Special Episode: Good Feelings (Part I)
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Melanie makes her way along the beach, gazing out at the windswept waves.
The entire ocean looks like a jewel today, crystalline and aquamarine, sparkling white at the crest of each wave. The beach grass lays in thick green mounds on the slopes of the dunes, swaying gently on the salty breeze. The sea grape trees are in blossom, their pale green fruits hanging in heavy clusters, beginning to blush a rich purple.
This is one of Ketterbridge’s less-visited beaches, one mostly frequented by surfers over swimmers. Still, there are some families on spread-out blankets, couples sharing beach towels, surfers camped on the sand beneath beach tents, grilling food and playing music.
Melanie seats herself on an empty picnic table on the grassy spread just above the sand dunes. Enwrapped in a pale green pool of shade from the overhanging tree, she leans back on her palms and rests her feet on the bench. Unhappily aware that she’s the only one at the beach not smiling to have all this sunshine, to have such an uncommonly beautiful day.
Mel catches sight of Dahlia. She’s caught a wave, and she’s flying on her beautiful new board. Mel can almost hear her screaming with delight from here. Mel doesn’t even surf, but she could tell what a gorgeous piece of work that board is. She’s never seen Dahlia soar down the waves so smoothly.
Mel tilts her head back and lifts her face to the light, willing it to work on her. It’s making everyone else happy, isn’t it? Whatever problems they’ve got going on?
She straightens up with a defeated sigh a minute or so later. Her eyes wander over to one of the nearby beach tents, where other surfers are laughing and talking, their relaxing, lazily-paced music rolling out from their speakers, smoke rolling out from whatever food is being passed around.
Some of them are pretty cute, which makes Melanie self-conscious about sitting here alone looking miserable. She knows they’re not paying her any attention, but still.
She hops down, smooths out her scarlet sundress, and sets off into the trees at the edge of the beach. The trees seem to glide by on either side as she goes, appearing and disappearing without her noticing. She’s way too deep in her thoughts to pay any attention.
She should be looking forward to the blind date Dahlia set up for her later, but she just can’t be. There have been too many disappointments, too many letdowns.
Melanie hates that even after all these years, even after that unbelievable disaster of a breakup, she still compares the men who come into her life directly to Aiden. What’s even worse is that they all come up short.
Mel is pretty sure everyone at school thought she kept taking Aiden back solely because of the most obvious reasons. His staggering handsomeness, his soccer skills, those brooding blue eyes, that voice. The sex was another obvious reason, though that’s a factor only Mel would know about.
The allure of those things wasn’t lost on Mel, but that isn’t why she kept forgiving Aiden over and over again for his bad behavior. It was actually for the way he got when he was alone with her.
Someplace quiet and peaceful, no noise, just the two of them - and Aiden would finally relax, find some kind of peacefulness within himself. Mel would see something hard and cold drop away from his eyes, and he’d look relieved. He’d turn all sweet and cuddly with her, warm, gentle, teasingly playful. She would lay wrapped in his arms and wonder if anyone else knew this side of him. Maybe Ralph and Noah, she thought, because the two of them pretty much seemed ready to die for him if necessary, a feeling Mel could understand.
All of that only contributed to making the breakup a nightmare.
“But you knew it wasn’t going to work out between us in the end,” Aiden had protested, genuinely stunned beyond all belief and obviously horrified when Mel burst into shocked tears. “I told you forever ago that I was planning to leave town, I kinda thought we were, like - looking after each other and having a good time together until we went our separate ways.”
“What? I thought we were leaving town together, and we’d get married, and…”
“I - what?” Aiden had stared at her like he couldn’t believe a word she was saying. “You and me?”
Mel had nodded, swiping her tears away on her sleeves, and Aiden’s eyes widened even more. He stood frozen for a second, then suddenly swept her up in his arms and kissed her. Mel wishes she hadn’t kissed him back, but she couldn’t help herself. Anyone who’d experienced a kiss from Aiden would’ve understood.
“I’m sorry I made you cry again,” he whispered, backing up towards the door after he let her go. “But this’ll be the last time, okay? You - you’re better off without me. You’ll find someone else, Mellie, someone who doesn’t make you cry at all. Trust me.”
