Practically jumping out of bed, I slipped into an old summer dress and flats. I pulled my hair into a low ponytail and decided to put on a little makeup. I brushed some shimmery pink eyeshadow over my eyelids and accented my eyes with mascara.
Just as I was putting on lipstick, Carter sent me a text—letting me know he was outside.
I looked myself over one last time and grabbed my purse before running downstairs.
“You’re meeting me at the door now?” I stepped back once I opened it, shocked to see him standing there. “You normally wait in the car.”
“You’re putting on makeup now?” He smirked, lightly tracing the crease of my left eyelid with his fingertips. “You usually don’t wear any if it’s just me and you.”
“I was already wearing makeup. I was trying a few different looks in the mirror.”
“I thought you were attempting to go to sleep.”
I blushed and looked away, caught in an easy lie.
He let up an umbrella and held it over my head. “You want to walk along the beach?”
“No,” I said, dodging puddles as he led me to his car. “Even if it wasn’t raining, hell no.’
“Why not?”
“Because you and late night strolls on the beach never end well for the girl…”
“Fair enough.” He laughed. “What about the movies?”
“We did that yesterday.”
“Yes, but we didn’t actually watch the movie. Maybe we can actually try to pay attention to it this time.”
I fastened my seatbelt, now remembering how one second we’d been sharing popcorn in an empty theater, and the next he’d had me in his lap—saying his name until the credits rolled.
“No to the movies,” I said. “I don’t trust you. What’s the best place you think you’ve ever taken one of your um…”
“Girlfriends?”
“Yeah.” I realized we still weren’t attempting to address what we were. “What about that nice grove where you took Sarah? Oh! And didn’t you take Emily to that old train station? I remembered you telling me you loved that, so maybe there? Or, what about where you took—”
“Stop.” He leaned over and pressed his finger against my lips. “You know how we’ve somehow adopted the unspoken rule that we’re not telling anyone that we’re having sex, how we’re continuing to hang out with our other friends—pretending like we’re not fucking each other recklessly every night?”
I nodded, unable to keep the redness on my cheeks from forming.
“Okay,” he said, lowering his voice. “Well, even though I tell you everything—and I do mean everything, I have a new, unspoken rule of my own: the last thing I honestly want to do when I’m out with you is talk about what I did with someone else…So, whenever we’re together from here on out, we’re not going to talk about anyone outside of us. Okay?”
I blushed again. “Okay.”
He drove out of my neighborhood and onto the main streets, holding my hand in his lap.
“What time does the docking section of the pier normally close?”
“Midnight, sometimes one o’clock if the employees feel like it.”
As we approached a red-light, he looked over at me. “Well, since you work at the marina—”
“Worked.” I cut him off. “I think I got fired today.”
“What? How do you ‘think’ you got fired?”
“It was my turn to take a break first for a change and I took it...I just never went back.”
Laughing, he squeezed my hand. “Good for you. I was actually going to ask if you’d ever been on one of your company’s boat tours.”
“No...” I said. “Ironic, huh?”
“Very, and I think we should fix that. Would you like to go on one?”
I nodded and he made a U-turn—speeding off into the night toward the other side of town. When we got there, we had to rush to the box office to buy tickets before they closed.
I silently thanked God that neither my manager nor Ashley were working tonight. Instead it was the tour guide himself, and since it was raining, he said we would be the only people aboard.
Undaunted by the small audience, he stated the trivia enthusiastically as the boat sailed across the dark Atlantic. He even gave us free drinks during the lags when there wasn’t much to say, acknowledging that most of his jokes were terrible, but we laughed anyway.
Carter’s arm went around my shoulder halfway through the tour and remained there for the rest of the ride. And every now and then, for no reason at all, he would tilt my chin up and kiss my lips for several minutes at a time.