Page 50 of Ebbing Tides
With a glance toward Lido, I answered the video call.
That was weird. How did he know the phone was going to ring?
“Hey …” I said, my voice lilting with question.
“What’s that for?” Sid asked.
“What?”
“Hey.” He mocked my questioning tone. “What the hell was that?”
I looked at the screen, my chest tightening with a platonic longing at the sight of my sleepy-eyed friend. It was late for him to be awake, and judging from the look on his face, he shouldn’t have been.
“Why the hell are you awake?”
He sighed, pushing the hair off his forehead. While my hairline had only receded over the years, his seemed to only get fuller. Lucky bastard.
“Because for some fucking reason, I can’t turn my damn brain off long enough to sleep,” he grumbled. “So, I figured you were awake. Might as well call and find out how things went with that chick.”
I huffed a chuckle and opened my mouth to speak when Lido lazily clambered to his feet, gave his forelegs a little stretch, then lumbered toward the door, wagging his tail wildly.
“Uh …” I stammered stupidly, glancing quickly at the camera, only to realize that I’d missed Melanie pulling up in her car in the minute or so since I’d answered Sid’s call. “I should—”
“What?” he asked as I looked over my shoulder, watching as Lido bounced excitedly.
“I should … probably …”
I didn’t have the chance to get my sentence out when the door opened, and in walked Melanie, her windswept strawberry-blonde hair falling over her shoulders and her cheeks a shade to match. Lido panted noisily, whining with a desperate need for her attention, and she seemed to scrub her palm against his head absent-mindedly while she closed the door behind her.
All the while, she stared ahead at me.
Her eyes were set, her face like stone, and I could swear for a minute that she was mad at me.
For what?
I furrowed my brow, ready to ask, when she charged forward, her leather jacket open and dripping off her shoulders as she hurried those few steps, and I realized that look of determination in her eyes wasn’t derived from anger, buthunger. I swiveled in my chair, noticing that I myself was suddenly famished, and prepared for impact as I sat up straighter, dropped my phone on the desk, and raised my hands to meet her. She walked into my arms, between my spread knees, and clasped her palms to the back of my neck in time with the swooping of her lips, engulfing mine in an open-mouthed kiss that swept me away with a rush of blood headed directly south.
Tongue met tongue; teeth clashed against teeth. Her gasp joined the deep, guttural groan that scraped against my throat. My fingers tunneled through her long blonde hair, tangling, getting caught, like a fly intentionally flying into a spider’s web. Emotional suicide—that was exactly what this was—and I didn’t need to jump off the side of a bridge to find it. All she had to do was come here, find me in the cold, between the headstones, darkened in the gloom, and I was all but gone.
Or was it that I’d been finally,finallyfound?
Her hands left my neck as she shrugged the jacket off her arms, letting it pool on the floor. Desperate fingers fell to my shirt, wrenching and tugging, when a sound from the desk pulled us both away from the urgent task at hand. The sound of someone clearing their throat loudly. Melanie jerked her mouth from mine, and I opened my eyes to find her staring back, startled and spooked.
“What was that?” she whispered, her voice taut with worry.
“So, hey, uh, Serg …”
I licked my lip, the taste of her coming away on my tongue. “Fuck. Sid.”
Melanie’s brow furrowed. “Who’s Sid?”
I reached around me and grabbed the phone, the screen still lit with the video call. My friend stared out at me, biting back a smirk. I was reminded of times when one of us would stumble upon the other at our base in Afghanistan, walking away from another random romp with an agreeable partner. That knowing twinkle in his eye, the twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was nostalgic, and though I wouldn’t wish to be back there in a thousand years, I couldn’t say it had all been bad.
Hell, most of it hadn’t been.
Melanie’s face was flushed with embarrassment as she stepped away quickly, turning around and rubbing her palms against her thighs.
I sighed, sorry I’d forgotten to hang up the moment she walked in, and began to say, “Hey, so I’m gonna—”
