Shaking my head... chuckling with my peeps, I assure her, "I swear to God. He fucking peed his pants."
"Oh my God," Alyssa snorts. "I think I'm going to pee mine."
"Tenn is like the most perfect man ever," Gabby says dreamily. "Next to Hunter, of course."
"So you see," I say, bringing the conversation around full circle. "I really like him."
"Oh, baby," Alyssa says with a knowing look. "You more than like him."
"Maybe," I admit while nibbling on my lower lip. "I don't know. I've never had these feelings before."
"What does it feel like?" Savannah asks earnestly, her lovely face tilted in curiosity.
I close my eyes briefly, and the image of Tenn's face magically appears in my mind. "When I'm with him, it's so comforting. It's like I'm continually immersed in my favorite smell of sea salt and coconuts or like I'm being wrapped in my grandmother's old afghan. Tenn feels like that giddy first day of summer vacation, and my insides feel like a litter of wiggling puppies whenever he looks at me. It feels strange, and dangerous, and like I'm on the edge of falling into something great and mysterious with all the promise in the world." I open my eyes, immediately seeing all four of my girls staring at me with romantic eyes and lips slightly parted in surprise. I smile at them, and lower my eyes shyly. "Yeah... it feels like the lifting of dark clouds on a rainy day... that moment when the sun peeks out and a rainbow magically appears."
"Wow," Alyssa murmurs.
"Dying here," Savannah sighs.
"Speechless," Andrea says.
"Holy shit, girl," Gabby exclaims. "You are so in love with him."
My entire body startles over her proclamation, and I immediately shake my head in denial. "No way. It's not love," I stubbornly assert.
"That is so love," Savannah says with a knowing smile. "Except I've never heard it sound so poetic."
"I don't do love," I practically whine. "I don't know how to do it. I'm just now getting comfortable with the idea that I like Tenn. I'm just now able to be happy that he's staying in the area. I'm not ready for love."
"None of us were really ready for it," Andrea says thoughtfully. "But when it comes... you just know it."
"But I don't 'just know it'," I maintain. "I'm having all kinds of doubts still. It feels awkward to me."
Gabby reaches across the table and grabs my hand. "Push through it, Casey," she says in almost a warning tone. "Don't you dare let this guy get away. He's the real deal."
"How do you know?" I ask quietly... skeptically.
"Because... he's the reason you're even sitting here with us waxing poetic about rainy days and rainbows. You're in a relationship, Casey, and while it's awkward to you, I guarantee you that it's fantastic too, right?"
I nod at her, my eyes filling with unmeasured hope. Could I do this? Could I push past my fears and really have something serious with Tenn? Could I really be in love?
"You need to grab onto it, Casey, and make it your bitch," Gabby says with a wink and a smirk.
"Yeah," Andrea says in affirmation. "Make love your bitch."
"That should be a hashtag on Twitter," Alyssa says, and Savannah gives another dreamy and romantic sigh.
Make love my bitch?
Hmmmmm. That sounds like something Casey Markham would do.
After having the most fun breakfast of my entire life, I swing by my place and grab Tenn, then proceed to take him around the island and show him five different houses for sale and three that are for rent. He didn't like any of them.
The view isn't good enough.
The carpet's too old.
The front door sticks.
The bathroom isn't big enough.
As we walk through the last house on the list today, I take in the open and airy living room that overlooks the Atlantic, a well-designed kitchen, brand-new hardwood floors, and a huge master bedroom that has a bathroom so big that it has a Jacuzzi tub. It falls well within the budget Tenn told me he had, which is apparently quite healthy due to some serious savings and equity from his house he sold in Wyoming.
"I dare you to find something wrong with this place," I tell Tenn as we step out onto the back deck.
He walks up to the railing, places his hands there, and leans forward while staring at the ocean. His profile is as stunning as the full frontal, and I stare at this beautiful man while he stares at the ocean.
"I don't like it," he finally says.
