“I can hear your thoughts from here,” I tell her with a crooked grin. “And yes, he did have some chauvinist tendencies my stepmother cur
ed him of pretty quickly.”
Her rich laughter and the warmth in her eyes ease the ache in my chest a little. I rarely talk about it because I hate feeling this way. Weak and helpless, like I can’t make it hurt less and I can’t ever bring her back, but I don’t feel those things tonight. It feels right to tell one incredible woman in my life about the other.
“Mom wasn’t a pushover, though.” I toy with the cloth napkin wrapped around my silverware. “She just loved my dad so much. Wanted to make him happy all the time. That’s how she was. She always wanted everyone to be happy.”
“Was your father still in the military then?”
I don’t even remember telling Banner my dad was military, but I nod.
“Yeah. Army, so we lived all over when I was young.” I shrug, dislodging the tightness creeping over my shoulders. “Dad got out soon after she died. Retired.”
“He wanted to be there for you? I imagine that was such a tough time with you being so young.”
I hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. It never occurred to me that my father did that for me, but maybe he did. He wasn’t around as much when he was in the army and if he’d been deployed, I would have had to stay with relatives.
“Maybe.” I look down at the table but don’t see the white linen tablecloth for a minute. I see, instead, my dad crying at my mother’s grave. Feel him clutching my hand like a lifeline. “I guess that is when we started getting close.”
“You have pictures?”
The question takes me off guard, and I stare at her like she asked me if I know where they buried Jimmy Hoffa.
“Uh, yeah. I do actually.” It’s the only physical photo I carry around. Everything else is digital, but this one I like to hold every once in a while. I dig out my wallet and pull the time-worn photo from the hidden pocket.
“Wow.” Banner studies the photo I handed her. “She’s gorgeous. That skin!”
“She was Italian. Guess it’s why I’m a little darker, too. Little bit of year-round tan in the genes.”
“That’s the only difference between you and your dad.” Banner raises wide eyes. “You guys could be twins, otherwise.”
My father was a little younger in that photo than I am now, and Banner’s right. The likeness is uncanny.
“Was it hard for you?” She passes the photo back to me. “When your dad started dating your stepmother?”
“You know, it wasn’t. Me and my dad had a few years, just the two of us, before she and August came along. I was a little older and frankly ready to have a woman back in the house. My dad couldn’t cook for shit.”
We share a chuckle, a lingering glance because talking about this stuff feels so . . . close. It feels like we’re venturing into something new and deeper. The water’s at my ankles, but for Banner, talking with her this way, with her looking this way, with her being this way, I’d wade in to the knees. Higher.
“So destiny brought the future basketball player and the future sports agent together under one roof, and the rest is history, huh?”
“Something like that.” I look around for the waiter to refill my drink. “Sorry that got so heavy.”
“I don’t mind heavy,” she says softly. “Life is heavy sometimes.”
And there it is. She’s one of those people who isn’t uncomfortable with the pain of others. It’s not awkward for her. She doesn’t say those weird things, the pat phrases that don’t actually mean anything, that don’t do anything, like empty calories.
The server brings our food and we dig in, both making appreciative noises instead of talking when the dishes first hit the table. We quiz each other over steaming plates and several more drinks. Banner finds a fruity one with no pineapple and plenty of alcohol. I begged the waiter for a Jameson and am on my third by the time we’ve excavated the last ten years of each other’s lives and at least some of the things we never knew.
The air around us thickens with every drink we take and every secret we share. Our drinks must be spiked with lust, some aphrodisiac that has us both heavy-lidded, licking our lips, linking ankles under the table, stealing touches every chance we get. I’m torn between continuing the most stimulating conversation I’ve had in years and taking Banner home for the best sex of my life.
“So now that I know everything from your favorite color to your favorite movie,” I say. “I think it’s time to dig deeper.”
“Deeper?” She relaxes into the seat, sipping the deceptively frothy concoction our server has plied her with all night. “Go on. Ask me anything.”
“Strangest place you ever had sex.”
The word “sex” planted in the air makes me hard. I read an answering flare of need in Banner’s eyes. She tips her head back, draws in the fresh air off the Caribbean, and looks so much like she did last night: head tossed back, riding me, driving, controlling the pace of our bodies colliding. And the mark on her neck she didn’t bother hiding, shaped like my mouth, ringed with my teeth, is yet another reminder of how we claimed each other.