This was not what Steve had in mind for this mid-Sunday afternoon, but it would certainly do. When Bo asked Steve on the way home from church if he wanted to partner up with him for his turn in the fish market his initial (unvoiced) reaction was no. Kayla’s reaction was really no. She wanted to spend every waking moment of this day with Steve, so the thought of him in the fish market while she hung out upstairs wasn’t her first choice. Steve, however, gave it a few moments of thought. He needed to show Shawn that yesterday wasn’t a fluke. So, if an opportunity was presenting itself, then he had to take it.
Steve agreed to work the shortened day from noon to 5:00 PM and hoped he was showing the right mix of strategically planned enthusiasm and respect by saying as long as it was ok with them. Bo was excited to hang out with him and sounded like a very weird sort of manchild to Steve when Bo asked his parents if it was, indeed, ok. Shawn and Caroline raised their eyebrows over their daughter seated between them in the front seat of the station wagon, each of them showing great interest in Steve’s willingness to help. Neither of them were surprised when Kayla crossed her arms in front of her and pouted like the 18-year-old she was.
Steve and Bo worked as a fantastic team, just like he and Kayla had the day before. Bo dusted off his fish-mongering skills, Steve waited a few tables this time, and no one got stuck in the cooler. He and Bo laughed until their sides hurt on more than one occasion of slowness, and Steve wondered what Kayla was doing right now.
Shawn made a handful of random appearances to observe the boys, most of which went by them unnoticed. What he saw impressed him on both of their counts, but it made him a bit sad, too. Bo would be leaving with Steve in three days, and he pined for his boy to stay here on the solid ground of Salem.
Shawn came downstairs just before closing to help wrap things up but stopped and listened intently before he entered the market when he heard what the boys were discussing.
“Stop riding me, man, there’s nothin’ left for me there, so there’s no reason to go back,” Bo said.
“There’s every reason to go back, Bo. You’re 17, that’s where you belong. If they catch you on the Alva Maerk they’re gonna throw your ass out, anyway.”
“Who’s gonna find out?”
“Without me there to protect you, who knows?”
“Then come back with me!”
“No, I’m out. I mean it. I’ve been here four days, and I’ve never felt more like I’ve come home in my whole life. I want to stay in Salem.”
“Well, I … can’t stay.”
“But you want to. Come on, Bo, you know you do.”
Bo paused before squaring his stance and crossing his arms, so much like his father. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t get into college before I get my diploma, and I’ve got too much to make up.”
“It’s 1979, Bo, there’s so much room you have to make that happen you have no idea. What’s wrong with going back? Tomorrow even.”
“No way, are you crazy?” Bo said.
“Fine, take the rest of your leave, man, relax. But tomorrow we go down to Salem High, we register you, and you begin classes next week. And if you’re lucky you finish with summer school and go to college ‘on time’ in September.”
“I don’t even know what I wanna do with my life!”
“Welcome to the world, Bo!” Steve huffed as he tossed a dish towel a little too hard onto the counter. “You think most people graduate high school and know what they wanna be when they grow up? Fireman, doctor, web designer?”
“What designer?”
“No one’s got it all figured out, and if they say they do then they’re full of sh*t. You figure out your life one day at a time.” He was getting through to Bo, he could see it.
“And what do you wanna do with your life, huh, Steve? You talk a big game with me, but at the end of the day, did you go to college?”
“Nope.”
“And you’re fine!”
“I’m not fine, Bo! If I were fine I wouldn’t have run off to the merchant marine to begin with!” Bo didn’t know what to say. “It was a good place for me for a while, but I’ve got baggage just like everybody else, man.” Bo hadn’t heard that weird baggage term, but he kind of got the gist of what Steve meant. “Got me some good skills, and so did you. You can use those for the rest of your life, and I’m gonna do the same thing.”
Bo’s voice softened slightly in tone. “Are you sure about this, man?” Bo asked. “Why the sudden change of heart?”
Steve was very careful in the next words he spoke, because they were all true, even if they were out of context. “Bo, this was just the most recent nudge. Meeting a family like yours …” Steve sighed heavily. “Meeting Kayla … I really care about her. She grounds me. Your whole family has been incredible to me, and they’ve made me want that for myself. And you’re my best friend.” Now Steve switched gears to once and for all drive high school home for Bo. “If I really didn’t care, it would be different, but I do care, Bo, and you’re making the wrong choice by going back to the merchant marines. I wouldn’t be much of a friend if told you otherwise. You have friends here, and seems clear to me that you’re pretty cool to them. And you miss ‘em, too, dude, I know you do. So, go back to algebra and English, pal around with those two idiots that don’t have a thing on you, man, find a girl to go to prom with, and just let the Alva go.”
Shawn didn’t breathe.
Bo did miss home. He did love the life of a mariner, too, being on the boat, having adventures. But that life would be much different if he went back without Steve. He really would get janitor duty, he’d be promoted to the bowels of the ship way before he ever saw the deck of it like he did today, and whatever made him feel smothered when he ran off in November didn’t seem to matter now. Steve was right, he wanted to come home, he just didn’t know how.
