Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (78 page)

“What
do you want on the side?” the young lady asked me. “You can have your choice of
fries, side salad, coleslaw or baked beans.”

“Fries,”
I said, because fries logically go with a pizza burger…or so I thought. I was a
little floored, I admit, when Jake ordered his olive burger with a salad. Rick,
whose imposing build made him look as if he ate Fred Flintstone-style racks of
ribs, also ordered the side salad with his burger. I got embarrassed; these
guys were making me look like a piglet.

“Oh,
and bring us another pizza burger and side salad,” Rick added as the server
finished writing down our orders. “For Tsuyoshi.”

I
froze in the middle of unwrapping my straw. “I thought Tsuyoshi wasn’t coming,”
I said.

Jake
shook his head. “He said he’d be late, but he’d be here. So, tell me something
about yourself, Lacey. All I know about you is your name, and that you like to
meditate in the garden.”

I
told him a little about myself as we waited for our food. As our server brought
our tray, Jake reached across the table and took my hand. “We always say a
blessing before the meal,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not
at all,” I said, thoroughly enjoying the feel of his hand in mine. With his
other hand, I noticed, he took Rick’s hand. Rick held tightly to Beth with his
other hand, and Beth reached over to take my hand to form a full circle.

“Goddess
our Mother, as we are about to enjoy the fruits of your Earth, we ask your
blessing. We praise you and give you our thanks for the sacrifice of your
creatures who sustain us. Blessed be,” Jake said.

“Blessed
be,” Rick and Beth echoed him.

I
think I swooned a little bit. Jake was thoughtful and sensitive, everything I
wanted in a man. “That was beautiful,” I said. Jake smiled as my fingers
slipped from his.

I
resisted the temptation to wolf down my fries while Beth and the two guys were
munching on their salads. Maybe they were on a collective diet
¾
not that they needed it; all of them were
perfectly well proportioned. Maybe they were just veggie people; they certainly
seemed to be enjoying their greens. Rick had ranch dressing, but Jake and Beth
didn’t even dress their salads. They did, however, savor them, enjoying each
cherry tomato, each slice of cucumber, and each leaf of romaine as if it were a
fine wine. I’d never seen people enjoy vegetables more.

We
finished our meal slowly; our cups were refilled several times. I drank so much
diet soda I had to get up to pee twice. The second time, Beth came to the
restroom with me. As we put our respective lip glosses on in adjacent mirrors,
she asked me, “So, are you and Jake going to be friends, or is there something
more there?”

“I
just met him,” I said, leaning against the sink.

“But
you like him,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I
don’t know,” I said.

“It’s
okay,” Beth responded. “He likes you, too. This isn’t the first time he’s
noticed you in the park.”

I
wanted to hear more about that last part, but Beth was already heading out of
the restroom. On our way back to the table, I noticed it was already starting
to get dark outside. I hadn’t realized how long we’d been hanging out in the
café; I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.

The
server was at the table when I sat down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to put
your friend’s meal in a box and stick it in the fridge?” she asked Jake.

Jake
shook his head. “I got a call from him three minutes ago. He’ll be here.”

I
saw the blue first: a bit of the sky, the same color as the top of the Blue
Morpho butterfly’s wing. It was his shirt. I gasped. Except for the fangs,
Tsuyoshi looked exactly as he had in my nightmare.

“What’s
wrong?” Jake whispered across the table at me. I didn’t have an answer for him.

Tsuyoshi
reached the table and stared down at me with his eyes, brown as mountain
granite. “Jake, who’s your friend?” he asked. He definitely had a Japanese
accent, though his English was perfectly clear.

“This
is Lacey Burke,” Jake said cautiously. He must have noticed the tension on my
face. “She and I met at the park today.”

“Rick
threw a flying disc at me,” I said nervously. Tsuyoshi held out his hand, and I
shook it. He sat down by his plate, positioned between Rick and Jake.

“We
got you a burger and a salad,” Beth said. “The burger’s probably cold by now.”

“I
could stick it in the microwave for you,” the server said.

“Would
you?” Tsuyoshi asked, lifting the plate and holding it out for her. “I’m
starving. I‘d like some coffee, too. Make sure it‘s fresh.” She nodded and went
to fill his order. Like Beth and Jake, he ate his salad without dressing,
though he didn’t seem to enjoy it nearly as much as they did. “I’ve seen you
before,” Tsuyoshi said to me.