And then he was gone.
Mel was furious about that response for ages, until gradually it dawned on her that Aiden had some kind of point. She can acknowledge that, looking back. Her high school self cherished a dream of the future where she and Aiden were married and had adorable babies by now, but in retrospect she’s glad it didn’t happen. What was she thinking, honestly? She and Aiden fought all the time. Those poor imaginary babies.
Still… Mel has to wonder… has she felt as warm and cozy and safe as she used to feel in Aiden’s arms? Has she gotten into any real trouble since he left, any wild off-limits adventures the way she used to with him and his friends? Has she had sex that was nearly as fun? Has she laughed as hard as she used to around him? Although - that last thing might’ve been because of Noah, not Aiden.
The point is that there were good things. Really good things.
Mel remembers all the stupid, ridiculous, crazed nights out that ended with everybody crashing at Ralph’s house. There was nothing like the hazy exhaustion after that kind of fun. One of the best nights of sleep Mel ever had was when she drunkenly crawled into one of the beds at Ralph’s place and passed out sandwiched between Aiden and Noah. The protective cozy pressure of warm muscle on all sides was perfect. Mel slept so deeply that she still wishes she could get another night of that kind of rest.
Thinking of it makes her blush with embarrassment a little, because she woke up the next morning snuggled up with Noah, not Aiden. Noah looked like he was just as deeply knocked out as she had been, gone deep into his dreams. He’d put his arm around Mel in his sleep, and she was curled up with her head on his chest, her nose buried in the soft fabric of his shirt, her head tucked beneath his chin.
Thankfully Noah never found out, and Aiden didn’t care when he did. He was never all that jealous when it came to Mel. He also never told her that he loved her, and it wasn’t until he left town that Mel realized she hadn’t said it to him, either. Maybe that meant something, that neither of them had felt the need to.
Mel wants someone who loves her so much that they can’t help but tell her. She wants to feel the same way about him. That wasn’t her and Aiden, clearly.
Mel doesn’t want him back, and if he ever dared to show his face in Ketterbridge again she’d probably tell him exactly what she thinks of him. But things just haven’t reached any of their highest heights, the way they used to when he was around.
After he left, Mel threw herself into getting her event planning company off the ground, then getting her own place, her own routine, her own steady life. It’s been years of that, now, and everything has slowly gotten so hopelessly boring. Everything is starting to look so disappointing. And how many weddings and baby showers does she have to plan before she finally gets to plan her own?
Mel is itching for some love, some fun, romance, adventure -
She jolts to a stop, listening hard.
One glance around tells her that she walked way farther out into the woods than she meant to. The rush of the waves is far back behind her, distant to her ears. And she just heard something else, something much more close by. A little snap like a twig being very lightly stepped on.
Mel’s heart starts to pound hard and fast. She shifts her feet into the stance she vaguely remembers from the times she went to Dahlia’s free self-defense classes. She strains to listen, her frightened eyes roving over the trees.
“Hello?” she calls out, backing up a step. “Is someone-?”
A whole lot of things suddenly happen, in about the span of three seconds.
First, Mel catches a split-second glimpse of a figure streaking through the trees. Then, before she can blink, a strong, warm arm catches her by the waist. The ground is gone from beneath her feet, she’s briefly airborne, held only by the arm grasping her. She hears four or five fast, dull thudding sounds as she falls, one after another in rapid succession.
She lands surprisingly softly, on someone’s lap. Whoever’s holding her twisted around in midair and took the hard hit so she wouldn’t. She takes a sharp breath, and the warm, woodsy, salty scent that comes back to her - along with the feeling of a broad, flat chest against her shoulder blades - tells her what’s going on.
Some man just tackled her to the forest floor.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she gasps, throwing an elbow backwards at him.
He catches it in his hand, quickly but gently.
“What are you doing?” he whispers, just as out of breath as she is.
His voice startles Melanie. She shouldn’t like it so much, given the context, but it was warm and deep and handsome, with some kind of gentle, flowing pidgin lilt to his words.
