Ever After Drake (6 page)

I scoop the last of the bacon out of a
pan and set it on a plate with a paper towel on it. “You
hungry?”

“
Starving,” he says as he
crosses the small space to the bar. I don’t have an actual dining
table. There is no room for one. “I normally down a bagel or
something at six-thirty on my way to school. Nine feels cruelly
late.”

“
Hey, don’t complain about
the time when someone else is making the food,” I say, brandishing
a spatula at him.

“
Hey,” he says, holding
his hands up in surrender. “I appreciate the food whenever it is
served.”

I give him a crooked smile and set a
plate in front of him.

“
Eat up,” I say as I start
loading my own plate. “I think I accidently made enough food to
feed a small army. My brother went grocery shopping with me last
night and insisted I get
all
the food.”

“
How old did you say he
was again?” Drake asks around a bite of bacon.

“
Seven,” I say as I come
around the bar and sit beside Drake. “Dick came over and asked if
I’d babysit while he popped into work.”

“
You like kids?” he asks.
He glances over at me while he pours syrup on his small mountain of
pancakes.

“
Yeah,” I say hesitantly.
Talking about such matters with someone you’ve only met a few days
ago is a bit heavy. But this is Drake, and I feel way too
comfortable around him. “I love kids.”

“
Me too,” he says with
that famous lopsided grin. “You know, I was thirteen when Kale was
born and me and him used to have so much fun when he was
little.”

“
And now?” I ask as I fork
some scrambled eggs into my mouth.

“
He’s turning into a
teenager and he’s already obsessed with girls,” he
chuckles.

“
Sounds like a
heartbreaker in the making,” I say.

Drake digs into his pocket and comes
out with his phone. He clicks away on it for a second and holds it
up.

He’s showing a picture of a younger
boy, who does indeed look to be around thirteen. He’s got much
darker hair than Drake, and dark eyes and brows to match it. His
features are chiseled and too mature for his age.

“
He’s a good looking kid,”
I say. Drake raises an eyebrow at me and turns his phone back to
him. He clicks again for a second and shows me once
again.

“
That’s Sage, my sister,”
he says. She’s pretty, with honey-brown hair and the same sharp
jawline Kale has. “She’s wicked smart and has ambition like you
wouldn’t believe.”

“
She sounds a bit scary,”
I chuckle.

“
She kind of is,” Drake
laughs. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she rules the world
someday.”

“
That reminds me,” I say,
standing from my stool and reaching for my phone on the counter. I
open it up and pull up the camera. “Smile.”

He only has a moment to form that
lopsided one I love so much before I snap the picture.

“
What’s that for?” he
asks.

“
Armando says he needs to
evaluate you for me,” I say as I text him the image. “And who
knows, maybe I just wanted a picture for myself.”

There’s a smile on his lips, but his
eyes are serious and thoughtful. He pulls out his phone and I give
a shy smile as he snaps a picture. After that, we are quiet for a
few minutes. We eat, we drink apple juice, and keep catching each
other’s eye.

“
I want to go do something
fun today,” I say finally. “How good of a swimmer are
you?”

“
Uh,” he says, wiping at
his mouth with a napkin. It feels as if he’s taking a moment to
evaluate what I’ve just said. Like I surprised him. I like that.
“I’m adequate, I think. What did you have in mind?”

“
A challenge,” I say,
finishing off the last of my food. “Now hurry up and finish. I’m
going to get changed into my suit.”

“
Hang on,” he says. He
grabs my arm gently just as I am about to walk away. “I want to see
something.”

He pulls me slowly toward him as he
turns on his stool. His eyes are warm and serious at the same time
and locked on my face. A grin starts growing on my lips as he pulls
me closer. The hand that was on my arm slides around to my back,
encouraging me to come closer. I step between his legs and my eyes
can’t seem to look away from his lips.

And ever so slowly, he leans forward.
My eyes slide closed.

And he brushes his lips against
mine.

Slow, gentle, tender.

“
Yep,” he says quietly.
“Still kills me.”

I back away from him just barely so I
can look him in the eye and bite my lower lip.

“
Who are you and how is
this so easy?” I say.

“
I’m nothing special,” he
says, his hand still on the back of my neck. “I’m just a poor high
school teacher that drives a rust bucket of a car and has good
taste in beautiful things.”

“
I think I have to
disagree with you,” I breathe as I stare at his lips. “You’re
something special.”

Suddenly Drake’s phone starts chirping
from the bar and we both laugh as we break apart and he reaches for
it.

“
I’m going to go change,”
I say, leaving him to reply to his text.

I grab my swimsuit from my drawer and
a simple baby blue sundress, and head for the bathroom.

I look at myself in the mirror. My
eyes are bright, my cheeks flushed pink and warm.

The last time I felt this happy and
relaxed is nowhere in recent memory.

By the time I come out of the
bathroom, I find Drake doing dishes.

“
Let’s leave those for
now,” I say as I search around for a bag that can hold a towel and
some snacks. “I don’t want to waste this day doing boring,
day-to-day stuff.”

Drake gives that lopsided smile over
his shoulder at me and washes his hands off before drying them.
“You say ‘for now,’ does that mean you’ll let me come back and wash
them later?”

“
I’ll think about it. Now
let’s go.”

Drake follows me down the two flights
of steps and out the front door.

“
So, I suggest we take
your car,” Drake says as we step out into the warm, late summer
air. “See that sad excuse for an automobile there? That’s my
car.”

