Sweet Nothings: A Bethany Beach Romance Page 6

  Jodie came over to me as I put last touches on the salad.

  “She was hanging out on the boardwalk with her girlfriends, flirting with some out-of-towners,” she whispered to me. “I grabbed her and dragged her to the car.”

  “Smells great, Mom,” Jodie said more loudly as she picked up the platter of steaks. I brought the salad over to the table and handed it to Alex before I sat down. Alex scooped some greens into her bowl and passed the salad right back to me, not even looking at me.

  With everyone at the table, Mom made sure to say Grace before we started eating. She shot Alex a look to make sure she bowed her head in observance. Grace was one of the holdovers from when Dad was alive. It was something he always made us do before every dinner at the table as a way of showing respect and reverence.

  We started off the meal quietly, eating our salads before passing around everything for the main course. It felt like it was five minutes before anyone broke the silence as we all ate quietly.

  “How was the beach?” Mom said to Alex.

  “Fine,” she said with a huff, shooting an angry look to Jodie.

  “I’ll bet the water was warm this time of year,” Mom answered, skewering a shrimp onto her fork.

  “I never even got to the water,” Alex pouted. “We hung out for a few minutes on the boardwalk and then Jodie manhandled me to get to her car.”

  Jodie laughed, nearly spitting green beans out of her mouth.

  “I hardly manhandled you,” she said in defense. “I just knew you would be screwed if you showed up late again.”

  “I would have made it here,” Alex shot back.

  “Not likely,” Mom added, giving Alex a parental look. Alex put her head back down and went back to eating her meal.

  “I thought maybe we could watch a movie after dinner,” Mom said.

  Jodie and I looked at each other because we knew where this was going. Mom always wanted to watch “Dirty Dancing,” and we had probably seen the movie a hundred times by this time in our lives.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Jodie added. “Kelly and I are going out tonight.”

  “You are?” she said as she sat back in her chair.

  “Yes,” I said as I laid down my fork, trying to go along with Jodie. “We talked about it this afternoon, about how we never go out and do anything, blow off some steam.”

  “But you have to get up so early in the morning,” Mom added.

  “We won’t stay out too late,” Jodie remarked. “We’ll probably still be in bed by eleven.”

  “Alone more than likely,” Alex mumbled under her breath.

  “Alexandra Rose!” Mom yelled. “We don’t talk like that at the dinner table, or anywhere else in this house for that matter! Apologize to your sister.”

  “Sorry, Jodie,” she said as she rolled her eyes when my Mom turned away. Jodie stuck her tongue out at her in response.

  God, I love my sisters, I thought to myself, smiling proudly.

  “You two are going out dressed like that?” Mom asked as she stood up, starting to clear the table.

  “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I asked her.

  “Well it’s just a t-shirt and jeans,” Mom said. “It’s not very pretty.”

  “Thanks for the compliment, Mom,” I told her as I grabbed the empty plates.

  “I’m sure Alex has something we can borrow, she’s not going anywhere anyway,” Jodie said snidely.

  “You’re out of luck, Jodie,” Alex answered. “Nothing I have will fit you. My boobs are way bigger than yours, and your ass is too big for my dresses.”

  Jodie squinted her eyes at Alex and walked over to her while Mom loaded the dishwasher.

  “Would you like me to tell Mom how big your boobs look in your new bikini?” she whispered.

  Alex’ eyes widened. “I'm sure I can find something for the two of you. Come on in my room,” Alex said as we left the kitchen and went down the hall to her room, formerly the room Jodie and I shared when we were growing up.

  We walked into the room, and Alex shut the door behind us. Clothing was strewn all over the floor, the bed was unmade, and there was stuff everywhere you looked.

  “How do you get away with your room looking like this?” I said to Alex as I picked up some clothes off the floor and tossed them into the empty hamper in her corner. “Mom would have killed us if we did this.”

  “I get away with it because Mom never comes in here,” Alex said proudly. She walked over to her closet to see what she had that might fit Jodie. She grabbed a red dress off one of the hangers and handed it to Jodie.

  “Try that one,” Alex said. Alex went over to her dresser and opened the second drawer. She tossed out a couple of t-shirts onto the floor before finding what she was looking for.

  “Here,” she said to me, handing me a white tank top.

  I pulled my t-shirt over my head and slipped the tank top on. It was a little roomy up top - Alex really does have the bigger boobs, I thought - but it was comfortable. It would go nicely with the jeans I had on.

  Alex and I both looked over at Jodie, who was pulling the waist of the red dress down further, so it sat properly. The thin straps of the dress did nothing to hide the bra she was wearing, but the dress did look good on her, even if it was a little short.

  “I can’t wear this,” Jodie answered, hooking her thumbs into the straps of her bra that were visible.

