by Cassie Cross
“What comes next?” For him and the house, for me and my dreams. Those words are left unspoken, but I think Oliver gets the gist anyway.
“I don’t know. We’ll regroup when we get home. But tomorrow? We’ll forget about it and have some fun.”
“Fun,” I say with a dreamy sigh. “That sounds amazing.”
“Know what else sounds amazing? Having some carrot cake. Pass it this way if you aren’t going to eat it.”
Oliver reaches around me for the plate and I use my body to block his access. Like hell anyone’s taking this cake away from me without a fight! He gives up relatively easily, amateur.
“At least let me have a bite,” he complains.
I cut off the edge of the slice, a part that has the perfect cake to frosting ratio. Then I pick it up between my index finger and thumb. “How desperate are you for this cake?”
His gaze bores into mine for a long, charged moment. “Pretty desperate.” Slowly he leans down and wraps his lips around my fingers, licking the frosting away from the pad of my thumb as he pulls away.
A swirl of heat swoops through my belly as he licks his lips. This is…not something the two of us do. I don’t dare get my hopes up that this is more than just some loosened inhibitions due to the champagne, so even though it’s the last thing I want to do, I quickly change the subject.
“Enjoy that bite, it’s all you’re getting,” I tease. I crowd around the plate as I slice off a bite with my fork.
Oliver clears his throat and picks up the remote. “Wanna watch a movie?”
A couple hours sitting where we don’t have to talk is probably for the best. Even better would be getting up and going into my room before I do something stupid like throw myself on top of him and kiss him into oblivion, but I’m not ready for this night to end just yet.
“A movie sounds good.”
Oliver turns on the TV and flips through the movie options, asking my opinion. We settle on a relatively recent comedy—the safest choice.
Oliver pulls out a blanket and covers us both with it. He keeps his right arm fully wrapped around me. As the titles roll and I get myself comfortable, I can’t help but think about how tonight might not have gone the way I hoped it would, but it turned out pretty great anyway.
Chapter Twelve
Quarter to ten is too early to be arguing with Oliver about his choice of clothing for today’s fun time outing, but I can’t help myself.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” he asks, looking down at his unfortunate ensemble.
“Shorts and a hoodie? It’s either warm enough to expose your legs, or cool enough to need a hoodie. Pick one!” I’m only marginally serious but I do my best to make myself sound stern.
He ignores me as he checks his wallet for something. “It’s warm enough that I won’t be too cold in shorts, but cool enough I want to cover up until the sun comes out. It’s easier to take off a hoodie than it is to change my pants.”
Well, he’s got me there.
I quietly try to come up with an argument and fail. My silence lets him know that he’s won this battle, and he gives me a cocky grin. I decide to try a different topic of conversation.
“You’re really not gonna tell me where we’re going?”
“Nope.”
“Are we going on a drive?”
“We have to drive to get to our destination,” he answers patiently. “Can you just relax and trust that I have something planned and that it’s going to be good and just enjoy the ride?”
“You know I hate surprises,” I argue. It’s true. I’m a planner. I like to plan. I don’t enjoy not knowing what’s going on or if I’m prepared for whatever it is. It can be a buzzkill, I know and usually I try to suppress the urge to ask twenty questions about it, but I’m too keyed up.
“You’ll like this one.” He smiles at me before he walks back into his bedroom.
My best guess is that we’re doing something involving water, because Oliver told me to bring my bathing suit. Luckily I thought to bring one, and it’s on under my clothes.
While Oliver’s doing whatever he’s doing in his room, I escape to mine so I can double check how I look. I’m wearing capris and a light white sweater over a tank top over a pink bikini. My hair is up in a messy ponytail, my makeup light. I look about as cute as I can manage, which is good considering the air between Oliver and I has been charged this morning.
I ended up falling asleep on the couch during the movie. The last thing I remember was Oliver wrapping the blanket around me, then closing my eyes as I rested my head on his shoulder. When I woke up this morning, I was tucked in bed. I have no recollection of ever getting up, so I know Oliver must’ve carried me there.
The thought of that makes me feel stupidly giddy.
“Felicity?” Oliver calls. “You ready?”
“Yeah!” I make my way out into the great room. “Should I bring anything?”
“Just yourself and a bathing suit.”
“What about a towel? Any particular shoes I need? What about extra money?”
Oliver playfully rolls his eyes, then grabs the glass full of what’s left of his orange juice from breakfast. “You’re not going to annoy me into giving it up.”
“Can I do something else to get you to give it up?”
When Oliver chokes on his drink I realize how that sounded.
“Not that I meant it that way, because I didn’t! Not that I wouldn’t want to do something that…” Oh god. I squeeze my eyes shut wanting to die.
Oliver just puts the glass down and gives me a goofy grin.
“Aren’t you going to try and stop me?” I mean, what good is he as a friend if he doesn’t try to stop a double entendre-filled babble?
He laughs. “Why would I?”
“Because you want me to have a fun day and a fun day shouldn’t start off with me being mortally embarrassed.”
“It should if you’re me.”
