Broken Fairytales (30 page)

“Sure,” I said,
not sure what I was agreeing to
but figured I was game to do anything w
ith him a
t that
point.

He got up, dusted off the back of his shorts
,
and held his hand out to
help me up.
I put my hand in his,
let him pull
me up to a standing position, and
we started walking
back
in the direction I’d come
.
We passed Molly’s house
, w
here I thought he was staying
,
and stopped two houses down at a small beach cottage.

“You’re not staying with the rest of your family?” I asked, as I followed him around to the front of the house.

He shook his head. “My mom and I
actually
live her year-round
now
. The rest of my family is just renting that house. They used to stay with us in the big house, but since the divorce, we just don’t have enough room.”

Zack stopped
next to
a
shiny black motorcycle
.
He leaned forward to take the helmet from the back of the bike and handed it to me.

“Is this okay?” he asked, gestur
ing to the bike, his eyebrows r
ising slightly in question.

Instinctively, my heart started pounding at the idea of riding on the back of a motorcycle, but I wasn’t about to let Zack see my fear.

“I’m
guess if I’m working on being impulsive,
sure,” I said, shrugging as I took the helmet from him
and tentatively placed it over my head.

He laughed lightly, shaking his head. “
You know,
princess,
it doesn’t count as being impulsive if you have to write a mental pro-con list before making a decision.”

I closed my eyes in
frustrated
amusement.
“Why do you keep calling me that?”

He shrugged. “It just seems to fit,” he said, matter-of-factly.

I sighed to show my frustration
but didn’t tell him not to call me that anymore. I wasn’t sure I didn’t actually it. When it rolled off of his lips, it sounded almost endearing.

“
You know, i
t’s unnerving how you always seem to be
able to know what I’m thinking,
”
I said, instead.

He smirked.
“Emily, I could literally see the wheels turning in your head as you work
ed
through whether or not you wanted to hop of the back of my bike with me.
”

He took a step toward me, his hand reaching for my waist. He playe
d with the hem of my hoodie
, lifting the edge, so his fingers could dance along my bare stomach
,
as his eyes locked with mine and my breath caught in my chest. My heart started pounding wildly at our proximity and little twinges started sparking down from the spot where his fingers played. He slowly swept his hand
across my stomach, his fingers falling
just below the waistband of my cut-offs. I had to bite my lip to keep from gasping out loud.

“It’s really important that you don’t think,” Zack murmured, his lips moving slowly
, seductively
. “If you truly want to be impulsive, you just
have to just go with your gut.”

I breathed in and out slowly, well-aware that my heart was pounding and my breathing
was s
lightly labored. In all my years with Ben, nothing he’d done had ever created this much desire or want in me.
It took every ounce of
control
I had
not to grab Zack’s face between my hands and draw him flush against my body.

“Now,” he said, his hand moving up to my rib cage, just under my bra.
He
swept
it
softly across my stomach.
“Do you want to go for a ride?”

“Yes,” I breathed out instantly, not entirely sure if he was still referring to his motorc
ycle.

His
mouth quirked up on the side so he was smirking at me. “Good,
”
he said, as his arm ran around to my back and he pulled me against him.

I knew he was going to kiss me, and all I could do was stand there, frozen and waiting, wanting nothing more than his lip on mine. His eyes stayed locked on mine before glancing down at my lips for a few beats, as if he was contemplating whether or not to close the distance between us. Then, before I knew what was happening, he released me.
I reached back for the bike t
o steady myself. My legs felt
wobbly
,
and my head felt heavy from the weight of the helmet.

I breathed out a sigh as quietly as I could so he wouldn’t see how much he’d affected me.

“
I’m guessing y
ou’ve never ridde
n on a bike before, have you?”
he asked then.

I shook my head, too afraid to speak for fear of what I might say. I could tell instantly that he could sense what I was feeling in that moment, and the smirk th
at
again
played on his lips told me I
was amusing him.

“Okay, it’s not big deal, except that as the rider, you need to make sure that we
don’t fall out of balance.
”

He had suddenly flipped a switch and was in teaching mode, all traces of flirting gone.
I raised my eyebrows, thinking that I didn’t have the
first clue as to how to do what he was telling me
and suddenly saw us plummeting to our deaths from me throwing the bike out of balance.

“It’s not so hard,” Zack said, smiling
a sort of crooked smile at me.
“All you have to do is hold on
to me and lean the same way
I do. Can you do that?”

I swallowed hard, thinking that in order to do that, my arms would have to be aro
und his waist, and
the flutters in my s
tomach
kicked back up again
at the idea of being so
close to
him.
I didn’t think I’d have any
problem holding on tight
.

