Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 119964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119964 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 600(@200wpm)___ 480(@250wpm)___ 400(@300wpm)
Fifteen
Finn
I take Chess to a restaurant on the beach. We sit on a huge terrace strung with lights, our table right beside the glass railing, and watch the sun set over the ocean as Chess drinks a fruity cocktail and I nurse a beer.
“What’s good here?” she asks me.
For a moment, I can only stare. Her skin glows with a light tan that makes her green eyes brighter. The ocean breeze kicks up the silky strands of her dark hair, making them dance around her slim shoulders. She looks happy, relaxed, and well satisfied.
I did that. I gave her that soft, content look. I gave her those kiss-swollen lips. Because I now can, because she’s right here, I lean in and kiss her again. A gentle, lazy exploration of her mouth with mine. She tastes of tequila and passion fruit. And I could gladly kiss her all night.
I pull back just far enough to see her smile, those green eyes lit with happiness, and I smile, too.
I want to tell her things. Important, emotional things that I’ve never said to anyone else. But this shift between us is too new and the place too public. Besides, she wants to order food.
“Get the lobster tacos,” I tell her with another soft kiss.
She hums against my mouth and, when I sit back, gives me an assessing look. “Why do I suspect that you come home for tacos almost as much as you do to see your parents?”
I laugh. “Because I do. They’re the best in SoCal.”
“Pretty sure there are taco lovers who would defend their own hometowns.”
“They can try.” I wink. Looking her over, a swelling sense of rightness fills me.
I’ve had moments I thought were perfect. They were preludes to this, to truly being with Chess.
“Our first date should have been like this,” I tell her.
Chess quirks a brow, but she’s still smiling. “I thought this was our first date.”
“Our first date was eating fried fish and talking about bad sex. We just didn’t realize it yet.”
“We didn’t?”
“Nope.” Slowly, I shake my head. “It was a date, but the execution was all wrong. I shouldn’t have made it a friend thing. I should have gone up to you and said, ‘I like you at lot, Chester Copper. Will you go out with me for, like, real?’”
She snickers, but it sounds suspiciously like a happy giggle. “How do you know it would have worked?”
God, I love her smile. I want to keep teasing her just to see it bloom again and again. “It would have worked. I would have kissed you the way I’d wanted to since we met, and you would have been mine.”
“Oh, really,” she deadpans, but I see the knowledge in her eyes.
“Really. I was made to kiss you, Chess.”
She goes soft at that, giving me those bedroom eyes. Her voice grows husky, making me hard and tight with anticipation. “Maybe I was the one made to kiss you, Finn.”
Emotion rushes through my chest, taking my air, and I breathe deep. “You were.”
The waitress arrives to take our order.
When she’s gone, Chess looks out over the water, giving me her profile. She’s flustered, her fingers tapping the glass in her hand. Neither of us has been in a relationship, me because I didn’t want to, Chess because she never found anyone she wanted. In a way, I’m glad that we’re both new to this. We can be each other’s only. But part of me wishes we both knew more, or at least one of us had some knowledge of how to play this.
But it is what it is, and I’m content to drink my beer, watch the sunlight dance in my girl’s hair. Our food arrives and we eat with gusto, talking about nothing in particular. The sun sinks behind the horizon, and the string lights twinkle overhead.
A dance floor is set up on one corner of the patio. Mostly older patrons are slow dancing to a Sinatra song. Chess watches them, the corners of her lips tilted up. “I wish I brought my camera. That couple there . . .”
I glance back and see a man and woman who must be in their eighties. He’s dressed in a light gray three-piece suit, an honest-to-god red carnation tucked into his lapel. The woman’s dress looks like something out of the ’40s. They move together in perfect harmony, his hand in hers as they smile at each other.
Chess glances at me but then her gaze goes back to the couple. “What must that be like? To spend an entire lifetime with someone, and the threads of who you are have become so interwoven, you can’t part without unraveling.”
I don’t know. But I want to find out.
The song ends and another begins. It’s slow, the woman’s voice filled with tender love and bittersweet nostalgia as she sings along to the piano. I listen to the lyrics and start to smile. “This song was playing when I walked you home that first night.”