Bo inhaled deeply and let it out, preparing to tell Steve what he’d been waiting to hear for days. “Yeah … ok,” Bo said after a few moments as he crossed his arms and leaned against the netting-strewn wall, dislodging a plastic fish, which he then picked up. “Fine. Just stop harpin’ on me.”
Steve smiled wide and clapped Bo on the back while Shawn took a moment to close his jaw and control the wetness in his eyes.
Bo threw the fish at Steve’s head, which he dodged and said, “Nice show of maturity, dude. See, you’re gonna have no problem fittin’ right back in there.”
A couple minutes later, Bo and Steve started to wrap up the fish when Shawn came out from the stairwell. “So, how’d it go, lads?”
Steve eyed him carefully; the tone of his voice was missing its usual joviality. It sounded more like he had something on his mind.
“It was slow, Pop,” Bo said, “sorry we don’t have great receipts.”
“It’s yer sister,” Shawn said, “she turns more heads, they buy more fish.”
Steve didn’t doubt that was true at all.
Shawn counted out the drawer and asked Steve if he’d do the second count while he watched. Steve appeared honored as he agreed, knowing this was a very good sign for his plan. Shawn did the final count while the boys closed up, and Steve, once again, went for the mop and started on the floors. He watched for Shawn’s reaction out of the corner of his eye and saw clearly when the elder Brady was watching him and turned on the required level of enthusiasm. He knew his father-in-law, and the man was distracted, though, and he wasn’t sure why.
“Mr. Brady, thanks for letting me lend a hand here, again, it gave me a great chance to hang out with Bo, and I really enjoyed it.”
“Thank you, Steven, you really know what yer doin’ with a knife, lad. I saw ya debone that halibut. Used a few tricks I thought I was the only one that knew ‘em. Who taught ya?”
Steve smiled. “Just some skills I’ve picked up along the way,” he said.
“Ya got a lot of tricks up those sleeves of yours, I think, don’t ya?” Steve wasn’t sure what that meant, and he had a sinking feeling it might be referring to Kayla. He was wrong, of course, but he’d had no idea that Shawn had heard the exchange with Bo. Shawn saw that Steve was flapping in the wind on that one and enjoyed keeping the boy guessing. “Ok, off with ye, wash up for dinner, Mrs. Brady’s made something that’s stunk up the kitchen.”
Goodie, Steve thought. Then he followed Bo up the stairs to find Kayla back on the couch studying for anatomy class tomorrow. He wondered if they were moving on from the lower skeleton.
“Hey, Sis,” Bo said as he kissed her cheek.
“Bleuch, you’re fishy!” she pushed him away with a forced smile.
“Uh oh, Steve, no footsie for you until you de-fish.” Then he headed to his room to clean up for dinner.
Kayla’s smile turned authentic, however, fishiness notwithstanding, when Steve appeared. “Hi,” she said with excitement to see him. Her shyness was still there beneath the surface, but her eyes sparkled. So damned cute, he thought.
“Hi, Sweetness,” Steve said back, wanting so much to kiss her. He kept his distance, though, because he wasn’t ready for their PDA in front of her parents just yet, plus he really did smell like fish.
He and Kayla had been excited to spend time alone together all day, but between church and working the fish market while she studied, this was the first chance they had to be in the same room alone together since they said goodnight in the bathroom doorway last night.
“How’s the studying going?” he asked.
“Good.”
What’s the hip bone connected to these days?”
Kayla giggled. “The sacrum,” she said. “We’re moving on to the spinal unit. That’s going to last until spring break, then we go to the upper body and finish with the cranium. Tomorrow’s the first day of the unit, so I’m just getting a general look at the bones before I’m given real work.” Kayla stopped to let her tongue dart out and moisten her bottom lip, and Steve’s heart skipped a beat.
“I wish you didn’t have to go to class tomorrow,” he said sexily before he’d known what he was doing. Kayla’s eyes fixed him with a look that reflected what was happening in her belly, and Steve shook his head. “I’m sorry, when you lick your lips it drives me crazy.”
“It does?” Her voice was low so that no one would hear, and also affected by the realization that she could do something like that to him.
“O-kay, time for me to clean up for dinner.”
“I want you to kiss me first.”
“I want to kiss you, too, but your pop is due up here—“
“I’m an adult,” she whined, “I’m not going to sneak around.”
Steve sat down on the opposite side of the couch and chuckled. “Alright, down you little minx,” he said as he grabbed her foot and brought it into his lap like he’d wanted to do the other night. “We’re not gonna sneak around, you made that really clear yesterday.” This Kayla was hungry, and he had to force himself not to feed her. “Relax, there will be time for us tonight.”
“Yeah?” she asked, enjoying the very new experience of having her foot rubbed by him. It felt good, she could let him do that all day. It was like he knew all her favorite pressure points.
“Besides, I’m fishy.”
“Just a quick one?” she implored.
He never could resist her. He looked toward the stairwell like a teenager and gave her a sweet kiss on the forehead, then he got up and headed for a shower as she tutted her tongue in disappointment.