"What the hell, Tenn?" I ask in exasperation. "What could possibly be wrong with this place?"
Blue eyes stay focused on the water but he speaks directly to me. "You're not living here. That's what's wrong with it."
Tenn's face turns slowly to me and his eyes are turbulent... swirling with something that I would say almost borders on agitation. He turns his entire body my way, casually resting an elbow on the railing and clasping his hands together.
"Cat got your tongue, Goldie?" he asks wickedly.
I give a small shake to my head and practically stutter out, "Are you saying you want to live together?"
One minute, he's leaning there all casual yet self-assured, and the next minute, he has me turned so my back is to the railing and he's kissing me so hard I bend backward. His kiss conveys a message to me loud and clear. He's possessive and he wants me in his bed, wherever that may be.
When he finally pulls away, I almost whimper at the loss of his mouth against mine. I loosen my fingers, which I find had somehow unknowingly fisted hard onto his t-shirt, and blow a huff of breath out.
"At the risk of getting attacked again," I say as I smooth my hand over my hair in an effort to appear calmer, "are you saying you want to live together?"
"Yeah, Goldie," he says with a small smile, reaching a hand up to absently tug on a lock of my hair. "I want to be in your bed every night."
"But you'd probably be there anyway if we had separate places," I point out matter-of-factly.
"And I want to be in your bed in the morning and on the couch when you get home from work. I want to eat breakfast and dinner together, and lunch when we can. I want to share closet space with you and figure out our bills together. I want to fight for space on the bathroom sink, and I want you to yell at me for leaving my clothes all over the floor. I want to know that when I think of the word home, it's the place where your ass resides with me. I want the words "home" and "Casey" to mean the same thing to me."
I reach my hands back to steady myself against the rail, because the feeling seems to have gone out of my legs. My voice is shaky... foreign sounding. "That may have been the sweetest, most romantic thing I think I've ever heard in my life."
Tenn's blue eyes lighten up and start to sparkle. He prowls forward and steps into my body, hands going to my hips. He dips his face to look at me and says softly, "So romantic we can move in together?"
My arms smooth up the hard lines of Tenn's chest, grazing softly around to the back of his neck where my fingers disappear into his black hair. "Don't you think this is awful fast?"
"No."
"No?" I ask incredulously. "Just... no?"
"What more do you want me to say, Casey?" he asks affably. "I'm crazy about you. I want to be around you as much as possible. You didn't mind me staying with you these last several weeks. We cohabitate quite nicely together, if I do say so myself. So, no... I don't think it's too fast."
I pull back from our embrace and turn to face the ocean. He comes up behind me, wraps his arms around my waist, and rests his chin on my head. We both gaze out over the beauty of the ocean, and I wonder out loud, "What will my friends say? My family?"
A small rumble of laughter from Tenn's chest vibrates up my back. "Do you really care? The woman who hasn't cared a damn bit what people think of her for the last eight years?"
That's true enough. I've never cared what anyone's thought of me... well, except maybe my parents. I mean... I didn't like when they've been disappointed in me but hell, even their most disappointed looks are filled with so much love, it really do
esn't pack much of a punch.
My friends will understand. The adventurous ones like Gabby and Andrea will pat me on the back and say, "Shack up, girl."
The romantic ones like Savannah and Alyssa will just give me knowing smiles and silent approval with dreamy sighs.
Now my brothers... that might present a problem, but only in an overprotective kind of way. The good thing is that I at least know they like Tenn already, and they both moved in pretty fast with Gabby and Alyssa.
My parents... I really have no clue what they'd think.
So, there's really only one thing to do.
Turning back around to face Tenn, I tell him, "I want you to come to dinner at my parents' house so they can meet you."
His eyes light up and those sexy lips quirk. "Want them to check me out first, huh? Get their stamp of approval?"
"No," I tell him candidly and with my chin raised up. "I don't need their approval. I say we can give this a try... at my house... for a while and see how it goes. I just want you to meet my parents so they can finally see that I've got my head out of my ass when it comes to relationships."
