57 - Life's a Beach

Delaney frowned at the pile of wet sand that should be taking on a grandiose form.  It simply wasn’t cooperating.  Anyone who thought that building sandcastles was anything like pottery or sculpting clearly held a different perspective than hers.  

There must be a trick to solidifying the shape.  She was going to have to read up on sand sculpture.

“You have a fucking art degree and that mess is the best you can come up with?”

“This shit is harder than it looks,” Pearl grumped supportively, planting sandy fists on her thighs.  “Especially without those cool turret-shaped buckets.”

“Art degree, not architecture, so bite me,” she blandly advised the man criticizing her with a cockeyed grin from behind his sunglasses.  Flinging a pinch of sand toward his beach chair, Delaney took on her own cockeyed grin when he swore and began digging granules from his navel.  “Let’s see you do better.”

“I know where my talent lies, and it ain’t in visual art.  You art, I’ll music.”

“How about you take a nap and she’ll do both?  Delaney sings your music as well as you.”

Jon turned to the woman in the chair a few feet to his left.  Petra was pretending to enjoy a book under the shade of an umbrella, but Delaney knew her sister was really people watching behind the designer sunglasses.   

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

Obviously deciding he wasn’t going to get any satisfaction from her sister, he redirected his attention back to Delaney, who was busy scraping the pile of sand into something more interesting than a sandcastle. 

“Mou.  You sing?”

“As much as anybody does,” she mumbled distractedly from under the brim of the Patriots’ hat borrowed from his closet.  Smooth curves were much more suited to the palm of her hand than the sharp angles needed for a sand castle.  It felt more natural, and she let instinct elongate the wet mass until it tapered down to a blunt tip. 

“Show me.”

“What?”  Her aviators were firmly in place but she still squinted up at him while pulling together a smaller collection of sand and butting it up against the elongated piece.   Now that there was a solid inspiration in her mind, the sculpture crowded out everything, including the conversation of three seconds ago.

“Sing something.”

 

Frowning, she went back to shaping this lump into a distorted bean shape and absently started the first song that came to mind.  “I don’t wanna be another wave in the ocean…”

There was a faint masculine chuckle at her musical selection, which Delaney disregarded in favor of her sand.  She continued with efficient movements to pack, sculpt and detail through the first verse and chorus, and by the time she finished, so was her simple alternative to a sand castle.

“It’s bad enough you can do both,” Jon groused, playfully toeing a spray of sand over her mermaid's tail.  “You have to do ‘em both at the same fuckin’ time?”

“Told you.”

“Nobody likes a smartass, Petra, and it’s not like she nailed the key change in ‘Prayer’.”  The dimples of both twins at the same time had him pushing out of the beach chair and to his feet.  The sunglasses were tossed aside as he ordered, “C’mon, Mou.  Let’s go swimming.”

Hard fingers enclosed her hand and hauled Delaney toward the shore, barely allowing time to shed her own sunglasses and hat before Petra called out the reminder that he obviously liked a smartass.  Flipping a middle finger behind him got Jon nothing but Pearl’s praise for a good photo to send TMZ.

“Your sister and Pearl aren’t invited to the beach anymore.  They’re pains in the ass,” he griped good-naturedly as they waded into the surf. 

Shallow waves lapped at her shins as Delaney laughed into his face.  The weather was gorgeous, the temperature was perfection, the pink kiss of sunshine on his cheeks and shoulders was sexy as anything as she could imagine and Jon held her hand like it belonged to him.  This day was turning out to be memorable for far better reasons than puking in the bushes.

Brunch went better than she could’ve hoped.  Jon was unexpectedly sweet in the reassurance she insisted he provide, and none of the kids offered an objection.  Stephanie went so far as to wish her luck. 

Jake and Jesse were openly accepting of Delaney and, more specifically, her profession.  Jesse now had a floral designer on call to pimp Hampton Water, which he considered more of a perk than she believed it to be.  Jake put in a prom flower request for next weekend and threw in appreciation for her cooking, as Jon had warned, and it was fine with her.  The kid was entertaining.  She agreed to feed him anytime he liked.

Romeo was the most reserved of the Bongiovi children, but he didn’t seem to hate the idea.  So, while everything might not be Brady Bunch happy, it could’ve been much worse.  Delaney took it as a ray of hope that chased away the lingering shadows in her mind – the darkness Jon wasn’t as readily willing to put aside. 

At his insistence, they left everyone else to clean the kitchens so that they could “go sort shit out”.  The bottom line was that he wanted to know what sent her running out the door earlier, and Delaney didn’t want to go to that recess in her mind again.  Later, maybe, but not while she was in a sweet spot and feeling good about the way life was progressing. 

He adamantly demanded to know “what the fuck was going on in her head”, fully expecting an answer.  Delaney didn’t want to answer and gave him her best puppy dog eyes, asking him not to ruin the first moment of inner peace she’d had since Stephanie arrived.  It was a dirty shot, and Jon muttered something about getting wrapped around her “little fucking finger” but relented in the end. 

