I thought I'd be used to the early May heat from living in Georgia, but the sun was different in the lowcountry, and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky to save me. I breathed a sigh of relief as Brooklyn came outside with two large iced coffees. The wrought iron tables on the patio of the local coffee shop didn't have umbrellas, and despite my body temperature rising by the minute, I refused to take my sweater off.
"So, just for your information," he said as he handed me my coffee. "People who drink black coffee are about 23% more likely to be complete sociopaths."
I scoffed at him and pointed to his own drink. Swirls of milk were still making their way to the bottom of the cup, turning the coffee the color of sand. "And just for your information," I retorted. "People who add a splash of coffee to their milk and sugar are about 60% more likely to be total wimps."
He smirked and shook his head. "Don't be mean just because I wouldn't let you pay for your drink."
"I'm not mean," I shrugged. "I just don't see why you had to, that's all." I took a sip, and the bitter chill of the coffee did little to cool my nerves.
He clicked his tongue and wagged his finger at me. "Because it's the right thing to do. My parents raised me to be polite and have manners. Paying for a girl after asking her out falls under that category."
"But we're just hanging out," I sputtered out. The dark lenses of his sunglasses hid his eyes, and I couldn't get a read on how bothered or unbothered he was as he chewed on his straw. Guilt rumbled in my chest, but I shook it off and took another sip of my coffee.
"Whatever," he shrugged. "I still wasn't going to let you pay."
A few moments of silence passed as he continued to chew his straw, and I continued to bob my knee up and down restlessly under the table.
"Fine, fine," I surrendered.
The only tell of emotion he gave me was the slight twitch in the corners of his mouth. Finally he just laughed that brilliant laugh of his. It rang clear through my ears, and I wanted to bottle it up in a jar to keep it and play it whenever I wanted.
"You know, you're cute when you're mad." He gave me a knee-weakening smirk, and I nearly choked on my coffee.
"You okay?" he asked.
"Terrific," I replied, clearing my throat. "Wonderful. Peachy keen."
He kept laughing.
"What's so funny?" I narrowed my eyes at him.
"You," he said as he casually sipped his drink. "You're something else. I like you."
"What?" I let out a snicker of disbelief. I avoided his gaze and stirred the rest of my coffee with the straw. "You don't even know me," I said defensively. "And I don't know you."
"Well isn't that the point of all this?" Brooklyn took his sunglasses off and placed them delicately on the table. He leaned forward on his elbows, and the tangy smell of cigarettes mixed with the sweet vanilla of his coffee buzzed in the air around me. I normally hated sweet drinks, but the amalgamation of scents made my head fuzzy. It was almost entrancing. "Okay, how about this? Ask me anything you want."
"Anything?" I asked.
"Yeah, anything."
I stirred my drink with the straw, contemplating my question carefully. The sound of the ice clattering against the plastic of the cup sounded like explosions in the silence.
"You tell me why you were really in the hospital, and no jokes this time."
"I knew that was coming." He snickered and held his hands up. "You sure you want to know?"
"Yes. I do." I bit down on my lip. I wanted to know so much about him.
Brooklyn sucked in a breath and nodded. "So, I have this really bad allergy..."
"Okay..." I leaned forward in my chair. "To what?"
"Well, every time I do heroin, I break out in handcuffs."
It took me a moment to digest what he actually said, and when I looked up at him, I was met with a toothy grin that spread wide across his rosy cheeks. His brilliant laugh filled the little patio again, and I swore I could have felt other peoples' eyes on us.
I scoffed and smacked his arm. "I said no jokes!"
"But it's the truth," he insisted, still laughing in between words.
I kept my glare on him. A sigh escaped his lips as he ran his hand down the side of his face.
"I mean, there's never an easy way to tell someone you have - or had, I guess - a drug problem," he said with a shrug. "I just have it in my head that if I joke about it, it won't sound as serious as everyone thinks it is."
A heavy sigh escaped my lips, and when he smiled at me, I smiled back. His energy was infectious. "Well, thanks."
"For what?" he asked. "Telling the truth? I've kind of learned lying doesn't get me anywhere."
