The Monday Girl (The Girl Duet #1)

by Julie Johnson

  I bite my lip and take that final step forward, closing the sliver of distance between us. And, for just a moment, with my head on his chest and his arms tight around me, I let myself be weak.

  “I thought you weren’t a hugger,” he murmurs against my hair. “I think this definitely constitutes hugging.”

  “This isn’t a hug,” I insist, near tears.

  “Oh? What is it then?”

  I sway back and forth a bit, so our bodies rock. “We’re dancing.”

  “This isn’t dancing.”

  Laughing through my tears, I pull back to peer up into his face. “Yes, you’re right — I’ve seen you dance. There’s a lot more booty-dropping involved. Some shimmying. Shoulder shaking. Definitely less rhythm. And far fewer clothes, if my memory serves me right.”

  “You should be honored I felt comfortable enough to dance naked in front of you.”

  “Honor was not my primary emotion, that night.”

  “Ohhh.” His voice is suggestive. “You thought I was sexy.”

  “I thought you were ridiculous.” I grin. “Though, I did really enjoy the sight of you gyrating like a wheezy geriatric without his walker, wearing absolutely nothing but your solar system socks.”

  “Leave my socks out of this.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “You totally packed them, didn’t you?”

  “No.” His denial comes a little too quickly.

  “They’re totally in your suitcase right now.”

  “No!”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not! Wait—Kat!”

  I pull out of his arms before he can catch me and dart toward his closet. He gives chase, but I’m too quick. I reach the suitcase first, stick my hand inside, and triumphantly pull out the first round ball of fabric my fingers land on. To my delight, it’s a pair of patterned socks, the stars and planets clearly visible.

  “I knew it!” I crow in victory.

  Grayson narrows his eyes at me from a few feet away. “Cruel, Firestone. Just cruel.”

  Leaning down, I pull them on my feet. They’re way too big — stretching halfway up my calves, they fall down whenever I take a step — but damn if the sight of those stars and moons doesn’t bring a huge grin to my face. His mouth is set in a glare, but his eyes are full of humor. When I start moving in an imitation of his drunken dance moves — wiggling my booty, shimmying my shoulders, twirling like a lunatic — he completely loses it.

  Laugher rumbles through him, making his shoulders shake. Turning, he walks away from me. For a second, I think he’s leaving, but instead he crosses to the room-control remote and presses a handful of buttons. A few seconds later, music pours through the speakers — a trashy pop-song from about a decade ago. I know every single word, and sing them shamelessly as I pelvic-thrust in his direction like an ‘80s workout instructor.

  “Now who’s ridiculous?” he asks, grabbing my hips and pulling me close.

  “Still you.”

  He hesitates no more than a beat before releasing his hold on me, turning his back, and dropping lower than one of Beyoncé’s backup dancers, his hip bumping mine with enough force to send me stumbling off balance. I dissolve into giggles at the sight of him.

  He really is ridiculous — in the best kind of way. My heart feels infinitely lighter than it did five minutes ago, and I know I have Grayson to thank for it.

  A few moments later, he retrieves a second pair of pattered socks from the depths of his duffle bag and pulls them onto his feet. They’re covered in lobsters and other sea creatures — a truly atrocious article of clothing.

  We strip off our bathrobes so we’re naked except for our little-kid socks, and for what feels like an eternity we dance around in the dim light of his bedroom, laughing like fools and holding each other close until our touches change from playful to passionate and our gasps of mirth turn to gasps of an entirely different nature.

  And I think, as he makes slow love to me against the hardwood floor, there have never been two people like us in the entire existence of the world, who fill the gaps between each other's heartbeats with such perfect timing.

  Afterward, we lie together intertwined, neither in any rush to untangle. He doesn’t tease me — Isn’t this cuddling, Kat? — and I don’t stand up in a huff and say, Fine, then let’s get dressed. We stay close, until our breaths even out and our hearts stop pounding like we’ve just run a marathon, only breaking apart when the polite rapping of knuckles against the door to his villa announces the arrival of our dinner.

