Relentless(8)
He throws himself across me and grabs my hand. “Wait! I’m sorry. That was out of line. I’m being a total douche. I know. Just give me one more chance. I swear I won’t fuck it up.”
His hand is on mine and his face is inches away as he leans across my lap. He smells a little minty and a little woodsy as his heat slams into me. I focus on breathing as I watch his eyes skim down my face and land on my mouth. There’s no fighting it as my gaze falls on his lips; those soft, kissable lips he pressed against my hand just a second ago.
“What is your deal?” I ask, sliding my hand out from underneath his. “Why are you so intent on taking me to lunch? I’m fine. You don’t need to keep apologizing for nearly running me over.”
He sits up and ruffles his hair before he answers. “I actually went to the café yesterday to meet you. I saw you last week when I came to sign the rental agreement. When I asked Cora about you, what she said intrigued me.”
“What did she say?”
“I thought you wanted to ask Cora yourself?”
I glare at him and he smiles. “She said you were single.”
“And?”
“And she said you were the sweetest girl she’s ever known.”
“And?”
He sighs, looking uncomfortable for once and I’m glad I’m finally able to crack through that smug disposition of his.
“What did she say?” I demand.
“She said you might want to be my friend.”
“Be your friend?”
“I don’t know anybody around here and Cora was concerned that a quote ‘young man like you might get yourself into some trouble without a nice girl around.’”
I can’t help but smile. That sounds exactly like something Cora would say. She grew up in Minnesota and is still very old-fashioned about some things. I’ve only been on one date since I moved into this apartment two and a half months ago. The instant my date brought me home, I glimpsed Cora peeking through her blinds to make sure I wasn’t inviting him into my apartment. I love Cora, but she can be a bit nosy and meddlesome.
“So you’re just following Cora’s advice. Well, let me save you the trouble. I’ll go back inside and you can tell Cora that we went out to lunch and had a really nice time. And I’ll go back to sleep. Then we all get what we want.”
“That’s not what I want.”
He looks me in the eye and I can’t help but marvel at his features: his perfect lips, the straight slope of his nose, the intense glare. He could be on the cover of GQ magazine and thousands of girls and guys would drool in the checkout lane.
“What do you want?” I ask, wishing I had brought a bottle of water because my mouth has suddenly gone dry.
“I want to be your friend. And I want to take you to get a fucking burger.”
“Well, when you put it that way, how can a girl resist.”
He shakes my knee, just the way he did in the truck last night, but this time I don’t complain about personal space. This time I kind of like it.
He pulls out of the apartment complex onto Lumina and heads in the direction of Johnnie Mercer’s Pier. My body is suddenly zinging with nerves. This feels like a date, but he said he wants to be my friend. I despise uncertainty. I prefer being upfront and honest about everything—except my reasons for dropping out, of course.
A girl is allowed to keep one big secret.
Cora told me this the day I moved in after asking why I had moved all the way to Wrightsville Beach from Raleigh. I told her, jokingly, I’d moved here to see if the ocean could cleanse my sin. That’s when she told me, quite seriously, that I was allowed to keep one big secret. For some reason, hearing those words from Cora changed something inside me.
The truth was that I had come to Wrightsville Beach to disappear, possibly forever. After that conversation with Cora, I looked up yoga and meditation studios. Then a customer at the café recommended the female surfer who owned the shop next door. Fallon taught me a few basic meditation techniques and that was it. I was hooked.
When I meditate, I become someone better. I’m not this person who’s made a million mistakes; the kind of mistakes that will haunt me for a lifetime. I’m not the person who should be lashed for all the awful, selfish decisions I’ve made over the last year since he left. When I meditate, I’m the new Claire. And today that’s who I’ll be with Adam.
“You’re quiet,” he says as he pulls the truck into the pier parking lot.
“Are you taking me to lunch at Buddy’s? ‘Cause I’m allergic to shellfish. I can’t even go in there without my throat closing.”