He kept his eyes on me, and my stomach flipped as I watched him run his tongue along his bottom lip. A rush of heat tore through me. The way my body reacted to him without warning was infuriating, and my head couldn't keep denying what my physical being already knew. Looking up at him with the sun hitting his face made my breath catch in my throat. With eyes like an ocean, freckles like a map of stars across his cheeks, and a boyish smile that probably made most girls melt, he had an undeniable charm to him. A subtle, unrefined charm, but I'd be lying if I didn't say my heart fluttered furiously in my chest every time he looked at me.
"Well..." I sighed wistfully. "It seems like you're getting the hang of it."
"I'm trying," he shrugged. "That's more than a lot of people can say."
The softness of his voice took me by surprise, and I felt myself wince. "Can I ask you something else?"
"Nope, any more and I've gotta charge you by the hour."
He smirked and bumped my knee under the table with his, and I let out a giggle. I never giggled.
"Well then." I sat up rigid straight in my chair in an attempt to regain my composure. "You just said that you joke about it so people don't take it so seriously. But...is it actually serious?"
I didn't know how many lines I was crossing with him, but I'd never been so compelled to just know someone the way I wanted to know him.
Brooklyn nodded intently, pinching his lips together like he was trying to wrack his brain for the right words.
"You know how they told us in those stupid D.A.R.E. classes they made us take in the 5th grade not to share dirty needles?" He chewed on his bottom lip before continuing. "Well, what they don't tell you is that when you're in some guy's basement and you're so dope sick you can't see straight, the last thing you're worried about is dirty needles."
I couldn't pretend that I didn't feel bad for him. He seemed so good and sweet and...normal. Dirty needles and dope sick were foreign concepts to me, but if you had told me that at one point it was his norm, I wouldn't have believed it. A red blotchiness crept up his neck, and he shifted awkwardly in his chair.
"I had a moment of clarity." He looked right at me, his eyes so intense but still so hurt it made my heart clench. "Like, a millisecond. Where I thought how the hell did I get to this point and maybe I shouldn't do this, but the withdrawal hit me like a freight train, and I just said fuck it, I really need to get high. I ended up getting a really bad infection, so I went to the ER. Doctors took one look at it, pumped me full of antibiotics, stitched me up, and sent me straight down the hall to rehab. I guess I'm lucky they didn't saw my arm off, Requiem for a Dream style."
I nodded as I digested his words. His uncomfortable moment faded, and he looked at me with a smile soft and warm like a summer morning.
"Well, I'm glad you're okay." I returned his soft smile, and he lit up.
"Okay, my turn," he said.
"What?"
"Well, you can't just ask me questions like that and then not expect me to ask one back. That's not how this game works."
"A game?" I echoed.
"Yes, a game," he smirked again. "What can I say, I'm overly competitive and I like winning."
"That's cute, but I'm no sore loser either."
He looked down at his coffee, but when he looked back up at me, another smirk pulled at his lips. "So, you have to transport a very large shipment of fruit and nuts to an island on a very small helicopter. How do you go about doing it in as little trips as possible?"
I looked at him with wide eyes, until I realized he was being serious. I scoffed. "Well...I wouldn't."
"What? That's not an answer."
"Sure it is." I shrugged. "I hate heights and things that fly. You couldn't get me on the damn helicopter if you paid me a million dollars. I'd just hire someone else do it. Simple."
He ran his tongue along his bottom lip, then his smirk widened into a smile. "Alright, fair enough."
"What kind of question is that, anyway?" I pinched the straw in my coffee.
"I got asked it in a job interview once," he chuckled. "The whole point is to catch you off guard, which...it totally worked on me."
I shook my head. "Trying to catch me off guard, too?"
"Maybe a little bit." He grinned. "Is it working?"
"You wish," I replied, returning his smirk.
Brooklyn had me hook, line, and sinker, and he knew it. He gave me that same half-smile that crinkled the corners of his gorgeous eyes, so vivid blue like gemstones you'd only find in a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean, guarded by a leviathan, or a kraken, or some ungodly creature ready to crush your skull and use your brains for jelly. It was almost inhuman, but the rush that tore through me when he grinned at me was my body's way of telling my brain that maybe, just maybe, I liked it.
