"Out of Season"
Part 14
By Sister Rose
Standard disclaimer applies.
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Ryan Atwood woke with a warm woman in the lee of his body. Sunlight filled the room, the same kind of sunlight that he always felt in Summer's presence. He slid his arm out from under Summer's sleeping form and pulled on the clothes he had been wearing the night before, digging the T-shirt wad out of the corner of his closet. He took Summer's car keys from their nail. How was he going to get his truck?
The U-Drop-Inn owners wouldn't mind a pickup being in the lot for one night, but he needed to retrieve it soon. But first, he needed to go to the diner.
Fortunately, Joyce was in early and was sympathetic to his plans. Ryan re-entered his room with a box of food balanced on one arm.
Summer had rolled over in her sleep, nuzzling her face into her hand like a child. Ryan wondered whether she had been a thumb-sucker and wished he could have seen her as a baby.
He quickly unloaded the box and turned it over for a makeshift table.
"Wake up, sleepyhead," he said, kissing Summer on the forehead. "Wake up."
"What?" she stirred.
"Breakfast in bed," he said.
She sat up in bed and leaned against the wall, fisting the sleep out of her eyes.
Ryan pushed the box closer to Summer and put a plate of pancakes on it. A small jar of strawberry syrup followed.
"What is all this?" Summer said.
"Happy Valentine's Day," Ryan said, a little uncertainly. What had seemed a good idea when he awoke seemed less so under the light of Summer's sleepy eyes.
"You made breakfast for me?" she said.
"Well, no," Ryan admitted. "Not made. Delivered. Joyce made."
"Strawberry pancakes?"
"For Valentine's ... look, it was a stupid idea and I'm sorry."
"No, it's so sweet. I love pancakes."
"You do?"
"I love breakfast."
Ryan and Summer had been having sex for more than a year, and he hadn't known she liked breakfast. He wondered what else he would never know about Summer.
"Just one thing," she said.
Ryan wondered what he had done wrong.
"Fork?" she said.
He handed her a fork and a knife and a napkin, then grabbed a thermos of coffee and poured her a cup.
He watched her lose all dignity and snarf pancakes like a starving rat, drowning them in strawberry syrup. He smiled as she inhaled food.
"Thanks," she said. "I guess a Slurpee wasn't all the nutrition I really needed. Aren't you going to eat?"
"I just brought the one plate, and I have to take it back to Joyce as soon as you're through," Ryan said.
"Well, that pack of crackers you had last night isn't going to last all through my plans for the day," Summer said. "First, we have to shower. Then we have to go get your pickup and bring it back here. Then we have to go shopping. I'm going to pick out the hottest, reddest dress anyone has ever seen and I'm going to leave Chip drooling in the dust. He's going to wish he had never even thought of messing with me."
Ryan heard these plans with alarm, especially the "we" word. He had planned a busy day, too, and the only similarity was the "take a shower" part.
"Who's going with you?" he said, trying for casual and hoping it didn't sound desperate.
"You are," she told him, chasing the last bite around the plate and through a puddle of syrup. "We can go get your truck, but then I need to take a pain pill and I still shouldn't be driving."
By the time they were showered, dressed and ready to go and Summer had quit complaining about wearing the same clothes two days in a row, Ryan had resigned himself to spending a day shopping with her.
"You know I know nothing about clothes," Ryan said, when they finished their errands and were finally on their way to the mall.
"That's my job," she said. "Your job is to look at the dresses on me and let me know which one is going to turn Chip into a shriveled, crawling, begging worm."
"How will I know that?" he said.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "Pull over there first."
She pointed her cast-covered arm toward a giant discount store, the kind he wouldn't have guessed she knew the name of. They drove up and down the aisles of the parking lot, looking for room.
"What are we doing here?" he said, claiming a parking spot triumphantly.
"Getting me some clothes that don't smell like a bar and getting you a Valentine's present," she said.
"What?"
"I didn't get you anything because, well, I didn't think you would remember the day, and then if I got you something when you didn't remember it, you would be all weird about it, but you did remember, so I need to get you a present. And I know just exactly what it's going to be."
"Summer, you don't ..."
"... have to get you a present. I know," she interrupted. "I want to. I wanted to before you got me pancakes. And you have to take it, so get that sulky look off your face right now and start planning on accepting it graciously."
She wasn't looking at him as she walked to the entrance, and Ryan had no idea how she knew his lower lip had started poking out. He attempted to comply, though he wasn't sure about his success in changing his expression to "suitable gratitude." He thought the wrinkled nose of bewilderment probably ruined the effect.
Summer marched straight toward the women's clothing section and started tossing choices into the basket Ryan was pushing.
She was on a mission, biting her bottom lip as she held up possibilities, considered them and put them back on the racks.
He watched her worrying that lip and then licking it. He imagined himself doing the same thing. He should have gone shopping with Summer a long time ago. He had no idea he could get so turned on standing in an aisle with a shopping basket.
"Which top?" she said, holding up two.
"Uh," he said.
"Never mind, Atwood," she said, throwing both in the basket. "I'll pick in the dressing room."
He followed her, still pushing the basket, to the men's clothing area.
"What size do you wear?" she said, stopping at a pile of folded khaki pants.
"I don't need anything," Ryan said, shoulders stiff. She didn't need to buy things for him.
"Did I or did I not ruin a pair of pants in the washing machine?"
She had, as a matter of fact, ruined the pants. They would do for cleaning rags now, but they were pants no longer. The shirt was still recognizable as a shirt, but its utility was going to be limited to nonstressful situations.
"Well, kinda," Ryan said. "But you were doing me a favor."
"No, I wasn't, and I'm not now. I owe you a pair of pants and a shirt," she said. "What size? Never mind."
