But I hadn’t.
Because, as being part of my family had made all too clear to me throughout my life, I wasn’t that bright.
That didn’t matter now, though. Being on TV would be perfect for me, and I would do whatever it took to get there.
“It was rough, yeah,” I said as lightly as I could, conscious of the voice recorder she held in her hand. “But it all ended up fine. Since people know me now I’ve sold tons of my swimsuits since I got home, and I’ve actually had to turn down lots of custom orders because I just don’t have the time.” Needing to turn the conversation from this to my new career dream so she’d pass that along to Simon, I added, “And I’m chatting to lots of people online, both my fans and my... well, non-fans, let’s say, and it’s great getting to interact with so many people. I can’t wait to make it into a career.”
“Yeah, I heard you want to be on TV,” Meili said. “What makes you think you’d be a good host?”
Her voice was neutral but her words still stung. I had to answer quickly, though, so Simon would see I was fast on my feet as Peter had said I’d have to be, so I said, “Well, I do love talking to people, and I’ve been interested in celebrity stories and people in general forever. I especially like getting into the truth behind the stories and the little things that nobody knows about people, because it’s so much fun to get to know a new person. I want to share that fun with an audience.”
I stopped, surprised at how good that answer had sounded to me, and Meili smiled with more warmth and said, “Well, you’re right that it’s fun. I love it too. And maybe you can help me out with a few little things about Kent and MC? Or perhaps Aaron?”
I didn’t want to talk about my ex or his fiancée of about ten minutes, but Aaron was fair game, so I smiled back and said, “Aaron’s a great kisser, I’ll tell you that. And I don’t think you saw enough on the show of how good he was to MC. He really took amazing care of her. It was sweet.”
“Will you two be our next couple after Kent & MC?”
I gave her a ‘wouldn’t you like to know?’ smile, and she laughed.
I had considered that myself, more than once. Aaron and I, following the show’s rules so we wouldn’t risk a million-dollar fine for bad behavior, hadn’t been together in person since we left the island, but we’d been talking almost every day on the phone and by email and text and I liked his flirting and his energy and what I remembered of his kiss. But I couldn’t imagine he’d want a relationship with me, at least not the kind I’d want.
“Don’t say no,” a low amused voice said from behind me, “or I’ll cry.”
I looked over my shoulder, already smiling. “We can’t have that. Get over here and talk to the nice lady.”
Aaron stepped up and slid his arm around my waist. I cuddled into him, liking the feel of a strong male body against mine, and we stood together answering Meili’s questions while her camera guy snapped picture after picture until I was blinded by flashbulbs.
I loved it. Loved the attention, loved the flashes, loved her interest in me. This was the start of my dreams coming true, and with every second I loved it more.
When she ran out of questions, she smiled at us both and left us alone. Aaron started to say something, but I said, “Hold up a second,” and pulled my phone from the pocket I’d built into the dress specially for it. “Selfie time.”
“You didn’t just get enough pictures?”
“Never,” I said, drawing him closer. He pressed his cheek to mine and smiled with me as I snapped the picture, then waited while I uploaded the picture to Twitter with a comment of, “Last time I kissed this guy I got ice cream sandwiches. Think I should do it again?”
He laughed, reading over my shoulder, as I posted the comment. “I think you should, yes.”
“Of course you do,” I said, pretending to sound disgusted. “That’s why I wasn’t asking you.” I wasn’t really asking my Twitter followers either. It was just part of the image I wanted to have, the fun-loving crazy sexy girl. A little ditzy, but not really stupid. A good cover story. “So, how are you?”
“I’m good,” he said, putting a ton of meaning into the word so I was laughing even before he added, “But you know that.”
“A legend in your own mind.”
“At least I’m a legend somewhere. Things are looking up.” He pulled me closer. “Oh, and thanks for the help up there. I don’t think those two would have gotten anywhere without us.”
