Part Three
Standard disclaimer applies.
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There was someone besides Ryan Atwood in Ryan Atwood's bed. Not a surprise. And she was female. Also not a surprise. She was wearing clothes, though, and that was a surprise. It was a Thursday. Usually by this time, she was naked.
"Hey," he said.
"Atwood," she said. "You're late. Daddy said everybody left the site by 6. Where have you been?"
"Stopped for coffee," he said. "I haven't had a shower yet."
"Ew," Summer said. "Go."
Ryan pulled off his shirt, a cloud of sawdust following as the shirt puffed to the floor. He bent down to unlace his work boots. He needed to brush them tonight, make them last longer.
"What did Daddy have you doing today," Summer asked, flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine.
"Running errands," he said.
No, wait, that wasn't a fashion magazine. It was a Cosmo. Ryan had seen the cover at the grocery store: "10 Secret Tips to Drive Your Man Wild in Bed."
Ryan's stomach tightened in anticipation and a little fear. Summer didn't need any help driving him wild in bed. Of all the women he had slept with, Summer was already the wildest.Keeping her satisfied would be a full-time job if he didn't already have two. No secret tips, please.
Then he started thinking about what those secret tips might be and where they might instruct Summer to put her mouth and what they might instruct her to whisper when her tongue wasn't busy otherwise and what her breath would feel like ruffling across his skin.
A shower was going to be completely necessary, he thought. Socks followed the shirt, then his undershirt, darkly stained with his sweat, his proof of value, his evidence that for today, at least, he had a job and had done it. He hoped he would have more sweaty clothes the next day.
Ryan opened his closet and came out with a black plastic garbage bag already half-full of dirty clothes. He added the stinky ones he had just taken off.
His hands went to his waistband and he started unbuttoning his pants. Summer stopped flipping through the magazine and peered over the top of it to watch him. He watched her watching his hands, and they faltered.
"Keep going," she said softly. It was an order, nonetheless, and Ryan knew it.
The model on the magazine cover had lips the same color as Summer's, but the model's lips weren't so full, so kissable. Ryan's eyes were on Summer's lips as his hands started their task again, slower than before.
He fumblingly finished and started pushing his work pants down his legs. Muscled thighs came into view, framed by white boxers.
Summer's tongue peeped out and she licked her peach-stained lips, quickly.
Ryan's hands somehow found their way to the waistband of his boxers.
"Stop," Summer said. His hands were glad to oblige. They had sort of forgotten what they had been doing and how to do it.
She got out of bed. Ryan had been wrong. She wasn't wearing clothes. She was wearing a robe. It might be a robe. He hadn't seen it before and didn't know enough about women's clothing to be sure what to call it.
Summer's blue robe, he thought. Summer's barely tied, see-through robe, with fluffy stuff on the edges. He could see the length of her olive legs from her fluffy blue shoes all the way up to her throat, surrounded by more fluffy blue stuff. At least he thought that the robe was see-through all the way up to Summer's throat. His gaze hadn't actually gotten that far.
"Atwood," she snapped. His eyes popped back to her face and he swallowed. She smiled. "Glad you like the new lingerie."
Her hands went to the waistband of his boxers. Her nails matched her lips. Soft, kissable peach hands, brushing across his belly. Soft, full peach lips following them.
Ryan quit thinking about his job, about Seth, about anything but Summer.
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They hadn't made it to the bed. Summer's head fit in the curve of Ryan's shoulder, dark hair fluffing out over his chest and face. Ryan lifted a strand of hair out of his eyes and tucked it gently behind her ear before pressing a kiss to her temple.
"How did my mules end up on the windowsill?" Summer asked.
"Probably the same way my shorts ended up on the punching bag. And who wears shoes to bed anyway?"
"It all matched. I saw it in Elle."
"That explains it," Ryan said.
She reached across her body to thwack him in the belly. As she turned her head, she gave an experimental sniff.
"You stink," Summer said.
"That's what you like about me," Ryan said. "But you smell nice. Thanks for the surprise."
"My pleasure," Summer said. "Really."
Ryan gently moved Summer aside and got to his feet. He bent down and picked her up. How could someone so curvy weigh so little, he thought.
"What are you doing?" she said.
"You shouldn't be on the floor," he said. He placed her on the bed and started toward the bathroom.
"Don't take too long," Summer told him. "I'll get bored and start changing things."
Ryan half-smiled at the threat. She had done it before. That was how he had ended up with a pink bath mat and huge, fluffy pink towels in his bathroom.
Summer's boredom also was responsible for the long-handled loofah and strawberry-scented moisturizing Vitamin E-enriched body wash in his shower, a loofah and body wash he was about to use. Because they came from Summer. He didn't care about the daily ribbing he took at work for his sweet smell.
Under the water, Ryan scrubbed his body hard. He couldn't be rich for Summer, but he could be clean. He used a nail brush to remove every speck of construction grime from under his fingernails.
He thought about the sex. He wondered whether Summer was getting bored with him, not just with waiting. He was doing his best to please her, and she had certainly screamed loudly there at the end. But if she had to read up on sex tips, maybe he wasn't getting the job done.
Summer was the only one who had ever made him feel this insecure. With every other woman, he had been confident that pleasure had been given and taken in equal measure. But then, Summer wasn't like any other woman he had ever known in any other way, so why should sex be different?
The lazy dribble of water over his head became a trickle and then gave out entirely before Ryan finished.
