Page 12 of Fireworks Flame
I freeze with my hands in the air, too stunned by his unexpected appearance to react appropriately. It’s not just the fact that he’s showed up instead of Phoebe but that he’s shaved off all of his hair. Not only from his head but the beard, too. All that’s left is a dark stubble on his cheeks and a black buzz on his head that I can’t help imagining feels softer than it looks.
The overall effect is... shocking. Overwhelming, actually. Without the hair, there’s nothing to distract from his piercingblue eyes and sharp cheekbones. It’s his mouth that’s the real unearthed treasure, though. I stare at it, unable to think.
“Deiss?” My voice comes out breathy.
“At your service.” His lip curls as if in response to the spotlight of my thoughts. He pulls back into his seat and I hear the pop of the ancient car’s trunk.
His disappearance breaks the trance, and I jerk my arms back to my side. They pop back up as if they’ve been spring-loaded, smoothing at my hair and face and clothes like any of it can be fixed. While it’s reassuring that I’ve brushed my teeth, the image I caught in the mirror while doing so was much less comforting. I happen to know for a fact that, beneath these sunglasses, the green of my eyes is so dramatically surrounded by ribbons of red Deiss is likely to break into Christmas carols if he sees them. My hair is limp, hanging down my back like a batch of sunflowers that have been forced to survive in the shade. I really hope I don’t smell, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.
Deiss climbs out of the car, and I mirror his movement to the trunk. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Disappointed?” He doesn’t seem offended by the idea. He doesn’t even seem particularly curious as to my answer. He merely reaches for my roller bag and tucks it gently into the trunk.
“Of course not.” No wonder he’s kept his face and mouth under wraps. He was probably doing it as a public service because he knew their beauty was too much for the world to handle. The emergence of them has thrown me completely off my game. “I just feel bad. I know it was a long drive.”
The minute the words come out, I realize they’re true. I feel terrible, actually. It was one thing when Phoebe offered to driveme; I knew she’d enjoy three hours of gossip about the ridiculous things Mac has done since they left LA. But Deiss? I can’t believe my arrival has cost him a full day of his vacation.
“Itwasa long drive. But I figured I should be the one to do it.” He places the bag inside and closes the trunk, pulling the mirrored aviators from where they dangle off the top button of his linen shirt and sliding them over his eyes. “I know you like me best.”
My body relaxes at his words, and I smile as he turns to head toward the driver’s door. My guilt is a wasted effort. He’s Deiss. If he hadn’t wanted to drive all this way to pick me up, he wouldn’t have.
“Actually,” I say, sliding into the passenger seat, “I made a list. Phoebe, obviously, ranked first. You almost came in second, but then I remembered Simone. And Mac.”
The rattly old car smells faintly of gas, and the seat is made of a faux leather that’s peeling in parts. A piece of it digs into my linen pants, threatening to snag the material. Since I’ve never been out of the country before, I’ve also never been in a car made for driving on the opposite side of the road. It’s disconcerting, like everything is normal but also slightly off-kilter.
“Just wait. Phoebe will be plummeting to the bottom of that list soon enough.” Deiss pulls the car out, and my hair tickles my neck as the air from the open windows slips through it. “You’ve never been on one of these things, so you don’t know, but that woman is a nightmare to travel with. Always talking about the schedule. It’s like vacationing at basic training.”
“Uh-huh,” I say, remembering the time Phoebe missed dinner because she’d decided to hitchhike to Tucson. It turned out she’d been “craving a cheese crisp,” although I’d had to come up with a better excuse for her professor to explain theclasses she’d missed. If she couldn’t even be bothered to figure out the schedule for a bus back then, I’m certain she’s not enforcing one of her own on others. “I’m going to tell her you’re lying about her.”
“Please don’t.” Deiss’s eyebrows lift over the mirrored frames as he merges onto the highway and picks up speed. There’s enough fear in his voice that I laugh, wondering what Phoebe did to finally break Lucas Deiss. My guess goes to the time she held a box of his records over the edge of a balcony, threatening to let go if he wouldn’t admit Taylor Swift is the greatest songwriter of our generation.
“I don’t know.” I pause, pretending to think it over. “I suppose I owe you my silence, considering you drove all this way.”
He grins knowingly, like this is proof he’s my favorite after all. My hair whips around my face, and I wonder if this car is too old to have air-conditioning or if Deiss can feel the richness of the air, too, and wants to soak it all in. Two days ago, I would’ve been worried about tangles in my blowout. Now, I can’t seem to care enough to even rope it back in a bun. It’s ruined anyway, and I like the feel of whirling through this foreign land.
I’m not sure what I expected from this place, but it wasn’t the long stretch of highway surrounded by a surprising amount of green we’re barreling through. It’s beautiful, but the sky is the real showstopper. It stretches endlessly above us, cotton candy blue and vast in a way I never get to see in Los Angeles. It makes me feel like I’m flying.
“Seriously, though,” I say, “why did you come to pick me up? I thought Phoebe was going to.”
“They wanted to go snorkeling.”
“And you don’t snorkel?”
“Not with sharks.”
“They went snorkeling with sharks?”
Deiss’s head tilts. “Notwithsharks, exactly. But there were reports of sharks at the beach this morning. And they went snorkelingatthe beach. So...”
“So, they went snorkeling in a shark’s playground.”
Deiss makes a sound with his tongue that signifies his agreement.
My eyes widen. It occurs to me for the first time that this is not an entry-level trip into the world of vacations. I’ve been so focused on catching up to my friends that I never stopped to consider where I was going to end up. I have spent the entirety of my adult life doing everything in my power to curate my existence. Not once have I considered inserting sharks into the picture.
“Do you think they’re okay?”
“Phoebe and Simone should be fine, but Mac’s probably worth worrying about. Since his brain is made of the same material as jellyfish, the sharks are definitely going after him first.”