“Gimme somethin’ to wear, Beauregard,” Steve said from Bo’s doorway before he jumped into the shower. “I’m outta decent pants.”
Bo was slighter than Steve, but he still had a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that did the trick for him. They were both snug against his rippling muscles, but Kayla didn’t mind that in the least, and neither did he, really. He enjoyed the physique he was sporting these days and decided to take it as a perk of this jump.
The offending dish stinking up the kitchen was cooked cabbage, which was the first thing Caroline had made since he’d arrived that he couldn’t bear to eat. He more than made up for it with the chowder, which he’d never get enough of, and the corned beef that had been fall-off-the-bone stewing for hours.
Normally on Sunday nights things wound down early in preparation for the work week, which always started at the crack of dawn for the elder Bradys. This time Bo, Steve, and Kayla lingered in the living room, each with a different agenda. Bo wanted to go back to the Cheatin’ Heart and pick up girls, Steve wanted to go there to hustle up some clothing money, and Kayla wanted that date Steve had promised her the night before. Steve wanted that, too, and thought he could get that and the pool hustle at the same time. Steve knew Kayla had class in the morning, so he decided that they’d better get going before time got away from them and suggested they all go together.
“Aw, come on, man, I don’t need my sister cramping my style.”
“What kind of style do you think I’m going to cramp, you’ve got to get them to look at you first,” Kayla teased.
“Are you trippin’, Kay? They’re gonna look,” he said. Steve busted out laughing at the 70’s slang that just continued to come out of Bo’s mouth at a regular rate.
“What’s so damn funny, sh*thead?”
Steve shook his head and waved his hand as the laugher formed a stitch in his side. He didn’t really remember this from the first time, and he wished he could hit the record button on his phone so he could play back the hysterically funny words coming out of Bo’s mouth for him when they got home.
Kayla smiled. His face lit up the room when he laughed.
Finally Steve calmed down and just before they left for the Heart the phone rang. Bo ran to the kitchen to get it, and it turned out to be Kayla’s lab partner, David, wanting to know if he was picking her up in the morning. Before Kayla knew it, Bo was hanging out the kitchen doorway with the phone on his ear, inviting him to the Cheatin’ Heart to hang out with them. Kayla waved her arms frantically no, but that just encouraged her brother’s torture even more.
“Nah,” Bo said, “we’ve got a friend with us, but the more the merrier, Dave, come on down … You know the place?”
“Bo!” she shouted her whisper.
“Right, that’s the one,” Bo said. Great, see ya in about 20.” Then he hung up.
“Bo!” Kayla said. Steve grinned, Bo always did know how to rile her up.
“What?”
“That was rotten!”
“Come on, Kay, now we’re an even four, and I can spend just a couple minutes with Steve, if you can tear yourself away, while you and Dave talk bones. Besides, he was my friend first, ya know,” nudging his head toward Steve. This whole fighting over him thing was … weirdly flattering. “I don’t mind sharing him, but play along, will ya?”
Now Kayla felt bad. She really had completely poached Steve from him. But as far as she knew she only had three more days with him while Bo would have three more months. Plus, she kind of wanted to spend time with Bo, too, before he left. She saw David almost every day, so it seemed a little unfair. But in the end, she got over it, and they all walked to the Heart.
Kayla had never been to the Cheatin’ Heart before. It was not what she expected. The crowd wasn’t rough, really, but they weren’t exactly college types. They were blue collar workers like her folks, and so there was a familiarity there. But the women were all much older, and a little bit … hardened. Experienced. Loose. Steve saw Kayla’s demeanor and wondered if she was ok with this. In seven more years she would stroll right in there and decide she belonged there just fine during her pursuit of him. Right now, however, she might not be there quite yet.
“You ok, Kayla?” Steve asked? “You wanna go?”
“Aw, come on,” Bo said rolling his eyes.
“No,” she replied in the very same way that she did when she insisted that she was completely ready and willing to drink that beer with the egg in it that she didn’t see coming. “I’m fine, it’s just different is all. I like the music.” Steve wasn’t so sure, but sitting at the table together just like they’d done so many times before made him feel amazing. Like time had stopped.
About ten minutes later David arrived, and Steve knew immediately that if there was ever a guy that wasn’t a threat, he was it. Despite Kayla’s initial annoyance with Bo’s having invited him, she was genuinely pleased to see him. He was about 5’7” with a thick mane of tight brown curls, and a kind, calm demeanor that made Steve like him immediately. There was nothing terribly stereotypical about him, but he did give off a vibe. Steve agreed, the guy was very likely gay.
“David, you know my brother, Bo.”
“Hi again,” David said.
“Hey, man.” Bo gave him a what’s up nod and said “get ya one?” as he tipped back his own beer.
“Yeah, thanks,” he said. “I’ll get the next round.”
“And this is …” Kayla wasn’t sure how to proceed with Steve.
“Name’s Steve Johnson,” he made clear from the get-go. “Kayla’s boyfriend.”
Kayla’s mouth hung open again, and she suddenly felt the need to cross her legs.
