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AUbrY

The last rays of the sun streak across the sky, igniting the water that seems to stretch to the horizon.

I set down my plate and gaze toward the sea.

If I close my eyes, I can hear the call of the gulls and the clang of fishing boats, smell the salt and the fishermen.

It’s been years since I’ve been back to my Lolo’s farm.

Living in the dry desert of Nevada was as alien to Cebu as a Canadian tundra.

But here, flanked by mountains and the winding green hills, nostalgia plucks a string made of barbed wire.

“This is beautiful,” she whispers, perched on the edge of her seat. Sadie looks as if she’s about to dash over to peer down at the valley.

There’s a wonder in her eyes that doesn’t dim even in the darkest of lights.

I’ve gazed into hundreds of brown eyes before but none with her shine for life.

She breaks from the fading sun to find me staring at her not as a man aware of what cards he has before him.

No, I’m a drooling lech starved for touch and aching for hers in particular.

Sending the food flying with one arm, then dipping her onto the table dances in my brain. Watching her eyes widen in surprise then surrender sends a cascade down my body until I have to tug on my inseam to adjust.

“This looks good too,” Sadie says and lifts her fork.

I join her, both of us raising our forks. “I hope you like it.” We clink our utensils like wine glasses then she digs in, swirling the spaghetti through the sauce.

I am off my fucking game. Every time I think to clinch the deal, I wonder if anyone’s outside watching.

If they’re calling for backup. If they’ll finally get me tonight.

And, by the time my paranoia calms to a normal level, the moment’s over.

At least she doesn’t seem to be aware. Or she is and that would explain her need to talk.

For god’s sake, all I have to do is eat, fuck her, then hit the road.

This is easy. I plunge my fork in, twirling the spaghetti, and glance up.

She’s cupping one hand under hers while guiding her head toward the stationary fork.

Just as she reaches out, lips parted and tongue about to extend, her eyes close.

Fuck. The sight of her making the same face on her knees, red lipstick about to slide down my cock, sends my hand racing to my lap. Pressing my engorged tiger tight to my thigh, I take a bite.

“Oh, my god!”

Fork tongs stab the roof of my mouth. “What?” I almost leap out of my chair, prepared to grab the gun.

“This is amazing!” She nearly has tears in her eyes as she takes another bite. “It’s sweeter than I expected and tangy.”

“That’d be the banana sauce.” I smile to myself, thinking of my first trip to a Jollibee in the city.

I’d been inconsolable since arriving on the island.

So, even with tears streaming down my face, my Lolo sat me down in a booth, brought me a plate of spaghetti, and told me to “ Kain tayo .” I didn’t speak a word of Tagalog but hunger took control.

Everything was different. I missed my house, my friends, my school, my city, my language…

my parents. But the second I tasted that sauce, I was sitting on the kitchen stool with my mom watching to make sure I got every bite.

“I ate so much of this in the Philippines,” I say. “It was a special treat after a hard day on my Lolo’s…grandfather’s farm.”

“Are you from there?” she asks.

“No.” I put on a smile as angry voices clash in the background of my mind.

My parents arguing over something I couldn’t understand, telling me I had to leave, my yelling back.

It was the last I ever heard from them. “I’m from Jersey originally, but when I was nine they sent me to live with my Lolo in Cebu.

He had a small farm that used to be a larger farm. ”

“What’s he grow?” she asks, taking another careful bite.

I twist my fork through the spaghetti, twirling and twirling until the tines are buried in noodles. My stomach twists, and I put my fork down. “Tourists.”

She scrunches her brow, hoping for an explanation. My instinct is to clam up and leave her wanting. I haven’t told anyone about Cebu in years. Why am I talking about it now?

“Sugar cane,” I say as if I meant that the whole time.

There once was sugar cane, but it became impossible to compete with the factory farms and the easier tourist dollars.

Every day new faces on the farm, every day someone else shouting at me to ‘Speak English’ as I tried to get to school. I hated it, but I loved Cebu.

“I had a piece of sugar cane once.”

Her response wrenches me out of my memories of smoke and ash. “Huh?”

“Part of a job. They wanted an all natural, organic photo for their sugar substitute so I got some sugar cane and mint leaves. Gave it a sun glare sort of feel like it was freshly picked from the field. I tried eating a piece after, but it was not easy.”

I wince and can’t help the laugh. “You don’t eat it.”

“Oh?”

“You chew on it, then spit out the pulp.”

Damn it. It doesn’t just sound like I’m laughing at her ignorance, I am.

She gazes down at her plate a moment as if collecting her thoughts, then smiles at me. “Now I know. Where were you two years ago?”

I know she doesn’t want to hear the real answer.

“In the lobby of a Vegas casino, helping a drunk with more money than sense find the door,” I lie easily.