  “Sure you can,” Alex said, walking up behind her. Alex plunged her hands into the dress and unhooked Jodie’s bra and then pulled it over her shoulders. Jodie reached in and pulled her bra out, and then adjusted the dress again.

  “I never wear a bra with that dress,” Alex said with a smile.

  “I don’t know how Mom ever lets you leave the house,” I said to her.

  “I have to admit, it looks pretty good,” Jodie said as she gave a little twirl and looked at herself in the mirror. She adjusted the top portion again, making sure it was good enough, so one of her breasts didn’t pop out every time she moved.

  “Where are you two going?” Alex asked as she plopped down on her bed.

  I looked over at Jodie, unsure just where we were going to go.

  “Let’s head over to Dolphin Cove. We haven’t been there for a long time,” Jodie said.

  “Dolphin Cove?” I said to her. “That place will be crawling with vacationers. Can’t we go someplace quieter?”

  “You mean boring,” Alex said to me.

  “No, that’s not what I meant, I just didn’t want to come home with a headache is all.”

  “Kelly, the whole point of us going out tonight is to meet some new people. Going somewhere quieter means we won’t meet anyone,” Jodie said to me. “Now let’s get going.”

  “Please take me with you guys,” Alex pleaded.

  “No way,” I said. “You can’t get in there unless you’re twenty-one tonight anyway.”

  “I can pass for twenty-one,” Alex said. “Please, I can’t watch Dirty Dancing again tonight.”

  “Sorry kiddo,” Jodie said, putting her arm around Alex. “It’s a rite of passage for all of us. I used to beg Kelly to take me out with her to avoid it. Now it’s your turn. Have the time of your life.”

  “You guys suck,” Alex said to us as we walked out of the room.

  “We’re heading out, Mom,” I yelled as we walked towards the front door.

  Mom came out of the kitchen with a cup of tea in her hand. We could see the menu screen for the Dirty Dancing DVD she had frozen on the screen already.

  “Okay, you girls have a nice time,” she said to us. “Stay out of trouble. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Jodie and I walked out and over to her midnight blue Subaru and got in. It was a short drive over to the Dolphin Cove, and the Cove was probably one of the most popular bars in town. There were plenty of locations in and around the town, but since they were right on the water, a lot of the vacationers in the area flocked here for lunch, dinner, happy hour or entertainment.


  We pulled in and parked and made our way up to the front door. I saw the sign that said Captian Caraway and the Seeded Ryes were performing tonight and rolled my eyes. Captain Caraway, also known as Nick Fisher, a local mechanic, had been performing in the area for many years. Nick loved the attention he got from being in the band, and even at fifty he still had his share of groupies.

  Jodie and I nodded at the hostess as we walked in and pointed to a table over by the bar. We sat down at the raised round table, and a waitress came over to us, dressed in a tight t-shirt and shorts, to take our drink order. Jodie recognized her as someone she went to school with. They had a brief conversation about life in the area before she took our drink order. Jodie got a pina colada while I ordered a white Russian.

  “Do you remember her?” Jodie said to me, trying not to be too loud but talking loud enough so I could hear her over the band playing “Margaritaville.”

  “No, I don’t,” I yelled back, “but I’m a few years older than you Jodie. You were a freshman when I was a senior.”

  “She was a great student, had a scholarship to college, then had to come home because her Mom got sick. She lost her scholarship, her Mom passed a couple of years ago, and now she’s stuck here. Sometimes I worry that I’ll end up that way too,” Jodie said with a fretful look on her face.

  “Jodie you never wanted to go to college. You always said you hated school,” I said, surprised she felt this way.

  “I know,” she said. The waitress gave us our drinks, and we stopped talking until she left us alone again. Jodie took a sip of her drink. “Now though, as I get older, I think I should have gone. Part of me feels like I need to know more, that I could do better.”

  “You don’t like working with me?” I asked her.

  “Of course I like it, you doofus,” she said to me. “But, and don’t take this the wrong way Kel… I don’t really work with you. I work for you. It’s your business, not mine. If you decided to close up shop, move somewhere else, or something else happened, where would that leave me? I think I just need to have a better plan for my future.”

  “I never knew you felt this way,” I said to her. “You know I don’t look at it that way, right? I don’t think of it as you working for me. We’re a team, all four of us.”

  “Yes, but at some point, Mom is going to want to retire, Alex may go to college, or want to do something else, and then it’s just you and me. I don’t want you to keep the business going just because you worry about me, Kelly.”

  “I love the bakery, Jodie, and I want you to be part of it for as long as you want to be. Now let’s stop talking about this depressing stuff. I thought we were coming out here to have fun and meet people,” I told her. I held up my frosty glass, and she clinked hers against it as we both took long sips.

