*****
When I pull the car into the spot and turn it off, Katie blinks—once, then twice, and then she laughs.
“This is where we’re going?”
I bend my head to look out the window. “This is where we’re going.”
“You brought me to the public library, Huck.”
“First…” I release the clasp on my seatbelt and let it roll up into its holder. “You said you didn’t want to do a boring dinner date, as if I’ve ever taken you somewhere boring for dinner. Second, you seem to be totally committed to using the phrase hang sesh, and this is the best place for one of those.”
“You’re the one who started the hang sesh thing.”
I hold up one finger. “I think we both need to stop saying that.”
“I agree.”
We both sit in adult seriousness for a heartbeat, and then the laughter takes over. Katie laughs so hard a tear escapes the corner of her eye and slips down her cheek. “Oh, Jesus, Huck. How many afternoons did we spend here?”
“A lot.” They flash by like an old-fashioned film reel, little black spaces in between. Katie eating chips one by one, pressing them between her tongue and the roof of her mouth so they wouldn’t crunch and give her away. Katie chewing on the tip of a pen, studying for our chemistry final with a dogged seriousness that earned her a B+, which pissed her off. Katie with one tear after another gliding down her soft cheeks when we read A Separate Peace. She sat there with a box of tissues, shoving them one by one into the garbage bin behind the table. “I don’t even know why I’m crying,” said.
But I knew.
And looking back, through the reality-colored glasses…
God, I wanted to be close to her then, too.
“You really showed up,” she says softly, and a tempered-glass determination slams down over one of our possible futures. I cannot fuck this up. I don’t want her to look back and think I was only doing it to get us to this point, but I don’t know how to say that to her.
“I might be a jackass, but I’ve always tried to be a good friend,” I say solemnly, and I catch a flicker of disappointment on her face. “Want to go in?”
“Hell yes,” Katie says, straightening up. “It’s time for our hang sesh.” She drags out sesh for way longer than necessary, then pulls on the handle and gets out of the car.
*****
“Here.”
We’re nestled at the back table on the balcony, where we used to sit back in the day. Katie sits across from me, just like she used to, and I get a weird double vision where I can see her like she was and like she is now. It gives me a sort of pleasant vertigo, and vertigo is not something I ever would have described as pleasant until this moment.
She watches me stick my hand into my pocket, her eyebrows rising. “What the hell do you have in your pocket?” Katie asks in her library voice, which is just above a whisper. “You perv.”
“I said here.” I get the Twizzlers out, finally, and slide them across the table like we’re completing an illicit transaction. “You’ll never get caught with those.”
Katie takes the package almost reverently in her hands and turns it so she can see the front. “How do you remember all this stuff?”
“How do you not remember it? Not—you specifically. I mean, in general, how do people forget all the stuff they know about a friend?”
She arches one eyebrow at me. “I’d say that we’re close friends at minimum.”
“About a best friend. And stop fishing for compliments.”
“Being your best friend isn’t a compliment,” she says primly. “Anyway, I’m not even sure we are best friends, after the wasteland of college.”
“Wasteland seems like a strong word.”
She shrugs one shoulder and it melts me all over again. “It was kind of a wasteland.” Her green eyes meet mine. “Why didn’t we talk?”
Because this would happen, and I wanted you to be free of Ruby Bay.
“I don’t know. The days got away from me, I guess. And I didn’t think your were having that hard a time.”
“I didn’t only want to hang out with you when I was having a hard time, you know.”
“That’s clear to me now. But in college, I was younger and dumber. And I still hadn’t made up my mind about coming back to Bliss at all.”
“You keep saying that.” Katie rips open the package of Twizzlers, pulls one out, and takes a bite of the end of one of the twists. “But I don’t get it. And why haven’t you brought this up before? Like, for real brought it up?”
“While we’re out taking guests on sailboats or doing all the other various bullshit for our jobs?”
She gives me a long look. “Yes. Exactly then. We’ve spent almost three full weeks together, and you didn’t say anything about it until the day of the wedding. You just kayaked until your arms got ripped.”
I flex them underneath my t-shirt. “Are you complaining?”
Her eyes rake over me. “No. But it did make me wonder if we were still friends. Still…close.”
I lean in, conspiratorial as fuck. “Is this the part where I talk about my feelings?”
Katie leans in, eyes darting from side to side. “Yes, you jackass. This is the part where you talk about your feelings.”
“But what’s going to come of it?”
She cups her hands around her mouth. “Hopefully a decent fucking conversation, Huck. Hopefully, we can catch up with each other in a way that’s not all about calling each other jackasses. Because I. Missed. You. What are you not getting about that?”
It should be hilarious, her mouth moving inside the circle of her hands, but I. Missed. You. is a sucker punch straight to my emotions. Warmth clamps down around my ribs like the world’s nicest vibes and shoots up to the crown of my head and down to my feet, and god, I missed her too.