He lets Mel go. She wrenches herself free and twists around to glare at her attacker, but all the angry things she had lined up to say fall apart in her mouth when she gets a look at him.
Whoa, some dreamy-eyed voice in her heart sighs, caught up in a burst of breath-taken surprise. She can’t see too much of his face, but the rest of him is eye candy. Going off his age and his build, he would fit right in with the cute surfers she saw on the beach. Or - no, he would stand out, at least to Melanie’s eyes. But only for good reasons.
“You tackled me!” she hears herself say indignantly, her eyes lingering on the beautiful sweep of dark, silky curls falling forward to kiss his brow.
“I’m sorry.” He spreads a hand at her, then points at the tree just behind himself. “Promise I had a good reason, wahine nani.”
Melanie didn’t quite understand all of that, but her eyes follow his pointing finger to the tree. There’s a splash of bright, wet color on the bark. Right near where she had been standing. Bright yellow paint.
“Would you please get down?” the man whispers softly, glancing anxiously around at the trees. “My life already flashed in front of my eyes, watching you nearly get hit. And he’s definitely still around.”
Melanie finally registers the clunky mask hiding half of the man’s face, the slender gun with the huge round magazine in his hands. Oh, Jesus. How did she not notice before?
“Did I just walk right into a paintball fight?” she groans, her shoulders sinking. “No, come on! This really isn’t what I need right now!”
“Yeah, you should really get behind me. Please?” He doesn’t touch her again, but his voice picks up a begging tone. “You got me choke kine nervous out there in the open. I’ll walk you to safety right after I take out this fackah, alright?”
The guy beckons to Mel. He’s crouched down on one knee near the tree, leaving room for her to fit behind him. She spends a few fraught seconds debating with herself, then quickly crawls around behind him, trying not to make any noise. She has to balance herself with a hand against his back, but he doesn’t complain.
She blinks in surprise as he pulls off his mask, then twists around to quickly pull it down over her eyes.
“Don’t you need that?” she asks, adjusting it to fit her better.
He’s already turned to face forward again. “You need it, too, if you’re gonna be here.”
And one of them has to go without. He’s clearly decided it should be himself, not her. Mel blushes a little beneath the mask.
“I’m sorry - I’ll just get out of here,” she whispers to him. “Don’t worry about walking me. It’s not far to get back to the beach.”
“Hang out for just one more second.” He’s slowly scanning the trees, looking down the barrel of his paintball gun, sweeping it in a slow half-circle. “I’m worried that if you go walking through the woods alone you’re gonna get sniped. Someone else is gonna think what I thought.”
Melanie is watching the trees, too. “What did you think?”
“That someone roped you in as part of their strategy. You know - a beautiful girl walking around lost in the forest during the game, that looks like a trap to lure a player out into the open. That’s why I snuck up on you, ‘cause I wasn’t sure. Not until I realized you were about to take a hit from someone else who must’ve assumed the same thing. Are you alright, by the way? No paint on you, right?”
Melanie is unhurt, but strangely hot and flustered. For some reason she wants to put her hand on his back again. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“What are you doing out here?”
“I was…” Melanie pauses, then lets out a helpless laugh. “Looking for some adventure, I guess.”
“Really?” The man breathes out a laugh, and Melanie’s heart flutters at the glowing warmth of it. “Wow. You’re a woman who knows how to find what you’re looking for, huh?”
His skin is a warm hue that matches that warm laugh, like rich copper. Shining with sweat at the moment. His collar is ringed with it, too, and he has mud splashed all over his clothes. Looks like he was crawling along the forest floor at some point.
Mel loses the battle against her curiosity. “What’s the game you’re talking about?”
“Basically it’s like capture the flag, but with paintball. If you get hit you’re out. Makes getting to the flag pretty difficult. It’s all the way up there, on what I wanna call a - mini mountain? The thing that’s too big to be a hill.”
Melanie absorbs that for a second. “Are you guys even allowed to do this out here?”
“Uh, yeah, speaking of that, maybe keep it quiet… you know that thing where you have a feeling you’re probably breaking some kind of law, but you’re not sure exactly what it is? We are using biodegradable stuff, though, so at least it’s not a crime against the ʻāina.”
