Please don’t.
With that, he jogged off with the ball. When he’d gotten a good distance away, he turned around and tossed it to me. An easy pass. I caught it effortlessly and threw it back to him. We passed the next half hour or so like that: running, throwing, catching, joking, laughing. It was the easy camaraderie that developed in any group of guys as soon as there was sports involved, even something as basic as tossing a ball around.
I couldn’t concentrate on it entirely though. The whole time, a portion of my focus was squarely on Sandy. On how beautiful she looked with the firelight flickering over her gorgeous face as she talked animatedly to the other girls and then listened intently to what they were saying. Her hair fell in soft curves over her shoulders, glinting in the warm, orange glow.
God. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her look more beautiful.
Chapter 15
Sandy
“Girl, I just don’t know how you can stand to be friends with that handsome hunk of meat in there without jumping his bones at every opportunity.”
I eyed Acacia sharply. She’d asked me to come inside with her to get more wine coolers to refill the big plastic tubs outside on the sand, but I knew what that really meant in girl-speak. She wanted to get me alone to talk with me about something she couldn’t talk about in front of the other girls, and I knew exactly what that topic was.
Hunter.
I’d have been more comfortable with the conversation if I knew what her intentions were. I mean, obviously, her intentions were to bone Hunter. That much was clear. But was she planning on doing that only with my blessing? Would she abandon those plans if I objected? Was she planning to pursue him while, at the same time, pursuing a friendship with me? Or was this the beginning of a scorched-earth campaign and she was just looking for ammunition to use against me in the future?
Girls can be complicated as hell.
I figured my best bet was to play it off as a joke until I got a better feel for who she was, really, and what she was ultimately after. I made my tone light and teasing as I said, “Oh, yeah. I’m basically nothing but a big, quivering mass of goo any time he’s around.”
She giggled. “You joke, girl, but I’m serious. I would be! That right there is one fine specimen of masculinity.”
I didn’t say anything for the time being, waiting for her to take the lead. Finally, Acacia could take it no longer. She burst out, “Oooo! Come on! Don’t torture me like this! You know what I’m getting at.”
I kept my face innocent. “What do you mean?”
“You know! I’m asking you if there’s anything between you and Hunter. I’ve definitely been picking up on a vibe.”
“Trust me. There’s not a vibe,” I lied.
“Oh, there’s a vibe.”
“No vibe,” I blithely reiterated.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “So…you’re saying that there’s never been anything between you two and you don’t mind if I go after him? Is that what I’m hearing?”
“You are completely, one hundred percent free to go after him. He is a free agent, this is a free country, and you are free as a bird to make whatever move you want.”
“Honey, your mouth is saying the word ‘free’ a lot of times, but your eyes are singin’ a different song. Also, when I asked if there’d ever been anything between you two and if I was free to make a move, you replied that I was free but made not even one little peep to deny that there’d ever been anything between you. So, darlin’…what is the actual story?”
“There’s no story! Honestly!” I insisted, not sure if I was getting frustrated at her for pushing the point or at myself because there really was a story and I didn’t want there to be.
This time, she was the one who used the wait-’em-out-in-silence interrogation technique, and it was just as effective as it had been a moment ago when I’d used it on her. I cracked in less than twenty seconds.
“Fine. There’s a story.”
She sat down, rubbing her hands together eagerly. “Well, if there’s one thing I love almost as much as a good man, it’s a good story. Grab a beer, sit down, and tell me all about it.”
Something inside me folded in on itself with relief. Sitting next to this friendly girl and unloading the entire sordid tale sounded heavenly, and I was happy to do it. I only had one question.
“Does it have to be a beer?”
She hooted. “Girl, it can be a chocolate malt if that’s what you want! Whatever’ll get you to spill your guts.”
I opened a strawberry wine cooler and hoisted myself up onto the barstool next to her. I sighed deeply as I took a long drag on the fruity and intoxicating beverage.
“Wow. Where should I even start?” I mused rhetorically.
“Honey, if you even think about starting anywhere but at the beginning, I will snatch you bald-headed. And that’d be some real pretty hair to lose over somethin’ so silly.” She grinned.
I couldn’t help but grin back. I still wasn’t sure of her motivations, but it was impossible not to like her. I rarely met anyone who matched me in the energy or frivolity department. I was enjoying being around somebody who was on the same page in both of those areas.
“Okay. Here goes. The beginning. Well, Hunter and I went to the same school…”
“College?”
“Elementary. And middle school, for that matter. And high school.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. Welcome to living in the same small section of the same small town. Not only that, but until we got to the ‘switching classes’ part of school, we were actually in the same class every single year.”
“Double damn!”
“Yeah. So Hunter always had a little crush on me. Even when we were kids. You know how you can sense that kind of thing.”
She nodded vigorously. Yeah, with that raven-black hair and alabaster skin, I bet she did know how that felt!
“Well, I always managed to keep his feelings on the back burner. He was my best friend. I depended on him. I loved him, even. Just…”
“Not that way,” Acacia finished.
“Not that way,” I confirmed.
“So, what changed?”