I huff indignantly, and Oliver just walks by and cups my cheek, sliding the pad of his thumb across my cheekbone. I immediately forget about whatever it was that was annoying me.
Today is going to be torture if he keeps doing things like that. It gives me hope that I don’t want to have, because I’ve been certain this whole thing is one-sided for so long. Now I’m not sure, and not being sure only opens the door for a broken heart.
“C’mon,” he says, grabbing the handle of the small cooler someone on staff dropped off at the room twenty minutes ago. “The sooner we leave, the sooner you’ll find out where we’re going.”
We drive for about twenty-five minutes to a marina nestled along the banks of the Willamette River. Oliver grabs the cooler and we walk down to a small landing area where an attendant meets us. He and Oliver have clearly met before, and exchange general pleasantries and conversations about the state of the marina as we walk along the slip.
We come to a stop in front of what looks like a brand-new pontoon. The attendant familiarizes Oliver with the controls for a few minutes, and then it’s just the two of us, Oliver in the driver’s seat and me on the lounge just beside him.
“So,” he says, turning to me with a grin. “Good surprise?”
Oliver knows my dad had a boat like this when Ben and I were kids; I mentioned that I hadn’t been sailing in years when we visited Shelter Island a few weeks back. Not only did he make sure that I got to sail again, but he made it happen on a boat just like the one we used to sail on when we were kids. Ben, Oliver, Caleb and I would take turns diving off the stern, or racing each other to capture a tennis ball my dad would toss out as far as he could.
It was always a vicious contest: the winner got to steer the boat on our way back to the slip.
So, good surprise? Doesn’t really even begin to cover it. “Great surprise,” I tell him.
“When you said you missed it, I wanted to do something about that.”
My heart flip-flops in my chest, and it’s yet another moment in my life where I realize tha
t I never had a chance at not loving this man.
“Thank you, Oliver,” I reply softly, mostly because I’m trying not to cry.
In the time it takes us to get to the marina, the sun comes fully out, and the temperature is rising. Before we get going, Oliver slips off his hoodie, folds it and sets it on top of the cooler, then smirks at me before he sits down.
“Don’t give me that look,” I say, even though I fully deserve that look. It is a little hot, so I pull off my sweater, tank top, and capris, then put them on top of Oliver’s hoodie so I can spray myself with sunscreen.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, full of anticipation of feeling the wind in my hair. “Ready!”
Oliver eases the boat out of the slip and into the main flow of the Willamette. Lots of people are out this morning, and I don’t blame them. It’s gorgeous. Sunny and warm but not too hot, with enough of a breeze to cool you down when you need it. There are lots of other pontoons, a few towing people lounging on inner tubes. A few paddle boarders are going along with the current, too.
Oliver stops the boat in an area of the river that’s fairly uncrowded and anchors her down.
“Wanna give that a try?” he asks, nodding toward a couple paddling by us.
“Why, did you bring some boards?”
“No,” he says, kicking off his shorts in favor of the swim trunks he’s wearing underneath. “But I could probably bribe them into letting us borrow theirs for a half an hour.”
He’s teasing—I know it—but I go along with it anyway because the conversation gives me something to distract myself with instead of ogling a half-naked Oliver.
“I’m really not interested in embarrassing myself today.”
Oliver laughs. “You wouldn’t embarrass yourself. I wouldn’t let you fall.”
“Even though you’re dealing with…” I motion toward his body, “all that, I don’t think you can stop gravity from doing its work.”
“Fair enough.”
He pulls out a bottle of sunscreen, pours some into his hand and starts rubbing it all over his arms and chest while I do my level best to not stare.
“I have some spray if you want it.” I put on my sunglasses and tilt my head back to give myself something to do.
“I hate that stuff.”
“You know you’re supposed to put that on fifteen minutes before you go into the sun, right?”
Oliver shrugs. “I’ll take my chances. Can you get my back?”
He tosses me the lotion, like this is all totally normal and not a test of every single ounce of my willpower. “Sure.” I think I manage to make my voice sound even.
Oliver walks over and sits down on the floor in front of me, and this whole thing is going to be complete torture.
I squirt some sunscreen onto my hand, rub them together, then start working it onto his back. His skin is so warm and his muscles seem a bit tight, so I knead them a bit as I rub it in. Oliver’s head lolls back as he relaxes, letting out a deep sigh.
“That feels good,” he says.
Yeah, it really does.
I do my best to cover the wide expanse of his skin, but also stop doing quite as thorough a job because I really want to move onto the next part of the day where I don’t have my hands all over him without it meaning anything.
When I’m finished, I give him a gentle pat on the shoulder. “I’m done.”
He lingers for a second or two, then gets up and stretches out on the lounge opposite mine.
I follow his lead, and lose myself in the rocking of the boat and the water gently lapping against the sides. After the past couple of days—hell, the past couple of weeks—it’s nice to just do nothing and be myself for a little while. Especially doing nothing and being myself with Oliver.
I’m jolted out of a nap by the sound of a boat whirring by, and Oliver must sense me getting up because he follows suit. I look at my phone and realize I’d only nodded off for about thirty minutes, but I’m already feeling like I should take some time out from the sun.
