“Have you… ever been through a hurricane before?”

Beck nods, sipping his beer with long, dirty fingers. They match the rest of him, sweaty and stained in a grey tank top that shows off his lean, wiry muscles and smattering of random tattoos. I wasn’t kidding when I said Milly bragged about Beck nonstop. I always kind of rolled my eyes and stopped listening when she started in on another “Beck’s so great” tirade.

Maybe I should have been listening, after all. “A couple, over the years. You can’t help it, growing up in Florida.”

I sip my beer, glancing at the deserted parking lot. “I haven’t,” I murmur, peering back into his curious brown eyes.

“I can tell.”

“How?” I jut out my chin defiantly.

“Well, for starters, you’re still here.”

I sag back against the chair. “I was going to leave. Milly wanted me to, but then I went and did this and…” I wag my bum foot, slivers of dull pain inching up through the rest of my leg. “I couldn’t exactly drive.”

Beck nods at the screen door, as if beckoning to the kitchen just beyond. “You don’t have many supplies if you’re staying.”

I lift my leg, fighting a wince. He already thinks I’m a grade-A wimp, and a minor to boot! “Again, need I remind you of Exhibit A?”

Beck glances just beyond my wicker chair, jutting out his scruffy chin. “Let me guess, you ate shit on that thing?”

I don’t have to look behind me to picture the long skateboard, now tattered and scarred, propped up on the railing behind my chair. “There are a lot more curbs around Siesta than the last time I visited.”

Beck stands, all muscles and sweat and scruff, like something out of a cigarette ad. I struggle not to ogle him, top to bottom and back again. “Oh yeah, when was that? Before you were knee-high to a grasshopper?”

He breezes through the screen door as if he owns the place. “Make yourself at home,” I call after him, smirking and feeling an unfamiliar, but pleasant, warmth in my belly. And not just from the beer. I hear him rooting around in the fridge, ignoring me until he slips back out onto the front porch and hands me another frosty can of Steel City Light. “You know, I’ve got precious little supplies as it is, and now you’re drinking up half of them.”

The wicker chair across from me creaks as he sinks into it, all soft edges and hard angles and lots of both. “Relax, Kid. Mr. Johnson in Unit 3 had me stock his place with a ton of stuff for the storm and then his flight got canceled at the last minute, so I’ll just haul them down here and not charge him for the trouble. The storm will be long gone by the time he gets a flight down to Florida again anyway, so…”

Suddenly, I get a hint of why Aunt Milly was always so impressed with Beck. “Wow, you’d do that? For me?”

He makes a kind of “peshaw” sound and rolls his eyes. “What, I’m gonna let you starve just because you’ve never been through a storm before? And can’t skate to boot?”

“I can skate, it’s just… been awhile.”

“Gonna be another while, too.” He nods at my big, ungainly boot. Waves his beer can at it, too, like I don’t know where he’s pointing. “How long are you supposed to keep that cast on?”

“Another three weeks.”

He makes a face. “Tell me about it,” I grumble, already restless from two days of sitting on my ass. And the storm isn’t even here yet. Beck is the most excitement I’ve had since I ate shit a few days earlier, and although he’s being nice at the moment, I know he’ll be gone soon enough.

And then I’ll be all alone, with an empty fridge and a bum leg and balls so blue it’s gonna be hard to sit down until I finally to do something about them. Alone, that is. As usual. I sigh and glance back at Beck, finding him peering at me curiously as I struggle not to fantasize about what it might be like to spend the storm with somebody else instead.

Someone tall, dark, handsome, and as sweaty as a pig in heat…