This beach and the ocean was my psychiatrist. I’d come back every summer since.

I hoped it was gonna work for her too.

I freed the door and as it opened the sound of the ocean swept into the SUV.

I looked at Lindy.

She was wide-eyed, watching the beach.

“Let’s go get our keys. I’ll get our stuff later.”

She looked at me, uncertainty creeping into her eyes, but she nodded.

I wanted to grip her hand as we walked across the parking lot. There was a whole minefield of protective energy bubbling around inside me. But it had blown up in my face before. I was steering clear of too much touching.

The thing with Lindy was she was so tiny it made me want to just put my arms around her and wrap her up. She was like a precious, breakable doll, five-two, to my six-one.

I glanced over at her. The ocean breeze flicked her wavy blonde hair against the curve of her cheek.

Her fingers tucked her hair behind her ear.

I’d wanted to do that for her. There was a hard need to touch her in my belly. But I’d spent years ignoring that instinct. That was nothing new.

She didn’t look at me. She looked ahead at the apartment block.

She’d won beauty pageants as a kid. Her Mom had been into all that shit, driving her to loads of contests and Lindy did have the look for that sort of thing, perfect symmetry.

At high school she’d been full of confidence. At college that had died for some reason.

She glanced at me, her blue eyes seeming bluer under the clear sky.

“I’ve ordered adjacent places, is that okay? I can ask them to change them if you want?”

“No, that’s okay.” She nodded.

The apartments were stacked and set out in rows spread along the edge of the beach. The guy at the desk said ours were on the top floor. The place was something between a hotel, a motel and cabins, and the rooms ‘slash’ apartments were accessed via a long hallway, with stairs at either end of the block.

When we got up there, I slid the card key through the lock, then stepped back and shoved the door open for her to go in. “You can have this one.”

It had a small kitchen and a sofa that turned into a bed. But most importantly, at the end of the room was a big window that looked out on the ocean. It had a balcony too.

“I’ll go get your stuff.” I left her in her room. But before I went back down to the SUV, I went into mine.

Shit. I combed a hand through my hair, then realized I’d fucked it up, and rubbed it so it spiked again.

It was going to be a hell of a couple of weeks.

I walked over and slid the glass door to the balcony back, letting in the soothing sound of the ocean. It pulled me outside.

Lindy stood out there, on her balcony, gripping the wooden rail and looking at the ocean. I turned my back on it and rested my butt against the rail. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just taking in the air.”

“Look, Lind––”

“I’m not in the mood to talk.”

Well, there was probably nothing I could say that would make anything better anyway. “I’ll go get our things.”

I dumped mine in my room, then went round to her door and knocked. She opened it, but stood there, stopping me from going in.

“Here you are.” I dropped her case and backpack just inside the door. “Are you ready for something to eat? We could walk downtown and then walk along the beach if you want?” I leaned against the door jamb, watching her, waiting on her answer.

I’d spent hours in this position, on the border to Lindy’s and Jason’s bedroom at college, talking to one or the other.

“Yeah, I can unpack later.” She turned away, knocking the door open wider, before walking back into her room.

I stayed where I was. “Did you call your dad to say we got here okay?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s okay with it?”

She turned, her eyes flashing impatience, a little of the real Lindy shining through the dark clouds hanging over her. Like a beam of intense sunlight catching me off-guard and blinding me.

“He may be a cop, but he doesn’t order me about. I’m twenty-two. I can do whatever.”

Yep, she could. When she was herself, she always did whatever she wanted, with a just-deal-with-it attitude. That attitude had made Jason go silent. He’d always let her have her way.

I lifted my weight off the door frame.

“You ready to go then?”

“Yeah.”

When she came out of the room, my hand hovered behind her. I had no need to touch her; it would have been strange to do it and yet it felt strange walking down the hall not touching her.

Lindy barely came to my shoulder.

I’d picked her up once or twice, messing around, and she was as light as anything. So frickin’ tiny.

Her thick blond hair flowed in waves about her shoulders as she moved. My hand itched to touch that. Literally.

Crap.

I lifted my hand to touch her shoulder. I didn’t. Instead I slipped my hands into the back pockets of my pants to keep them tamed.

The way out from our apartments was a wide wooden staircase, leading down from the third floor.