It is indeed a rust bucket. I’m pretty
sure it was once a maroon color, but it’s now heavily veined with
orange rust. The back passenger door is buckled in and the window
has tape crisscrossing all over it to hold in the shattered
glass.

“
I think maybe we should,”
I agree. Suddenly I am much more fond of my Mini Cooper.

Drake gives me directions and seven
minutes later, we stop in front of an apartment
building.

“
Be back in a second,” he
says and darts out of the car without another word.

Not three minutes later Drake is back
in the car and we are off.

We drive for about forty minutes and
our elevation rises and the trees grow thicker and taller. I pull
into the small parking lot and look out over the lake.

“
I’ve been here once
before,” Drake says. “We went camping here once when I was a
kid.”

“
Me too,” I say. “Well, I
wasn’t really a kid, it was when Mom and Dick were married. But it
was a lot of fun.”

Drake looks over at me, his eyes
serious and thoughtful. He brings a hand up and brushes his
fingertips over my cheek.

This is unnatural. Building this kind
of ease and comfort with someone is supposed to take time. It’s
supposed to come after some kind of struggle. Belle had to tame the
beast, Cinderella had to overcome poverty, Arielle had to lose her
voice and grow legs.

But on just day four, I’ve found
myself deep into Drake.

“
Come on,” I say, nipping
at his hand playfully. “Let’s see if you sink or float!”

I scramble from the car, and not
bothering to get the bag that contains our stuff, I take off toward
the lake. I strip off my sundress as I run, revealing my pink and
white striped bikini, let my flip flops fly off my feet, and barrel
toward the water.

“
Think you can outrun me,
short stuff?” I hear Drake tease. I make the mistake of looking
over my shoulder. He’s stripped off his shirt and is chasing after
me. And closing the distance fast.

I give a delighted scream as we both
race across the dock. Drake suddenly wraps his arms around my waist
right as we get to the end of it. He gives one giant leap and we
both sail through the air for just a second before we crash into
the water with a tidal wave.

The second my head resurfaces I send a
flooding splash at his face. He squints his eyes closed and tries
to grab me, but I defend and splash water in his direction over and
over.

I should have known he would take it
as a challenge. A wicked grin forms on his face and he suddenly
takes a giant breath and slips beneath the surface of the
water.

The sun is brilliant overhead, but
this is a lake and the water isn’t exactly crystal clear. I don’t
have a prayer at spotting him beneath the surface.

I push over onto my back and start
kicking and stroking as fast as I can to get away from wherever
Drake might be under the water.

I get fifteen strokes away when he
finally pops up from the water with a gasping breath, not far from
where we started.

“
How’d you get clear over
there so fast?” he asks as he starts paddling his way over to
me.

A smug smile forms on my lips and I
tread water to stay where I am. “I was on the swim team in high
school. I was the backstroke champion. Still am,
apparently.”

“
So you’re part fish,” he
says as he closes the distance between us. “Where are you hiding
those gills on that beautiful body?”

I smile at him, but what he’s said
makes my mind falter.

I’m short. I don’t have the build that
most men consider beautiful. My shoulders are broader than seems
proportional to the rest of my body, my boobs are lacking in size,
my thighs are thicker and I’d like. I’m built like a gymnast, and a
lot of guys down the line didn’t find that very
attractive.

But Drake has called me
beautiful.

“
What?” he suddenly asks
and that expression of his of being in trouble and looking slightly
surprised takes over his face. “Is something wrong?”

“
No,” I say, shaking my
head and smiling. I swim closer to him and loop my arms around his
neck, kicking my feet slightly to keep myself above water.
“Everything’s…perfect.”

“
Yeah,” he says as he
leans in closer. “It is.”

His lips meet mine. They’re wet, and
taste of lake water. But they’re Drake’s. And they were made to be
companion to mine.

And then he slips under the
water.

I instantly let go of him and kick to
keep myself from going under as well. The water splashes around us
and he pushes himself back up to the surface. We both break out
into laughter.

“
Maybe we should take this
to the shore before one of us drowns,” he chuckles.

“
Before
you
drown, maybe,” I
tease as we start swimming for the dock. “I’m part fish,
remember?”

“
Part siren, more like
it.” He gives me a coy smile.

We get back up to the sandy and rocky
shore and head for my car. We retrieve our stuff and head back for
the beach. We lay towels out side by side.

“
Could you ask for more
perfect weather?” I say as I lie down on it and shade my eyes from
the sun with my arm. “It’s got to be, like, seventy-five degrees
out here.”

“
It’s gorgeous,” Drake
says. He’s laid down next to me and is looking in my
direction.

A smile curls on my face.

Drake reaches over and laces his
fingers through mine.

CHAPTER
SIX

Sunday morning I wake to a
text from Drake saying
Will you be my
girlfriend?

To which I instantly
reply
YES.

The following two weeks are filled
with late night dates, even later night texting, tired teachers,
and more than a little making out.

But we did still have our jobs and we
did still have to teach classes.

I couldn’t wait for school to get out.
It was Friday, and I was feeling the sleepless nights.

“
Mesopotamians believed
that the world was a flat disk, surrounded by a huge, holed space.”
I try to do a drawing, but it’s rudimentary, at best. “Above
that
,
 
heaven
. They also believed that
water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that
the
 
universe
 
was born from this enormous
sea.”