Taking full advantage of my invisibleness, I check out my tranquil scenery-breaker. Bright-white sneakers, athletic pants that cling around a pair of thick thighs, and a light grey tee hangs loosely on his upper body, breaks of dark perspiration mark the crevasse of a muscular chest. With his baseball cap pulled down low, I can’t see his face. He’s concentrating on his text.
“Oh-ho.” He shakes his head. “That’s not happening,” he says as his fingers work the cell screen.
Maybe I should give the bench a shake with the wiggle of my ass. Ya know, to inform him that he’s not alone. After a few seconds, I shrug. It’s a free country. I’ll just sit back, enjoy the sunset, and forget about my unwanted guest.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” I hear a raspy voice say and turn just as he pulls the buds from his ears.
“What gave me away?” I drop my head to try to make eye contact, but the low baseball hat shadows his eyes.
“The way you’re looking at the bay,” he says in a pleasant masculine tone.
“It’s beautiful.” I shrug with the truth.
“Yeah.” He nods, shoving his cell into the front pocket of his pants. “What you call beautiful, I call home. But,” he folds his hands and places them on his lap, staring straight ahead at the bay, “no object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”
Oh, my God! Did he really just quote London’s renowned poet from the late 19th century? I try to compose myself as I push a strand of hair behind my ear. “Oscar Wilde fan?”
Ever so slightly, his lips turn up. Then a dimple strikes the corner of his cheek. I feel a smile tugging my own lips as his head sways my way, his eyes still masked by the hat.
“Beauty,” I point at my chest, “to me, it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to.”
“Ah.” His head tilts back just a little and the sun slips beneath his cap, revealing a pair of unique, gold-speckled eyes. “Picasso fan?”
“Yes.” I smile thoroughly impressed. I glance at the calming bay, not giving away my astonishment. “And that is why, what you call home,” I turn back to gaze into those exceptional eyes once more, “is beautiful to me.” Apparently, the bay isn’t the only thing worth looking at. I can’t say that when I came to this little town, I thought I’d find a guy who could quote Oscar Wilde or recognize a quote from Picasso for that matter. Yet here he sits.
“Actually,” he taps the side of his head, “it’s your brain's medial orbital frontal cortex that’s telling you the bay is beautiful.”
I gaze at the mysterious scenery-breaker. He’s ... wow. I like him. “You’re speaking of the pleasure center of the brain.”
“Correct. It’s responsible for telling us what’s attractive and what’s not.”
“But it only tells us what we like to look at,” I’m quick to point out.
“True.” He nods with a low chuckle, setting his arm along the back edge of the bench. “We must rely on the rest of our brain to tell us if what we’re seeing is actually worthy of its attraction.”
He’s so right but most men don’t get that. I giggle, not recognizing the girly sound that just came out of my mouth.
“So …” He turns to face me and his head lowers, again the hat hiding those unique eyes. “Will you be around long enough to make that deduction?”
“I’m here for the summer,” I say without pause.
“Well.” His chin shifts upward and those enchanting eyes find me. “I’d say that should be enough time for you to decide if what I call home is truly beautiful.”
“Yes. I think that it should,” I say watching as he rises from the bench.
He lifts the ear buds toward his head. “Maybe, I’ll see you around then, Picasso.” He smiles and places the buds in his ears just before jogging off.
Me. I sit on the bench, mouth slightly ajar, as I watch the mysterious scenery-breaker slowly disappear from the horizon. “Huh.” I slouch back; who would’ve thought the first guy to get my girly-giggle on would hail from a little town called Vista Bayou in Texas.
CHAPTER TWO
“Oh good, you’re back.” Rayna glances at me, snatching her purse off the coffee table as I come through the front door. “Emmie is upstairs waiting for you. She has a couple of outfits picked out for you and,” she points at me, “make sure she does your makeup.”
“Why?” I halt in the living room. “What’s up?”