“Oh!” David said with excitement like he really was her very best girlfriend. Now he saw what Kayla meant by that. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend, why didn’t you tell me?!”
“I … didn’t, uh …”
“We just sort of got serious the other day,” Steve said. Then he leaned over, kissed her cheek, and whispered, “you’re catchin’ flies, baby.”
Kayla closed her mouth. “Yes, ah … that’s right,” she said almost dreamily. “This is my boyfriend. He’s, um … he’s in the merchant marines. He has to go back on Wednesday, though,” and her voice showed her disappointment. Don’t worry, baby, I’m not goin’ anywhere. He wanted to tell her, but Bo needed to come clean about school first. Kayla wrapped her arm around Steve’s and squeezed.
“So, David, you’re Kayla’s lab partner? How’s school goin’ for you? You’re studying to be a nurse, too, right?” He said it with genuine interest, and David smiled slightly.
“Yeah, I am,” he said with an edge of surprise in his voice.
Steve was confused. “What, you had to think about that?” he laughed.
“You just … you say it like it’s not a big deal.”
Steve tilted his head and curled his lip. “Ya lost me, dude.”
“I’m studying to be a nurse.”
“David, you’re the only one who thinks it’s weird,” Kayla said.
“And you’re the only one in class who agreed to be my lab partner, so I doubt that’s true.”
Steve sensed that there was some politics happening that he wasn’t aware of. “You’re gonna have to give me the course for dummies, ‘cause I’m not getting what you’re puttin’ out there, dude. Why’s it weird for you to be a nur—ooooh.” It hit Steve what he was getting at. “’Cause you’re a guy.”
“And the pretty, blonde, man wins a kewpie doll.”
The fact that David just described Steve as pretty didn’t register with him as much as the completely extinct reference to the carnival game prize. These constant pop culture reminders never ceased to make him take a mental step back.
“So, you’re shocked that I don’t care?”
“That you didn’t even react. I’m not used to that.”
Steve plowed his hand through his hair, then rested his arm around Kayla’s shoulders. “Doesn’t make me no nevermind, you’ll be laughin’ all the way to the bank when you get yourself a good payin’ job with that degree.”
“Steve is related to a nurse,” Kayla said.
“What?” Bo piped in as he arrived back at the table. “Who?” He handed David his beer, then he turned a chair around and sat on it backwards with great flourish, showing off for the two women that had to be five or six years older than him sitting at the bar. Steve had half a mind to go look up Hope, but he was fairly certain she was about 12 years old. So much for that.
Steve realized this might get sticky and just steered the conversation to pool. “I was gonna try to hustle up a game of pool; could use some cash. Don’t see anyone playin’, though. Lots of dancin’, but no one grabbing a cue.” Wish I had mine. Can’t lose with that one, he thought to himself not for the first time.
“What do you mean, hustle up a game?” For some reason, Kayla couldn’t get the image of the Hustler magazine she found under Bo’s bed once out of her head.
Steve explained the basic concept to the group, and Bo confirmed that Steve is a hell of a player and could easily make $25 or $30. Yeah, or add a zero to that with inflation …
But there were not a lot of takers tonight, and after an hour of shooting the breeze between the four of them while bar patrons paired off and danced around them to every song that played, Steve resigned himself to the fact that he wasn’t actually going to be able to make a fast buck tonight. Well, that was just too bad, he’d have to go to the money he had to buy some clothes tomorrow.
By now Bo had turned around in his chair to talk to a girl that graduated a year ahead of Bo that Kayla knew from high school, and David had gone to the bar to buy the second round, which Kayla declined. Bo and the girl were clearly hitting it off, and Steve just wanted to go back to the house and be, finally, alone with his wife.
Steve loved how she looked, though he wasn’t sure how she would have felt about it. She wore the same hip-hugger bellbottoms that she’d worn when they arrived four days ago, and her rust colored sweater had tassels that hung off a laced up neckline that he was aching to pull apart. Her sleeves belled out, too, and she was just a 70’s fashion plate, that was for sure. He felt his wife with him at every turn, in every second, with every blink of her eye. It was such a strange mix of realities for him. Sometimes she’d look at him with eyes that for just a moment looked like she knew all his secrets, but then he’d see her innocence and be reminded that she didn’t know they were married. He loved her so much. He wanted to tell her how much, but she wouldn’t understand the depth of the love he had for her. Not today, four days into her having laid eyes on him for the first time. But oh, how he wanted to take her in his arms and tell her that he’d love her until the day he died.
Steve watched Kayla’s eyes follow the couples on the dance floor with longing, and he knew she wanted to dance. Well, that was something he would be more than happy to deliver to his Sweetness. Abba’s Knowing Me and Knowing You was playing, and while it wasn’t his ideal pick, he didn’t really care what he danced to, as long as it was Kayla dancing with him.
“Hey, baby,” Steve said as he reached his lips to her neck and kissed her.
Kayla gasped at the new sensation. “Oh wow,” she said.