“Yes,”
I said. “In the park.”

“Yeah,”
he said. “You like to meditate. In the early morning, while it is still cool,
you wear lavender yoga pants.”

Okay,
that was creepy. I didn’t know I had a stalker.

Jake
laughed. “I guess we hang out at the park more than I realize,” he said.

Rick
asked Tsuyoshi about a trip he’d made to the mall the previous evening, and
Jake stared across the table at me. “You okay?” he mouthed. I nodded, though
something inside me was chilled to the bone.

Tsuyoshi
finished his meal, and he and his friends got up from the table. Jake offered
to walk me to my car; I accepted.

“You’ve
got my phone number,” he said. “You’re welcome to call me, if you’d like to go
out some time. Maybe next time it could be just the two of us.”

“Yeah,
I’ll call you,” I said.

“Listen,
don’t worry about Tsuyoshi,” he added. “I know he’s noticed you before; he’s
pointed you out to me a couple times. He appreciates a beautiful woman. He’s
not, like, following you or anything.”

“I
wasn’t worried. Really,” I said. “I thought he looked familiar, and I was
trying to think of where I knew him from. That’s all.”

“Would
it be too forward of me to ask for a kiss?” Jake asked.

“Not
too
forward,” I said. I leaned in and closed my eyes. He gave me a
brief, polite peck on the lips. It was over too quickly, but the taste of him
on my lips was sublime.

“Call
me,” he said, in place of a goodbye.

I
told Janette everything when I met her for lunch later in the week: Jake, the
weird dream I had about the butterfly, Tsuyoshi.

“You’re
sure the man in your dream said his name was Tsuyoshi?” she asked.

“Yeah,”
I said. “He even looked the same.”

“Maybe
you’re misremembering when you had the dream,” she suggested. “Maybe you didn’t
have the nightmare until the night after you met him.”

“I
wish you were right,” I said, “but I know you’re wrong.”

She
shrugged me off. “Tell me more about this Jake.”

I
did. As we were getting ready to leave, she said, “Oh, and I have another
theory about the Blue Morpho.”

“You
do?”

She
nodded. “Maybe it wasn’t a butterfly you saw. Maybe it was a fairy.”

I
laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe in fairies now.”

Janette
grinned. “It was only a joke. You know me; I have a strange sense of humor.”

After
work that night, I called Jake. We made plans to go on a proper date on
Saturday night. Before he let me off the phone, he insisted I hear a song he’d
written, an instrumental piece he played for me on the guitar. It was slow and
soothing, the perfect lullaby. I thanked him for sharing it with me.

“Lacey,
I wrote it for you,” he replied. I think I swooned, a little bit, for a second
time since I’d met him.

That
night, I dreamed of tiny flower fairies with bright blue wings, lighting up
like fireflies as they flitted around Shiojiri Nawa.

On
Saturday night, Jake showed up at my doorstep with a picnic basket. “I thought
we were going to that Italian place,” I said.

“Change
of plans. I made us some spaghetti, and I’ve got garlic bread and a bottle of
Chianti. Will you let me take you on an adventure?”

I
smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I could do that.”

We
got it Jake’s Prius, and he drove to the county park on the outskirts of town.
“Are we even supposed to be here at night?” I asked him.

“Yeah,”
he said. “The park doesn’t close until eleven. It’s perfect; there’s almost no
one here.”

It
was
a beautiful night, with a clear sky and hundreds of stars above us.
The crescent moon was high in the sky. Jake brought a flashlight, and we
followed a trail into the woods. “Where are we going?” I asked him.

“To
my favorite spot,” he said. “There’s a wishing well and a koi pond at the top
of the hill where the stream flows.”

“Sounds
nice,” I said. It took us several minutes to walk there. Jake asked me about my
family, and I asked him about his. Jake was Japanese-American, but unlike
Tsuyoshi, his family had been in the U.S. since the nineteenth century. They’d
lived in this area for three generations.