I looked across the crowded backstage area at Kent and MC, who stood with their arms wrapped around each other chatting with several of the other exes. “Maybe not.”
I wasn’t sure, actually. MC, who’d always seemed flatter and duller than sand washed clean by the ocean, had stood up in front of everyone in the studio and all the people watching at home and told Kent she loved him and wanted him back. With such a big gesture from her, matching his gesture of throwing that contest on the island, I wasn’t sure anything would have gotten in their way, not even the show staff that Aaron and I and some other exes had blocked from reaching them.
“Speaking of getting anywhere...” Aaron turned me partly toward him and brushed his lips over my cheek. “I’ve missed you, and I’d love to see you again. Now that we’re allowed. Any interest in that?”
His light kiss set my skin tingling, but even without that I’d have said, “Definitely.” We had shared a far more significant kiss on the show during one of the contests, and though everyone had been standing around watching I had almost forgotten that because of how good his mouth had felt on mine.
I’d dated since Kent and I split, of course, but when the guys found out I wouldn’t be having sex with them unless we got married that had always been the end of things. It would be the end with Aaron too, no doubt, but at least I’d get a few more of those kisses before that happened. And maybe... he had made it sound on the island like he was interested in more of a commitment than he’d wanted in the past. And he’d been so good to MC, so caring and concerned. He was more than just a sexy face and body. Maybe he and I...
“Definitely,” I said again, and shivered as he again kissed my cheek.
“Excellent,” he said into my ear. “Party in my hotel room in an hour. Stay in that dress. It’s gorgeous. Just like you.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said in my best sexy voice.
He chuckled. “Whatever you say, gorgeous. See you in an hour.”
*****
“Seriously, though, you guys need to keep it down. Okay?”
Aaron nodded, and the security guards left. Once he’d closed the door behind them Aaron rolled his eyes and moved one hand in a ‘blah blah blah’ gesture, and we all laughed.
“So, where were we?”
“Right here.” Greg held out a fresh beer to Aaron.
“You’re my best friend,” Aaron said as he accepted the bottle.
I pouted. “Thought I was.”
Aaron crawled back up onto his bed to sit beside me and slung his free arm around my shoulders. “You’re my best... something else. But you need to stop laughing so loud or we’ll get kicked out of the hotel.”
“Then stop being funny,” I said, cuddling into him.
“I’d have to stop being alive for that to work.”
“Could be arranged,” I said, at about the same time as several other people expressed the same opinion, and we all howled with laughter again.
Only about ten of us had shown up for Aaron’s after-party, but we were still a tight fit in his small Vegas hotel room. Kent and MC had politely refused, no doubt to go have sex like I’d never do with Kent again, and most of Kent’s other exes had clearly just wanted to get away from everything related to the show, but Lily and I were surrounded by men and both clearly enjoying it. She was snuggled up in an armchair with Greg but still laughing and joking with the other guys.
Jim launched into a complicated plan for how we could kill Aaron, and Aaron said, “I’m not safe here. My bodyguard and I are locking
ourselves in the bathroom.”
He got up. Nobody joined him.
He laughed and held out his hand to me.
“But I was the first one who wanted to kill you. Why would you lock me in with you?”
“Keep your enemies close, as they say.”
“That makes no sense,” I said, but I still took his hand and let him help me off the bed and to my feet because I had a feeling I knew what he wanted and I wanted it too. “I don’t think you get what’s going on here.”
“Fine. You can explain the concept to me in the bathroom.”
I didn’t get a chance, though. Once he’d shut and locked the door, he pinned me against it and kissed me hard.
Heat ripping through me, I kissed him back, and after a long amazing time he pulled back and said, “I think I prefer this without an audience.”
The passion and hunger in his eyes sent such a shiver through me I could hardly say, “Me too.”
“Stop talking,” he murmured against my mouth, then began kissing me for real again before I could make the protest I knew he expected that he’d started it.