“You wanna dance with—” Steve was broken out of his focus by the universally time-transcending sounds of someone at the bar being an asshole to someone else. And that someone else was David. Steve tore his lips away from Kayla’s neck just as Kayla heard the same ruckus and opened her eyes to check it out.
“I said, this place ain’t for your kind,” a skinny man of about six feet tall with long sideburns and a trucker’s cap said as he leaned his elbows back against the bar.
“I’ve got a lot of kinds,” David said, “So, you’ll have to get more specific.”
That was witty. Nice one, dude, Steve thought to himself, but Trucker Cap wasn’t happy that David wasn’t running scared yet, and now Kayla straightened her back when it had caught her attention, too.
“You hear what I’m sayin’ to you, f*ggot?!”
“Hey!” Kayla shot up, her face screwed up in anger. Steve shouldn’t have been stunned at Kayla’s abject anger at such a vile word used on her friend, but he wasn’t expecting the outburst. “Who do you think you are?!”
Oh, this isn’t good.
“Here we go,” Bo said quietly. “Kay, shush!”
“No, I’m not going to shush, Bo! How would you like it if someone decided to call you a name because you had long hair, huh?”
“Yeah, well I don’t like hippies any more than I like f*gs,” the man said.
Steve wanted to get Kayla out of there, but he was so proud of her for being the woman she’d never stopped being for her entire life. Kind and not just accepting but nurturing of everyone around her until they gave her a reason not to – and sometimes even then, too. He placed a possessive arm around her waist from his position in his seat when Kayla fearlessly left his side and went to David’s. “Kayla,” he tried to stop her.
Bo and Steve watched the next exchange as if in slow motion before they could do anything to diffuse it.
“This is my friend, we have as much right to be here as you do, so back off!” She was nervous, and her body language showed it as she swayed back and forth in front of the man, but she held her ground, refusing to let his comment go undefended. David tried to protest and tugged on her arm to get her back to the table with him, but she was too angry to let the epithet go.
“You his f*g hag? You got a mouth on you.” He now rose to his full height and purposely towered over her. “How ‘bout you shut it, bitch?”
Steve was up so fast that his chair fell over, and he closed the distance between them in light speed. “That how you talk to women, asshole?” Steve said in a low, menacing voice as he fisted the mans’ plaid flannel collar in both his hands. “Huh? You get off on hate? Maybe you’ve just got such a tiny little dick that you’ve gotta compensate, is that it?”
Steve easily outweighed and outwitted this guy, and his bluster suddenly shrank a bit.
“That’s my girlfriend, and I don’t like people calling her names.”
“And my sister, and I like it even less,” Bo added with his own anger.
“Now you say you’re sorry, meathead.” The man looked to the bartender for help, but he didn’t give two sh*ts.
“And for the record, this guy’s not just her friend, but he’s mine, too, so you say you’re sorry real nice-like to him, too, and you do it right f*cking now.”
David was stunned at the show of support from a person he’d never met but an hour ago and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
“Hey, I’ll say sorry to the blonde, but God hates f*gs, so I got my limits!”
“Oh yeah, you wanna dance?” Steve threatened. “I like to dance.”
Steve was much, much bigger than Trucker Hat in all the right places. Plus, Trucker Hat was very, very stupid. And with the look in Steve’s eye at his refusal to apologize to David, it dawned on him that even though he hated him, he’d possibly chosen the wrong guy to harass.
Bo went to the door and opened it, letting in the cold wind, and the crowd groaned. “Hey, Steve, he’s a piece of garbage, throw him out with the rest of the trash!”
“Good idea, Beaugregard!” He pushed the guy backwards out the door, and before he released him, he said, “You don’t say another word to my friend, again, meathead. And you see her? You never f*cking look her way again or I’ll kick your nuts up into your eye sockets, you got me?” Then he pushed him out into the night, and Bo slammed the door behind him. The crowd clapped solely because the door had now closed, which was apparent from the looks of annoyance rather than appreciation on their faces.
Steve’s adrenaline was pumping, and Bo felt like it was another day in port. The two guys shook hands and did a traditional “gimme five” before Steve turned back to see Kayla and David staring at him slack-jawed. Steve realized they were both still processing what had just happened, and he was flattered at their obvious admiration. But he also was mad as hell at Kayla for not being smarter at the battles she chooses. Not that that one wasn’t worth fighting, but that if he and Bo hadn’t been there that it wouldn’t have been winnable.
“Steve,” David said, “Bo … thank you. No one’s ever done that for me. Stood up for me like that.”
“Don’t mention it, dude. People are stupid.” Then he focused on Kayla and ran his hands up and down her shoulders and then brushed her hair back with his hand. Despite the affectionate gesture, his tone was harsher. “Baby, what were you thinkin’? You could have gotten yourself hurt with that idiot. I know you wanted to stand up for your friend, and I’m proud that you did, I really am, but you have to be smarter. If Bo and I hadn’t been here you would have been in trouble.” She was still staring at him in astonishment, and he started to wonder when she was going to lay into him for scolding her. “I might not be here next time, so—”
Before Steve could finish, Kayla pressed herself against him and kissed him passionately. “Mmf … baby … oh, baby …” he moaned into their kiss as his cock began to lengthen significantly. He was thankful for the tightness of the jeans.