"So..." he popped his lips, breaking the electric tension between us. "You want donuts?"
"You really know a way to a girl's heart, huh?"
My cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling so much. Part of me wished I was having a bad time. Part of me wished he was just a typical douchebag guy, and I could go home with no attachment and no expectations, continuing to be good at "being alone." But none of that was true. Brooklyn was charming, and funny, and gave me attention I didn't even realize I wanted. Or needed.
We walked down the street to a local gourmet donut shop called Purple Glaze. After ordering I reached for my wallet, but he grabbed my hand.
"No way," he smirked. "Still my idea, so I'm still paying."
"Fine," I groaned. We sat on a bench outside, watching teenagers on skateboards whiz by a pack of yoga moms pushing around their babies in strollers. I didn't realize until then how glad I was to actually be out of the house. The scent of roses from the bushes that lined the sidewalk filled my nose, and I could practically taste the fresh air as a forgiving breeze blew through us. A busy flower shop was situated on the corner across the way, and next to it was the art gallery that I assumed Aunt Mel was trying to have her work put in. It wasn't until then that I realized I'd barely explored my new home, despite living there for more than a month.
My stomach flipped when Brooklyn bumped my knee with his again.
"We should do this again," he said with a mouthful of chocolate donut.
"Not if you're going to inundate your coffee with that much sugar again. My teeth hurt just watching you drink it." I narrowed my eyes at him, but he just returned my glare with that brilliant laugh of his again. I really needed him to stop doing that before he put me in cardiac arrest. Never in my life had I ever used the word "cool" to describe anyone unless they were actually cold to the touch, but that was all I could think of when I saw Brooklyn. So candidly, unabashedly cool.
"Oh please," he rolled his eyes. "That black coffee you order is for psychos."
I rolled my eyes but gave him a playful smile. "Just remember you're the one that asked to get coffee with this total psycho."
"Duly noted," he nodded.
He pushed his sunglasses on top of his head, letting his gaze wander from my eyes and down to my lips.
"You've got...uh..." He pointed to my face, but before I could register what was happening, his thumb grazed the side of my mouth.
"Chocolate." He showed me the splotch on his thumb before licking it off, causing my stomach to somersault. Luckily his phone rang, allowing a welcome distraction from the fact that I could have just passed out from human contact. He frowned when he looked at the screen.
"Oh boy, this can't be good." He pressed the phone to the side of his face, and was instantly met with screams when he answered.
"Where the hell are you, Mom is going to kill you!" came the screeching from the other end of the phone. Brooklyn winced as he pulled the phone away from his face.
"I'm downtown just getting food," he replied, which was only met with more incoherent screeching. Brooklyn's face twisted into an odd, almost hurt expression, and I felt a pang in my chest as his eyes darkened.
"Alright, El, relax," he groaned. "I'll be home in twenty minutes."
"You better be or you're so screwed," The voice on the other line warned. "I can't keep covering for your ass."
"Okay, okay, I'm leaving now." He hung up the phone and dropped it into his lap. He slid the sunglasses back over his eyes to no doubt hide the storm brewing in them, and I felt him tense up beside me before he spoke.
"I may have uh...neglected to tell my mother I was leaving the house." He scratched the back of his head. "Since her default assumption is I'm getting myself into trouble, I should probably go home."
"It's fine, really," I assured him. "It's no big deal."
"I promise we won't be long," he said as he stood up from the bench.
I let out a sharp exhale. "Wait, you want me to come with you?"
"Please," Brooklyn pouted and pressed his hands together in front of him. "You're like living breathing proof that I wasn't actually doing anything twisted."
Going back to Brooklyn's house and meeting other people was not on my agenda, and as I stood up and smoothed down the creases in my borrowed silky shirt, I was suddenly conscious of how exposed I looked. I pulled my cardigan tighter around my torso despite my body temperature continuing to climb.
"Okay, sure," I nodded.
"You're the best," he said when we were both back in the Mustang. He reached across the center console and put his hand on mine. "Seriously. I owe you...again."
I looked up at him, and as his eyes lit up, I smiled. His touch could have given me third degree burns, and I wouldn't have cared.
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