“So how did you meet our Griffon?” The “our” in front of his name is not lost on me.
“I picked her up in London,” Griffon answers for me.
I laugh quickly while Alana raises her eyebrows. “London? Really.”
“Yep. London.” I smile at him and take a sip from the cup.
I spend the rest of the conversation trying to avoid Alana’s eyes as she seems to track my every move. Rayne manages to find something in common with Peter, and the two of them step back from the fire to go sit on the concrete retaining wall at the end of the beach.
“Want to walk?” Griffon asks, gazing out at the shimmering ocean. He reaches back with his hand out and I take it, running a few steps to catch up with him. Away from the fire, the air is colder and the noise from the crashing waves is louder.
We walk down the beach just at the edge of the water, hearing scraps of conversation and shouts of laughter from the bonfires as they’re carried by the breeze. Griffon bends down as a wave recedes and wipes the sand off something before handing it to me.
I look at the perfect sand dollar and run my hand over the smooth edges before putting it carefully into my pocket. The beach is littered with broken ones, but a whole one is always a treasure. “Thanks,” I say, leaning into him as we walk.
There’s a big log a few yards down the beach, and Griffon pulls me down onto it so that I’m sitting in front of him. I lean back, enjoying his warmth as we watch the surf pound the beach. I feel Griffon shift as he looks back toward the bonfire.
“Rayne seems to be pretty happy,” he says.
I glance back to where I can see their silhouettes still sitting on the wall. “Thanks for introducing them,” I say.
“Peter’s a good guy.”
We sit in silence for a few more moments, until I can’t hold it in any longer. “Do you know Alana from school?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” he says. I can feel his heart beating as I lean into him. His chest rises as he takes a deep breath. “Actually, I, um … used to know her sister.”
“As in ‘know,’ know?” I get a sinking feeling, wondering if she’s as pretty as Alana.
“I suppose. But it’s not like she was my girlfriend,” he adds quickly.
“You mean you slept with her?” I ask. I turn around to face him so that I can see his eyes as he answers.
He pauses, but won’t meet my gaze. “She goes to college down in Santa Barbara and came home last summer for vacation.” He suddenly seems older again, more mature than any guy of seventeen has a right to be. “Look, I didn’t lie to you,” he says. “I don’t go out with girls my age. Nobody in high school, anyway.” He lowers his eyes and bites his bottom lip. “At least, I didn’t.”
Despite the fact that this makes my heart race, I say nothing. Griffon leans in to kiss me, but I pull back just as his lips brush mine.
“Sometimes I think you just want to be the handsome prince,” I say, studying the rough bark of the log. I haven’t really thought any of this through, but I suddenly know that it’s exactly how I feel.
“Um, thanks?” he says uncertainly.
“Not thanks,” I say. “It’s like I’m some kind of damsel in distress and you want to be the one to rescue me.”
Griffon puts his hand over mine. “You’re right. I do want to rescue you,” he says. “But not because I think you can’t handle things on your own. It’s for my own selfish purposes.” He leans in and kisses me again; the hunger he feels is almost visible in his touch. The vibrations that exist between us are like background noise now —so constant that they’re just an extension of him.
I let myself melt into his body, my hands traveling up his thighs to pull his hips toward me, causing Griffon to inhale sharply. I wrap my legs around his waist and unzip his jacket, sliding my cold hands inside. I can feel the outline of the ankh pendant underneath his shirt as I explore his torso, my fingers tracing the muscles under his warm skin. We stay like that for what seems like hours, tasting and touching, and I’m grateful for the limitations imposed on us by being out on a wet, cold, public beach. If we’d been safe in his room on his big, wide bed, I’m not sure that I’d be able to say what I know I should to keep things from going too far.
As we sit listening to the waves, I feel peaceful inside, like I’ve finally found what I’ve spent years looking for. School doesn’t matter. The cello doesn’t matter. Even not playing the cello doesn’t seem to matter.
“It makes a difference, doesn’t it?” I say. “Knowing you’re going to do it all again.”
“In a way,” Griffon says cautiously.
“I mean, what if something bad did happen? It would suck for the rest of this life, but we could find each other in the next life and start all over again. There’s got to be a way to leave a marker to follow the next time around.”
“It doesn’t really work like that,” Griffon says, a hint of sadness in his voice. “There’s no guarantee that we’ll even be back together in the same century—forget about the same continent.”
“What about all those stories you hear about people who are destined to be together? Who find each other again because it’s fate?”
“I wish it were that simple.” Griffon leans over to kiss my neck. “There are no guarantees you’ll find the people you were with before, even though technology does make it easier to find other Akhet.”
The thought of coming back without him sends a stab of pain through my chest. “Does it ever end? Do people ever stop coming back?”
“Maybe,” he says. “Some forms of Buddhism think that once you no longer need the earthly experiences anymore, you go permanently to a higher plane.”
“Like heaven?”
“Probably where the idea of heaven came from,” he says. “But I personally can’t imagine no longer needing earthly experiences.” He starts running his fingers through my hair, each contact with my scalp sending shivers straight down into my feet. I close my eyes, giving myself up to the sensation and the sound of the waves in the cold dark night.
The transition into the vision isn’t as jarring as it has been before; the first thing I feel is the scratchy fabric at my throat, and the familiar rhythm of someone gently running a comb through my hair.
