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She somehow hears it over the lapping water and plans the escape. “Maybe we should head back. Grab some lunch.”
I nod, and we kick our feet out behind us and swim back to the cabana.
Gwendolyn
“You really went all out for this trip,” he says, wiping a spot of guacamole from his lips as we wrap up our lunch of shrimp tacos. Gram and Nancy finished a bit ago and wandered off in search of the pool, so Sawyer and I are alone again. He looks around the cabana and nods. “Seriously, let me know what I owe you for our share, and—”
“Absolutely not.”
He looks up like he’s been scolded. “Gwen…”
“Everything’s covered. It’s fine.” It wasn’t cheap, but Gram’s been saving, and I’ve earned back the generous advance on my book, and we decided to splurge. Plus, there’s no way I’m going to ask a semi-unemployed public school teacher to foot part of the bill for the things I’m enjoying on a luxury vacation.
I must have stalled our pre-lunch conversation as long as possible, because Sawyer (who has put his fancy shirt back on) stretches and dives back into the part of the conversation where we left off. “So. Bad breakups, huh?”
“Ha. Yeah.” It all comes rushing back: the cold air in New York, what should have been one of the best nights of my life, everything crashing down. “I was dating this guy, Tristan, on and off for five years or so. He traveled a lot for work, and it was hard to find time together.” I could stop there, and everything would be true. Nothing so far is a lie, but it’s incomplete. And I think Gram would frown on incomplete. So I tell him the whole thing.
I tell him about the serendipity of being in the same city at the same time. I recall for him my disappointment that Tristan never showed up at the book signing and how I called him to just check in, to make sure he was okay. How he didn’t answer. How his hotel was two blocks from mine, and when I asked for a key to surprise him they acquiesced, and how when I went into his suite, I saw him bent over the side of the couch.
Actually, I saw him bent over some random woman, over the side of the couch.
To Sawyer’s credit, he doesn’t interrupt. He just sits and listens, and he lets me spill it all out there, until I’m done and out of breath.
“And the worst part was,” I say, feeling the burning of the tears that I try to hold back, “it wasn’t even some assistant or coworker that he’d worked with for years and had some kind of friendship with, at least. It was some rando, a stranger, and fucking her was more important than being there for me.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you. You don’t deserve that.”
It’s possible I obsess too much over language and word choice, but I hear the way he says ‘don’t’ and not ‘didn’t’, and I feel like I can breathe again.
“Are we disasters?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I just think we’ve both been screwed over.”
“True. But enough whining, okay? I’ll shut up, and I’ll focus on getting to know other things about you.”
He grins across the table at me. “Deal. On one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“We start with finding out who can make the bigger splash.” He takes the steps upstairs two at a time, but I sneak under his arm and around his hip to beat him to the top. Then I send myself down the slide into the water and emerge, drenched again, laughing, refreshed.
There’s a wide, square hammock built into the flooring just off the water. I hoist myself up with a boost from Sawyer after he launches himself down the slide after me. He runs a hand through his hair and rests his arms on the deck around the hammock. Droplets roll down the muscles in his shoulders and arms, and he nestles his chin onto his hands.
“There’s plenty of room up here,” I tell him, but he looks at the hammock and shakes his head. I scoot further to the side, freeing up two-thirds of the space. “Come on. I don’t bite.”
He evaluates again and gives in, climbing up and over the edge, until he’s lying there next to me. “If you want me to get out, just tell me, okay?”
“Why would I want that?”
He shrugs, stretches one arm out to tuck a hand behind his head, and keeps the arm closest to me at his side with his hand resting on his stomach. “Just be honest with me. You won’t hurt my feelings if you say ‘Wow, Sawyer, you’re so big and muscular, and you’re taking up too much space on the hammock I paid for.’”
I pinch a tiny bit of skin on the underside of his arm, and the man flails. His arm shoots up over his head, exposing his obliques, and his whole body seems to leap three inches off the hammock.
“Geez, Gwen.”
It’s so hard not to laugh when those brown eyes go wide and look at me with such alarm. A cackle comes out and I say, “Sorry. I’m just shocked that someone so big and muscular would be hurt by a little pinch.” For added effect, I drag my fingers over his abs and sides. It’s such a reflex, joking like this, touching him like this, and I don’t realize how inappropriate it is right away. But he lets me do it; his arm’s still awkwardly overhead.
I should ask if this is okay. I should look for a sign in his eyes, or better yet, just back away. Hands off the statue, Gwendolyn. Don’t touch the art. Instead I test the waters, creeping my fingers across his pecs, feeling his heart beating a steady rhythm, watching his chest rise and fall. He inhales deeply. Swallows hard. And then I’m curled up along his side, my head resting on his chest, our skin in contact along our torsos and the length of our legs. He tilts a foot in my direction and I answer, and then his arm is around me and he strokes my back with the backs of his curled fingers.