“I missed you too.” I gather up all the balls I have for the next thing hovering on the tip of my tongue. “And I think I’ll miss you again, and pretty soon, because this—” I motion vaguely around us, hopefully indicating all of Ruby Bay, including the Bliss Resort. “This isn’t the endgame for you.”
Katie pops the rest of the Twizzler into her mouth. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
“And you’re always giving me shit for being cryptic.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
“Stop it.”
“Shall we?”
She holds her hand up.
For a high-five.
And damn it, I give her a high-five right there in the library, the sound echoing through the silent stacks.
10
Katie
Not dating. Not dating. Not dating.
I am not dating Huck, he is not dating me, we are two friends who fucked one time in the boathouse and now we have unlocked that rare and powerful achievement: being friends again. Actual friends, who do more than just hassle each other and die laughing when one of us falls out of a kayak. When Huck falls out of a kayak, actually, since I haven’t fallen out once this summer.
The only problem with having slept with him is that I know how good it felt now. And it’s given him some magical golden glow that makes it, frankly, really hard to stop staring.
When I was being willfully delusional, it was easier to ignore the six pack. The broad shoulders that hold a paddle as easily as a broadsword. Ha, fine. I don’t have a lot of experience with a broadsword, but something about him makes me think he’d be okay on the battlefield, if he wasn’t the sniveling youngest son of a powerful lord who never had to face anyone in battle before the first big war.
A paddle waves in front of my face, inches away, and I leap back so far I almost go off the other side of the dark. “What the hell? Safety rules! Safety rules!”
“I felt unsafe. You were doing it again,” Huck says from the kayak floating in the water next to the dock.
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about whether yo
u would suck ass as a medieval knight or not.”
“Please, please tell me how you got on that train of thought.”
The heat starts in the back of my neck and wraps itself around to my cheeks, the air seeming to sizzle with it. I swallow hard. There’s nothing embarrassing about thinking of Huck naked, but I didn’t even see him naked, and like a greedy bitch, I was picturing it. Of course I was. I mean—I haven’t seen him naked all at once. I’ve seen him shirtless, and I’ve seen him pantless, but the full view eludes me.
“I was watching you paddle the kayak,” I mumble into the water.
“What was that?”
“I was watching you paddle the kayak,” I say louder, into the wind.
“What?” Huck shouts, then launches himself right out of the kayak in a combination move of such athleticism and grace that I teeter on the edge of the dock again. He’s totally abandoned the kayak, which does a stately float underneath the dock at our feet. Huck slips an arm around my waist and pulls me into the center of the dock, away from the edge, and then brushes a palm against my cheek. He gazes deeply into my eyes. Once again, I am kneeless.
“I couldn’t hear what you were saying.” His voice is low and sexy and hot damn I wish we could sprint for the boathouse. “What was that?”
“You’re a terrible jackass.”
“Shhh.” He puts a finger to my lips. “That’s not what your face said earlier. Your face said that I was a Greek god on a kayak, and I want to know what made you stare at me like that.”
“You have a nice body,” I tell him through gritted teeth. “A fucking perfect body, if you must know.”
“Hmm.” His brows knit together. “Are you sure we’re not dating?”
“I am sure we’re not dating.” My chest expands around my heart, that sensation of hope pressing so hard that my rib cage threatens to explode. “I’m really, really sure. We’re friends.”
“Would you say…that we’re friends with benefits?”
“Not really, since…we’ve only had that one time in the boathouse, and I—”
Huck leans down and kisses me.
It’s a tender, searching thing, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck and raising the heat there another thousand degrees. He’s slow, deliberate, tasting me, exploring, and I cannot breathe. If I thought my knees were gone before, now they’re gone gone and I feel my weight sink into his arms. Remind me again—what’s the point of staying upright?
He ends the kiss, and disappointment arcs through me like a black bolt of lightning. When I finally manage to force my eyes open, his are still on mine. “What about now?”
“We can’t play games like this at work.” My whisper is so full of something I have to clear my throat. “People could see.”
“Yeah,” he says. “My brothers have all done worse in the past summer, so I’m not too worried about that. This resort is supposed to be about luxury and romance.”
“I’m not here for a romance,” I say, but it sounds like a lie, even to me.
“I didn’t say anything about romance for you,” Huck says breezily. “I only asked if you thought we were friends with benefits. I’m not a huge fan of the term, by the way, I just thought it would be the easiest way to describe all this high-voltage hanging out we’ve been doing.”
“You kissed me.”
“Yes.” He looks at me like I might have lost my mind. “I’m part of this arrangement. The truth is…”
He trails off. “I hate when you trail off like that. It makes me feel like I’m in the path of an oncoming train.”
An impish smile lights up his eyes. “I apologize so sincerely.”
“Bullshit.”
“Look. I wanted to know if we were going to make out again. Now we have, so if what you want is to keep our distance, then—”
I grab a fistful of his shirt. “I don’t want to keep our distance, you…you lovely man.”
“Good save.”
“I don’t. I want—”
“Be very clear,” Huck warns. “Or we might end up back in the boathouse.”