I shook my head. This was the hard part of the story to talk about. “It was the end of our senior year. We had just graduated. We were hanging out, celebrating, drinking a little…”
She adopted a knowing expression. “I think I might know where this is going.”
I snorted. Yeah, it didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know where it was going. Too bad, on that night, I hadn’t known. It would’ve saved me a lot of heartache—and Hunter, too, probably.
“Yeah, well, it went… exactly the place you’re probably expecting that it went.”
“And it wasn’t good?”
“Oh, no. It was good, all right.”
She looked at me expectantly. When I didn’t say anything more, she extended her arms in front of her, entreating me to continue.
“Well? Don’t leave me hangin’, girl!”
I smiled. She was fun to talk to. Unlike Brandy, the person I generally spilled my secrets to, Acacia had the kind of big reactions that made it exciting to tell a story.
“The reason why Hunter and I aren’t together has nothing to do with sex. Or attraction, even. It has to do with what I want out of my life. Who I want out of my life.”
“And the who is not Hunter.”
“No.”
She waited a moment, giving me space and time. When I still didn’t respond, she said, “So, who is the who?”
I smiled at her wordplay. “Beats me. I don’t know who he is. I know what he’s like though.”
After a bit of silence, she slapped her hands against her thighs in frustration. “I swear, girl, having a conversation with you is like pulling teeth!”
I laughed. “I know! That last one was just to mess with you.”
She laughed along with me. “So…what is he like, this dream man?”
I put my chin in my
hands. “He’s elegant and cultured. He’s well-traveled. He’s handsome, and everyone else looks up to him.”
“And, of course, all the other girls want him.”
“Of course! But he only has eyes for me. And…I don’t know. It’s about more than good looks, or charm, or even personality. I know he’ll have all of those things, but he’ll have something else—an indefinable something. It will be like he belongs to a world I never even imagined, and he can’t wait to show it to me, to bring me into it.”
“He’ll be your magic carpet man, showing you a whole new world.”
“Yes! Exactly.”
“Well, honey, I think I know just the man for you. In fact, he fits that bill to a T.”
I grinned. “I have a feeling I know who you’re about to suggest.”
Acacia matched my grin. “I have a feeling you’re right. And it’s not just because it would be fun to double date—although that would be an absolute blast. It’s because you couldn’t have described him better just then, right down to the only-has-eyes-for-you part. Darlin’, my brother is a smitten kitten, no two ways about it.”
I smiled. “Well, then, I think that…a double date, it is.”
She squealed and threw her arms around me, and I almost didn’t have time to feel a pang at the thought that a double date meant that she would be going out with Hunter.
Almost.
Chapter 16
Sandy
The firelight made everything dreamy and mellow as we all sat around the bonfire on the beach. There were about twenty kids left. It’d gotten pretty late, and a good chunk of them had taken off to go to bed—whether they were doing that solo or together, I didn’t care to speculate.
I was wrapped in Hunter’s hoodie. When the temperature had started to drop a half hour before, he had insisted that I take it. I’d tried to refuse, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He didn’t want me to be cold. Typical Hunter, always thinking about me before himself.
It was going to be very difficult to keep myself from get used to that again, but I had to try my best. I couldn’t let myself be lulled into thinking that this might last forever, because the truth was that it might not. He might be gone again as quickly and suddenly as he had reappeared, and I could never forget that—or else I risked getting hurt again.
Of course, it was also very difficult to impose that rule on myself. I was distracted by the musky, intoxicating scent of Hunter. It surrounded me on all sides from his hoodie. Between the warmth and the wonderful scent, snuggling up inside this hoodie was as close as I could get to being wrapped up in Hunter’s arms while still sitting a good twenty feet away from him.
Acacia was sitting across the bonfire from me, next to Hunter, which I made a strong point of not holding against her. After all, I’d given her my explicit blessing to go after Hunter. It would’ve been petty of me to be pissed at her for doing exactly that.
Besides, I was sitting next to Avery. Acacia hadn’t been kidding when she’d said that Avery fit every single item on my “Dream Man” list. If someone had made a list of all the things they saw and knew about him, it couldn’t have lined up more seamlessly. He was my dream man in the flesh.
So, why couldn’t I keep my eyes from wandering back to Hunter every two minutes?
Acacia interrupted the quiet conversations between the smaller groups of people by standing up and saying forcefully, “Hey, y’all! Hey! Listen up!”
It was clear from her no-nonsense tone and the way that everyone immediately stopped what they were saying, and turned their full attention on her, that she was a girl who was used to getting attention when she asked for it. That didn’t surprise me at all.
She raised her red Solo cup in the air and said, “Everybody have one of these?” She looked around at the circle full of red Solo cups that people had raised slightly in the air, and nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Okay. Because you’re going to need it for the next game.”
“What game?” several people asked in unison.
“Well, I’m about to tell you all. Hold your horses. So here’s what we’re going to do. It’s called the Truth Game. It’s kind of like Never Have I Ever, but a lot more straightforward. We just go around the circle, and whoever’s turn it is, they say, ‘Drink if you’ve done’ fill-in-the-blank. Then, if you’ve done that thing, you gotta drink up. So, basically, if you’re a wild child and you’ve done a lot of stuff, you’re going to be drunk as a skunk by the end of this game. That’s the point!
