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I roll my eyes as I drape myself over him, bracketing his head with my arms as I start pressing feather-light kisses on his face. “I’m scheduled for van duty right now, and I don’t have a studio session until later today. You can get Father Matteo and Kendall to watch over the camp. Let’s go somewhere. Just you and me.”
I know I haven’t voiced it, but I think that all this sneaking around has been getting to me. I crave what I have with Jarred, always wanting his body, always yearning for his thoughts, always giving him parts of me I’ve never given anybody else, but there’s a limit to that. I’ve been slowly feeling it as the weeks have gone by. It’s not enough to stop whatever it is we’re doing, but it is enough for me to want just a little escape. To want to go somewhere where we don’t have to hide. Where he can see how good this could feel out in the open.
“Where would we go?” Jarred worries his bottom lip. I can tell that he’s thinking this over way too much. I mean, I get why he wouldn’t want to be seen out in public with me, but I’ve thought this through enough for the both of us. It’s about a two-hour drive from here, in the middle of nowhere, where nobody can recognize us. He should know by now I’d never put him at risk.
“Well, I saw a sign three towns over for mini golf.”
“Mini golf?” he chuckles. “I haven’t played that in twenty years.”
“See? It’ll be fun,” I say, poking at his side. “You haven’t played it since before I was born.”
Once again, he pouts adorably, the tips of his ears burning red. “Please, don’t put it that way.”
“So, what do you say?”
He takes a deep breath and smiles sheepishly. “Okay?”
I’ll take it.
“Perfect,” I say, slapping his hip as I toss him his shirt. “You go tell Father Matteo you’re leaving, and I’ll get the van ready.”
He nods and leaves with a parting kiss. It doesn’t take him long to tell them we’re leaving before he’s already back in the van. We drive in companionable silence, listening quietly to music, our hands intertwined between our seats. Once we get there, I follow the signs for the mini golf place I noticed last time I came to this town to pick up some supplies. Nobody bats an eye as we approach the little kiosk, pay, and get our clubs.
It becomes increasingly apparent ten minutes in that I have no idea how to fucking play mini golf, but Jarred just laughs it off, perfectly doing…whatever it is you do in mini golf.
“I told you this would be fun,” I say, smiling when he does this adorable little clap when he sinks the ball into the hole. “So, twenty years since the last time you played? It doesn’t look like it.”
“Yeah. Jenny and I took the kids when they were five. They loved it,” he says but something pinches at his expression as we move on to the next lane. “Now that I think about it, it might have been the last time we actually had fun together as a family.”
“Not the greatest relationship,” I blurt sarcastically then I curse. “Shit, I’m overstepping.”
He smiles at me with a soft shake of his head, laughing a little under his breath as I set up for my turn. “No, you’re not. Jenny and I got married right out of high school. It was one of those comfortable kinds of love. Safe, I think.”
“I can’t imagine you in high school,” I snort. “Let me guess. You wore a lot of flannel.”
“No, I was actually the captain of the football and basketball team,” he says with a roll of his eyes and a proud smirk on his lips. “I played a little of both in college too.”
“What’s your degree in?” I ask. I poke my tongue out as I try to focus on the ball in front of me, but I miss it by way more than a few inches and frown. I sigh in exasperation and turn back to him. “Damn.”
“Catholic Theology.”
“Wow. That sounds…”
Boring. It sounds fucking boring as hell.
Jarred sobers, holding the bright pink ball in his hand for two seconds too long before setting it down, not making eye contact with me as he speaks. “It was what my dad wanted.”
Right. That piece of shit. I swear if I could resurrect him just to kill him myself I would. I hate the fact that I’ve even remotely managed to steer the conversation in that direction. So, I change the subject. “Well, I was artsy, which you can probably guess.”
“A tortured artist,” he says teasingly with a sly smirk. “Lots of metal music and grungy outfits.”
“Nah, I was…” I struggle for the word that can aptly describe my circumstances growing up. “Perfect. The perfect kid who got perfect grades and acted perfectly at church.”
He frowns, stilling and ignoring the fact that it’s his turn and people are sure to catch up with us. “That doesn’t seem like you. Not that you’re not perfect. That’s not what I meant—”
“I know what you meant. I just acted exactly like my parents wanted me to. I did everything they asked for. It wasn’t until I left for college that I realized how trapped I was.”
It was a life of suppressing who I really was. It was constant quips about the state of my hair and the weight of the scale. It was always being told to be quiet, be invisible, be forgettable. It was being consistently told that my mere existence was an inconvenience and the least I could do was make myself as small as possible to make up for that.