Tenn throws his head back, and I get a flash of white straight teeth as he starts laughing. When he looks back at me, he says, "Fuck Casey... I adore you so much."
I adore you too, I say with my inside voice, and hope that one day I can say that with my outside voice too.
Chapter 22
Tenn
I wasn't nervous about the prospect of dinner with Casey's parents. She, however, assumed I was and gave me a knee-buckling blow job not long before we left, I suppose in an effort to relax me. I wanted to tell the sweet minx that I didn't need it but damn... with her on her knees before me, wrapping those lips around my dick. Yeah, well, I wasn't about to tell her I didn't need it. Sure as fuck wanted it, but didn't need it.
Casey has babbled the entire way as she directs me to her parents' house in Avon, which is about an hour south of Nags Head. We decided to take her Jeep since rain was forecasted for the early evening, but as has become our ritual, I'm driving.
Over the last few weeks, I've come to learn a lot about her family. While I know we spend an inordinate amount of time having sex, we spend a good amount of time before and after talking.
Once she got past the emotional block of sharing herself with a man on an intellectual and emotional level, she sort of blossomed. This specifically came on the heels of her ditching Jeff Parkhurst in the restaurant and seeing me waiting on my bike for her. It doesn't mean she tells me all her secrets, and I can tell she's still holding back a bit, but she's definitely more open and free with herself. Definitely not guarded the way she used to be.
She's pretty much an open book when it comes to her family, and I believe that comes from absolute and unconditional love between everyone. I've come to learn a lot about her mom, Lillian, who is a nurse, and her dad, Butch, who is a fisherman. Despite what Jeff Parkhurst thought, Casey didn't exactly grow up poor. She wasn't rich, but her parents provided a nice, middle-class upbringing for her and her brothers. They had enough money to support Hunter's fledgling surfing career as he grew up, and with it looking like Brody was on his way to medical school being the brainiac in the family, they had plenty of money set aside in savings for him. Sadly, they ended up using that for his legal fees, but nothing could derail the disaster of him getting convicted and sent to prison for the drunk-driving accident that claimed a man's life.
Casey and I had stayed up late one night, sitting out on the back deck and drinking decaf coffee. The moon was bright and lit the entire ocean up to our right as we looked at it between the roofs of the other houses. We sat in some low-slung, Adirondack chairs with our feet propped up on her railing.
I asked her to tell me what happened to Brody.
And she did... starting way back when she was in high school and what it felt like to find out your beloved older brother who had a bright future ahead of him as a doctor ended up being convicted of Felony Death by Vehicle and put behind bars for five years. She glossed over Jeff Parkhurst and how he took advantage of her emotional frailty in order to get her virginity, but I didn't need to hear that. I knew that story and besides... it pissed me off way too much to hear it again.
But she did tell me more about what Brody was like when he came home.
How emotionally unavailable he was to everyone... and how much that impacted her, especially being a woman that withheld herself emotionally from other men. It was weird, ironic, and eye opening for her. It made her feel worse about herself, seeing Brody act the way she acted. She wanted Brody to snap out of it... let the past go... be a part of regular life again. And yet, she couldn't do the same herself.
It was a fascinating dynamic, and I was even more intrigued by her continued story when she told me that Brody wasn't the one driving the vehicle during that tragic accident. It was Brody's then girlfriend and being an overprotective, if not foolhardy man, he took the fall for her. While Casey didn't say as much, I think it had to affect her more than the other family members to watch someone who proclaimed to love her brother take advantage of him in such a sinister way. I'm sure she felt the pain of that on Brody's behalf all the way down to the marrow in her bones.
When we reach Avon, which is a blip on the map, Casey has me make just two turns off the main highway and we are sitting in front of a small, classically stilted cottage that sits a few blocks from the ocean. Like Casey, her parents don't have beachfront, but I can tell by the way their house is situated and the fact that there are fewer homes, that it means they have a better view of both the ocean and the sound.
