My breath caught in my throat.
I want that, too. So much.
I didn’t answer, but lay unmoving, feeling my body float back to earth.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him adjust himself. I felt guilty for making him uncomfortable.
Hell, was there anything I didn’t feel guilty about?
“Is this what it’s going to be like for the next four months?” he said, sounding aggrieved.
“Or I could join a convent,” I muttered, almost to myself.
“I’d still find you,” he said darkly.
I smiled.
“Okay, no convents. Or monasteries, come to think of it.”
I fished around for a new topic of conversation.
“Tell me about this job you mentioned. When do you start?”
“I haven’t applied for it yet.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted to make sure it was okay with you first, Caro.”
I was surprised. Yes, that was the word, surprised and plain amazed.
“You … you were waiting for … what, my permission?”
“Well, not exactly.” He sounded puzzled. “So we could discuss it together and then decide.”
Oh. Like a real couple.
David never discussed anything with me; I simply received his Decree from on high.
“And you’ll be working the late shift? Well, that sounds fine to me.”
“Great!” he said and turned on his side to look at me, smiling. “I’ll have to do some day shifts, maybe. The pay is shit but Ches said the tips are pretty good, especially from older women.”
I winced and his expression froze.
“I didn’t mean … I don’t think of you like that! Caro, no!”
But the genie was out of the bottle, a vintage one at that.
“It’s not far off the mark, Sebastian.”
He sat up, his face alarmed.
“Don’t say that! I love you so much, Caro. I … what I feel for you … I’ve never…”
He grabbed my hand and held the palm against his cheek.
I sat up, too, shaking sand from my hair.
“It is what it is, Sebastian.”
We sat in silence for some minutes.
I could tell he was mortified, wishing his candid words unsaid.
“So,” I said at last, my tone deliberately light, “no girls at high school who grabbed your attention? No cheerleaders waving their pompoms at you?”
He smiled ruefully, relieved, I thought for yet another change of topic.
“Not really.”
“Not really isn’t not at all. Tell me, I’m curious.”
He sighed. “They didn’t mean anything.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “I’m not jealous, Sebastian!”
But even as I said the words, I wasn’t entirely sure they were true. I remembered the hungry look of the surf shack girl and how much I’d wanted to punch her vapid smile into the back of her throat.
“What do you want to know?” he said in a resigned voice.
“It’s not important, honestly, I was just curious.”
He lay back on the sand, his eyes closed.
“It’s always been you, Caro. The first time I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful girl that I’d ever seen. I thought you must be a princess, like Cinderella. It’s only ever been you.”
I was stunned by his reply.
Yes, a fairy tale. That’s what this was—a lovely fantasy. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care. I longed to run my fingers down his smooth skin, over his bare chest, across the defined muscles of his stomach. My gaze lingered on the waistband of his cut-offs.
“What about you?” he said, his eyes still closed.
“What about me what?”
“Did you go out with anyone before … before David?”
I didn’t really want to hear David’s name and certainly not from Sebastian’s lips, but it was a fair question.
“I dated a few times in high school—movies, bowling, that sort of thing. I met David when I was in my senior year.”
“My age,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
Where was he going with this?
“Did you … did you … sleep with him then?”
I really didn’t want to go there.
“Yes.”
“But you won’t sleep with me?”
“Oh, Sebastian! Please don’t do this!”
“But I don’t understand. You were my age. You just said so. How can it have been right then and wrong now?”
He sounded really angry and he turned his head away from me.
“Please don’t, Sebastian.”
My voice was suddenly hoarse with tears.
He didn’t reply.
I swallowed and took a deep breath.
“Because we were in Maryland and the age of consent is 16. It wasn’t illegal.”
“And that’s the only reason?” he muttered.