  Grayson gets up and puts on his robe to deal with room service, tossing mine over me like a blanket as he walks by with a devilish grin. Smiling so wide my cheeks ache, I slide my limbs into the plush cotton fabric and watch him move, feeling lazy and lustful and luckier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

  Hello, happiness.

  It’s nice to finally meet you.

  * * *

  A knock sounds at the door of my villa the next morning.

  I race for it, giddy and breathless, a grin already stretching my features wide as I pull it open. My expression falls instantly when I see it’s not Grayson standing there in the entryway. He made no promises to come by, after I left him around midnight… but I’m disappointed regardless.

  Apparently, it shows.

  “Gee, what a greeting,” Harper drawls, pushing past me. “I think Jehovah's Witnesses have been received with more excitement.”

  “Sorry,” I say, closing the door and attempting to school my features into something resembling happiness. “What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She pins me with a look that says it’s definitely not nothing. “Just wanted to see what you were up to.”

  “Up to? Me?” I squeak. “I’m not up to anything.”

  Oh, good, that didn’t sound suspiciously guilt-ridden at all.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Yep.” I swallow. “Just hanging. Me, myself, and I. You know. Doing… me… stuff.”

  “Hmmm.”

  I bite my lip to keep from spewing any more nonsense and wait for her to speak.

  “Funny,” she murmurs, examining her cuticles with bored glance. “I came by last night, when I wrapped up on set. You weren’t here.”

  “That is funny! I must’ve been out for a walk.”

  I make my way to the sitting area, avoiding her eyes. I try to act casual, instead of like I’m ready to explode from the strain of keeping the events of the past few hours to myself. She settles on the couch and stares at me. And stares. And stares , until I feel myself break as though she’s been water-boarding me for hours instead of sitting there blinking.

  “I’m lying,” I admit in a rush. “You know I’m lying.”

  She nods. “Easier to spot than a bad spray tan.”

  “I don’t even know why,” I wail. “I just… I don’t know where to start.”

  “I’m guessing this has something to do with whatever’s been making you so squirrelly and weird the past few days.” She pauses. “And I’d also wager that something has green eyes and dark hair and deliciously chiseled abdominal muscles, if I had to put money on it.”

  “Not a bad bet.” I press my eyes closed and force the words out of my mouth before I can change my mind. “I slept with Grayson. Last night. We went for a hike to this hidden waterfall, and it just… happened.”

  The admission is greeted with absolute silence.

  No explosion, no surprise, no chastisement. Just total quiet. It bothers me infinitely more than her smacking me upside the head and screaming about the idiotic choice I’ve made, getting involved with him.

  I crack open an eye and look at her cautiously. Her face is blank.

  “Did you have a stroke?” I ask after thirty seconds, when she still hasn’t spoken.

  “I’m just searching for something to say that sounds intelligent and supportive but also questions whether you’ve thought this through, and simultaneously expresses my concern that you’re going to get hurt
.”

  I blink. “And?”

  “And I haven’t come up with anything yet.”

  We fall back into silence. I feel her words stirring inside me, a tornado tossing emotional debris in every direction.

  I have no words either. No answers.

  The truth is, I don’t know whether I’ve thought this through. For all I know, things with Grayson could be a colossal mistake. The sex was great. Fantastic, even. But when it came time to sleep and I voiced my concerns about people noticing if I made a walk-of-shame back to my villa the next morning, Grayson didn’t tell me to stay. He didn’t insist I go get a change of clothes and come straight back. He didn’t say, I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. You’re my girl, and I don’t care who knows it which, for the record, is what he would say if this were a movie, instead of real life.

  Nope. He walked me to the door, kissed me goodnight, and said he’d see me soon.

  See you soon.

  Isn’t that something you say to a co-worker when you awkwardly bump into them at the supermarket?

  Hey, Bill, great to catch up. Enjoy those avocados. I’ll see you soon.

