“MACIE! THE TRUCK’S filled up!” Nina yelled from the living room, and I looked around my empty bedroom. It looked bigger.
I was actually leaving the East Coast and heading west. I wanted to giggle for feeling like some kind of pioneer going out west. California. I was excited about the change my life was about to take and glad Nina and I would be working at the same university.
University of the Desert in Southern California.
I was going to live in the desert! Me! Born and raised in the East! A giggle bubbled up and out of me. The excitement too great. Nothing was going to get me down.
Not today!
The fact that my dad hadn’t been bothered to write an email or text back after I had left word with his secretary I was moving would be dealt with some other time.
“Do you think we have enough snacks?” I asked as I walked out of my empty bedroom of our two-bedroom apartment.
“Plenty! And it’s not like we can’t stop. We probably will with two guys,” she shared, looking around the now empty place we had called home.
“That’s right.” I smiled tightly, the reminder making my stomach twist. I had no idea who the hell I was going to get stuck with the next week as we drove cross country.
“I promise Sam’s awesome. I really think you two will get along!” she said, smiling too brightly, and I knew it was because she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her guy. I didn’t blame her.
Brandon and Nina were made for one another.
I had never been a true believer of one person for someone, but when it came to them, I got it. They’d fallen in love and tried to keep it together despite distance and time zones. When it got to be too much and a change had needed to be made, Brandon had broken things off. For two years, I’d had to see my best friend not at her full chipper self. She’d tried, and I think some of the time, she was able to fool herself into thinking she was okay. But at the end, at graduation, he’d come back looking for her.
They were back full force and on the see-you-at-the-end-of-the-aisle express lane.
As crazy as it might have looked to some of our friends, to me it made sense. She was back. My best friend’s smile sparkled like the diamond heart necklace around her neck.
“I’m sure it will be fine.” I hadn’t met the infamous Sam yet.
I’d been too busy saying goodbye to friends, finishing the last couple shifts of my second job, and getting all packed up in a crazy short amount of time. But Nina knew me like a sister from another mister. She and Brandon both had a lot of great things to say about him, so I wasn’t really worried about it.
“Macie?” a deep voice that had lingered in the corners of my mind since graduation called my name, and I froze. “Macie?” he repeated, and I slowly turned.
Right smack at our front door stood the guy.
Mr. Blue Eyes.
The guy who had approached me at graduation. The guy whose eyes had been starring in my dreams and naughty fantasies. And for some weird reason, he was standing in my apartment, next to Nina’s guy, Brandon.
“You two know each other?” Nina asked, breaking the moment, and I felt like a fish out of water unable to say anything.
“We go way back,” he said, leaving me momentarily stunned, but I watched the flash of something in his eyes, and it was like he was silently handing me the reins of control.
“Yeah, way back.” My lips moved up into a smirk.
“Really?” Brandon asked, looking back and forth between the tall beautiful stranger and me.
“Macie and I grew up together.”
“Bullshit, you grew up in Arizona.” Brandon laughed, and Blue Eyes shrugged.
“How do you two know one another?” I redirected, hoping to steer the attention away from me.
“Sam and I served together,” Brandon shared, enlightening me further.
Mr. Blue Eyes had a name.
“Sam,” I said softly, enjoying way too much how it rolled off my tongue.
Sam. It suited him. Looking at him, his short hair, the way he held himself, I could see him in a uniform.
Damn. My eyes shamelessly roamed over his body. From the top of his head to the tip of his shoes, I could picture it. His body would definitely fill out a uniform, very much like someone off Magic Mike.
“You’re a Marine,” I said, stating the obvious.
“And you’re Nina’s best friend,” he said, taking a step inside the apartment. Everything devoid of him faded into the background.
“I am.”
“Small world,” his voice rasped, his lips tipping upward, giving me a peek of what his smile would look like, and I had no idea how I was keeping my cool, but I was.
“Very,” I whispered.
“Wow,” I heard Nina in the background. “Umm, should we give you two a sec?”
“Knock, knock!” Our super knocked on the door, making me jump and breaking the bubble I’d been in. “You ladies ready for the final walkthrough?”
“Yeah.” “Sounds good,” both Nina and I answered and went to showing Larry, our super, the apartment.
I felt Sam’s eyes on me the entire time, tracking my every move.
I don’t know how, but I did.
And I liked it.
Sam
Life had its own ways of surprising you when you were least expecting it. Who would have thought the one girl I couldn’t stop thinking about, the girl who made me feel like some idiot teenager, was the same girl I would be crossing the country with?
“Level with me, man. You really know her?”
“I saw her at the graduation.”
“What?” Brandon’s eyes narrowed, and I shrugged and looked away. The girls were in the bedroom talking to the super before turning in the keys.
“I saw her and tried to pick her up, but…’
“But?” he asked, obviously interested. His eyes widened, surprise and intrigue reflecting back at me. “Holy fuck, did she turn you down? Did the big, bad, and swaggy lose his magic touch?”
“Fuck no. I…” I didn’t know how to explain I’d lost my nerve the second my eyes met hers. How looking into her eyes had felt like I’d been shot in the chest with a fucking arrow piercing the one spot I didn’t think existed anymore. My heart.
“Okay, ladies, we are all set,” the older man announced as they returned to the living area. “I will pass this along to the landlord, and you should get your security deposit check. You guys requested it to be cash app’ed?”
“Yeah, if it’s possible,” Nina said. “If not, the address I gave you is my parents’ house.”
“But try and talk him into it, please, Larry?” Macie asked, batting those inky eyelashes at him. “We’re gonna be on the road, so the extra money would be great.”
“California. You sure about that? I’ve heard it’s nutty there,” he teased and then smiled sincerely. “You two will be missed. Wish there were more tenants like you two.” He wasn’t creepy about it either. It was like a parent looking over his kid.
“We’ll miss you too,” they said as they hugged the old man.
“Okay, then.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll tell him and see what he decides. Be safe, take it slow, and enjoy the journey.”
Enjoy the journey. The stranger’s words echoed in my head as my eyes met her fiery stare.
I was definitely going to enjoy the journey.
