The Perfect Indulgence

“Ha. Yes, of course things upset me sometimes.”

“Has anything ever upset you around me, or do you just never show it? Because I’ve never seen you—”

“Chris.” He stopped walking. “Can we start with ‘How was your evening? How are things going? What have you been up to for the past few months?’”

“Okay.” She stared up at him, wishing she could see his face better. “How was your evening?”

He chuckled and kept walking. “Fine, thanks. Luke and I went running, then we had dinner, watched some TV, got hungry again and brought more food down here.”

“How is he doing?”

Zac sat on one side of a blanket spread at the bottom of the cliff, leaving her plenty of room to join him. “He’s okay, considering he changed coasts and is starting his life over. Are you hungry?”

“Actually, yes.” She dropped down next to him. She was starving. There had been little at the bar that wasn’t loaded with cheese or deep-fried or both. “What do you have? Man food, I bet. Cheetos and beef jerky?”

“C’mon, this is California. We brought sushi, papaya and fair-trade chocolate.”

“No way.” Her stomach growled viciously. Thank goodness the waves were loud enough to cover the sound. “Do I have to high-five you and call you ‘dude’ to eat it?”

“If you want.” He lit a small lantern that threw a warm circle of light onto the sand and their blanket. “But how about you tell me about your evening instead?”

“I went out with Gus.”

“Yeah?” Zac’s body hitched as he leaned toward the cooler, but his voice stayed even, so she couldn’t tell if he’d reacted or not. “How was that?”

“It was okay.”

“Not great?” He handed her a take-out container with a few remaining pieces of a sushi roll. “Spicy tuna.”

“Yum, thanks. We went out to play pool.”

“Really.” He was smirking. “I seem to remember you telling him pretty pointedly last October that pool was not on your list of things you like to do.”

“That was then.” She picked up a piece of sushi. “I’m open to more experiences now. I’m glad I went.”

Zac put a container of cubed papaya on the blanket between them. “You seeing him again?”

A big bite of really wonderful spicy tuna roll gave her the chance to think before she answered. On the one hand, her dating life wasn’t really any of his business. On the other, it was a perfectly normal question. If a woman had asked her, she wouldn’t have blinked.

But Zac was definitely not a woman. “I thought we were catching each other up on our evenings and the past few months.”

“Fair enough.”

“So what have you been up to the past few months?” She grabbed another piece of tuna roll. Sheer heaven.

“Let’s see.” He relaxed down onto his side, supporting his head on his palm. “Before I left, I finished my master’s thesis, defended it and passed.”

“Hey, congratulations.” Chris was taken aback. Before he left? He hadn’t mentioned it to her. You’d think he would have been bursting with the news. “What was your thesis about?”

“Introducing clean water systems in isolated areas. I can go into a whole lot of detail if you want. It’d take, oh, say, about an hour. Minimum.”

“Maybe another time?”

He grinned and stole a piece of papaya. “Then I finished my doctorate program applications and was about to schedule a vacation to Costa Rica when I got the call that Luke had been arrested. He’d gotten into a fight with a kid from another school over something really important, like whose hockey team was tougher.”

Chris winced. “Boys.”

“Yeah, but I don’t cut him any slack for that. He’s twenty-one—he knows better than to be a hothead idiot. Plus he’d been on a drinking binge. So stupid. So that took a while to sort out. We all agreed he needed a break from UConn, where he wasn’t doing that well anyway, and a break from his usual life, and a break from my dad, who means well but isn’t cut out to parent a lost kid.”

Chris nodded sympathetically, feeling strangely lit up. She didn’t think Zac had ever said that many sentences to her at once, and she was pretty sure he’d never shared that much about his life before. Maybe she hadn’t given him the opportunity? “That’s a lot to cope with.”

“Nah. He’s family. He got a bad deal growing up. My mom died when he was really young. Pretty much a baby.”

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry. That must have been devastating.” Chris pressed her lips together, aching inside. A bad deal, he’d called it? Typical Zac understatement, undoubtedly representing a hell of a lot of pain, and not only Luke’s.

“So Luke is here now. As soon as he finds a job, I hope he’ll settle, maybe go back to school at some point if he can get in anywhere around here. But he needs to do some growing up first.”

“He’s still pretty young.”

Zac didn’t respond, which surprised her until it hit her that if his mom died when he was a teenager, he’d undoubtedly had to grow up a lot quicker than Luke.

Her heart started a slow sympathy melt.

No. She was not going to allow herself to get soft on Zac. It was really late at night—or really early in the morning—and she was exhausted and therefore a little giddy and vulnerable, and he was an undeniably large, warm, sexy presence beside her in the cool air on the deserted beach, spilling out his heart in a way he never had before.

Breathe in, breathe out.

“Now tell me how your last few months have been.”

“Oh.” She speared another of the sweet, juicy papaya pieces, wishing the fruit was this fresh and flavorful back east. “I’ve had a really great time.”

“Guys been asking you out every hour on the hour?”

“No! That was really weird.” She laughed, feeling herself blush in the darkness. “Most of the time I was feeling my way through changes at Slow Pour.”

“I like what you did. You got rid of some of the clutter without sacrificing the comfort or quirky feel of the place.”

“Thanks.” She was surprised he’d noticed, though given how well he could read her feelings, she probably shouldn’t be. That was so different from the men she knew. Her father could probably pick up on a hint of sadness if one of the three women in his family was writhing and sobbing on the floor at his feet, but other than that... “And I took a few weeks of classes at the Peace, Love and Joy Center, trying to unblock myself, surrender to a deeper consciousness, and become freer and less stressed.”

“Ah.”

She frowned. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Me?” He sat up to unwrap a bar of chocolate and broke off a row. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you think I’m spouting New Age crap.”

“No.” He handed her the squares of chocolate. “I think the idea that you have to fix something about you is crap.”