“Everything okay here?”
“Yeah.” Shit! How long was I staring at the ceiling for? “I laid on the bed for a minute and lost track of time.” He smirks and my cheeks flush again. These are the feelings that I don’t know what to do with—this fluttering, heart-pumping, kind of want to puke sensation that takes over my thoughts and makes it hard to function.
“Have you ever been in a Gator?”
The tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand. Josh doesn’t seem like the crazy redneck type. You know, the Joe Exotic kind of people that harbor illegal animals and find joy in feeding them food they’re not meant to have. I.E—me. “Please tell me you’re not talking about the animal.”
Josh sits in the driver’s seat of an oversized four-wheeler. I’ve been on a four-wheeler, once and hated every minute of it. Colson wanted to go to a Mud Festival back when I was sixteen. Mom and Dad were gone most weekends, so they never would have known we drove the four hours with his buddies if I hadn’t broken my wrist. Not the best experience, not to mention it was dirty. I’m not a prissy girl, but washing a pound of mud out of my hair with a cast on my dominant hand wasn’t easy.
Josh holds an unopened bottle of orange juice out to me. I shake my head and struggle to look away from the beads of sweat dripping down his neck. Normally, I’d say guys who sweat are gross, but Josh pulls the look off. It probably helps that I know he got this way trying to do something nice for me. At least, I hope this ride will be nice.
“You ready?” he asks. I buckle myself in and nod.
Josh grins, then puts the side-by-side in gear. The engine is loud, almost like a motorcycle, but the music blaring through the speakers drowns it out. Josh turns around the back side of his house and floors it, slinging up dirt behind him before peeling down a bumpy path. I grab the oh-shit-handle above my head and hold on like my life depends on it.
“You good?” Josh yells over the music. I try to nod but he hits a hole that sends me up off of my seat. If not for the seat belt, I would have bounced right out of this damn thing.
“Sorry.” He slows to half speed. I relax in my seat a little and try to enjoy the ride.“I’m excited to take you to the back forty. The only person who’s been out there with me is Sam.”
“It’s cool.” I clear my throat and reach for the bottle of orange juice Josh tucked into a cup holder. I break the seal and take a sip. “Now that I don’t have to worry about dying, this is kind of nice.”
Josh puts his arm over the back of the seat. I unbuckle and scoot closer. My nerves eat at me with each second I’m not strapped in. I trust Josh, but it would take nothing to lose control.
He must sense my hesitation because he grips my hip and chuckles. “I can run these roads with my eyes closed.”
“Roads?” I look around, at the vast span of untouched land that seems to go on for forever. “Where?”
“There.” Josh points to a path of pushed down grass that’s old enough to notice but new enough that had he not shown it to me, I would have missed it all together.
He hits a bump and I reach for his hand. I don’t mean to, but holding onto something makes me feel safer. “Where I come from, roads are made of asphalt, and sometimes dirt. But never grass.”
“You’re living in the wrong part of the world. This… it’s a little piece of heaven.”
I smack my arm, killing a mosquito and spreading the blood it tried to steal on my arm. “Your heaven is full of vampires.”
Josh smirks and uses the long sleeve of his shirt to wipe my arm. “Can you blame them for wanting to take a bite out of you?” His grin stretches wider. “Hang on to me.”
Josh swerves into a puddle and sprays muddy water all over the windshield. He sees another puddle, this one the size of a tiny pool and dives off into it. It’s maybe a foot deep, but at the speed we’re going, there’s enough water to splash up the sides of the Gator and sling mud everywhere.
Josh veers to the left, taking us down a dirt path and into the treeline. I huddle closer, a shiver slithering through me as the sun hides behind a veil of lush leaves. Josh holds me tight, taking his gaze off the road for a split second to kiss my temple.
I close my eyes, actually enjoying the ride. In a few hours, I have to go back to Orlando and to my life. But for now I can pretend nothing exists but this moment. The sun comes out from behind the trees and I open my eyes again.
Josh stops the Gator at the shoreline of a large pond. He pulls his arm back without saying anything and walks toward the water.
“What are we doing?”
Josh tugs his shirt over his head and for a moment I’m lost. He is fucking gorgeous. When he drops his pants, I gulp.
Josh turns, walking backwards into the water and says, “Swimming.”
Wading waist deep into the water, I get down on my knees and extend my arms. The coolness is heavenly against my hot skin. I dip my head back, letting the water wash over my face. I wanted to take Layla horseback riding, but Maybelle hasn’t been acting right the past few days and Winston is too green to put her on. I wanted to trail ride along the fence line. Letting her see the cows could have been romantic, but this is nice too.
Our pond is big, stocked with bass that have been breeding since I was a boy. Paw and I used to com
e out here, just him and I, once a month and fish. He said it was important to carve out time for just the two of us and that the water has a way of grounding you. No matter how rough life gets, we’ve got it better than these fish. The only thing outside of this water for them is death. Me, I’ve got the world at my feet, or so Paw said.
I sit up again and wipe my hand over my face. Layla’s peeling her shirt over her head. A second later she’s sliding her shorts down her hips. She walks to the bank with one arm over her stomach and tucks her hair behind her ears with the other hand.