We
finally saw the tiled roof of the wishing well at the top of the hill. Jake
found us a flat spot to lay the blanket we’d brought with us; he kept one in
the trunk of his car. From where we sat, I could watch the starlight shining in
the pond. The white and red koi were active on this hot night; we saw them
eating mosquitoes off the surface of the water. They were beautiful. Jake
poured me a glass of wine. I drank it too quickly, because I was already
feeling a little buzz as I ate the garlic bread. “This is great,” I told him.

“I
hope you don’t mind if the spaghetti isn’t very hot,” he said. “I couldn’t
figure out how to keep it hot.” He took a glass baking container, covered in
foil, out of the basket, and dished the spaghetti into two plastic bowls. He
handed me a fork, and as I twirled the pasta around it, I saw steam rising.

“It
seems hot to me,” I said. “It smells delicious, too.”

“Thanks,”
he said. “I made the sauce myself.”

“Are
you serious?”

“Yeah,”
he said. “I even grew the tomatoes and the basil in my back yard garden.”

I
tasted what was on my fork. It was heavenly. I was so pleased, I actually
laughed out loud.

“Are
you glad we didn’t go to that Italian restaurant now?” he asked me.

“Definitely,”
I said. “Jake, this is amazing. The food, the wine…”

“You,”
he said. “You look amazing tonight.”

“How
can you tell?” I asked as I wiped a bit of stray spaghetti sauce off my lips.
“It’s dark.”

“But
I saw you when you opened your front door,” he said. “You wore green. Green is
my favorite color.”

“I’m
sensing that,” I said. He reached out and touched my sleeve, where it met the
bare skin of my arm.

“Is
that silk?” he asked.

I
smiled. “No, not really. It only feels like silk.”

He
pulled his hand away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to feel you up or anything.”

“I
didn’t mind,” I said. “Maybe we should finish eating first, though.”

He
smiled and handed me a cloth napkin from the basket. I finished my spaghetti
slowly, savoring it as Jake did his. When we finished, he placed the dirty
dishes back in the basket. We laid on the blanket, looking up at the stars. I
was still looking at the constellations when Jake leaned over and kissed me.

His
kiss was soft, the weight of his body as he leaned into me unbelievably light.
I wouldn’t have guessed he had such a soft touch from his tall, lanky, athletic
build. He
was
gentle, though, as I put my arms around him and pulled him
nearer. He smelled like earth after a rainfall, spearmint, and hyacinth
blossoms. His inviting scent, and those lips that knew exactly what they were
doing to me, made me want to get closer to Jake. I tugged his heather-gray
t-shirt loose from his shorts; he helped me pull it over his head. His chiseled
chest was almost naked except for a few dark hairs leading my eyes downward,
into his waistband. I felt his hardness against my thigh, and I wanted it.

I
put his hand on my thigh, and Jake needed no further encouragement to trace the
path up the outside of my thigh, over my hip, and inside to the elastic of my
panties. He made a thrilled humming sound as I helped him peel them down over
my hips, off my legs, and into the grass.

I
couldn’t keep my hands off Jake’s back. His caramel-colored skin was smooth,
and nearly hairless, like his chest. As he fumbled with his shorts, I brought
my mouth close to his ear. “Do you have a condom?” I asked him.

“Yeah,”
he said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

 “Yes,”
I said. He kissed me again before he pulled his dick free of his shorts and
rolled the condom on. We lay there for a long time, just kissing and touching,
getting to know one another’s bodies before he gently eased his way inside me.
We fit together like yin and yang. Still humming delightedly, Jake moved in
long, slow strokes. Between his touch, his wonderful scent, and my secret fear
of being caught by a park ranger, I climaxed quickly. Wary of being too loud, I
muffled my cries by pressing my lips into Jake’s shoulder.

Jake
held on much longer. I loved every second he held me underneath him, moving
fluidly to a rhythm only he could hear. The melody reverberated through my
body. When he was finally ready to come, I could tell by his rough breathing. I
felt my heart speeding up along with his, and I came with him.

He
shifted his weight, and we lay side by side, spooning for what seemed like an
endless moment. Then we picked our shed clothes out of the grass.

It
was almost closing time when we left the park, but we managed to leave without
running into any of the rangers. We went back to my house and had another glass
of wine and snuggled on the couch before Jake said goodnight.