Page 55 of Resurrection
Shit.
I look up.
There she is, her dark hair a banner against the evening, her eyes locked on mine. And there’s a smirk on her lips.
Busted.
"Why are you here?" she asks, gesturing at me ducked down, about to kiss the ground. "And why didn’t you come in. Tired already?"
I jump up, pretending I wasn’t hiding, and dust off my jeans. "Just lost my contact," I mutter. That’s the first thing that comes to mind, and it’s obviously not a good excuse.
"Stop bullshitting," Naomi counters, marching closer. "You’ve got perfect vision."
She would know. I feel like I’m fourteen again, hoping she won’t notice my voice cracking. I adjust my shirt one more time, a real pointless gesture at this stage. "Maybe blindness is setting in. The years take their toll," I mumble, trying to play it cool and failing.
"Yeah, right." She scoffs.
We’re in the parking lot, but we might as well be standing on the moon for all the empty space around us. She stops just short of being close, her arms crossed on her chest like a shield all of a sudden. "The years take their toll?" she repeats, her tone heavy with more than I want to think about.
I rub the back of my neck, fighting the urge to hide behind the car again. "About the other night. I, uh, didn’t mean to ruin dinner."
"Is that why you’re here?"
"It was uncalled for, but I wanted to apologize for the kiss, and I didn’t know how to find you. I didn’t mean to crash your family time."
"Oh?" She raises an eyebrow, and I can feel the weight of her stare. My mind blanks, and the speech I had all planned out crumbles.
I open my mouth, and something between a grunt and a word slips out. Finally, I gather my courage. "I’m an ass. I know it."
"You notice anything?" Her hand bounces between our bodies. "The pattern?"
"The pattern?"
"You fuck up. You ask for forgiveness. You fuck up again. What’s the point of doing this if the result is always the same?"
"Do you have to be like this?"
She steps closer, and my heart stops.Fuck. Why does that happen? Why can’t I not feel all these things when she’s nearby?I half expect her to slap me again, but then she cranes her neck and presses her mouth to mine. Her lips are soft and sweet, and even the time between us can’t diminish that spark I felt for the first time during my sophomore year of high school.
Everything freezes and then spins.
It ends before I realize it started, then she turns to leave. Panic clutches at my chest, and blood shoots straight to my cock. Seventeen years later, and she still has me in the palm of her hand. "What am I supposed to do with that?" I blurt out.
Naomi pauses, looks back with a cunning smile. "Same thing I did with your promises when you disappeared."
She’s gone before I can even breathe. The sky’s a shade darker, and I’m standing in the still desert evening with nothing but the echo of her words and the mess they’ve left inside me.
I’m too stunned to be think clearly or act logically.
Instead, I drive back to my parents’ place. The driveway welcomes me with string lights and the smell of Mom’s baking. But the taste of Naomi’s kiss is still tender on my lips, and I duck into my room before I’m summoned to the kitchen.
Despite the fact that my trusty old Fender is waiting for me, it’s my thoughts that need tuning. I pace the room for a few minutes, then settle into my chair and strum a few chords. But every note trips over itself, stumbling under the weight of the past that she just dropped back into my arms.
I know she did it out of spite, but it felt just as magical as it did the first time we kissed at sixteen, which only reinforced my belief she’s the only woman for me in this lifetime.
After a few minutes of pointless messing around with the strings, I leave my Fender behind and wander to the kitchen, where Mom’s baking away. The aroma of vanilla and chocolate wraps around me like a hug I don’t know how to accept right now.
"Thought you were on a diet," she teases as I grab a cookie, then startpacing the floor like I’m running from something that’s already caught up to me.