So many people smile at the thought, maybe ask how I’d deal with the riffraff of Nevada, but her brows narrow again.

“What about you?” I volley the question back, before remembering she started all of this. “What, um…brought you to Loomis?”

“Well, it wasn’t the eggplant festival,” she says with a chuckle.

I smile, glad I wouldn’t have had to white knuckle through watching her down a plate of fried eggplant for dinner.

“Ah, I had these roommates in college who got a job here. We figured why not all stay together. It went so well before. They stayed a year before finding something better, and I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I love it here. There’s a small town feel, the place is beautiful, I don’t have to see my mother every day. ”

Sadie drops her fork, extends her spine, and points a finger at the air, “ ‘Sadhvi, where is your jacket? You’ll catch your death.’ ” She rolls her eyes. “It’s California, mom. I’m not going to freeze into a popsicle in Anaheim.”

“Sadhvi?” I ask.

Her smile flinches, and she flushes. “That’s my birth name. Sadhvi Nair. The little Indian girl who likes samosas so much she became the large Indian girl.” Her voice cracks and she keeps waving a hand around to tell me to laugh.

I catch her hand and cradle it. A wary eye watches me, as if expecting me to pounce.

Running my thumbs over her palm, I gaze down at her.

“If that’s what samosas do to a figure…” Boldly, I stare down her dress.

The white cotton is fighting for its life to keep her breasts in place.

A little tie cinches them up, threatening to snap.

I want to tear the whole thing in half with my bare hands, run my palms under her thick thighs and clench them around my waist. “Mmmm…I have to learn how to make them.”

“Ha, uh…that’s um. Wow.”

“Have I driven you speechless, Sadhvi?”

I wait for her to melt in my hands, but she pulls back. “You can call me Sadie. Please. It’s… I don’t hate Sadhvi. But hearing other people call me it I either think, oh that’s my cousin, and boy do I not want to think of you as my cousin.”

I snicker, hoping for the same from her.

“Or, ya know, it’s school crap all over again. They only called me Sadhvi when the worst was coming. ‘Sadhvi smells. Get her away.’ Imagine being the only girl in seventh grade with sideburns whose last name is Nair? I don’t know how I survived without a murder charge.”

In a flurry, she tries to cross her leg nonchalantly while also hiding behind her hair.

The air crackles with middle school tension threatening to turn into rain.

I could easily ignore it and wait for the storm to pass.

But as she shakes her leg, hitting the table by accident, my mouth opens.

“Some of the other kids used to throw rocks at me.”

Sadie pauses, her gaze boring into me. “Why?”

“Because…” I was different and they knew it.

They knew that farm, the kind of people who grew there.

They knew the connections our family had, and feared what that could bring.

Maybe the kids didn’t know, but their parents did, and infected them with the same hate that drove my mother and father to the states. That sent me back into it.

I can’t tell her that. “Hi, I turn into a vegetable. Bet you can’t guess which one.” She’ll think I’m insane, run out, maybe call a wellness check on me. The last thing I need are cops getting involved.

“Because I was new, and American. Oh, and scrawny.”

Her jaw drops, her eyes widening. “No way.”

I nod. “Until about sixteen, I was nothing but legs and arms. I looked like a piece of sugar cane standing up.”

“Well…” She traverses down my broad shoulders and built chest. “You filled out well. I bet all those kids are jealous as hell of you now.”

I really doubt it.

The movement of her fingers draws me in as she rests them on her chest. She softly drums the tips right against her bare skin and licks her lips.

“Your dress,” I whisper, fighting with all my animal urges to look away.

“What about it?”

I rise out of my seat and slide around the stone table. “We never did solve the spaghetti problem.”

Her eyes open wide. “Why? Did I get something on it?” She stares down at her immaculate chest, hunting for any hint of a stain.

I slip in behind her. The scent of coconut and ginger wafts off of her and sings in my soul. As I grip onto the table in front of her, I lean closer. Sadie abandons her hunt for the stain and tips her head back.

Fuck. Her cleavage from this angle causes my cock to jump. I dig in to the table to keep from grabbing her breasts. Tipping lower, I nearly bend over her. Sadie keeps leaning back to see me.

“Oh,” I sputter. Her shoulders brush up my hard cock, and the way she bites her lip at my reaction only engorges it more. Fighting back for control, I lift one hand from the table and tease the tie keeping her dress together.

The string catches between my fingers, ready to be pulled. She’s breathing deeper, her wondrous eyes gazing up at me. “It’s the something under it I care about,” I whisper. “How does option three sound?”

“Yes!” she cries out, lifting her chest. The tie pulls, undoing the bow. I reach for her freeing breast, my lips parting to taste hers. Sadie swoops her hand over my jaw, her eyes closing tight.

A scream cuts through the still air.