Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (12 page)

Caelyn was giggling.
 
And then she started laughing
hysterically.
 
Something about the
look on his face as he’d lost control of the car for that one instant was just
too much to take.

Maybe it was that
she’d never seen Elijah look out of control before.

She kind of liked it.

They crossed over
into Florida late that afternoon.

When she’d seen the
sign that said Welcome To Florida, The Sunshine State, she’d whooped and
hollered and exchanged high fives with Elijah.
 

But the celebrations
had been short-lived.
 
Firstly, because
they still had hours left to drive.
 
It was a long way from the border of the state down to Sarasota and
Siesta Key.

She was getting
tired, and so was Elijah.

Worse yet, she was
compulsively checking her cell phone.
 
The texts from Jayson had stopped for the time being, but then she’d
received some from her roommates.

Now, she was getting
worried, because the texts had changed from
hey,
what’s going on?
To
WHERE R U
GIRL????

It was only a matter
of time before someone called the police, or the school, or her parents were
notified.
 
She needed to do some
damage control.

Finally, she opted to
call Alicia rather than wait for the inevitable freak out from friends and
family when they discovered she was gone.

Alicia answered on
the first ring, as if she’d been waiting by her phone.
 
“Caelyn, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she
said.

Elijah looked at her,
curious.
 
She hadn’t told him she
was going to call anyone back home.

“We thought you’d
decided to stay at Jayson’s, but then Nellie said she saw Jayson at the union
and he hadn’t seen you since the other night.
 
I was starting to freak out.”

“I’m fine,” Caelyn
told her again.

“Oh.
 
Where are you?”

There was a long
pause as Caelyn debated how to answer that question.
 
Finally, she opted for the truth.
 
“I’m in Florida,” she said.

“Wait—what?
 
I didn’t hear you.
 
I thought for a second you said
Florida.”

“I did say Florida.”

“I don’t get it.”

Caelyn sighed.
 
“I left.
 
I’m not coming back to school, Alicia.”

“But that doesn’t
make any sense.
 
The semester’s not
even over.
 
If you just take off,
you’re going to flunk everything.”

“I know it doesn’t
make any sense, but it’s what I had to do.”

“Why?”

“I can’t…I don’t want
to talk about it.
 
I just needed to
leave.”

“Come on,
Caelyn.
 
This is totally crazy.
 
You can’t just leave and go to
Florida.
 
What are you going to do
there?”

“I don’t know,”
Caelyn said.
 
“I’m hoping to get a
job waitressing.”

“Why Florida?” Alicia
said.
 
And then she moaned.
 
“Oh my God, is this because of that
stupid postcard my mom sent?
 
You’ve
been obsessed with Siesta Key ever since.
 
I should never have let you keep that thing.
 
It’s cursed.
 
That’s why I threw it out.”

“It’s not cursed,”
Caelyn said, almost laughing.

“Everything my mother
touches is cursed.”

“Listen, I’m
fine.
 
I’ll talk more about it in a
few days.”

“You need to
seriously think about what you’re doing.
 
You could screw up your whole life, doing this.
 
Are you alone?”

Caelyn looked over at
Elijah and smiled.
 
“Not exactly…but
look, Alicia.
 
I called because I
didn’t want you to worry.”

“Well mission not
accomplished.
 
I’m more worried than
ever.”

“I have to go.
 
I’m sorry.
 
I’ll call you tomorrow or the day
after.”

“Caelyn,
seriously.
 
Don’t do this!”

“I’ll call you
later,” she repeated.
 
And then she
hung up.

***

By the time they
reached Sarasota, neither of them were quite as jubilant as they’d been
previously.
 
The weather was almost
stiflingly hot, and they’d also passed through a couple of brief torrential
showers that hadn’t lasted long, but had made it difficult for Elijah to drive.

Florida was
beautiful, and Caelyn was excited that they’d finally arrived safe and
sound.
 
At the same time, there were
a few big question marks floating around, now that they were getting close to
their destination.

Elijah had asked Caelyn
to call around to the various hotels and motels in the area and try to book
something cheap.
 
“For both of us?”
she’d said.

He’d just looked at
her.
 
“You tell me.”

She’d shrugged in
return.
 
“I…I guess.
 
I’m not sure what’s going on.”

She’d hoped that
perhaps he would tell her what he wanted to do.
 
After all, they’d only just met and it
hardly made sense for them to try and live together out in Florida.

“Are you going to be
working out here?” she’d asked him.

“I’ll figure
something out.”

And that had been
that.

After calling a dozen
places and starting to lose hope, she’d finally found them a relatively cheap
room at a place called The Seaside Motel, which apparently was close to the
main drag on Siesta Key.
 
The cost was
just over one hundred dollars a night, which Elijah had said was
acceptable—and besides, there weren’t many other places available in the
area.

Caelyn’s spirits
momentarily lifted as they crossed the bridge taking them over to Siesta
Key.
 
There was beautiful blue water
on either side of the bridge, and palm trees, and boats in the distance.
 
