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As unexpected as having the wind knocked out of me, my fuse finally burns to the end and I fall against the sand on my bottom and bury my face in my hands, sweat and all. My eyes begin to burn as I smear mascara into them, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I look like a raccoon when I go back into that building—sometimes you just have to throw your hands in the air.
“Are you all right?” I hear a voice say.
Raising my eyes from the confines of my hands, I look up to see a tall, gorgeous guy in red swim trunks standing over me—the same guy who was looking at me across the beach in the red and black wetsuit yesterday. The same guy whose brief glance made my stomach flutter.
FOUR
Sienna
Although I only saw him from afar, he has the kind of face that would be hard to forget: defined cheekbones brushed by a five-o’clock shadow. Deep hazel eyes that seem to contain everything between devotion and mischief, framed by tousled golden-brown hair, short in the back but a little longer on top. It looks like he woke up this morning, shuffled his hand through it a few times, and, voilà, perfection.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I say with no distinguishable emotion, wiping underneath my eyes with the edges of my thumbs.
I quickly pull the ends of my skirt farther down near my ankles to make sure I’m not on display.
“I see,” he says, crossing his arms loosely over his plain white T-shirt. “You must not be from around here then.”
I look up at his tall, tanned form looming over me and brace for the same tourist treatment that Veronica received.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My nose wrinkles around the edges.
The guy smiles, close-lipped, and though it’s charming enough that it borderlines infectious, I’m not sure what to make of it.
“Well, people from Hawaii,” he says matter-of-factly, “when they cry like that, it usually means something’s wrong.” He shrugs.
I blink confusedly and just stare up at him for a moment.
I’m not crying.
“Is that so?” I say out loud, my voice faintly laced with sarcasm. “I’m curious to know where you think I could be from then, based on that observation.” I’m usually not this impolite, but he caught me at a really bad time.
His lips turn up faintly, matching the charming look in his eyes.
“I dunno,” he says. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
I look away and down at my phone crushed in one hand. A stream of unread text messages from Paige await me. Sighing heavily, I drop the phone on the sand beside my shoes, not wanting to think about any of that right now.
The silence grows between us.
I wonder why he’s even still standing there.
Finally I stand up and dust sand off the back of my long flowered silk skirt, and then my hands. My heels sink deeply into the sand again, causing me to lose my balance. I catch myself before I fall, but it doesn’t stop him from collapsing his hand around my elbow, just in case. My stomach flip-flops a little when he touches me, but I quickly brush that aside.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone then,” he says suddenly and takes a step back. “Whatever it is, just let it go. You’ll feel better a lot sooner.” He smiles. His strange advice seems sincere and not at all arrogant or all-knowing—this alone makes me infinitely curious to know more about him.
He starts to walk away, his white T-shirt clinging to him in the breeze, his bare feet moving easily over the top of the sand as if he’s had time to master it, but then something urgent grows inside me and my mouth suddenly has a mind of its own.
“I’m just under a lot of stress,” I call out, finally giving him an answer, and stopping him in his tracks.
He turns to face me.
Nervously I glance down at my toes and the blue-mint beads running along the bottom strap of my sandals, buried partially by the sand.
He walks toward me again, but I don’t look at him. It feels awkward to look. I don’t want to risk giving him the wrong idea.
“That must be some serious stress,” he says, stepping back up. “To reduce you to tears.”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I point at him playfully. “I wasn’t crying though.”