“Do we have any water?” I ask.
Oliver reaches down and pulls two bottles from the cooler he brought onboard and passes one to me. Then he flips a switch and rolls out the Bimini top so we can have a little shade. He grabs the cooler and brings it over to where I am, then sits down next to me.
“Thanks for that,” I say, pointing at the top. “The sun was nice, but the shade is nicer.”
Oliver lets out a soft laugh as he opens the cooler. “I brought some sandwiches and some potato salad. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” I tell him.
He grabs some napkins and hands me a sandwich—ham and cheese with mayo and mustard, just the way I like it—and a little container of potato salad.
We eat in companionable silence until…
“Can I ask you something personal?”
A flash of heat finds its way to my cheeks, just because the question catches me off guard. Oliver and I talk about personal things all the time, but we usually find our way there through the course of the conversation; it’s not typically where we start off.
“Sure,” I tell him. I don’t have anything to hide from him, except for my ridiculous, unrequited feelings for a guy who sees me like his little sister.
“Whatever happened between you and Chris? He was around for a while, then he just disappeared and you never really talked about it. If you don’t want to talk about it now, I understand. I was just curious. Did you decide you didn’t want to be in a relationship, or…”
That question kind of surprises me. Oliver never seemed to care about Chris one way or another. He just sort of…ignored his existence, even when Chris was in the same room.
“I didn’t want to be in one with him, that’s for sure,” I reply with a bitter laugh. “He was nice at first. It was fun, but…I don’t know, the longer we were together, the more he started nitpicking my life and criticizing me.” This is a little difficult to talk about. First, because it’s embarrassing, but also because I never really got into the specifics of that breakup with anyone, not even Corinne. I just wanted it to be over with and to never think about it again. It feels surprisingly nice to talk it out with someone.
Oliver’s shoulders stiffen, and he sits up straight, like he’s on high alert. “What did he criticize you about?” His voice is almost a growl.
“Anything. Everything. He didn’t like the site’s layout. He didn’t like my clothes. He thought all the skirts I wore were too short, that my shirts were too tight. He didn’t like the way I spent my money, thought I liked food too much, made little jabs about my weight—”
“What?” Oliver is…well, the best way I can describe it is incensed.
“Yeah,” I say with an exasperated laugh. “He was really concerned about me gaining weight. He was a total dick about it, actually.”
Oliver drops the paper his sandwich was wrapped in into the cooler and clenches his fists. “Your body is perfect. You’re perfect.”
I’m going to just slide right past that first comment because it’s a little too confusing to think about right now, and focus on the second.
“No I’m not. But I was lonely, so I let him stick around much longer than I should have, and I wish there was some way I could hang a warning sign around his neck for any other women he may rope into his life with his considerable charm.”
Quietly, while he looks down at his feet, Oliver says, “I didn’t know you were lonely.”
“Yeah, well…” I reply, playing with my fingertips. “It’s not really the kind of thing people announce. Anyway. Glad he’s gone. What about you and Caroline?”
I’ve never asked about Oliver’s ex, even though I’ve been desperate to know what happened there. They weren’t together long, but she was around a lot, and everything just fizzled out with them all of a sudden. Not that I was all that upset about it, but I didn’t want Oliver to be hurting, if he even was. He never showed it one way or another, but Ben mentioned that he was re
eling from it.
Oliver shrugs. “It got a little complicated.”
Undeterred, I reply, “Then tell me the simple version.”
“The simple version is that we weren’t right for each other.” He looks at me very intently, for a long time. That feeling that there’s more, that I’ve been reading this situation wrong tugs at my heart again. “She wasn’t the one that I wanted.”
“Oh,” I reply quietly. “Ben told me you were reeling from it.”
Oliver snorts. “What?”
“When he talked to me about this weekend. He said you were acting funny and still reeling from your breakup, and that it would be good for you to have a little sister around this weekend to keep you in line.”
Oliver’s expression is unreadable. “He said that to you?”
“Yeah. Why? Does it bother you that he did?”
“In general, yes. And to you specifically.”
That kind of hangs between us for a few seconds when Oliver abruptly stands. He grabs a tennis ball from a bag I hadn’t noticed tucked in next to the driver’s seat, then walks back to the stern and tosses it as far as he can across the water.
I know what he’s doing, and no way am I gonna let him have a head start.
He smiles at me, and it’s beautiful. “Whoever gets the ball first gets to steer the boat on the way back.”
I laugh as he counts down from three.
Together, we jump.
Chapter Thirteen
After an afternoon spent swimming and competing to catch that damned tennis ball (I beat him by one in a best of ten), Oliver and I climbed back onto the back of the pontoon and let the sun dry us out. It’s a quiet time; I’m hesitant to speak because all I want is to ask Oliver what he meant when he looked at me like that and told me that Caroline wasn’t the one he wanted.
Instead of asking and finding out what the hell is going on between us—if anything—I lie back and let the boat lull me into a sense of calm as the light in the sky fades off to the west. I dare one look over at Oliver, whose hand is draped casually across his stomach as he stares up at the sky.