I didn’t really want to protest about anything at that moment, because I didn’t want his kisses to end, but his hands began roaming my sides and stroking every part of me he could reach and though I loved the feelings it gave me I knew I had to stop him. I wasn’t going to sleep with him, and the more he fondled me the harder it was to remember that.
As his touch drove me crazy, I found my hands moving over his back and shoulders and I didn’t stop them either. Everything just felt too good.
“I think,” he said, his words broken up by kisses, “we should make the others leave.”
A different kind of shiver swept through me. If he did that, there’d be nothing to stop us having sex. Nothing except that I didn’t want to.
My brain didn’t want to, anyhow. I’d seen so many of my high school friends’ relationships ruined by sex that I’d decided not to have it until I was married. As an unexpected bonus, the decision had also helped me avoid the jerk guys who caused my friends such grief, because as soon as they realized I wouldn’t give it up to them they gave up on me. It made a great filter. When I met Kent and told him I was waiting to be married and he said simply, “Understood,” I knew he was a good man. Making Aaron wait would show me whether he was good too.
My brain understood all that. My body, though, remembered how mind-blowing I’d found sex and it wanted it again. Right now. And it didn’t care whether Aaron was the kind of good man my brain wanted, because it knew he was exactly the kind of good it wanted.
As my brain and my body argued and Aaron kept kissing me and I kept kissing him back, I heard the doorknob rattle behind me. Pulling my mouth from Aaron’s, I gasped, “Someone’s out there.”
“I know,” he said, trying to draw me back in. “Give me one more second then we’ll go get rid of them.”
I pushed him away. “They’re trying the doorknob.”
It rattled again as I spoke.
Aaron muttered a curse word then unlocked the door and flung it open. “What?”
Greg stood there, with two more security guards, bigger and angrier-looking than the last two, one of whom had asked Aaron for an autograph. The hotel was clearly sending in its heavier weapons.
“Party’s over,” the biggest guy said in the deepest voice I’d ever heard. “Only one allowed in here is Aaron Garcia. The rest of you, get out.”
“Summer can stay, can’t she?” Aaron slipped his arm around my waist. “We’ll be quiet, I promise.”
When he wasn’t kissing me I could think more clearly, so I skipped away and said, “Don’t cause trouble, Aaron. I’ll see you later. Tomorrow for breakfast?”
“Room service?”
I made myself giggle. “You’ll wreck my reputation. Look, you already are. I’m getting kicked out of your room!” I grabbed my phone from my pocket and snapped a quick picture of myself with the security guards behind me before they could stop me.
“Twitter?” Aaron winked at me.
I winked back. “Maybe.”
The biggest guard sighed, probably considering whether he could take my phone from me, and his partner said, “Time to go, folks.”
“Fine, gorgeous, you win this round,” Aaron said, smiling at me. “Breakfast in the restaurant at ten. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said, relieved to be out of the situation and also desperately wishing we’d been able to finish what we’d started.
Chapter Two
“Saw that picture on Twitter,” Kia said, holding open the thrift store door for me. “Those guards were huge.”
I laughed. “And not very happy. But I got like fifty retweets for that so at least I’m happy.” I’d caught Aaron, looking like he’d been doing exactly what we had been doing, in the picture along with me and the guards, so I’d posted with a caption of “Aaron, as always, getting me into trouble”, and the retweets and jealous comments about how much they’d like to kiss Aaron had shown me people loved it. Kia followed me inside, and I added over my shoulder, “As long as people keep talking about me, I’m happy.”
She moved up beside me. “Because it helps with the suits, right?”
I looked over, surprised at the bite in her voice. “Of course. That, and the potential TV stuff. But I won’t be calling those guys until later today so for right now it’s all about the suits.”
“Good.”
Since we’d been to this store many times before we walked straight to the swimsuit section and began browsing for interesting styles and patterns I could rework and combine into amazing one-of-a-kind pieces.