“Ya know, I don’t need to be seein’ this,” Bo said with a roll to his eyes, “So, when you two come up for air, I’ll be on the dance floor.” He then took the girl he’d been talking to who now had her own stars in her eyes and began dancing.
Steve and Kayla continued to kiss there in the wide open space of the bar, and she tasted so damned good. He wanted to taste her lips all night. He wanted to taste all of her. Finally they broke, and Kayla’s eyes were hooded with desire. “What was that for, Sweetness?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.
“That was for me,” David said, all but forgotten from where he was eyeing them with a smile on his face. “I’d kiss you, too, but you’re already claimed,” he joked.
Steve laughed. “Yeah, I don’t swing that way.”
“No!” David mocked. “Well on that note, I think it’s time for me to be going, we’ve got class tomorrow. See you at 8:15,” he said.
“Ok, see you,” Kayla replied. Then she stopped him with a hand on his arm and tentatively hugged him. “I’m sorry he was such an … asshole,” she said.
David and Steve both smiled at her use of the word “asshole.” “Thank you, Kayla. And thank you, too, Steve.” The man really meant it, and it was a serious wake-up call to Steve that the “awakened” ‘70’s weren’t as progressive as they purported to be.
“Dave, I’ll walk ya out,” Bo said and winked at the girl who’d taken a liking to him. “Hey, guys, I’ve got some serious sleeping in to do in the morning, so see ya back at home?”
“Yeah,” Steve said.
“Love you, little brother,” Kayla said. “Be careful!”
“Yeah, yeah, no strays!” Kayla laughed as the three of them left the Cheatin’ Heart.
When they got back to their table, Steve took a swig of beer and waited for her to say what he could clearly see her trying to form the words to.
“Thank you for defending me.” She said as she looked down upon the table. Steve tilted her face up with his finger and they kissed quickly. “And David. I couldn’t—believe—the—what you said.”
God he loved her. “Kayla, the guy was out of line, and he deserved everything you said, I just didn’t want you to get hurt, and I just had this vision of him … hurting you. And there was no way I was gonna let him call you names.”
“But, I mean, I got up in his face.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re right, wrong, or both, I’ll always defend you. I’ll always be on your side.”
“Well, if it’s between me and Bo,” she chuckled with humor tugging at her eyes, “that’ll be a tougher call for your loyalties, I think. Ya know, your best friend or your girlfriend,” she smiled. She loved calling herself that. Steve, however, wasn’t laughing.
“I’ll always be on your side,” Steve repeated. His face was solemn, and it made Kayla’s breath catch in her throat. She swallowed hard at the realization of what he was saying, and blinked.
“And if I’m wrong …”
“Your side. Always.”
Kayla was touched beyond her ability to form words. “Steve,” she whispered.
Steve cupped her face and brought it to his lips for sweet and tender kisses all over her face, then finally her lips. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her and as the next song started, his heart overflowed even as it broke. Within seconds of the piano’s beautifully steady notes reaching their ears, Steve stood up. Without another word, he took this woman that meant everything to him in his arms right there at their table and started swaying her slowly to the rhythm of the song. Rather than let her lay her head upon his chest for the dance, he caressed her face with his thumb and looked her in the eyes as he softly sang the words to her.
“Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
An endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
And you …” he almost didn’t get the word out, “its only seed.”
For the first time on this jump, Steve saw Kayla’s eyes fill with unshed tears, and he had to stop singing for the moment for fear of breaking down, the emotions roiling inside of him were that intense. For the next verse, Steve brought Kayla’s head against him and kissed the top of it, and he felt her crying shoulders shake just once as she took in the meaning of the words he’d sung to her.
Kayla had saved him all those years ago. She’d written out this poem for him on the inside of his beloved cookbook that was still in their apartment not far from here along with their children, and she saved him from a life described in the cautionary words she’d written. She’d saved him from the fear of a broken heart. And never learning to dance in the light of their love. She’d saved him from the fear of allowing himself to awaken into a world where he took a chance on not just her but them. She saved him from a life so afraid to take the love she so freely gave and where his soul would be afraid to live. She’d tried to tell him how much she loved him with the written words from this beautiful song; and now he was doing the same.
Steve lifted her face back up to look at him, and it held a wonder he’d see so many more times through the years, while her eyes streamed with tears. Steve brushed them away with his thumb as he continued to dance with her and found the strength to finish his serenade.
“When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose.”
Everyone in the bar had turned to watch them, and every woman, jaded or otherwise, was touched at the love this young man clearly had for the woman in his arms.
Now Steve bent his head to Kayla’s ear and whispered the words he could no longer hold back. “I love you, Kayla.” In a rational world it would seem to soon, but nothing was rational, he loved her so much, and he could no longer stop from telling her. Then he brought her lips to his and kissed her softly as her tears continued to flow.
The bar slowly tore their eyes away as the next song started, and Kayla thought she was in a dream. “You love me?” she asked through her tears.
