Page 94 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“Well, you know.” She shoots me a furtive look.

“Laurel!” I shout. “You slept with him?”

“Not right away,” she scoffs, like waiting a day or so made the whole situation any less insane. “We went out to dinner on Friday night. And one thing led to another, and…it just happened.”

I shake my head. “I raise my glass to you, living the life so many women dream of.”

“Do many women dream of academic ruin and disastrous love triangles?” She quirks a brow.

“I think so,” I say matter-of-factly. “That’s the premise of nearly every teen drama ever aired. At least, the second part is.”

“Hmm.” She pretends to consider this, then flips the script. “So, what happened with Oliver?”

“Oh. Um, he brought me home the night of the storm. And then he had to stay because of the weather.”

“Here we go!” She honestly looks deranged, she’s so excited. At least she doesn’t seem angry with me anymore. “Tell me all about it.”

I think of Oliver’s warm chest and his kisses in the dim light; the way I screamed his name and then fell asleep in his arms. The way the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we ate tasted like a gourmet meal; how his tone about us shifted to future tense almost immediately. Because he wants me to stay. Because I want to stay.

I don’t know that I’m ready to share any of it. It feels too intimate, too sacred a thing to just blab about like it’s merely locker room talk.

Suddenly, Eleanor’s reticence to go into detail in her diary makes a lot more sense to me.

I decide to go for brevity. “We borrowed several of your condoms,” I shrug. “I’ll buy you more.”

Laurel’s jaw drops. “Ivy, you harlot.”

I snort. “That’s pretty rich, coming from you.”

“It’s true,” she agrees, throwing her arm around my shoulders. “We’re just a couple of crazy women-about-town.”

We decide to go for a walk where the waves meet the sand, and that keeps us occupied until dinnertime. I’m meeting Oliver for ice cream after his shift, so I keep things simple with an egg salad sandwich. Laurel updates me on her parents’ laundry room renovation, and I tell her more about Maisie’s surgery.

The topic of Simon, or of my discussions with my mom about Eleanor’s diary, don’t come up at all. Things are feeling a little bit better between Laurel and I, and I’m afraid to tempt fate by reintroducing my quest to unravel the hidden mysteries of the past. When and if I’m able to figure out what happened all those years ago, I’ll have to decide whether to share it with Laurel. But that’s a worry for another day.

“You have to try this,” Oliver insists, holding out a spoonful of blueberry pie ice cream.

“Only if you try the cookies and cream.”

“You drive a hard bargain.” He leans forward and licks the edge of the cone I’ve shoved next to his mouth.

Watching his tongue dart along the ice cream is, frankly, a religious experience for me. But we’re in public, so I shove thoughts of his head between my thighs out of my mind for the moment. Instead, I take his spoon and am overwhelmed by how deliciously bright and fruity the blueberry pie flavor is.

“Okay, so, I don’t often do this,” I say once I swallow, “but I’m going to admit I was wrong. That’s definitely the best ice cream I’ve ever had.”

His eyes glint with victory. “I’m honored to be on the receiving end of one of your rare concessions.”

“This just means you’re going to have to let me take you out for ice cream again so I can order this flavor for myself.”

We’d haggled a bit over who got to pay for tonight’s dessert, but I ultimately won the battle, reminding him I owed him for his help with the library books.

“Taking you to the library benefited me, also, you realize,” he’d teased.

“Why? Did you enjoy watching me verbally spar with another woman with you as the prize?”

“Maybe,” he’d smirked.

“Well, I’ve got news for you,” I’d whispered close to his ear. “Next time, I’m going to let her win. She can deal with all this.” I gesticulated wildly like he was exuding an aura of absurdity.