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Held A New Adult Romance(21)

By:Jessica Pine


I clear my throat. She doesn't move. I do it again and this time her hand comes up, tips the sunglasses down. "Hi," she says. A phone rings at her side and she picks it up. "Time up," she says, and gets up off the lounger. "Can you help me with the umbrella? I think it's stuck."

It's on the tip of my tongue to say that she needs to take the plastic off the damn thing first, but I see she's already done that. She's right - it takes a little jiggling to push the umbrella up.

"You should have had this up in the first place," I say. "You'll burn."

"I won't. I'm on a timer - twenty minutes. I need the vitamin D. I'm getting prison pallor."

"Is this where I ask you why you won't go out?"

She pulls another lounger into the shade and pats it. I sit down. She settles into her own. I see how her little bikini bottoms are held at her hips with two little interlaced C's - Chanel. Complicated, I'd told Beca. Understatement. She's a million miles and a million dollars out of my league.

"Do you want to know?" she asks, picking up a bottle of sunscreen.

"Only if you want to tell me," I say. "If I wanted to know I'd have looked online, wouldn't I?"

"I guess," she says. She's very thin - too thin. When she leans over to put sunscreen on her legs I can see the bumps of her spine where she bends. I want to ask about the scar at the back of her neck, but I don't want anything to spook her. I don't think I could handle it if she told me to go away and never come back. When she kissed me the spot on my cheek was tingling for days.

"It was kind of you," she says. "Not to ask, I mean. Some days when my therapist comes I feel like I do nothing but talk about...stuff. Issues. Emotions. All of that. You were the first normal conversation I'd had in forever."

"I'm glad."

She smiles. "Me too. And I do, by the way."

"Do what?"

"Want to make friends."

I stare at the pool for a moment and swallow. I don't trust myself to look at her. She's too lovely and it's been too long for me. "Good," I say. "So do I."

She doesn't say anything else. I think she knows somehow that I'm trying to keep my eyes from straying. Out of the corner of my eye I see her rubbing sunblock on her chest. Her fingertips dip beneath the fabric of her bikini. She has one leg bent and I can see the pale inside of her thigh, but it's different this time. Nobody's shoving a camera up her skirt and forcing her to show herself.

I have no idea what to say. Everything on my lips has the word 'beautiful' in it.

Eventually she lets out a dry, embarrassed little laugh. "So much for that," she says.

"For what?"

"Normal conversation."

"Oh." I stare at the swimming pool again, but I feel like we've exhausted that topic of conversation. "I don't know what to say," I admit. "If things were different...I don't know."

"Don't know what?"

I shrug. "I guess, if this was anywhere else, if we were somewhere else, I guess I would have asked you out for a drink by now."

She turns her head slightly towards me. Her sunglasses have gone less dark in the shade and I can see her eyes through the big, tinted lenses. "A date?" she asks, with the trace of a smile.

"A drink."

"Sounds like a date to me."

I laugh, not quite sure what's going on here. She's a movie star's kid. She can't possibly be flirting with me. "You're putting words in my mouth. It could just be a drink."

"Do you ask men out for drinks?" she asks. I think she is. Wow. Her sunglasses have slipped down her nose and her eyes are full of mischief. The tip of her tongue pokes out from between her teeth.

"I've arranged to meet male friends for drinks, yes," I say, carefully.

She starts shaking with badly concealed laughter. I'm fucking this up so bad. "So," she says. "Would you go back to the gatehouse, for example, and say 'Cory, I would like to take you out for a drink'?"

"No," I say. "When you say it like that you make it sound really gay."

"It would be really gay. You would be asking him out for a drink in a date kind of way. The way you asked me out for a drink. And I'm pretty sure I'm not a man and you're not gay, so doesn't that make it a date?"

I sigh. "You're determined to make me suffer one way or another, aren't you?"

She shrugs. "It's kind of what I do." She settles back on the lounger and lights a cigarette. "Where would you take me? Where do you usually go for drinks?"

That's a laugh. I think of the mysterious watery fruit punch at the CYO. "I don't," I say.

"You don't drink? After all that?"

"No, I do. I just don't get much out of sitting around with other men drinking beer. I prefer hanging out with women - that way I get to dance."