I bellow out a laugh. “I wish that was the case.”
“How long have you and Lexi been going out?” she continues. “Hurry up, Park is going to kill me if he finds me grilling you.”
I chuckle. They are opposites these too. Rachel has no qualms about poking her nose in her friend’s business while Park minds his own.
“We met right before I went to Afghanistan and then got back together when I came back,” I tell her. “Luna is her sister’s child.”
She looks at me thoughtfully. Then she takes the lemonade. “I’ll keep Lexi company. Go and say hi to everyone.”
“Okay,” I say and head to the tables.
I know almost everyone has grown up in Santa Monica. It’s nice to catch up. I note that everyone is married with kids. When I was in Afghanistan, it was easy to think that time would stand still. That when I came back everyone would be in the same place I had left them.
It’s a little disconcerting to find myself as the only unmarried person. Rachel brings Lexi over and introduces her as my girlfriend. It’s a good thing that Stacy has left.
Lexi is good with people, definitely more talkative than I am. It’s nice to sit back and watch her socializing. I’m starting to have more than a passing interest in her. But that could also be because I’ve been around guys for too long.
Chapter 8
Lexi
“This is perfect,” I tell Ace as we sit together perched on a rock looking out at the ocean.
The musky scent of sand and seaweed permeates the air. A slight breeze rises and rustles the flowers and trees around us. I cannot imagine living a few steps away from the ocean. How cool is that?
Everyone else is back at the house and Luna and Kacy are napping. They insisted on sleeping in the same bed and I felt comfortable leaving Luna under Rachel’s care. “I like your friends.”
Park and Rachel are warm and welcoming. It seems as if the whole group of friends grew up together here in Santa Monica. What a nice thing to have friends from your childhood and now share the experience of raising children with.
“They’re good people,” Ace says.
He seems so at peace out here and I wonder why he lives out in LA when he could be living here. I know from Declan that their parent’s home is around these parts.
“If I were you, I’d be living here,” I tell him.
He chuckles in response. “I used to live here before enlisting in the military,” he says. “Change is good. You can’t be born in the same place, go to school there, and work there for the rest of your life.”
I stick out my chin. “And why not? I was born and bred in LA and I’ve no plans of moving.”
Ace turns to me. His eyes bore into mine and a shiver goes through me. He is easily the sexiest man that I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just his physical features, which are perfect, by the way. It’s an energy that comes off him. A sexual appeal that turns me into a sex-obsessed female.
I think how nice it would be to kiss him. To have him make love to me under the skies.
“You’ve seriously never thought of moving or traveling even?” he asks.
I look out at the ocean. At how far it stretches and then disappears into nothingness. Now that I think about it, I would like to travel. I’d love to see how other people live.
“Nope, not before now,” I tell Ace.
“There’s a whole world out there,” he says. “Going places makes you see things from a different perspective.”
When he says such things, it makes me want to tell him that Luna is his daughter. But something stops me. A sense of preservation I suppose. It can’t hurt to wait a little longer.
“Maybe one day I’ll get a chance to travel,” I say.
“I’ve sailed to lots of places,” Ace says.
“Yeah? Like where?”
“Let me see,” he says and then rattles off a list of exotic-sounding places. “The Bahamas, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, The Dominican Republic.”
“How do you sail there from California?” I ask.
He laughs. “You don’t. You fly to Miami and rent a different sailboat. From here, you sail to Catalina, to Cabo San Lucas, to Santa Rosa…”
I’m entranced as I listen to his descriptions of places he has been. I stare at the ocean as he speaks, and I try to imagine getting on a sailing ship and just sailing away.
“There’s no feeling like being out in the vast ocean knowing that your time is yours and there’s nowhere you’re expected to be,” Ace says.
It does sound glorious. I lose track of time as Ace and I sit on the rock staring out at the ocean chatting. We’re both different out here. Less guarded. More open with our deepest thoughts. I like this version of Ace.