There were brightly colored houses and
buildings, and for a second, she really thought they’d found paradise.

“Just like the
postcard,” Elijah had mused.

“It is, isn’t
it?
 
Maybe even better than the
postcard,” she’d smiled.

“We’ll need to check
out that beach before long.”

They pulled into The
Seaside Motel as the sun was starting to dip in the sky.
 
The motel looked like something out of
the nineteen seventies.
 
Everything
was wooden, and old, and the paint on the signage looked as though it had
needed repainting…probably for the last decade or so.

Neither of them
really cared at this point.
 
They
both just wanted out of the car, and maybe to have a place to dump their bags
and stretch their legs.

Elijah checked in and
then they climbed some rickety steps to the second floor of the motel.
 
Their feet slapped and echoed on the
catwalk as they made their way to the room.

Inside, it smelled
vaguely musty, but Elijah forced a window open and some nice, breezy ocean air
helped to clean out the room.

It was small, with
only one bed, a tiny TV, ancient wallpaper and even more ancient, stained
carpeting.
 
The bathroom had painful
florescent lighting that turned Caelyn’s skin green when she looked in the mirror.

“Home sweet home,”
she said to Elijah, as she came out.
 

He was sitting on the
bed, looking glum.

“Everything okay?”
she asked.

“Yeah.”
  
But he looked not okay.
 
He glanced around the room.
 
“Maybe we should get out of here, check
out the beach.
 
Want to?”

“Sure, why not?” she
said.
 
In actuality, she wanted a
shower and a nap, but Caelyn could tell that Elijah needed to get out and move,
and she didn’t want to say no to his idea.
 

They left the room
and walked out of the parking lot, onto the main road.
 
“I think the beach is only a half mile
down,” Elijah said, pointing.
 

There were other
people on the road, some walking, others with their dogs, or riding
bicycles.
 
“Everyone looks happy
here,” Caelyn said, “don’t you think?”

“More so than Boston,”
he agreed.
 
“But other than New
York, I don’t think any place on earth has moodier, crankier people.”

She laughed.
 
“True.
 
Everyone I see around here is
smiling.”
 
Then she looked at
Elijah.
 
He wasn’t smiling at all.

The two of them fell
silent and walked for a while more.
 
Soon, they reached the beach parking lot.
 
It was less than half full.
 
“It’s getting dark,” Elijah said, “so
most people probably took off already.
 
We’ll get the place to ourselves, right?”

They crossed the
street and then found the pathway down to the beach.
 
She could hear the ocean as they walked,
and then she could see it—a powdered sugar beach with palm trees waving,
and blue water crashing against the sand.

It took her breath
away.
 
The sun was setting over the
water, casting brilliant flashes of color across the sky.

“It’s amazing,” she
said, coming to a stop at the very edge of the beach.

Elijah stood with her
and took in the scene.
 
“Yeah, it
really is.
 
Makes the drive worth
it.”

She took off her
shoes and let the sand squelch in between her toes.
 
“Oh, wow, this sand feels amazing.
 
It’s soft and cool, like a velvet
glove.”

“You sound poetic,”
he said, throwing back her earlier remark to him.
 
Then he took his shoes off, too.
 

They started walking
towards the water.

There were other
couples walking down by the water, Caelyn noticed.
 
And then she checked herself.
 
Other
couples, Caelyn? You and Elijah are not a
couple.
 
You’ve never even
kissed.
 
Sure, he’s totally
gorgeous, and he’s been sweet and caring, but he hasn’t shown an ounce of
interest in taking this beyond a friendship.

Her thoughts were
spinning as they walked together by the water.
 
It was magical, romantic—it was
everything she could have asked for.

But part of her
couldn’t totally enjoy it.
 
She kept
glancing at Elijah and wondering what he was thinking.
 
He seemed pensive and quiet, not as
happy as she’d expected him to be.

Maybe it was because
he understood that something had to change now that they’d finally arrived in
Siesta Key, or maybe it was because he also felt something for her.
 

She almost made a
joke about holding hands, since almost everyone else was doing it—but the
moment passed.
 
She lost her nerve.

After they’d walked
for a long stretch, Elijah declared himself hungry.
 
“Want to grab some food?
 
I think there’s a bunch of places on the
main drag,” he said.

“Sure.”
 
And truth be told, she also wanted to
check out the bars and restaurants because she was hoping to scrounge up some
work.
 
She needed to make money fast
or she would be out of options.

They found the strip
easily enough.
 
It was just down the
road from the beach, not even a mile from where their hotel was located.
 
It was getting busy now that they were
hitting dinnertime.

There were fewer
restaurants and bars than she’d imagined, just a handful really.
 
It made her wonder if finding work out
here would be as easy as she’d assumed.
 

And it wasn’t as if
she had an incredible resume, either, just a couple years of waiting tables at
Friendly’s in high school.

They walked past an
ice cream shop with a line out the door, and a cute little breakfast place with
a broken egg on the sign—an oyster bar, another bar with live music
floating into the street.