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“You game, Lori?” Naomi asks.
Normally, no, I wouldn’t be cool with a practical stranger doing a body shot off me, but I’m supposed to be letting loose and trying new things I never would’ve done. Iamon vacation, after all. Worse comes to worst, I don’t like it and don’t do it again, but at least I can say I tried it. Besides, all I really have to do is lie there.
“I’m game.”
Naomi cheers and grabs a shot from Thomas, which has a lime wedge resting on the rim. “What is this?” She sniffs it.
“Ugh. It’s vodka, isn’t it? You’re sick, Thomas.”
“Better than tequila.” He shrugs, then heads over to their other friends, offering the plate out to them, and I’m assuming daring them to do the same thing.
“Thomas wants to make sure everyone has fun,” Naomi tells me as we move off the dance floor and to some pool chairs. “He’s been especially doting since the whole I-was-drowning-and-he-didn’t-notice thing. He hasn’t even been drinking.”
I’m not sure what to make of that statement, but before I can mull it over, she pushes me down into a pool chair. A girl who’s friends with Naomi sits on my other side with a girl she introduced as her girlfriend. She shoots me a smile as she lies back in the chair. On her other side is Naomi’s other friend with a guy. The three of us recline, and I ignore my nerves to instead copy the girl beside me, pulling up my shirt and setting the lime in my mouth with the fruit part facing out.
Naomi pours the shot into my navel, and I force myself not to laugh at the sensation. Before I even know what’s happening, Naomi takes the shot then grabs the lime from my mouth, her lips not even touching mine.
“Woo-hoo!” she hollers when she removes the lime from her mouth. “All the tasks crossed off!”
It was over so quick I barely even realized it happened at all.
That wasn’t so bad, and when I sit up and join in the high-fives with the girls beside us, I realize I’m grinning. The girl and guy on the other side of the girls join in the revelry, and we all take turns checkingbody shotoff the backs of each other’s shirts.
“Hey,” Dean says, appearing out of nowhere with a beer in one hand and a glass in another. Naomi sends me a wink and disappears as Dean holds out the glass to me. “I didn’t know what you wanted but you’re always drinking vodka cran, so I figured that was a safe bet.”
My heart pounds becausehe remembered my go-to drink!
“You noticed I like vodka cran?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard not to notice when you threw one at me yesterday,” he jokes, and my face heats instantly.
“I really am sorry,” I say, rising from the pool chair and taking the drink. “I promise I won’t throw this one at you.”
It’s clear he doesn’t care about the incident last night at the club—he didn’t even care in the moment it happened. I probably could’ve thrown a whole pitcher of cranberry juice on his favorite white shirt, and he still wouldn’t have cared or gotten angry with me. Actually, I’ve never seen Dean mad except when Pervy Gym Guy took a picture of my butt and when Terry threatened to beat me up on the second night here. Both times he was defending me, and both times he made sure I was all right.
I try not to think about it as I sip from my glass. “Thanks for the drink.”
“No problem. Did you just checkbody shotoff your list?” he asks.
“She sure did!” Naomi interjects, walking back to us with a drink in her hand. She eyes the back of his shirt and I’m not sure I like the mischievous way her eyes light up. My suspicion is confirmed when she says, “I see you haven’t checkedbody shotoff. Lori, why don’t you help Dean out?”
Out of Dean’s view, she waggles her eyes at me, and this whole thing is such a Faye move I’m not even surprised. I’m almost scared of what would happen if the two of them became friends.
“I—umm—that’s—” I sputter, my mind imagining Dean leaning over me, his lips on my stomach, then hovering a fraction of an inch above my lips when he takes the lime. It’s one thing to have Naomi take a body shot off me, but forDeanto do it . . .
I might spontaneously combust before his lips even touch me.
Naomi must take pity on me because she says, “Oh, Dean!
Thomas was looking for you earlier. Something about your opinion on some game or something.”
She points to where Thomas is talking with some guys.
“We’ll meet you here, after.”
Before Dean reacts, Naomi grabs my hand and tugs me to a little table where I plop down in a chair. “Icannotbelieve you did that to me!”
She laughs as she sits across from me. “I was trying to help you out. I didn’t think you’d freeze like that.”