I acted like I always did, but the whole time I could feel eyes on me. Feel it, and love it. People’s whispered comments near me, the occasional click or flash of a camera, the way they blushed and looked away quickly when I caught them staring... I loved it all. Both of my careers, my current one and my longed-for one, required me to have people’s attention, but even if they hadn’t I’d have wanted it. I knew that some of my fellows from the show, especially MC, hated the limelight but I didn’t understand that. I wanted to be famous for as long as I could.
Kia nudged me. “Do you like this one?”
I looked at the suit she held, then burst out laughing. “Yeah. It’s perfect.”
She looked confused. “What’s so funny?”
I brushed my finger over the brick-patterned fabric of the tank suit to give myself time to think. Since I’d already been thinking of her the suit had immediately reminded me of MC, the brick wall against which conversations threw themselves to die, and I’d thought Kia was thinking the same thing. She clearly wasn’t, though, and I didn’t know what to say.
Finally, I went with, “There’s that song, ‘Brick House’. I always thought that was hilarious.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, Summer. Whatever. I just thought the fabric was neat.”
“It is,” I said, almost not noticing her snarkiness. I got that a lot, and I’d long ago stopped letting it bother me. Far better that than people realizing how often I was lost and clueless. “Hold onto it.”
She threw it over her shoulder and kept digging through the racks, then said, “So I went looking for another fulfillment site for us.”
Her too-casual tone would have alerted me that she was up to something even without the words. “What? I thought we agreed we couldn’t do that. Each swimsuit is unique and those guys all deal with shipping out tons of the same thing. How would they--”
“I talked to one who’ll take the suits on a J.I.T. basis. Sounds good to me.”
It might have to me too, if I knew what it meant. Back when we’d first started working together on my suits, me doing the design and creation and her handling the business side, I’d asked for explanations of some things I didn’t understand and she’d been so condescending about it I couldn’t bring myself to ask now. “Okay. Can they do like you’ve been doing, wrapping the suits in matching tissue paper and making
the package look pretty and--”
“Highly doubt it,” she said, sounding annoyed. “Fine. I’ll keep doing it. But you’re going to have to help. I’m getting overwhelmed. Maybe post on Twitter a little less and run your business a little more?”
Every time I posted on Twitter we got another boost of attention and often more orders, so I kind of was running the business by being there, but I knew what she meant and I knew she’d been working hard so I said, “Okay. Sorry.”
She cleared her throat. Sounding like she regretted pushing me, she said, “Me too. And look, we’re all going out this weekend. Wanna come?”
I did, but... “I’m way behind on making suits. All those custom orders... I have to get them done.” When I’d gone off to the show I hadn’t even thought about the ‘I’m happy to make you a custom suit’ page active on my website. Kia had realized what was happening when emails began pouring in and pulled the page down after the first episode aired while I was still on the island, but even in that time we’d still received over a hundred orders. I’d been plugging away at them in the three weeks since I’d returned and was nearly half done, but I couldn’t bear the idea of getting negative feedback online for being later than the promised six-week delivery time. I needed everyone to love me.
“The girls say you’ve changed,” she said quietly. “Because of the show. They say you don’t want to bother with us any more.”
“Us? Are you part of that? I assume not, because I see you nearly every day. And I want to go out with them too. Tell them that, okay? I do. I just... I have to finish those orders.”
She nodded, and we went on looking for suits and occasionally being interrupted by people who wanted pictures of me, and I wondered what she would have said if I’d told her that I had to finish those orders right now because once I was a big TV star I wouldn’t have the time.
Chapter Three
“You’re getting better,” Ron said as I rinsed my fogged-up goggles in the pool. He shook his head. “Man, after what I saw on the island, I didn’t think it was possible.”
I slapped his arm, not too hard because I knew he was joking. “Come on. It’s not my fault I never really learned to swim.”
Fifteen Minutes of Summer Page 2