Page 3 of Right Side of Paradise
The car dipped when he got back in and cranked the A/C up.
“Where I’m taking you, little one?” he asked, the southern twang sticking to his words like honey.
Little one. Like I wasn’t knocking on thirty. A grin broke across my face as a warm feeling hummed in my chest.
“You can take me to Rico’s.”
His head bobbed. “It’s nice that y’all are still close after your folks split. That’s what family is.”
Walking the earth this long had taught me sometimes family was trifling. I just so happened to get lucky. When my mother married Brock Donovan when I was seven years old, I got abrother in the deal. Once he noticed how shy and anxious I was, Rico Donovan had turned into my very best friend and so had his two friends, Soul and Christian.
I wasn’t the overanxious little girl they took under their wing anymore, but those three would forever own the softest, biggest piece of my heart.
With the A/C blasting in my face, I enjoyed the smooth, albeit short, ride to Rico’s house.
“How’s that mean ol’ grandmother of yours?” The man beside me tried to ask casually. But he wasn’t fooling me. His crush on my grandmother was about as subtle as this big ass car.
And Edith Westbrook wasn’t thinking about him. “She’s doing ok. You know how she is,” I trailed.
He mumbled something under his breath, palming the steering wheel.
After that, he fell quiet, and I went back to listening to my podcast while my eyes traced the familiar sights passing us by.
Palm trees lined the narrow streets of Onyx Cove, backdropped by the kaleidoscope of colorful shops set off from the road.
Growing up, we used to call this stretch of road “Rainbow Row” because there was a storefront corresponding to every color of the rainbow. The first time a tourist asked me about a restaurant on Herring Rd, I stared at them until they kissed their teeth and walked away. They thought I was a gatekeeping local, whole time I didn’t know what they were talking about.
In no time, Mr. Tiny pulled in behind Rico’s neon green Jeep.
The white beach house was narrow up and down, and while it looked modest from the front, the house spread out over three stories and opened up to the beach in the backyard.
Rico spent three years building his oasis and told me I would always have a place to stay when I came home.
So, when Mr. Tiny helped me get my bags over his white pebble front yard and up the front steps, I hugged him and opened the notes app on my phone to find the key code for the front door.
As soon as the lock disengaged after typing in the last number, I turned to wave at my unintended chauffeur as he backed out of the driveway.
I nudged my suitcase over the threshold with my knee before kicking the door closed behind me. A long exhale deflated my chest when I pressed my back against it to take in the view in front of me.
Sunlight drenched the whole first floor.
Rico was a textile designer, and it showed in the vibrant patterns he had visible throughout his house.
From the front door, I saw straight through the house and to the beach in the backyard. The sand, the sky, and the lazy waves called to me like an estranged lover. They would be seeing a lot of me this summer.
Quirking my lips, I kicked off my sandals, left my bags where they were and went on the hunt for Rico.
When I found his office on the first floor empty, I took the tiled stairs two at a time to get to the third level. The primary suite was the only thing up here, so I headed to his slightly ajar double doors.
One hand was on the knob while the other tapped the side of my headphones to silence the podcast in my ears. Parting my lips, I prepared to greet my stepbrother, but my steps stuttered at the new soundtrack filling my ears.
Skin hitting skin.
Wet kisses.
And the all too familiar creak of a bed frame being pushed to its limit.
“Mm…fuck.” The moan was muffled and wanton.