He wiped off the last of the soap before wrapping his waist in pink and stepping out of the shower onto the fluffy, pink bathmat. It almost hid the dirt ground into the corners of the bathroom. He was going to have to take an evening to do some housecleaning again. Maybe a stronger cleanser would do the trick, and a heavier brush. Maybe he could get them with his last paycheck, he thought morbidly.
But if it was going to be his last paycheck, he wouldn't be able to afford this room anymore and wouldn't need to worry about cleaning the corners. He shook his head to clear it and decided to worry about that problem later.
Ryan stepped out of the bathroom, letting the steam into the only other room, his bedroom/sitting room/dining room/guest room. His guest was sitting on the worn-to-nubs bed cover, wearing a mini skirt, leaning on both pillows at the head of the bed and flipping through her Cosmo again. Her high heeled-shoes, which Ryan hadn't noticed when he first came in, were under the bed. The blue mules had disappeared, Summer performing her usual wardrobe magic.
"Shouldn't you be studying?" Ryan said, seating himself at the foot of the bed.
"Can't bear another minute of it. Did the water quit on you again?" Summer said, frowning at his slick, wet hair.
"Yeah," he said. He picked up a foot. The toes were peach, too. "Did you know your feet, hands and lips all match?"
She favored him with a half-power version of her "You're no rocket scientist" look.
"You need to talk to the landlord," she said. "You pay your rent in full, on time, every month and have for more than a year. He owes you working utilities. If he can't get things fixed, maybe you need to find a nicer place."
Ryan put his thumbs in the arch of Summer's foot and began rubbing. He didn't tell her he was lucky to have this crummy room within walking distance of at least one of his jobs. If his pickup gave out, at least he could still get to work at Nina's.
"Atwood, are you listening to me?" she demanded.
"Yes, Summer," he said, moving his hands to just below her toes, stretching them out.
"Are you going to talk to him, or should I give him the benefit of a rage blackout?"
Ryan kept his eyes on her cute peach toes and his mind on rubbing her feet. They were so soft and she abused them terribly.
"You shouldn't wear such high heels," he said. "It's too hard on your feet."
"Atwood!" she said.
He picked up the other foot and looked into her face.
"Summer," he said quietly, letting his tone tell her the conversation was over.
It was an ongoing quarrel. He couldn't move and he couldn't afford to piss off his landlord. Summer couldn't even visualize a world where she couldn't piss off whom she pleased when she pleased and how she pleased. It was one of the thousands of differences between them.
"Do I smell like strawberries now?" he said as a peace offering.
"You know I'm only letting you change the subject because I'm hungry," she said after a pause.
"I stopped at the diner on the way here, but I could make you a grilled cheese on the hot plate," Ryan said. He didn't add that Seth had eaten Ryan's supper allowance and Ryan wouldn't be eating again until breakfast.
"What did you have?" Summer said, casually.
"The usual," he said, just as casually. Coffee was his usual when he was out of money.
"Well, I don't want a grilled cheese," she said.
"I could make mac and cheese in the hot pot," Ryan said. "Or I have the stuff for a peanut butter sandwich."
"No and no," she said. "You're always feeding me. And I want some vegetables. Let's get dressed and I'll take you somewhere nice. Maybe the Lighthouse."
"If you want to go somewhere nice, you could call one of your friends," Ryan suggested, reluctantly. "I have some things to do here."
He hated to lose half of his evening with her, but they couldn't be seen together in public, and he couldn't pay anyway. It would be better if she went with someone else.
"No," she said, mulishly. "I want to spend time with you, and I don't want to think of you sitting here alone in the dark."
"We could go back to the diner." His tab wouldn't be due for a few more weeks. He could scrape together the money to pay for an extra meal by then. And no one at the diner would be calling up her father to let him know about his daughter's tawdry affair with the hired help. People at the diner minded their own business.
"No," Summer said. "You'd end up paying again, and this is my treat."
He flipped his eyes up from her feet. He had the uneasy feeling she knew about the money situation.
"You don't let me do much for you," she said softly, meeting his eyes. She rolled onto her knees and reached out to touch his face. "Let me take you out tonight to a quiet place where you don't have to cook. It's a meal, not an engagement."
He looked into her eyes for a minute more, testing them and her intentions, before agreeing.
"OK," he said, "but it can't be fancy. Or where anyone would know us and ..."
"Get dressed," she interrupted happily. She jumped off the bed and ran into the bathroom for a little pre-prandial primping.
Ryan grabbed clean pants and a shirt and shrugged them on.He hoped he wouldn't have to spend the next day remembering them as the clothes he had been wearing when Summer dumped him.
He had read in one of the magazines Summer left at the room that the best way to break up with a man was to tell him in a public place so he couldn't make a scene. Not that he would make a scene no matter what she decided. Summer knew that. But she liked to do what the magazines said.
He would know for sure if she suggested taking separate vehicles. He wondered whether his pickup had enough gas in it to make it to the restaurant. Whether the five bucks in his pocket would need to go for gas or for the tip, and if he had to choose, whether Summer would understand that he had to have gas to get to work, even to a job that he likely wouldn't have the next day anyway.
"I'll drive," she said,coming out of the bathroom in a cloud of perfume.
He smiled. "Whatever you say, Summer," he said.
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AN/I know Summer's dad isn't a construction guy on the show, but by the time that fact was introduced, the first draft of this fic was 90 percent complete. I hope it doesn't spoil it too much for anyone./Sister Rose