She slowly removed her finger from her mouth and smiled. “Just don’t forget to at least use their phone to call me when you get there.”
I patted my pocket with the number she’d given me along with the wad of cash. I hadn’t wanted to accept it, and probably wouldn’t have had I not been worried about retribution from my past. Holing up in a motel and staying off my drums until Grace could help find an acceptable foster care solution for me seemed the safest bet. I’d told her about care facilities that catered to at-risk kids like myself. They were more like centers than homes, but they offered both school and vocational studies, and I could stay in them until I aged out of the system. So, yes. I’d agreed to her loan, knowing one day I’d pay her back in full, and then some.
“I will. As long as the room has a phone.”
“What kind of hotel doesn’t have a phone?”
There was that word again. Hotel. “The kind I stay at. But I promise, Grace. I’ll find a way to contact you.”
“Tonight?”
“I’ll try. Otherwise, tomorrow I’ll find a shelter and use their phone.”
“Tomorrow,” she repeated, laying her head back against the seat and pretending to cry. “Tomorrow is so far away.”
I leaned over the console, just staring at her. She was so beautiful. So much more than I should be allowed. I couldn’t help but flash back to that moment in the towel hut, her moaning in my arms. I could have had her right there, but I knew well that once innocence was gone, you could never get it back, and I didn’t want her to have any regrets. But I also wanted to give her a taste of what to expect when we finally became one.
Grace turned to the side, allowing me full access to her pouty mouth. I closed the gap, sliding my fingers around the back of her neck and pulling her to me. Her lips pressed into mine, and without hesitation, her fingers glided along my bare chest. I hardened at her touch. She noticed, pressing her palm on me.
“No.” I moved her hand away.
“I want to.”
“Me too, but we can’t. Not here.”
I kissed her, deep and long. Her mouth parted, and I swiped my tongue along her lips. Tentatively hers touched mine, testing. Curious. We stayed locked like that, our bodies reacting to the heat, and despite my warnings not to touch, I slid my own hand up her shirt and under her bikini top. She gasped when my fingers traced around her nipples. My touch ignited her, like little blasts of static electricity. It was power like I’d never felt before. I had the ability to take her down to the studs, and while I reserved the right to do it sometime soon, it wouldn’t be today.
I removed my hand and sat back up. “Jesus, Grace. The things we could do.”
She nodded, a dribble of my spit clinging to her swollen lips. “I’m not stopping you.”
“I know. That’s why I have to leave.”
We sat there a second just staring, neither one of us wanting to end this thing we had going but both knowing we had to.
“Meet me around back,” Grace said, opening her door. “I’ve got your clean clothes and a few other things for you. I didn’t know what you needed, so I brought everything.”
She wasn’t kidding. Anything that might help me survive on the streets was in her trunk. Boxes and boxes of supplies. She moved the one of camping gear out of the way.
“You won’t be needing this in the hotel. And some of these clothes can probably wait.”
A shirt caught my eye, and I slid the box back to rifle through it. It was like stepping into a skater shop—all the brands the kids at school wore that I could never dream of owning. But as much as I wanted these things in my wardrobe, so would everyone else. I’d been jumped for my Goodwill duds. I could only imagine the beatdown her brand name stuff would get me.
“Save these for me,” I said, knowing once she got me off the streets, I’d very willingly accept the donation.
“I will. Honestly, Beats, none of this stuff is really necessary, since you’ll be sleeping inside, but I do have one thing…” Grace made a show of hiding whatever it was behind her back before whipping it around and dangling it in front of my face. “The holy grail.”
I gasped, ripping the Ziploc baggie out of her hands and wasting no time shoving the homemade cookies into my mouth.
“Slow down,” she laughed. “There are more where those came from.”
I looked around her trunk. “Where?”
“No, I meant like me. I’m your cookie dealer. You stick with me and I’ll hook you up like the sugar junkie you are.”
This all felt too good to be true; like I would close my eyes and it would have all been a dream. Like when I was a kid and a small bit of fortune would come my way, in the form of a good, loving foster home. But they never lasted. Just as I’d get attached, Nikki would do something shitty and a garbage bag would be thrust in my hand. And away I’d go. What if this thing with Grace was just as fleeting? The fear made me want to back away from her, to protect myself from the losing like I always did.
Grace handed me my laundered clothes, now in gray tote bags.
