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“Hey, are you awake?” Ty asks.
“Yeah…I am now.”
“Okay, well…get dressed. Get your bathing suit on. I’ll come get you in…can you be ready in thirty minutes?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go to the beach.”
“We aren’t going to the beach,” he says. “We’re doing our own thing like you wanted. Do you want me to tell you what it is?”
I smile. “No, I trust you. And I want to be surprised.”
“Okay, I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay…bye.”
I hang up the phone and head downstairs to grab something to eat. Emma is already awake, eating cereal on the couch while watching weekday morning cartoons and talking to herself.
Or at least I assume she’s talking to herself.
I almost jump when I reach the first floor, and a loud male voice fills the space.
“Well, look who it is!” the voice booms. “This house is just full of beautiful women, isn’t it? I could get used to this.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask the man from the café yesterday. What was his name? Greg? No, it was Grant.
Grant is sitting at our kitchen table in his boxers and a t-shirt with his laptop open, shooting the shit with my nine-year-old sister. I’m suddenly aware of how little my own sleep clothes cover—that I’m not wearing a bra under my white shirt, and that’s exactly where his eyes are. I fold my arms across my chest in an attempt to cover myself.
“Your mom said I could stay for as long as I wanted,” he says. “I gotta say—this is a nice break from the hotel and the café.”
My mom never…never, never, never lets men stay in our home like this. Why would she do that? I break his gaze and make my way into the kitchen.
“Well, you’ll be rethinking that when it heats up in a few hours,” I tell him. “We don’t have air conditioning.”
I take a slice of bread and drop it into the toaster, then I open the refrigerator, bend down, and grab the gallon of orange juice from the bottom shelf. I pull out a glass from the cabinet, set it on the counter, and fill it. I bring it to my lips and take a drink, suddenly aware that his eyes are still on me. I see that he’s turned all the way around in his chair, watching with a playful smile on his lips.
It makes my stomach churn.
He reaches down and deliberately adjusts himself, and I’m beyond uncomfortable now. It’s like there’s some kind of an alarm going off in my head. A part of me wants to scream at him to get out of our house, that he shouldn't be here, but it loses to the voice in my head that says, ‘As long as you’re nice to him, he’ll leave you alone.’
Instead, I smile back.
“What’s with the ring?” he asks.
“I’m engaged,” I tell him.
“Really? Wow,” he says. “Aren’t you a little too young to be engaged?”
“I’m eighteen,” I tell him. “That’s old enough.”
I could argue that Ty and I grew up faster than most people out of necessity, but what would be the point?
He laughs. “No, it’s not. But I don’t blame whoever the guy is for trying to lock down a pretty little thing like you.”
I stare back, unsure of how to respond. Fuck this older than shit toaster. I’m ready to get the fuck out of here.
“That’s a compliment,” he says. “You should say, ‘thank you,’ when people compliment you.”
“Thanks…”