“I’ve got this
,” I said, confidently, nodding my
heavy,
helmet-covered head a few times.

“Okay,” Zack said, as he took his place on the front of the bike. “Hop on.”
He glanced from me to the space
behind him.

I tentatively climbed on and
leaned forward, pressing my body into his back and snaking my arms around his
waist.
I a
lmost
shivered as I felt his taught stomach
through his
t-
shirt and gripped him tighter, locking my hands together.

Zack laugh
ed and turned around slightly.
“I do
still
need to breath
e.
”

“Oh, sorry,” I said and automatically loosened my death grip.

“Thanks,” he said, as he kick-started the bike. 

As we started to slowly
move out of the dri
veway, I couldn’t help but wonder
wha
t my parents would think of me
riding on a motorcycle with a guy I hardly knew
.
I knew they wouldn’t be please
d, which
sort of
pleased me to no end.
I did everything I could to push Ben’s clouded face from my mind, as it would surely be if he saw
me holding onto another guy that
tightly, as we zoomed a
way to an unknown location
. 

Once we got movin
g, I found the initial fear I felt
ebbing more toward exhilaration as
the wind
whipped around us.
We couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles and hour, bu
t it felt like we were flying.
I instantly loved the feeling of the wind, the freedom
,
and
Zack’s body so close to mine.
I felt the sudden urge to press my lips to his neck which both scared and excited me.

“You okay?” he asked when we stopped at a light.

“I’m good
,” I said, hugging him tighter.

When we finally reached our destination, I saw that we were at the top
of a small cliff of some sort.
Zack parked the bike at the top and helped me off. 

“You did good,” he said, as we walked toward some stairs
that I hadn’t seen when we’d first pulled up
.
They led us down to a stretch of t
he beach that was uninhabited.
There were no houses nearby and
no lifeguard chairs.
It didn’t look like the stretches of beach that were on the end of the island where we were staying.

We walked
over to a
large
outcropping of rocks that blocked our path.
The water was coming dangerously close to
the rocks as the tide came in.
Zack ste
pped on top of the lowest rocks and
put his hand out for me to grab. 

My eyes fixed on
a
pink
rubber
bracelet that he was wearing.
I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it fell to the end of his arm, as
his shirt sleeve pulled up from his wrist
.
I looked from it, to his eyes, to his outstretched fingers,
reached out and took his hand.
For some reason,
I took that gesture
as
a sign t
hat there was no turning back.
I was crossing a line, and once I crossed it, that was it
, but I didn’t
stop. I didn’t even
slow down
.

Zack helped me up onto the rocks and held my hand as we walked the ten feet across, be
ing careful not to slip, as the rocks
were already getting damp from the spray of the ocean.
On the other side, he hopped down onto hard
-packed sand and helped me down
so I was standin
g next to him on firm ground.
We found ourselves on a secluded part of the beach where day trippers most likely didn’t set up t
heir chairs and beach blankets.
There was only about twenty feet of space from the back of the rocks to the ocean, and the expa
nse was only thirty feet wide.
On the other side were more large rocks th
at were too tall to traverse
easily.

“Come on,” he said, taking my hand again. 

We wa
lked up to the back of the beach
where there wa
s a small entrance to a cave.
He
hesitated just ou
tside of it but didn’t enter.
Instead he sat down on the sand, so I sat next to him.

“What is this?”

“Th
is is my other place,” he said.
“I used to come down here as
a kid, actually all of us did.
We would camp in there a few times each summer.” He indicated
to the cave opening behind us.
“I used to love how we could pretend
it was our own private island.
When I was older, and my parents would fight, I would c
ome here
a lot
just get away from it all.”

“Did you feel like you needed to get
away tonight?”
  I asked, wondering
what was bothering him so much.

He nodded. “Yeah, I did.
I’ve been coming here a lot over the past few months to think or write or just be alone.
”

“You write?”

He nodded. “Music.”

“Really. How come you never play your own stuff at the beach?”

He shrugged. “Everyone likes covers. They’re crowd-pleasers. Besides, some of m
y stuff’s been pretty dark
lately, so I figure it’s just better not to bum everyone else out.”

“You haven’t exactly been playing bright and cheery tunes,” I said recalling that a lot of his cover choices had
a definite
melancholy air.

He shrugged. “I play what I feel, so I guess that’s sort of rubbed off. Sorry if I’ve been bumming you out.”

I laughed
a non-humorous laugh “I’ve
actually
been pretty bummed out this summer, so I kind of liked your music.”