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Neither of us says anything, because what would we say, anyway? ‘Hey, sorry your last relationship sucked. This isn’t a relationship but you can still touch me and I’ll touch you and it’ll be hot and magical and meaningless and then we’ll go home and never see each other again’?
I could fall asleep like this if I wasn’t so damn electrified by his presence. Everything about this feels so right and so wrong all at once, and I’m only mildly aware of the footsteps crossing the floorboards, pausing, retreating, and the hushed whispers that follow. Gram and Nancy must be back.
“Are you ready to kick me out yet?” Sawyer finally asks, his hoarse voice just above a whisper. I feel his breath across the top of my head, and his hand has lazily found its way to my lower back.
I pull in closer to answer his question, wrapping my arm around his waist and draping my foot over his shin.
“Gwen,” he exhales, pulling his arm back from my skin. He shifts at the waist, breaking the contact between our legs. Then he uses his free arm to readjust the waistband of his shorts and tug at the hem, leaving his arm to rest across his body when he’s done. Oh.
“I’m an Aries,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“You said you’re a Pisces. I’m an Aries. I don’t know if that matters.”
“I don’t think it does.”
I sit up, giving him more space and freedom and less contact. And that’s when I see it. On his hip, peering out from his shorts.
“Sawyer Dawson!” I poke at the line of ink and drop my voice to a giddy whisper so I don’t alarm Nancy if she’s not aware of what her grandson is rocking in his shorts. (Yes, that sounds weird. No, I don’t care. Because Sawyer is about to become even more interesting.) “Do you have a welcome mat?”
His eyes widen and he looks at the skin my fingers poke at. “A welcome mat? Really, Gwen?” He rolls his eyes and adjusts the waistband again, covering the ink. “Have you never seen a tattoo before?”
“Not there,” I say, shaking my head. “Not on a guy. In person.”
“It’s really not that exciting.”
“Agree to disagree. Can I see it?” I try to reach for it, to pull back the fabric of his shorts just enough to see what he decided to permanently decorate his body with, but he twists his hips away from me.
“It’s, uh… It’s a little low, I think.” There’s an unmistakable blush creeping across his cheeks.
“Okay,” I shrug. “Let me know if you change your mind. You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
His eyes move over me. The swimsuit isn’t crazy skimpy, but it’s also a bikini, so I’m sure he’s wondering if he somehow missed seeing it today or if it’s just very well hidden. I like the way he looks at me, trying to see everything about me, inspecting my skin and dropping his gaze from my chest to my hips.
“Hey, Gwennie?”
I inhale, suddenly aware I’ve not been breathing since Sawyer began his perusal of my body. “Yeah, Gram?” I holler up onto the cabana platform. Sawyer swings his legs over the hammock’s edge and submerges his lower half in the water.
“Did you two see the swim-up bar?”
Sawyer
It’s exactly the interruption we need. The four of us wade out together, past the remaining cabanas and some floating beds, to do something Maggie added to her bucket list as soon as she and Nan started planning this cruise.
There are a few thatch-roof umbrellas in the water with little counters mounted to their posts so people can set their drinks down and relax close to the bar. Nan suggests they wait there while Gwen and I pick up the drinks, but Maggie is determined to sit at the bar and get her own drink. “That’s the fun of it,” she explains, winking.
I climb the ladder first, then offer a hand to the older women while Gwen helps them from below, and soon we’re all at the floating bar, Maggie and Nan perched on stools (thanks to the guys that stood to make room for them) while Gwen and I hang back, standing along the railing that lines the bar’s perimeter.
Once Maggie has her Sex on the Beach (this woman is shameless and lacks subtlety), she swivels toward us. “Having fun so far today?”
Gwen nods. “Yep. Just getting to know each other better.”
The answer clearly pleases Maggie, and she and Nan recount their adventures, including a brief foray into snorkeling that ended when Nan saw a fin in the distance. “I keep trying to tell her, it was just a dolphin.”
“And I keep trying to tell her, where there are dolphins, there are sharks. Except yesterday. Yesterday was just the dolphin.”
Gwen dials up the drama in her voice and elbows me. “I don’t know. I thought I felt something grab onto me at one point. Definitely not a dolphin.”