  I shake my shoulders, wishing I could as easily shake off the spiral of dark thoughts inside my head. I’m losing my grip on the happy glow I felt in Grayson’s arms, mere hours ago. Harper can probably tell I’m beating myself up already — perhaps that’s why she feels no need to lecture me. She just scoots closer and lays her head on my shoulder and, when she finally speaks, her voice is laced with worry.

  “Just promise me you’ll be careful. I know he’s gorgeous. I know he’s fun. I know he makes your insides flip like you’re riding a rollercoaster. But falling for a guy like Grayson Dunn is like trying to wait out a hurricane by taking shelter in the eye of the storm. You might manage to survive for a little while, but eventually that hurricane is bound to roll over you… and when it does, the wreckage can be catastrophic.”

  * * *

  H arper and I avoid talking about Grayson for the rest of the day. We spend all afternoon parked in beach chairs at the edge of the surf, soaking in the sunshine and enjoying our rare bout of free time. We sip delicious rum drinks, make asses of ourselves on paddle-boards, take selfies with a massive green sea turtle that’s beached itself on the white sand, and wave to Wyatt as he catches waves on a sleek, waxed surfboard a few yards down the beach.

  I laugh and splash and sip my drinks and reapply sunscreen with a smile, but deep down, there’s an unsettling twang of worry in my stomach. The text I sent to Grayson about meeting us for lunch went unanswered. There’s been no word from him all day.

  If Harper notices me looking over my shoulder in the direction of the villas for a dark-headed form that never appears, or checking my phone every now and then, waiting for a text message that never arrives, she chooses not to comment on it.

  I try to stay in the moment and out of my head… but all the while an irrepressible storm is brewing inside me.

  I’m no blushing virgin, no inexperienced schoolgirl who’s never had a one-night-stand before. I know the rules. I understand the typical three-day-post-sex-waiting-period some men ascribe to before calling, so they don’t seem over-eager. People say dating is a game, but I’ve always thought of it more as a power struggle. A battle of indifference. A contest of who can care less.

  Perhaps it’s cynical and cold, but it’s also the truth — the less you care, the more control you have over the other person.

  And… indisputably… I care.

  I care too much.

  My head recognizes that I should not be this affected by the fact that, twelve hours post-coital, he hasn’t yet reached out, hasn’t asked to see me or shared how he’s spending his free day in paradise.

  My heart is another story entirely.

  With a normal guy, I wouldn’t be bothered. I’d accept his silence for the standard morning-after need for distance — the well-documented dance of unattached ambivalence two partners engage in when they haven’t quite established what any of it means yet, or aren’t ready to slap a label onto their relationship with all the sentimentality of a quality-grade stamp on a plastic-wrapped package of ground meat in a grocery store.

  Grayson is anything but normal, though. Nothing about him follows any of my rules. I feel like a junkie, strung out after one hit of heroin. Craving more, now that the buzz has worn off, even if it might kill me.

  It’s strange — when I left his villa in the early hours of the morning, I’d never felt more certain of his affection for me. But the longer we’ve spent apart… the more time that passes without hearing from him… the more my mind has turned over our strange situation. And the more I’ve realized that nothing is certain at all.

  My nerves are frayed, frazzled. I am raw with worry and self-doubt. Stripped of the surety I felt within the circle of his arms. The prospect of seeing him again in a few hours to work on the overnight shoot looms ominously on the horizon, a storm cloud hovering just offshore, about to make landfall.

  The unavoidable sex scenes.

  It would likely be strange enough, filming something of that nature, even without what happened between Grayson and me last night. Now, there’s an even deeper level of emotional investment in our scripted passion.

  Because it won’t all be scripted; not for me, anyway.

  I’m not sure where he stands.

  My mind is full of mocking self-doubts that sound suspiciously like my mother, and they only seem to grow louder as the seconds of our separation tick by into minutes and then into hours without hearing from him. I know it’s silly to be so unsettled by his silence.