Melanie fights down a burst of giggles with great difficulty. She’s trying to remember to keep an eye on the trees. Her heart is racing, her senses all pricked up for any sign of movement.
“It’s all just for fun,” he adds. “Whoever wins, doesn’t matter. We’ll all go back to the beach afterwards and have a good time. We got a grill and stuff set up for later. We stay down near the edge of the beach, did you spot us? The blue tent. We left our boards there.”
No wonder he looks like he’s with the cute surfers Mel spotted on the beach. He’s one of them.
“We’re actually hanging out all night,” he adds casually. “If-”
“Can I play?” Mel hears herself blurt out, before she can think too hard about it. “Can I join the game?”
He doesn’t break his gaze away from the trees, but his paintball gun pauses in its slow, sweeping arc. “You want to play? Seriously?”
Mel thinks about it for a second, scared and excited. Are you really doing this, right now?
“Yeah, why not?” she forges on determinedly. “Are you allowed to have a teammate, or is that against the rules?”
The cute guy considers for a second.
“Nah, it isn’t against the rules. Pretty much everyone’s got a teammate except for me. I don’t actually know the other guys too well, if I’m being real with you. I just moved to town, so I signed up to try this out and meet some new people. Still looking for my friend group here, I guess.”
A radiant smile turns up Melanie’s lips. She was going to ask if he wanted her as a teammate, but he could’ve just lied and said it was against the rules if he didn’t. That was his opportunity. He let it go by.
“I’ll be your teammate,” she whispers, smiling behind his back. “If that doesn’t sound bad to you.”
“I’m Raj,” he whispers back, and the name flies right to Melanie’s heart. She likes it immediately.
“Raj,” she repeats softly, and then, with a gasp - “Raj!”
He had started to turn his head to look at her, and the second he did, Melanie caught some movement in the treeline. The glint of sunlight off of someone’s paintball gun. Mel drops her head, instinctively flinging her arms around Raj and pressing her cheek against his back.
Raj whips around, raises his paintball gun, and fires. There’s a spattering sound, and then a stream of violent curses from somewhere out in the trees.
“Hah!” Raj calls triumphantly, breaking into a wide grin. “You’re out, dude!”
“Got me right on the mask, brah,” a groaning voice calls back.
“Sorry ‘bout it, brother. Clean it off and toss it to me before you go back to the beach, yeah? I need it, and your gun, too. Assuming you don’t mind.”
“No, but why?”
“We’ve got a new player. She needs some gear.”
Melanie pulls off her mask as Raj gathers up the stuff for her, quickly fixing up her rumpled braid. He comes back over to her with his head bowed over the mask, busy polishing it up on the sleeve of his shirt.
“Don’t think I caught your n-” he begins, then stops abruptly, having looked up.
For the first time, Mel gets a clear look at his face without the mask hiding any part of it. Her heart stops, wracked with a shy stutter so painfully intense it reminds her of the way she crushed on boys in middle school.
His face is beautiful, unusual and striking. Composed of all straight, sharp, hard angles, but together they inexplicably paint a gentle, dreamy picture. The set of his mouth makes him naturally look like he’s right on the verge of a friendly smile. His espresso eyes are dark and soft, warm and wide. Traveling slowly over her face.
This is his first time getting a good look at her without the mask, too, and he seems to have forgotten that he was saying something.
“I’m Melanie,” she hears herself answer, melting with a sudden rush of shyness.
“Melanie,” Raj repeats softly, breaking into that sweet smile his mouth is perfectly designed for. “Alright, cool. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”
~~~~
Raj helps Mel fit the mask over her face, then gives her the basics on how to use the paintball gun. She isn’t dressed right for this, so he gives her his long-sleeve RVCA shirt to wear over her little red sundress.
This leaves him in his t-shirt, revealing his bare arms and more of his shapely build. Mel can tell by his frame that he’s a man who works hard with his hands for a living. Her eyes flit very briefly to his biceps when he reaches his hands behind her head to tighten up her mask.
Mel bends over to make sure her sneakers are laced up tight. She senses Raj’s eyes lingering on her, but he’s carefully looking away when she straightens up.