She tossed a couple of pairs in the basket, grabbed a handful of shirts off a nearby rack and said, "Come on. We have to try these things on."
Ryan followed her to the dressing rooms and obediently took the armload of clothes to the men's side. He noticed the clerk watching him suspiciously.
Inside the tiny dressing room, he looked in the mirror. After his shower that morning, he had changed into his best pants and T-shirt. He examined the effect. Worn work books, thinning at the toes. Black pants, worn at the knees until they were almost gray. Too-tight black T-shirt trying to tear apart at the shoulder seams from too much wear. Hard-faced, close-shaven man with scars.
Conclusion: He looked like what he was -- an overmuscled poor boy with too many miles on him.
If even the discount store workers were suspicious of him, he needed different clothes to wear to the mall with Summer. If he didn't want the security guards to shadow them all day, he needed to let Summer buy him these clothes. The realization soured in his mouth.
She was hiding her charity, but it was still charity. He forced himself not to scowl as he left the dressing room and walked toward the giant mirrors where Summer was waiting.
She looked like muted orange sunshine. He couldn't stop a smile from pushing the proto-scowl off his face. She always had that effect on him.
"I don't know much about color," he said, "but I think an orange blouse doesn't go with a red cast."
Summer made a face. "I'm trying to think of it as complementary colors, but I'm afraid you're right. Who knew Atwood had fashion sense?"
She whirled her good arm around in the air, motioning him to turn. He did. She walked over and checked the size tag at the small of his back.
"No, those pants are too big," she said. "Try the other ones."
"They feel fine," he said.
She smoothed a hand down his backside.
"I want to be able to see your butt in them," she said. "Go."
She wanted to see his butt. And she had copped a feel. She must like it. He thought about that and smiled wider while changing.
"Yes, that's better," she said, back in front of the mirrors. She was wearing a green top and a tiny green skirt. "Do I look too much like Christmas in this?"
He looked her up and down, red cast included.
"A little," he admitted.
"What I thought," she said, sighing and turning back to her dressing room. "Go try on the blue shirt."
After two more runs for each of them through the dressing rooms, Summer was satisfied.
"Come on," she said. For a woman wearing very high heels, Summer was able to cover a lot of territory fast when she was inside a store. She had talked about shopping being her true calling, and Ryan was beginning to think it hadn't been a joke.
She stopped at the shoes.
"Summer, do you even know how to wear cheap shoes?" he said.
"I'm not wearing these heels through the mall," she said. "We're power-shopping and I want some cute sneakers."
"We could go to your house and get some," he said. For that matter, they could have gotten all her clothes from her house. It was a drive, but not an unreasonable one. She didn't have to spend money on clothes just to go buy more clothes, especially when he knew the variety of her wardrobe. Sometimes he thought he understood Summer. But when she acted like the rich girl she was, he didn't understand her at all.
"This is my party," she said. "And I don't want to go to the house today. I called and told the stepmonster I wasn't going to be home today. She's not that sad about it -- something about a naked day just for her and Daddy. Ew. I don't want to think about that too much and I certainly don't want to see it."
Ryan didn't ask any more questions. He didn't want to encourage the picture that had popped into his head of the gray-bearded Mr. Roberts and the tanbed-and-blonde Mrs. Roberts naked together, nuzzling and ... Blech.
"Sit down, Atwood. This could take a while," she said.
He found a shoe bench and plopped onto it.
Summer picked her way through the shoe racks, choosing and discarding and making little snorty noises of displeasure at the shoe choices.
He closed his eyes, leaning his head against the shoe rack behind him, savoring the experience of being with Summer, even if he had to go shopping to do it.
"Hold up your foot," she said, startling him.
"What?" he said, opening his eyes to a men's sneaker.
"Little slow on the uptake today, aren't you?" she said. "Hold up your foot."
She was right. He had done nothing but say "Huh?" and "What?" since he got up. He stuck a foot in the air.
Summer put the hard-soled shoe against his boot sole, measuring it.
"That should do," she said. "Take off your boots and try them on."
He looked up at her, standing with her hands on her hips and an impatient expression on her face. He looked down at his boots and started unlacing them.
They both winced as the sock smell hit them.
"Sorry," Ryan said.
"You must have a deficient laundry maid," Summer said.
"That must be it," he agreed, yet another smile flirting around the corners of his mouth. "Though I'm wondering how she knew an entire jug of bleach would melt my clothes."
"You knew!" Summer said. Her impatient expression changed to a guilty one. A totally guilty one. Ha!
"Finally figured it out," Ryan said with satisfaction. "Took me long enough."
"You're not mad?"
"I was at first."
"And now?"
"It's kinda funny now."
"Really?"
"But not a lot funny, so don't push it."
Summer made a big show of zipping her lip and tossing the key.
Ryan made a big show of obediently trying on the shoes she had picked.
They fit exactly. He didn't want to take them.
She must have seen it on his face.
"It's your present," she said. "If they fit. And if you like them. I didn't think you would like the loafers I found."
As Summer had said, it was her party.
"They fit," he acknowledged, looking at them and not at her. When Ryan had been younger, he had tried to look good in his clothes. He had grown out of vanity -- or it had been knocked out of him -- but he couldn't help but realize these brown lace-ups would look good with the khaki pants Summer had picked out for him. It was embarrassing, but it warmed him, too. She must have noticed that he didn't have any shoes, just his work boots. And she was taking care of it.
"Thank you, Summer," he said, "for the Valentine's present."
She smiled her brilliant smile.
"Come on, Atwood," she said, charging for the checkout lanes.
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AN: This chapter is for BonnieD, who thought I forgot about Valentine's Day./Rose