Page 44

E ight months later

My brother better not fuck this up.

The back tire spins in the sand as Symphony and I approach the dune I scouted yesterday.

Symphony squeals and grips my waist more tightly. “We’re going to get stuck!” she shouts in my ear.

I can’t speak back to her, not over the roar of the bike. But no, we won’t get stuck.

It’s a balmy day for March. We’re on spring break, both of us, and Symphony got a couple of days off from her job at the federal building.

I started my art degree for real in January and reduced my hours at the Leaky Skull. It’s been fine. The renovations attracted a higher-paying clientele, just like Uncle Sherman said it would. The man is a fucking genius.

We have a secret menu now, one full of cocktails with racy names like “Fuck Me Standing” and “Flash the Room.” Sometimes even the bikers order them, particularly when cute young things come through.

They like the look of shock on a lady’s face when Jake or Merrick drops the drink onto the bar and says, “Here’s a ‘Fuck Me Standing’ from the gentleman at the corner table.”

The mix of the old crowd and the new has worked well enough so far. Receipts are up, and we’ve taken on a couple of new hires. Vicki likes to boss them around.

The bike arrives at the right spot, and I kill the engine.

Symphony swings off the seat. “I have sand all up in my helmet!” She whips it off and shakes her hair.

Her red bikini top shimmies perilously, and I’m already at half mast by the time I get the bike securely standing in the dune.

She looks around. “This is pretty private! Are we going to skinny dip?”

“We could.”

I don’t have to say that twice. She’s already kicking off her shoes.

“You’re going to fry in all that black,” she says, reaching for the bottom of my Leaky Skull bar shirt.

She wiggles it up until I lift my arms. I don’t deny her much of what she wants these days.

“Let’s get burned where the sun don’t shine!” she says, this time making that gorgeous chest wiggle on purpose.

I glance at the digital display of my phone mounted on my handlebars. We’ve got time.

I reach for the tie of the bikini top and jerk it loose. She squeals again as it falls. “Here we go!”

I kick off my tennis shoes, a concession since my biker boots don’t go with swim trunks. By the time they’re gone, her shorts and red bikini bottoms have joined the top on the sand, and Symphony is running down the beach stark naked.

Full mast. I don’t bother shucking my shorts yet as I take off after her.

I follow her footprints to a funny rock in an outcropping of the cliff, surrounded by scrub brush.

“Get in here, art boy,” she says. “This wise and experienced woman wants to show you a few things.”

I shake my head at her. We never get tired of playing a role.

“On your knees, boy,” she says with a laugh. “I’ve got sand for you to lick in a very special place.” She perches on a smooth curve in the rock and spreads her knees. “Right here.”

I kneel in front of her like I’m praying to a goddess because I am.

This will never get old.

We emerge from our hiding spot a while later, Symphony dashing ahead to dive into the water. I follow her in, eyeballing the sun. It’s probably coming up on time.

A flutter of nerves trickles through me. It’s not something I’ve felt often, not in the last decade, although I got it a couple of months ago when I had my first oil painting critiqued.

It was a piece depicting Symphony, of course, still my obsessive subject. She likes being my muse, even if it’s always her body on display. I channel her confidence in the work.

I tried to tone down my lust for her in it, but I failed. The students in the class spoke of its eroticism, the imagery evoking the Greek mythology of Helios and his chariot carrying the sun.

It was all her, her body, her openness, her outstretched arms. And the white-hot sky, radiant, blinding, blending into her glowing skin. It wasn’t clear if she was the source of light, or if all the power was flowing into her. Maybe she and the brightness were one and the same.

But I got an A.

Today is different, though. It’s a day I didn’t see coming, an urge I never thought would come over me.

Symphony splashes and laughs, and I can already imagine my next project in what I see, the sunset gold over the blue waves, her emerging like Aphrodite.

“Let’s head up to the bike,” I tell her. “It’ll get cold once the sun goes down.”

She catches up to me near the shore, and we retrace our steps back to the bike.

Merrick and Marietta have been here, just like we planned. There’s a picnic basket on the beach next to my bike. Blankets. Wine. A small fire crackles in a circle of rocks.

“What is this?” Symphony moves close to the fire, the yellow-orange flames lighting her skin against the dwindling twilight. Another painting in my mind. I may never be finished with her.

My brain falters. Merrick left the ring in the basket, and Symphony is already poking around inside it. She hasn’t noticed the rocks arranged on the shore beyond the circle.

And should we do this naked? It seems unusual. But maybe not for us. Sunset is falling fast.

I’m about to suggest we wander closer to shore when a beam of light breaks the gloom.

“Oh, shit,” Symphony says. “Eek!”

She dives behind the bike, scrambling for her bikini.

I slide my shorts back on. Is that Merrick? I peer at the figure with the flashlight.

Shit, it is. And Marietta, too. They don’t seem to realize we are by the bike.

“I told you we needed more rocks!” Marietta hisses. “All you had to do was the me !”

“I’m getting them!” Merrick hisses back.

Symphony emerges from behind the bike wrapped in her coverup. “Was that your brother?”

The two of them freeze. I step between Symphony and the shore. “Should we see what’s in the basket?” There’s a full dinner in there, all her favorites.

And the ring.

I hope.

“Hey!” Symphony calls. She steps around me. I reach for her, but she’s already gotten past me.

Merrick and Marietta take off over the dune and disappear.

Symphony turns to me. “Did you see that? Was that your brother?”

I don’t know what to say. The plan is way off. I reach into the basket for the ring box. It’s there, at least. I can salvage this.

“What is all this?” she asks as she stumbles on the rocks aligned on the sand. She accidentally kicks several of them out of place.

I stand beside her as the last vestiges of the sun cast a glow across the beach.

She tilts her head. “Mar me?” She lets out a laugh. “Looks like someone chickened out in the middle of a proposal.”

“Maybe we should fix it,” I tell her. I pick up a few rocks from our fire circle and finish out the letters.

“Much better,” she says. “I wonder if she said yes. Or he.”

I guess it’s now or never. I drop to one knee and pop open the box. “What would you say?”

She fiddles with the rocks with her foot, not looking my way. “I’d say some alien creature has inhabited your body.”

I wait, sweating it out. Finally, she turns to me as if expecting me to laugh, but then her face changes when she spots my position and the glint of the diamond in the box. “Diesel?”

“I guess the alien got me,” I say.

“Diesel?” she repeats.

“I spent a long time refusing to recognize my family for what it could be.” I reach for her hand. “Then you came along and made me see what I was missing.”

“I did?”

I grasp her fingers firmly. “You did. I denied anything that might be weak. I didn’t realize that facing those things is what truly makes us strong.”

“Oh, Dean Diesel.”

“Symphony Collins, my muse, my motherfucking goddess, will you marry me?”

She glances at the rocks. “These were for me.”

“Yeah.”

She laughs and kicks at the rocks to get rid of the Y again. “Hell yes, Dean Diesel. Mar me. Mar every fucking inch.”

I flash her the grin I know knocks her panties off and slide the ring on her finger. “In the water or on the sand?”

She grabs the waistband of my board shorts and yanks them down. “All of the above.”