Always Remember

her job four weeks ago, and Daddy won’t bail her out anymore. He gave her a month to at least find a part time job and he said he’d help until she got something more permanent, but she didn’t. She assumed he’d help anyway, so she partied all her money away. She has to go back home to Kent.”
    Well, shit.
    I sit back on my chair. “How do you know all this?”
    “You know in Harry Potter that Rita Skeeter gal? The one who turns into a bug?”
    Lexy and I nod our heads.
    “I’m like her, just less buggish.” Saph shrugs. “I have eyes everywhere, and I’ve been keeping an extra one on her.” She grins slyly. “One of them happened to be male and in her flat when she got the call from her Daddy.”
    “ Ew,” Lexy mutters. “I’m no prude, but ew.”
    “I ’m with you on that.” I point to her. “So that’s it? She’s just leaving?”
    “Tomorrow,” Saph clarifies. She sinks the rest of her wine and eyes us, settling on me. “So I’d finish your drinks and get your asses to Sam. She ain’t done with your guy, Jen.”

    ~

SAM

    “Why are we doing this outside instead of in the basement?” I groan, chills starting on my bare arms.
    “You ’d be a shit surfer,” Alec mutters, not for the first time.
    “Yeah, I ’m more of a sun guy. I’m a city guy, remember?”
    “A city guy who regularly gets his ass handed to him by a small town girl.” He grins.
    “Fuck off.” I laugh, standing up and wiping my face. The back doors open and I look up.
    Jen comes flying through the door, runs across the garden, and launches herself at me. I stagger slightly, holding her ass in my hands as she jumps up, wrapping her legs around my waist. She grabs the back of my head and presses her lips against mine.
    It’s a desperate kiss, one I’ve felt before. It’s the same kiss she’s given me each time since last weekend – but this one is tinged with determination.
    Her tongue slides against mine, her fingers tightening in my hair, and I dig my fingers into her skin. Her legs grip me tighter, her body pushes against mine, and I almost forget we have an audience.
    “Well, that’s the best hello I’ve had in a long fucking time,” I mutter, staring at her still closed eyes. They snap open, and I’m suddenly swimming in the blue of them.
    “She can kiss my ass. She might be leaving, but she ’s not fucking having you. I don’t care. The day she gets you is the day she climbs over my dead body to get to you. You’re my guy, and I don’t give up anything that’s mine.” Her eyes are full of steely resolve, as hard as ice. But… Heidi’s leaving?
    “Heidi ’s leaving?” I repeat out loud.
    “That ’s what Saph said,” Lexy says from behind Jen. “And she thinks she’s not done with you, thinks she’ll show up here or something in a last ditch attempt to get to you go back to Kent with her. It brought out Jen’s tiger.”
    “I happen to like that tiger,” I mutter, feeling her thigh muscles clench. I lower us carefully to the ground, letting her sit in my lap, and wrap my arms around her back. I hold her tight to me, proving to her that the feeling is mutual. “I ’m not going anywhere, babe. You know that. Me and you, remember?”
    “I know,” she says in a quieter voice. “But she ’s kept up this game because I’ve let her. I should have grabbed her bleach blonde extensions and flipped her over my shoulder onto her surgically enhanced chest the first time she tried it.” Her eyes flick away and back to me. “I’m not even letting her try, Sam. I don’t care anymore. I’m looking at everything I care about.”
    I touch my lips to hers. “I love you,” I whisper. “And your tiger.”
    She smiles against my mouth. “I love you, too, and so does my tiger.”
    I smile, running my hands down her back.
    “They make me feel slightly sick,” Lexy says deliberately loudly.
    “Then I hope you never have to see you and Alec. I ’ve ruined perfectly good toilet bowls over you two in the past.” Jen laughs, spinning so she’s sitting next to me.
    Lexy pokes her tongue out and Jen does the same. I watch as Jen flicks her tongue across her bottom lip. I glance up and she ’s looking at me from the side of her eye. Her lips creep up on one side.
    “Stop teasing him, Jen. It ’s not nice.” Lexy grins, glances at Alec, and bites her lip. His eyes double-take before the smile drops from his mouth. She slowly releases her lip, and Alec shakes his head. I look at him