“I’m just a little worried about your bare legs,” he tells her, determinedly keeping his gaze trained on the trees. “You take a hit there, it’s gonna hurt.”
“Well - if it happens, it happens!” Mel isn’t about to let anything stop her now. She hasn’t been this excited for anything in ages. “Sometimes you get a bad paintball bruise. Whatever. It’s not a big deal, it’s - part of life!”
She sets off walking at a fast clip before Raj can answer.
He jogs over to catch up with her, making a distressed little sound in his throat. “Yeah, sometimes you get a paint-based injury, then get an infection, then go to the hospital! It’s all part of life!”
“Exactly!”
Raj blinks, then lets out a sputter of warm laughter. “Alright, you know what? Word.”
“Yeah?” Melanie asks, relieved.
“Sure, I can get down with a little recklessness.” He flashes her his sweet grin. “And I like your energy.”
Melanie smiles up at him, blushing in surprise.
“None of this applies if you get hit on your bare arms, by the way,” she adds. “If that happens because I have your shirt, it’s a crisis, and I’m going to feel terrible about it forever.”
“What?” Raj laughs, watching her curiously. “Why’s that?”
“Because-” God, doesn’t he know how nice his arms are? Injuring them even a little bit would be a crime. “Nevermind. Don’t worry about it.”
They set off through the forest, keeping low and quiet, taking a very roundabout way to approach the huge hill.
“Were you really just walking around in the forest looking for an adventure?” Raj murmurs, stealing along by Melanie’s side.
“Not exactly. I was at the beach with my friend. We’re going to a lowkey little beach bonfire thing happening later, but we got here early so she could try out her new surfboard.” Mel lets out a soft sigh. “I’m supposed to meet a guy at the kickback tonight for a blind date. Dahlia just met him and she thinks we’d be cute together, so she wants to introduce us.”
Raj stops suddenly. His gaze snaps to Mel’s face, his eyes widening.
“Oh, you’re-?” he begins, then breaks off, taking a closer look at Mel’s expression. He tilts his head to the side, his angular eyebrows furrowing. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m dreading meeting him,” Mel blurts out, not sure why she’s being this honest. “I’m dreading the whole thing. I probably would’ve blown it off, but Dahlia already told him I was down to meet him tonight, so I can’t.”
“Wait, what?” Raj draws his head back sharply, blinking hard. “Why are you dreading it, if you haven’t even met him yet?”
“I don’t know. Dahlia’s all - oh, Melanie, he’s perfect for you, he’s the nicest guy, he clearly has such a big heart, and he’s really sexy and sporty, just your type. It’s like, okay, I get it, I’ve been single for a while. But you don’t need to start exaggerating to get me to start dating again. All that did is set me up to be bummed out when he’s not those things. Just means it’s all going to be very disappointing, once again.”
Raj is frowning, his lip caught between his teeth.
“You been disappointed a lot?” he asks quietly, his voice softened with sympathy.
Mel realizes what she said a little too late. She turns her face aside, not looking at him.
“Enough times,” she answers. “There’s just - a lot of jerks out there.”
Raj falls quiet. He looks a little sad, all of a sudden. He tilts his face down, letting a cluster of soft curls fall forward to hide his expression.
“It’s not just that,” Mel adds quickly, trying to move them right past that conversation. “To tell you the truth, I just hate going on first dates.”
“Why?”
“Because I always get so nervous! I spend too much time worrying about how I look, trying to please instead of just being myself. If he turns out to be my person, that date is the first thing he’ll remember about me. That thought always makes me anxious, because I’m not trying to date casually. I want love, commitment, a family, and a cozy house for us to live in. The first date would be the start of that, so it has to be perfect. It’s a lot of pressure.”
Raj thinks about that in silence for a moment, offering her his hand to help her over a creek.
“Well - we’re not on a date,” he says slowly. “Why don’t you hang with me until tonight, so you can try to stay in this zone when you meet him? There's no pressure with me. You can be as honest as you want, say whatever you’re thinking. And don’t worry about looking cute.”