“But—and this is the really, truly important thing—you have to be honest. The game doesn’t work if everybody isn’t honest. The main point of it, of course, is to get drunk, but the other purpose is for all of us to get to know each other a little better. So, if you lie, it defeats the purpose. So cross your heart, hope to die a painful and terrible death—you gotta tell the damn truth. Everybody in?”
She made sure people were nodding in agreement. Shit. This made me nervous. After all, I didn’t know these people from Adam. How could I promise to spill all of my terrible secrets? But only one other person there would know if I was telling the truth, and he wasn’t about to rat me out.
At least, he’d better not.
Since the risk to agreeing was minimal, I nodded along with the others.
“Okay, awesome. It looks like everybody’s on board. I’m going to go ahead and start it off. Drink if you’ve ever done the nasty in a public place. Come on, y’all. Bathrooms, dressin’ rooms…all that counts. If you could hear voices while you were sneakin’ off, drink up!”
To my surprise, about half the group laughed and lifted their cups to their lips. Damn! This was a wild group of kids!
“Okay, good. That was obviously a good one to get the party started.” Gesturing to the boy on her left, Acacia said, “All right, Jimmy. I know you have a ridiculous imagination. I’m passing it off to you. Go.”
With that, she sat down, and Jimmy raised his cup towards her in acknowledgment.
“Okay, I can keep this rolling. Now, anybody sitting here who has done the deed under the covers while their roommate was in the room, pretending to sleep, you’d better drink up. Come on. I know you all are some horny buggers. Gotta be honest!”
With that, he took a giant gulp from his cup, and so did some of the others, everyone laughing along.
Dang. If these were the “wild” caliber of the questions, I was still going to be stone cold sober by the end of the game. I hadn’t done anything along the lines of what these questions were asking about.
The next few questions continued along in the same vein, with lots of other people drinking, but not me. And, I noted with satisfaction, not Hunter, either. He hadn’t gotten wild and crazy and raunchy during the time we’d been out of touch. I liked that.
I’d almost stopped paying attention to the questions. I was so sure that none of them were going to apply to me, but then one brought me up short.
“You have to drink if your ‘first’ is someone who’s sitting in the group right now.”
Shit.
Double shit. Triple shit!
The truth was, Hunter had been my first.
When I initiated our grad night fling, at the beginning, it’d been—at least, for me—a little bit about losing my virginity. Getting that over with and out of the way before college. Sure, it had mostly been about wanting to have sex with Hunter. But the bye bye, virginity, hello, college aspect was a huge bonus too.
Of course, within the first two minutes, that reason had flown out the window and it had been All. About. Hunter. And only Hunter. But the fact remained: that night was my first time. And Hunter was my first.
I was in a bind now, though. I didn’t want to admit that fact to Hunter by drinking. I didn’t want to admit it to Acacia. Or Avery. It was personal. It was private.
That was when, while looking straight at me and with a small and secret half smile on his face, Hunter began to raise his cup.
My mind started racing. How was that possible? Hunte
r had had not one but two semi-serious girlfriends in high school. One of which was Molly Patterson, who had quite the reputation. Hell, I figured that was why he’d been with her in the first place. It sure hadn’t been because of her winning personality.
When he brought it to his lips and took a drink, tingles washed over me like a blanket of small, exploding stars bursting all over my skin. I couldn’t believe we’d shared that amazing, intimate, personal experience together—we’d lost our virginities together—and we didn’t even know it, until now.
We’d been each other’s firsts.
I returned his small smile, and as I raised my own red Solo cup to my lips and tilted it, taking a drink that felt like it just shifted my entire reality.
Our gazes locked across the flickering firelight, we took our drinks, and then spent a long moment smiling at each other as we continued to look into each other’s eyes.
I think it might’ve been the closest I’d ever felt to him, the most connected. And we weren’t even touching.
*
Hunter
I sat on the couch in a scene that should’ve been perfect, but it wasn’t quite there. It had all the elements, but they weren’t adding up.
It was the most comfortable couch I’d ever been on, in an elegant study, with an impressive, roaring fire in the fireplace. I was drinking the most spectacular wine I’d ever tasted, with a beautiful girl tucked under my arm, her head snuggled into my shoulder.
The problem was that it was the wrong beautiful girl.
The party had moved inside and gotten considerably mellower, which was fine with me. I was still reeling from the moment Sandy and I had shared outside by the bonfire. How could I have been her first? I took her to the clinic to get birth control when Carter asked her to Senior Prom. All she talked about was how hot he was, and how she was so happy that he was going to be her first. Then she’d dated not one, not two, but three random losers over the next year. I just couldn’t quite understand how it could be possible that I was her first.
With my mind a million miles away in trying-to-understand-Sandyland, I appreciated the opportunity to chill with a smaller group of people in a quieter environment where I didn’t have to pay such close attention to being “on.” I could just be.
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