We get out of the Jeep and round the front. At the base of the stairs that lead up, I hold my hand out to her. She looks down and then back up to me, slipping her warm palm against mine. I curl my fingers tight around her, and we walk up together.
As we reach the top step, the front door swings open wide and I'm staring at either Brody or Hunter. I really can't tell without their respective women with them as they are indeed identical and even wear their hair about the same.
Leaning to the side, I whisper, "Which one?"
Casey giggles and whispers, "Brody," just before she lets my hand go and steps into a hug with her brother.
Brody gives her a tight squeeze and looks at me over her shoulder, giving a jerk up of his chin. "What's up?"
"Not much, man," I say in response and our male greeting ritual is complete.
"What are you doing here?" Casey asks as Brody steps back into the house and we all walk in together.
"Alyssa had to head over to Manteo to pick up a dog that's set to be euthanized in the morning, so I figured I'd come and partake of Mom's cooking tonight."
"And to make me squirm as I introduce Tenn to the family," Casey guesses sagely.
"Yeah, something like that," Brody says with a sly grin.
Casey just levels him with a look that dares him to make this difficult on her, reaches back to grab my hand, and then leads me through the living room. It's small and cozy, with plush, beachy-looking furniture in blue and white striped cotton, bleached wood tables, and tile flooring covered by a shaggy, blue rug. Framed photos are everywhere. Walls, tables, corner curio. A brief glance and I see several of Casey and her brothers, and I can't wait to look at them in a bit more detail. I want to study them, knowing that I'll see something different in her eyes in those photos that are pre and post Jeff Parkhurst.
Just as I know I'd see something different now if I were to snap a picture of her.
"We're here," Casey calls out.
Brody says, "They're on the back deck. Dad's cooking up some steaks."
"Steaks?" Casey asks in surprise. "I thought Mom said she was going to make some shrimp and grits tonight. I was looking forward to that."
We head into a surprisingly large kitchen for the moderately sized house with whitewashed cabinets and cheery yellow paint on the walls, and just beyond, the sliding glass doors that lead out to the deck.
Casey releases my hand, opens the door, and steps out. I'm on her heels but momentarily forgotten as she hugs her mom first, who is leaning back against the deck rail with a glass of red wine in her hand while watching as her husband flips some steaks.
Casey and her brothers both take after their mother in coloring but you can tell they get their height from their dad, who I'm guessing is almost eye to eye with me.
Lillian Markham turns to me and with her wine in her left hand, reaches her right arm up in a clear indication that she prefers hugging as her primary method of introduction. I step forward, bend down, and she loops that arm over my shoulders. I wrap my arms around her lightly and accept her embrace.
"It's so good to meet you, Tenn," she says in an accent that is far more southern than Casey's.
"Thanks for having me," I say as she releases me, and then I look over to her father. He quickly switches his grilling tongs from right to left hand and leans past the grill. We shake hands, and he gives me a warm smile.
"Great to meet you, Mr. Markham," I say.
He shakes his head as he turns his attention back to the grill. "It's Butch and Lillian. None of that formal crap here."
I chuckle and step up to the grill to take a peek at what he's cooking. Five nice-sized rib-eyed steaks with perfectly charred hatch marks. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Casey and her mother step back into the kitchen, presumably to get other stuff ready, and then it's just me, Brody, and Butch out on the deck.
"Beer is over there in the cooler," Butch says with a nod of his head.
I see frosty bottles of Budweiser and bottles of water. I know Brody doesn't drink anymore after the accident. Even though he wasn't driving, he takes alcohol consumption so seriously that he refuses to touch a drop, so I grab two beers for Butch and me, and a bottle of water for Brody.
When I stand up and pass the bottles, I can see surprise on Brody's face that I would know he doesn't drink. I suppose that tells them something about how their daughter and sister must feel about me... to trust me with that information.
"Casey said that you're relocating to the area and are going to move in with her," Butch says quietly as he flips the steaks and shuts the grill lid.