Page 17 of The Destined SEAL
He turns his head. “You’re coming back to the West Coast?” Ben’s eyes light up. “For your master’s?”
I nod and try not to show him how pleased I am with his response. “Yeah. They have a linguistics assistant professor job available. I can do that while I take classes and finish school. I need that PhD after my name.” I grin. He knows I’m not being a snot. He felt the same way in the past. “Marcus got in, too.”
“Oh. Gotcha. It’s a lovers’ move. Not a move for you to come back home.” What he failed to say, and I know was there, is that I failed to come back home to him.
I push his shoulder, and I’m again reminded about his muscles. “You’re constantly away anyway. I figured it was time to be closer to my parents, and I’ve been away for a while already, you know? Nothing is holding me anywhere. It was a good opportunity one of my professors set me up with, and that’s it.”
“Nothing to do with me then, huh?”
Of course.
“No, Ben. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Didn’t you learn that lesson when you were three? I’m allowed to make decisions that benefit me, just like you make decisions that benefit you.”
“My decisions benefit the rest of the free world, but who’s counting?” he jabs.
“I do miss you, and one of the first things I thought of when the opportunity was presented was you,” I hiss. “But if you’re going to be such a jerk about it, I’ll cancel the thought and replace it with disdain.”
“With your boyfriend, though. Not sure how I like that.”
“You don’t have to like it, Ben. You have to live with it,” I explain.
He shakes his head. “No more boyfriend talk. I’m sorry. Rewind. Congrats on your new endeavor. The best coast is happy to have you back. So am I.”
Smiling, I lie back down next to him. Our hands touch in a lazy, comfortable way. With one finger stretched out, I point at the passing cloud cluster. “Who do you see?” I readjust my thick black sunglasses.
“Buttercup,” he says matter-of-factly.
The Princess Bride. I was obsessed with that movie and the unconventional way Westley expressed his love. Ben watched it with me more times than I’m comfortable admitting. My heart hammers out the familiar rhythm called my repressed feelings for Ben. “It’s not her. No points,” I whisper.
“You’re awfully sure it’s not her.”
Clearing my throat, I say, “It can’t be her. It looks like the Tasmanian Devil.”
He tilts his head to look at the cloud from a different angle. “As you wish,” he says.
Narrowing my eyes, I glare at him. He smiles, acknowledging his heinous crime.
“If that’s what you want it to be, but no one is getting points for it,” Ben replies. His cell phone is pumping music out from the bottom of the blanket, and the song changes to one of my favorites. I sing along in a low tone while I contemplate a million different things.
“One last cloud, and then we need to get on the road. Hell hath no fury like your mom when she’s made her famous consommé and we’re late to the party,” Ben says, bouncing his foot up and down to the beat.
“Oh, god. She made consommé? How did I not know that?” I roll up to a sitting position and start gathering our stuff. The gunshots have receded from a rapid fire to a few piercing shots every few seconds. “They must have killed whatever they were killing.”
Ben laughs. “If they’re killing anything over there, we’re in trouble, Harps,” he says, handing me the comic book to put intothe big tote bag. We came here after a Jazzercise class. Just as he promised, he participated and didn’t laugh once. I think Ben likes Jazzercise as much as being a SEAL. I’ll never call him out on it, though.
“Do you wish you were with them?” I ask, standing to brush off sand. Taking a deep breath, I inhale the fresh, saltwater air. It’s one of the purest scents on Earth. To me, it smells safe and constant. Who the hell knows what the world will look like next week or year? The ocean will smell the same, though. “Don’t you like to practice killing things?”
“I took some time off while you’re here. I never take time off.” He raises his brows and blows out a breath. “I needed this.” Looking up at me, I see the cost of his breakneck-paced lifestyle. “It’s constant, you know? The second we rat out one guy, we’re focusing on the next.”
I nod, lean over to grab the corner of the blanket, and pull as hard as I can. He rolls off into the sand. “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Consommé, remember?”
He plays at mock outrage and rolls around the sand, making a big deal out of my ceremonious dumping.
“You’re going to get your truck full of sand. You know that, right?”
He waggles his brows, folds his arms behind his head, and says, “Not if I take my clothes off before I get in.”
Folding the blanket, I stuff it under my arm. “Better get on with it then,” I quip.