They were still swaying. “I do, Sweetness.” He fought off tears of his own and looked deeply into those blue eyes that told him how much they loved him on their wedding day as he signed his vows to her. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Kayla said as fresh tears fell over her lashes.
Steve closed his eyes. He knew it was not the same love that she would feel as the years went by and their hearts bonded in ways the girl in his arms couldn’t begin to fathom. But hearing those words out of her mouth – he needed them so much. He needed to hear her say she loved him and really mean it. And now she had. And it was beautiful. He had to be with her. Alone. Right now, he had to go and be with her.
“Really?” he asked.
“Really,” she assured him with a soft, beautiful smile. “I—I knew it last night. I know it hasn’t been long, but—but—“
“Shh, I know, baby, I know.”
“But I knew.” They’d stopped dancing, but Steve’s arms were around Kayla’s waist, and her hands were up gently clasping the back of Steve’s neck. Now she took her right hand and ran her fingers over the ridge of his left eyebrow and looked deeply into his eye. Steve shivered at the meaning she had no idea the gesture had for him, and again he felt that eye, plus the other one, want very badly to mist over.
“Baby,” Steve whispered, his voice completely affected. Then before she could see the emotion, he held her to him and breathed in the smell of her hair. He held her that way for several minutes, swaying her to Kansas’s Dust in the Wind, but continuing to hear The Rose in their heads.
The walk home went by in a veritable haze. They knew they got there, but neither of them remembered actually navigating the short distance over the pier and back into the house. Kayla’s parents were asleep and, of course, Bo was not back yet. They went into their separate rooms, closed their doors, and immediately met in the bathroom and began kissing with passion.
Steve walked Kayla backwards into her room without letting his lips leave hers, and they softly collapsed into her bed and continued letting their mouths explore each other. He closed his eyes and felt his wife in his arms and couldn’t take it. He plunged his tongue into her mouth, and she welcomed it with the familiar feel of her own. The weeks before this jump were the worst kind of hell he could actually remember, and now, Kayla’s arms around him just continued to heal him. Steve couldn’t take it, he had to feel more of her. He wanted to put his hands on her, but that was a line he didn’t want to cross.
“I love you, Kayla,” he whispered so softly and wondered if they should move to his room, which didn’t share a wall with her parents. Her body was beneath his, and this time, Kayla didn’t recoil from the erection she felt against her thigh. “I love you so much, baby.”
“I love you more.”
Steve pulled his face away and held her gaze. “No, you don’t,” he said looking down upon her with a sad smile. “But one day you’ll love me just as much.”
Kayla didn’t understand why he’d say that. Because it had only been four days? She did love him. She felt like she couldn’t possibly love him any more than she did right now. Of course, she was wrong. But there was nothing he could say to her that would help her understand that, so he just let it go. It did tug at him, however, to know that the deep love he needed from her wasn’t there yet.
Kayla didn’t like the doubt she saw in his eyes. She would just have to make sure he understood. “I love that you are completely unselfish,” Kayla whispered up to him. “I love how I can tell from the look in your eyes how much you care about my father and how much you respect them both. I love how you’ve taken care of my brother and made sure he lived to come home. I love that you got him home to us.”
“You know about that?”
Kayla shook her head. “But he couldn’t have done it himself because he wrote me enough for me to know that he has hardly a dime to his name. You did that, Steve. I know you did. With your own money.” He couldn’t very well tell her that he did it so he could get home to her, but the impact of her words was deep.
“I love your beautiful green eyes and how they look at me like I’m the only girl in the whole world.” Steve felt an ache with that statement, knowing how Kayla would have felt about him with two eyes. “I love how strong and capable you are, and how generous. And I love how you protect people that need protecting.”
Steve bent his lips to kiss hers again, and she ran her fingers down his cheek. “I’m in love with you. Don’t you see that?”
Steve’s eyes stung, but he refused to let himself cry. The realization that Kayla loved him hit him now with a ferocity that stunned him. Kayla loved him. Right now. Today. At age 23. She loved him. And my God, he loved her back. This 18-year-old version of her that would become his wife, he loved her. Not just the memory of who she would be as he experienced her from age 25, but her right here solidly beneath him. Looking down upon her like this as she filled his heart with the adoration in her eye, he had truly fallen in love with her. The emotions electrified him as the love he poured into her doubled; it was the love for his wife in 2009 that he pined for so badly, but it was also the love he felt for her today. It took his breath away. And he believed that there was such a thing as fate, that they really did belong together; in any time, in any circumstance, their souls could not be kept apart.
Steve couldn’t control himself, he brought his lips to the delicate skin of Kayla’s neck and trailed firm, wet, demanding kisses along the areas he knew drove her wild. Feeling them for the first time so aggressively, Kayla cried out softly. He wanted to fill his palm with her breast, lift it to his lips, and make her feel good as his tongue swept over it, but he resisted touching her more intimately than he already had. Instead he wrapped his strong arms around her held her to him firmly as he sucked on the tender flesh at the crook of her neck. He felt immense pleasure when that caused her to twist and squirm in his grasp. He gently bit at her suggestively, being sure it would not leave any evidence for her parents to see, and then moved up to suck on her earlobe. “Kayla … baby …” He lost himself in feeling her reaction to what he could do just by kissing her. Then he was brought back into reality when he felt Kayla thrust her groin into him. With difficulty, he tore himself from her smooth skin and forced himself to calm down.
