Page 158 of Ecstasy
I know I do.
I throw my arm around her shoulder, tug her close to me and kiss her hair. She cut it, at a place on the coast, and it’s to her shoulders now, all neat edges and healthy ends. I didn’t really know anything about that,but she pointed it out to me. She told me the “straggly parts” were gone, and I never ever thought her hair looked “straggly”, but whatever. It looks good as fuck, just like it did before. Though she looks older now, in a good way. Classier, maybe. Except for the fact she’s in a nearly translucent black, long-sleeved top tucked into her skin-tight skinny jeans, and she’s not wearing a bra so maybe classyisn’t the word, but I don’t care.
She knows I’m not going to share her like he did, and so long as she understands that—which she said she did—then I don’t care what she wears. She could walk around fucking naked for all I care.
Which makes me think of when I pulled down her bikini top at that fucking party and that fucking video I’ve painstakingly tried my best to erase from everywhere.She doesn’t seem to care about that though.
Our past lives, as she likes to call them. Even though they weren’t that long ago.
She does act like a different person. Quieter, not too…hyper. Because she’s sober. But she’s kinder, too. And I think she loves me more.
I kiss her again as we get to the middle of the bridge and she comes to stand at the edge, against the wood railing. It’s close to ten o’clock, and the stars shimmer on the surface of the water which is, grudgingly, I have to admit, really damn romantic.
I wonder if she’s thinking the same thing, but she just slurps on the orange juice in a plastic cup she has in her hand and I can’t tell. I don’t know where her mind is right now. I’ve asked her probably a hundred times what she was thinking the past week, so I let it go for now before she gets sick of me.
But I can’t stop staring at her. At her sharp cheekbones, those long, dark lashes. And even in the night, even under the stars and the moon, I can see the blue green of her eyes. They’re Caribbean eyes. That’s the best way to describe them. Beautiful, like the sea, but better than the view of it we’ve got right now.
“Are you okay?” The words come out before I can stop myself. I’ve never had a lot of self-control, and I guess that hasn’t changed.
She turns her gaze to me and it’s a little hard to breathe. Especially when her pink lips turn up into a smile and the stud in her nose catches the starlight. She looks like fucking magic.
Okay. I’m obviously in love.
“Why do you ask?”
I notice that she didn’t answer my question, but I let it go, pulling her even closer to me, so her head is against my arm. She smiles a little, clutching her orange juice, and I glance out at the canal. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a fucking clown on stilts, but I don’t care. I ignore him, and the kids running and screaming from his path.
“I just want to know how you’re really doing,” I whisper into the dark.
She wraps her arm around my back, and I turn back to look at her, her eyes searching mine.
“Truly?” she whispers, and I feel myself tense, getting ready for her words. They may not be what I want to hear, and I have to be okay with that. I want her truth, even if it hurts. I’ve poked and pried so many times the past week. Probably too many times. I know it’s not good for her recovery, but I can’t walk around on eggshells when I’m with her all the time either and I alwayswant to be with her.
“The truth would be best,” I tell her quietly.
She squats down, my arm falling from around her shoulder, and she sets her orange juice cup on the wooden planks, then stands back up and circles her arms around my neck, standing on her tiptoes even though she’s in gray, heeled booties. Another new word I learned from her.
“I love you, Alex Cardi.”
I can’t explain the feeling in my chest when she says those words. I can’t explain how it swells and nearly bursts and I regret all the bad from before, all the shit I said about her. Did to her. All the fucking bullshit with my ex-roommate and how I left to go to the coast, and he was able to get his hands on her all over again.
I regret letting him ruin my life because I didn’t want to relive a night that wasn’t even mine to stress over. I regret what happened to Cari, but I can’t say I’m not happy it wasn’t fucking me.
It wasn’t fucking me.
I did what I could.
I’ve always tried to do what I could.
Except where Zara is concerned. I did hurt her. And I almost drowned her, too. I almost fucked everything up for us.
“Do you?” I ask her, but I can’t hide my smile.
Especially when she jumps up to plant a kiss on my head. I catch her, pick her up by her thighs, which she wraps tightly around me, making my dick fucking rock hard in no time flat. I’m aware there are children around us and those stupid clowns but it’s fucking ten o’clock. If someone doesn’t want their kids to see two idiots in love, they should take them elsewhere.
And when some woman mutters, “Get a room,” I offer her my middle finger without pulling my tongue out of Zara’s mouth.
She laughs against me, pulling back and flicking my nose. “You’re awful,” she tells me, and I know she doesn’t mean a fucking word of it.