  A moment later, there was a young, college-aged guy standing in front of our table. He was wearing a t-shirt and board shorts, had some wispy scruff of a beard, and spiky brown hair. He looked at me and smiled, and then turned his attention to Jodie.

  “Hey there,” he said to her, with a slightly Southern accent.

  “Hi,” she said to him, looking him over.

  “Do you want to dance?” he asked her, bending over to speak into her ear.

  The band was playing their cover of “Walking on Sunshine,” an odd choice for a burly Captain Caraway, but they sounded pretty good. Jodie looked over at me and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Go on,” I said to her loudly.

  She smiled and hopped off her stool, going out to the crowded dance floor with her hipster young man.

  I sat on the stool, watching the dance floor, gently stirring the froth in my drink with my straw. The band finished up their song and started in with “Under the Boardwalk.” I took a small sip just as someone walked up to our table and stood in front of me.

  “Hi there,” he said to me.

  I didn’t recognize the face and wondered if he was going to ask me to dance. He was a tall man with just a hint of stubble on his face, and he showed the faint beginnings of a tan as if he just arrived in town. I could see that he had strong arms showing beneath the short sleeve shirt that he wore.

  “Hello,” I said casually, turning my attention back to the band and spying Jodie dancing it up.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?” he said to me with a smile.

  “I’m sorry, no I don’t. Do I know you?”

  “Well, not really, I guess,” he said as he sipped his beer.

  I wondered where this guy was going with all of this and what his pickup line was going to be. I looked over at him, and he seemed like he was getting ready to say something or walk away, and he couldn’t decide.

  “I came into the bakery today,” he said to me. “You gave me a donut because I didn’t have my wallet on me to pay for it.”

  It dawned on me then who he was. He seemed flustered when I saw him this morning as well. I had thought he was cute at the time. Looking at him again in the dimmer lighting of the bar, he was more chiseled and manly than cute.

  “Oh right, the jelly donut guy; I remember,” I said to him, pointing at him. “I’m sorry, we get a lot of people coming through the shop this time of year.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said to me. “I just thought, since you were here that maybe I could buy you a drink as a way to say thank you for the donut.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said to him.

  “Please, it’s the least I can do,” he said to me.

  “Okay,” I relented. “I would love another drink,” I said as I slurped the last of my white Russian foam through my straw.

  “May I sit?” he asked me.

  I pointed to the empty stool to my right and nodded. The waitress came back over and asked if I wanted another, and I said yes. My guest also asked if he could get another beer.

  As we sat and waited for the waitress to return, neither one of us had much of anything to say. It was funny that I never had a problem striking up a conversation with the people that came into the bakery each day, but when I was taken out of that setting, I never seemed to have much to talk about.

  “The band’s pretty good,” he noted as they started the second verse of “Under the Boardwalk.”

  “Yeah, they’ve been playing around here for a long time. There something of legends in the area,” I told him. I went back to fiddling with the paper umbrella I had taken out of my first drink. Thankfully the waitress arrived with our next round to break the awkwardness.

  “Thank you for the drink,” I said to him, raising my glass.

  “Thank you for the donut,” he said, lifting his beer bottle to touch my glass. We both took draws on our beverages.

  “I’m Damian, by the way,” he said to me. “I guess I probably should have introduced myself already,” he said and followed it up with an uncomfortable laugh.

  “I’m Kelly,” I told him. “What brings you out to our town’s hot spot tonight?” I was wondering if he was just a vacationer out trolling to see who he could reel in for the night.

  “Just looking for a place to get something to eat, have a drink, and relax. My friends are over playing pool, and I saw you sitting here by yourself… I hope I’m not interrupting you.”

  I suddenly felt a warmth towards him and smiled at him.

  “Don’t worry about it, you’re doing fine,” I answered. “I don’t often talk to guys outside of the bakery.”

  Damian seemed to relax a little bit after I said that and he laughed again.

  Jodie came walking back over to the table, alone, and picked up her drink and finished it.

  “That was fun,” she said to me, not taking notice of Damian just yet. “That guy was just twenty-one and still in college. He’s just a baby. I’m sure I could teach him a thing or two…”

  I interrupted Jodie, tapping her on the arm.

  “Jodie, this is Damian,” I said to her pointing to Damian as he sipped his beer. “Damian, this is my sister, Jodie. She works with me
at the bakery.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jodie,” Damian said, extending his hand to her.

  Jodie smiled at him and then looked at me and smiled.

  “Well hello, Damian.”

  “Can I get you a drink, Jodie?” Damian asked her.

  “That would be wonderful,” she said to him, handing him her empty glass. “A pina colada, please.”

  “Be right back,” he said as he walked up to the bar. Leaving us at the table.

  “Where did he come from?” Jodie said as she looked at me.