Steve touched the pads of his fingers to her lips and shook his head very slowly. “Kayla, there are things you don’t understand.” He was having a hard time controlling his breathing. And his mouth. And his hands. “But I do see … how much you love me. I do. I love you too, I wish you knew how much.”
In answer, Kayla untied her laced up collar and began to spread open the revealing fabric. Steve caught her hand before she could and shook his head again.
“You’re not ready,” he whispered.
“Yes, I am. I want you to touch me.”
Steve sat them up and saw her breasts supported in a bra that her 2009 breasts, which had been through two pregnancies and were now nursing their baby son, would never have hoped to fit into. He took each side of her knit sweater and closed it back up, then he re-tied the tassel.
“You don’t know how badly I want to,” he said.
“Then why don’t you?”
“It’s—”
“Complicated, I know,” Kayla finished with frustration.
“Baby, please, shh, I don’t want your folks hearin’ us.”
“Ok,” she said, then launched herself off the end of her twin bed and silently went to his bed. Steve followed and sat opposite her.
“Baby, listen, we don’t have to rush.”
“Do you think I’ve never been touched before?”
Steve took a beat. “Say what?”
“I’m not as inexperienced as you think.” She tried to sound so mature and assuring.
Steve knew better, but he didn’t want to break her spirit. At the same time, her breasts were heaving up and down as her breaths had begun to come far more quickly with her arousal, and he had a hard time keeping his hands off of them. Then don’t, he heard himself say. And before he could stop himself, he reached his hand out and fondled her left breast over her sweater. Kayla gasped, and Steve let his palm cover it, feeling her nipple harden through the two layers of fabric that separated it from his fingers. “So beautiful,” he murmured, relishing the feel of his wife’s body as his other hand laced his fingers into hers.
Kayla’s insides ached. This wasn’t a feeling she’d ever experienced, and it made her release aroused wetness between her legs. Heat rose in her cheeks realizing what that wetness was for.
Steve saw her turn red right before his eyes and took his hand away. “You ok?”
“Mm-hmm,” she said in a strange voice.
“No you’re not, what is it?” We’re going too fast.
Kayla shook her head. “Touch me.”
“No. Tell me what happened just now.”
“I … I think I’m … horny.” Her flush deepened another shade.
Steve smiled and watched her body language as her legs rubbed together. “Yep, I think that’s it, Sweetness,” he said.
“Oh my God,” she whispered feeling the ache radiate through her womb and up into her throat.
“That’ll go away when we stop. Which should be now.”
“No, I don’t want to stop,” she insisted. “I want to feel you near me just a little while longer.”
Steve knew he should march her off to bed, but he didn’t want it to end. He laid them down and they kissed for several more minutes. He allowed his hands to palm her breasts as they made out on the bed, and once he even rubbed himself against her thigh without realizing what he was doing. The pleasure it sent through his penis was amazing and served to waken him out of his stupor.
“Ok, time for bed.”
“Come with me!”
Oh, I will come with you, baby. As soon as you get here, I’ll be coming with you.
“Do me a favor, baby?”
“Anything,” she said.
“Help me buy some clothes tomorrow after class?”
Kayla smiled. “Really?”
“Yeah, I’m out of stuff to wear, and your brother’s jeans are cuttin’ off my circulation.”
“Do they have to be things you can wear on the boat, or do you mean other kinds of things, like when you’re on liberty?”
Steve smiled. Now was as good a time as any. And maybe it would help her slow down a little, not that it would help him in that department. “I won’t be having any more liberties.” Kayla was silent in her question of why. “I’m not re-upping for the next 90. I’ve decided to leave the merchant marines and settle down here in Salem.”
Kayla’s heart skipped at least three beats. “You’re staying? In Salem?!” This time she watched her decibel level. Steve nodded, and Kayla was overjoyed. “I can’t believe it! I get to see you past Wednesday?”
“Sure do, baby.”
Kayla shot up and sat facing him on her knees. “Why? Why the career change?”
“You’re why.” Kayla’s eyes softened in awe. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but … then I met you, and I realized I was ready.”
“Steve …”
“I meant what I said to you. I love you. And I can’t leave.” Kayla’s heart soared, and the dull ache between her legs subsided. “So, listen,” he threaded his fingers through her hair, “now that we’ve got plenty of time, it’s time for bed, you have school in the morning. And no disrespecting your folks house, we sleep in our own beds at night.” Kayla nodded and kissed him sweetly. “Mm, you taste so good, baby.”
“So do you,” she smiled. “I love you.”
Steve held her to him. “I love you, too, Kayla.”
Kayla and Steve fell asleep with their song in their heads. For Kayla it was new. For Steve it was decades old. For both of them it represented forever.