Page 31 of Sweet Chaos
I hadn’t expected that. My anger dissipated, and I deflated like a balloon.
“Now can we fucking sit down without you causing another scene?”
He didn’t care about causing a scene. Things like that didn’t bother him, but he did want me to sit down and eat dinner with him. Knowing he would never say please, that he’d already made himself more vulnerable than he was comfortable with, I simply nodded, and we returned to our seats.
Still trying to swallow past the lump in my throat that his words had caused, I stared at his profile. His dark hair was cut longer on top, short around the sides and back, and tonight he wore it slicked back. It made him look more intimidating. The sharp angles of his cheekbones, the cut, clean jawline, and the perfect symmetry of his face more pronounced. He lifted his beer to his lips and took a swig, his throat bobbing on a swallow before he pointed the bottle at the spectacle in front of us.
“You’re missing the show.”
I wasn’t. Dylan was the star attraction. But he didn’t like me looking this closely, especially not after he’d shared a piece of his soul with me, so I turned my head to face the teppanyaki grill and watched the silver flash of knives, the scent of grilled steak and shrimp making my mouth water with hunger.
This was what Dylan did. He could make me angry one minute, and blink back tears the next. In a short span of time, I was wildly swinging from lust to love to heartache and a dozen other emotions in between. All because of him. The scary part was that deep down I had always known this wasn’t just about sex. It was so much more, and even now, so early in the game, I didn’t know how I would ever walk away. This thing with us, it couldn’t last forever. All the odds were stacked against it. He was him, the guy who had never belonged to anyone, and I was me, the girl who desperately wanted him to be mine.
Later, when Dylan dropped me off at my apartment, my belly full and lulled into a food coma, he said, “Just to be clear, Idowant to fuck you but that has nothing to do with me helping you.”
Not sure how to respond, I shoved open my door and climbed out of his car.
“And Scarlett… stop fooling yourself. We are notjust friends.”
I slammed the door on that conversation. I hadn’t fooled anyone. Not even myself.
12
Scarlett
“We got a gig at Mavericks,” Ollie said as we carried our boards down to the water, our bare feet leaving footprints on the cold sand. The sky was a crisp blue, with a few wispy clouds painted on the horizon, the sun directly overhead. We’d gotten a late start today, but the beauty of winter surfing was that it was only locals at the break and never got that crowded.
“That’s great. I’m really happy for you.”
He sighed. “Smalls, I’m sorry, okay?”
“I know. Me too.” All we ever did was apologize these days.
“I’m just trying to look out for you.”
It was more than that and we both knew it, but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Let’s just surf and put it behind us, okay?”
Lately, it felt like every time I was with Ollie we were trying to put something behind us. He looked like he wanted to say more on the subject but changed his mind and for that I was grateful.
“Waves are barreling.”
They were amazing today. I grinned, excited to get out there. It was a perfect day for surfing, the air and ocean temperatures in the sixties and my full wetsuit kept my body temperature warm enough to last a few hours in the water.
As we paddled out, I spotted Dylan out at the back. He was with Shane and Travis in the lineup, but I was too focused on getting out there without getting thrashed by the heavy waves to do more than glance in his direction. I duck-dived, my head submerged under the chilly ocean water, the wave breaking over my head as I battled against the undertow trying to drag me back to shore. Emerging victorious, I paddled hard to get past the breakers, my wet hair plastered to my head and a smile on my face that had nothing to do with Dylan.
Surfing made me feel so alive, so energized, it was impossible to feel anything but happy.
Ollie saw Dylan, I knew he did, but he didn’t mention it, thankfully. I mostly ignored Dylan. I was here to surf, not ogle him in his wetsuit. Besides which, we’d put enough distance between us that we wouldn’t be hassling each other for waves. Although, I did watch him ride a few.
Dylan was a goofy foot, surfed with his right foot forward instead of his left. He was an aggressive surfer. Charged hard, pumping the wave to try and pick up as much speed as possible. There was no Zen in Dylan’s surfing whatsoever, and he wasn’t too bothered about technique or style. He just went for it, balls to the wall, going full-throttle until he’d ridden the wave for all it was worth. I guess he surfed the way he lived.
I watched Travis and Shane too. They were at a different level than the rest of us. A different stratosphere. Travis, Shane’s best friend, was a pro surfer and a three-time world champion so it would stand to reason that he’d be an awesome surfer. But everyone in the surfing community knew that Shane could have been world champion. Even though his career had been cut short, he was still one of the best surfers around. When you watched Shane surf, you could almost delude yourself into believing that surfing was easy and effortless. Zen galore.
Whenever Shane rode a wave, Dylan straddled his board and watched him over his shoulder. I doubted that Shane even noticed that Dylan only watched him and not Travis, but I found it interesting. It was also interesting that Dylan barely glanced my way. Since our dinner three nights ago, I hadn’t seen him or heard from him but his declaration about wanting to fuck me was still playing on repeat in my head. So were the other things he’d told me that night.
I saw you, Scarlett. I always saw you.
For a girl who had felt mostly invisible in her own family, overshadowed by an older sister, those words meant a lot to me. And somehow Dylan had known that.