Mel lets out a helpless laugh. She gestures to his long-sleeve shirt over her sundress, then to the big dorky mask over her eyes. “Yeah, I kind of already had to give up on that one.”
“Oh, that’s not what I meant, I actually think you look really-” Raj stops himself, then shrugs his well-built shoulders, hastily turning his face away. “Anyways, you and I have no dates planned for the future. We’re just hanging for today, so you just be completely yourself and don’t give a damn about what I think. If that doesn’t sound bad to you?”
Melanie considers the offer, finding herself surprisingly okay with it. She’s having a good time with Raj, anyways. This is the most fun she’s had in a while. Definitely the first adventure in a good long time.
“Okay, yeah.” She smiles brightly at Raj. “Let’s do that.”
Raj dramatically holds up his paintball gun, pretends to aim it at something off in the distance. “And we’ll win this whole damn thing while we do it. Something’s telling me.”
Melanie giggles at the level of theatricality he put into that one little move. “You’re that sure we’re in for a glorious victory? What will the victory parade look like, then?”
“Oh, it’ll be crazy.” Raj grins widely at her, his beautiful eyes laughing. “My family is Indo-Caribbean, by way of Hawai’i. We come out to celebrate.” He taps a fingertip to his temple. “Mad in we mind as soon as the party starts, as my uncle would say.”
Melanie can’t remember the last time this many waves of giggles kept overtaking her, one after another. She’s blushing so hard, too. Her cheeks are burning and aching.
“It’s actually pretty weird that I can’t dance, considering,” Raj adds thoughtfully.
“Aw, you can’t dance?” Melanie laughs.
“I can’t, but I do. Gotta fete a little every day, you know?” He glances brightly at her, his eyes sweet and warm and genuine. “There’s never not a lil’ something or other to celebrate.”
Oh, her cheeks hurt. They hurt a lot.
“I bet you’re not as bad as you think,” she protests. “Why don’t you show me?”
Raj pauses, staring at her in alarm. “You - want me to dance? Right now?”
“You said to just say whatever I’m thinking and do whatever I want. I’m letting you know I’d like to see you dance. You do what you want with that information.”
Raj arches a dark eyebrow, hearing the challenge in her voice.
“Hey, I’ve got no problems dancing in front of you. I’ve got problems with the idea that someone might take me the fuck out with a paintball while I’m dancing badly in front of you. That’s the type of thing a man can’t recover from, not when it happens in front of a pretty girl. Especially not a babe of your caliber.”
Are her cheeks, like - okay? She’s trying to remember if they’ve ever burned like this before.
“Up to you,” she says lightly, then slips her phone out of her pocket, hits play on the paused playlist.
Soft music drifts up from her phone.
Raj sighs heavily, slinging his paintball gun over his shoulder. “This is gonna make you happy?”
“It is.”
“Alright, you asked for it,” he tells her.
Melanie’s eyes widen as Raj begins to dance in front of her. Her free hand flies up to her mouth, her shoulders drawing in with a full-body effort to hold herself together.
“Oh - oh - Raj, stop,” she gasps, her voice trembling with laughter. “Please, I - oh, my god.”
“Told you,” Raj laughs, then snaps into total, solemn seriousness, wrenching the paintball gun back into his hands and shifting into a battle stance. “Alright, enough play. Back to the war. We have to see this through to the end.”
He says it with such soulful gravitas - so much like a character in an epic war movie, in such wildly sharp contrast to the silly dancing he was just doing - that Mel instantly dissolves into laughter again. Raj beams at her, then quickly covers her mouth with his hand.
“Hey, M, we need to-”
“Yeah, no, I know. I’ll be quiet.” Melanie catches her breath, her laughter subsiding into little tremors. “Sorry, I’m just-”
Having fun, she realizes. She bites her lip, beaming up into Raj’s eyes. His dark lashes flutter as he blinks hard, staring back.
They quickly break their gazes apart, then freeze as a noise disturbs the quiet of the forest. The unmistakable sound of a footstep from somewhere in the trees.
Mel and Raj exchange a glance, then drop low to the forest floor.
“Alright,” Raj whispers. “Let’s go win this thing.”
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