  Just because he hasn’t sought you out doesn’t mean he’s avoiding you.

  Just because he hasn’t texted you doesn’t mean he’s ignoring you.

  Since when have you needed a string of emoji-laden sentiments on a smartphone screen to reassure you of a man’s intentions?

  Relax, crazy-pants.

  Like he said… you’ll see him soon.

  Soon — somehow, it feels like an eternity.

  We head to the filming location early, so Harper has ample time to do my makeup and help me get into costume. By this point in the film, my pretty blue sundress has been transformed into a more practical crop-top and shorts, stitched unevenly with fishing line. The costume designers worked their magic, making the fabric look convincingly bleached and battered, as if the garment has actually been out in the elements for six months on an island in the South Pacific without the convenience of a washing machine or supply of detergent.

  I move away from the makeup tent into the mouth of the cave, nodding in greeting to the set workers who are testing overhead lighting and making sure the film equipment is ready to roll by the time Sloan arrives. There’s a bed of palm fronds and a fire-pit — Violet and Beck’s small attempt at making the rock dwelling into a home, while the storm rages outside. My eyes scan the rest of the space, looking for Grayson.

  When I spot him, it feels like someone’s plunged a dagger straight into the space between my third and fourth ribs. I stop short, heart in my throat. My nervous anticipation at seeing him again dissipates.

  Told you so , that ugly, awful voice sneers at me from my deepest subconscious.

  He’s sprawled on a chair over by the far wall and Annabelle is hovering close by his side, tossing her perfect hair as she laughs at one of his witty lines. He hasn’t spotted me, yet — he’s too busy looking at her.

  Smiling at her.

  Touching her arm in a casual gesture that makes me feel a little nauseous.

  And even recognizing the absurd, unreasonable nature of my own jealousy does little to dilute its presence in my veins like some kind of deathly narcotic. It laces my bloodstream, poisoning me from the inside out.

  I stand there, bleeding inwardly, facing the horrifying fact that I, Katharine Firestone, have foolishly fallen for my cocky, condescending co-star. One day swimming in grottos and the depths of his eyes, one night wrapped up
in his arms and his sheets, and I am hopelessly lost. More uncharted than Beck and Violet ever were, in a hundred-page script.

  I turn to flee one instant too late — Grayson looks up and catches my eyes, lifting his hand in a wave of welcome. There’s no choice but to cross over to them. His mouth curls in a half-smile that still manages to twist my stomach into knots, but he makes no move to stand, to hug me, to greet me like I’m anything except his co-star and this is any other day.

  “Hey,” he says when I reach them, green eyes on mine.

  “Hey,” I echo, trying to breathe normally.

  “Oh! Hi there!” Annabelle interjects, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “What’s up, Kat? Did you need something?”

  I shake my head, not looking at her. My focus is locked on Grayson.

  “How was your day?” I ask him, striving for a casual tone. “I texted you, this morning, to see what you were up to…”

  “It was good,” he murmurs. “Didn’t quite live up to yesterday, though.”

  My lips twitch. I feel some of the tension ebb inside me.

  “It was so great,” Annabelle gushes. “We went on a helicopter tour!”

  We ?

  I blink, stunned, the tension swiftly returning until my limbs feel pulled tighter than a bowstring.

  Grayson is watching me carefully. I feel his eyes on my face, scanning for some kind of reaction, so I’m careful to keep my expression bland. I don’t respond to Annabelle’s announcement, but she’s so excited to spill all the details about her day with Grayson, she doesn’t notice my silence.

  “You just have to take a tour before you leave the island, Kat. It was seriously amazing!” Her voice is downright giddy. It makes me feel physically ill. “Did you know you can see the volcanos from the air? Some of them are active! We saw lava and everything! They flew us so fast around some of the mountains I was worried we were going to crash. I don’t know what I would’ve done without Grayson there to calm me down! I must’ve broken every finger in his hand, I squeezed so hard!”

  Breathe in.

  Exhale out.

  Don’t spiral.