She didn’t know how long the reprieve would last, but she should make it through the day, at least. 

“You knew freeping well what you were signing on for,” Delaney teased over his complaint about her travel companions and lightly kicked water at him with the side of her foot. 

He kicked it back and countered, “Yeah, but it was the only way to get your stubborn ass out here.  And I put up with David on tour.  Those mini pains in the asses got nothing on him.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

Water covered her ankles now that they had meandered further out into the tide, but Jon was still moving forward. 

“Not since Montreal.  Why?”

“Just wondering if he was still calling me Bounce.”

“Probably.  He gets something stuck in his head once, and it’s there forever.” 

With the rolling surf now up to her thighs, Delaney reclaimed custody of her hand to cup both and scoop up some floating seaweed.  Nothing was worse than brushing into it unexpectedly and fearing that a sea monster – or at least a jellyfish – was making its move.  It and a fair amount of water were tossed out of harm’s way, toward where Jake and Romeo were body surfing.  Jesse, Ali and Stephanie had opted to stay home by the pool.

“I’m glad you came, Mou, but I hate that it’s been so goddamn traumatic.”

She turned with a smile, finding that Jon was also picking a piece aquatic plant life from the drink.  His face was creased from both squinting in the sunlight and frowning, making for a fierce expression. 

“The good outweighs the bad,” she assured, wading over to encircle his waist with wet arms.  “And I’m glad I came, too.  Where else am I gonna get the chance to see you looking like a very sexy beach bum, live and in person?”

The squint was still in place, because the man hated being unprotected from the light, but a flash of brilliant white scoured away most of the fierceness.  Heavy forearms folded into the curve of Delaney’s back so that he could disregard her rhetoric with a husky, “Have I mentioned how amazing your tits look in that bathing suit?”

“Nope.”  Ever since shedding her cover-up, she had caught his eyes repeatedly sticking on the ruched bra of her modest two-piece, though.   

The black suit been chosen for its underwire support to kept heavy breasts lifted and tucked, and the retro bottom sat at her natural waist.  It knotted lower on one side to provide a visual distraction from the tummy bulge it was designed to hold tight.

“Your tits look amazing.”

“Thanks,” she accepted with a snicker. 

“Ever fuck in the ocean?”

His abrupt bluntness and exaggerated waggling of eyebrows had Delaney bursting into whole-hearted laughter.   “No, and I’m guessing you haven’t either – not within fifty yards of your kids, anyway.  You need to cool it, buddy.”

Sliding out of his grasp, she again cupped her hands together and plunged them beneath the water’s surface. This time when she dipped out the brininess, it wasn’t to fling it further down the waterline but into Jon’s chest. 

It only took a beat for masculine nipples to reveal how cold the seawater was against his sun-warmed pecs.  They beaded instantly, and Jon took time for only a single sucked breath before swearing and drenching Delaney’s “amazing tits” with the same nipple-puckering punishment. 

Her competitive instinct kicked in along with a burst of adrenaline and she returned fire, shoveling water as fast as he did until rivulets ran from both their faces and hair.   He was merciless in his assault, meaning that Delaney ended up with as much water in her mouth as her hair, and she didn’t appreciate the taste. 

Deciding that she was at a disadvantage due to the difference in hand size, Delaney chose to even the odds by hooking a foot around his ankle and giving a powerful jerk. 

Muscular arms flailed as he tried to keep from going under, but she didn’t hang around to find out if he succeeded.  Her sole focus was on making a break for dry land and running through the thigh-high water as fast as it would allow.

It wasn’t until dry sand squished between her toes that she slowed long enough to look back, and when she did, a moving force collided with her.  She was clotheslined at the waist and propelled backward, making her squeal with alarm when shoulder blades dug into the warm beach.

It knocked the wind out of her, and a heart that was already beating with exertion took on a livelier cadence with the added spike of adrenaline of impact.  Delaney breathed deeply, willing it into normalcy, and eyes that had scrunched shut on landing eked open to meet the wolfish grin of a very drippy Jon.  Arm muscles rippled with the effort of keeping his upper body from crushing hers, and water dripped from his chest into her cleavage as his hair dribbled on her forehead. 

It was a combination of hot and cold that caused her flesh to pimple for all the right reasons.

“You didn’t fall,” she observed breathlessly.

“Not in the water.”

The thumping behind her breast bone had nothing to do with running or impact now.  His unspoken meaning paired with the thoughtful kaleidoscope of blues studying her were responsible for the staccato thumping that felt a whole lot like “Keep the Faith”.

He saw her.  Delaney felt his intent perusal of all the things she kept hidden from the world, and even better, she felt his approval of it all.  There was nothing there he wasn’t willing to accept.

A fact that was proven by his quietly smiling, “You make me happy, Mou.”

Just like that, he plugged another hole in her broken heart.