“Yoo-hoo!” Oh, my god, who says that? Who says you-hoo still? I let go of Huck’s shirt on instinct. What guest is this and why is she being allowed to stay on Bliss property while saying stuff like yoo-hoo oh my god.
“I want to end up back in the boathouse,” I say through gritted teeth as Huck brushes by to greet her.
“I hear you.” He snaps his fingers and points at me.
I could punch him. I could kiss him.
“Morning,” he calls to the guest, then turns back over his shoulder one more time. “Can you grab that kayak, Katie?”
“Oh, sure thing.”
I’m aching from his kiss. Every inch of my skin burns with wanting more, with wanting his hands on my body, with wanting to feel his weight over me and in me and everywhere else. Even my nipples are in on the game, pressing hard against the fabric of my bra. One kiss. One kiss. I don’t think I could stand being in love with him.
The kayak has drifted to the other side of the dock, conveniently near one of the ladders that reaches down to the water. I climb down one step at a time and hook the kayak with my toes, drawing it closer. Step one: get in. Step two: unhook the paddle from the bungee cord where Huck stored it before he came to ruin my day with sexual frustration. Step three: paddle it into the shore and drag it up on the sand so some lucky guest who is not suffering from awful sexual deprivation can use it. Those lucky bastards. They don’t know how good they have it.
Step one is when everything goes wrong.
I go to lower myself into the kayak seat and the seam of my shorts twists, somehow pressing itself up into my sensitive bits, which are already on high alert from Huck’s kiss. I’m being tortured by my own shorts and my body reacts on instinct, wriggling hard to the right.
Just hard enough to throw myself out of the kayak.
I can at least hope that the splash was dignified.
I resurface in a gasp of air to two faces staring down at me. The woman’s is all concern. And Huck has his hand over his mouth, obviously to keep himself from laughing.
“All good,” I call up to them, grabbing the kayak with one hand and waving with the other. “Totally good.”
“You sure?” Huck calls down. “Because if you need help—”
“I don’t need help.” I need you. “I’ve got it from here.”
Underneath the water, my bits have not cooled in the slightest. I push the kayak toward the shallows, kicking hard, trying to keep my knees a few inches a part. Help me out, Ruby Bay.
Ruby Bay does not help me out. Unless you count delivering swift karma to me for laughing at Huck the day he tipped his own kayak.
I know just how he felt.
Damn that beautiful man.
11
Huck
“I said I was sorry,” Katie says loudly, as if god himself is listening in. “I’ve learned my lesson. Okay?”
“Who are you talking to?”
She slinks down into the couch at my place. I, being a gallant gentleman, closed the boathouse early and brought her back to my place so she could shower all the lake water off of her. Now she’s ensconced on my sofa in a Bliss-branded fluffy robe and a towel in her hair, all of her skin clean and pink from the shower. Huge shout-out to Past Huck, who bought sea salt products and not some Old Spice bullshit for the shampoo. Now her scent is all soap and Katie, which is frankly driving me insane.
Other things are driving me insane, too, like the way I felt when she tipped into the water. If she hadn’t fallen from the kayak I’d have jumped in after her. My heart flew up into my throat on giant wings despite the five-inch drop to the surface. And then—oh, my god, the look on her face when she surfaced. That was hilarious. A giddy, hilarious joy—she’s okay followed by she richly deserves this followed by I don’t care what she deserves, I want to get her out of those wet clothes.
“I was just talking to...you know. The general presence of the univ
erse. I want all of it to know that I’m sorry for laughing at you. Clearly I shouldn’t have.”
“I forgive you.” I settle into the couch next to her, wrap one arm around her betoweled shoulders, and press a kiss to her temple. The skin there is so delicate I can feel her pulse in my lips. This—this feels right, her in my arms, safe from dangerous kayaks.
“I wasn’t asking for your forgiveness. Just—” She waves in front of her.
“The general universe. Right.”
We sit in a silence that expands around us and somehow isn’t terrible, and I let it fall over the employee bungalow. The noise from outside filters in after a minute without voices—the slow turn of wheels on pavement, the breeze against the windows—and part of me tears raggedly in two. I missed this when I was in college. It was always noisy on campus, always noisy off campus, all hours of the day. Buses creaked to a stop outside every building I ever lived in, on the hour, on the quarter hour, all day, most of the night. Frat guys shouted at each other. I did my fair share of shouting, too.
“What’s next for you, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” answers Katie with a sigh that seems mostly contented. “Probably Netflix, unless you’re going to kick me out before the laundry’s done.”
I scoff at her. “I would never kick a lady out before her laundry was done, unless she committed a truly heinous crime.”
“Good,” she says, then huffs out a laugh and lets her head fall back against my arm. “What did you mean, though? Like later tonight?”
“Like...later when the boathouse closes. You took this to cover a gap, didn’t you?”
Katie frowns, and I regret asking, but I still want to know. “Yeah. My mom’s still in town, and I thought it would be nice to see her and make some extra cash before I head out to...whatever’s next.”
Love on You: A Bliss Brothers Novel Page 5