Chapter 26

26

Preston

W e start with bouncy basketball.

“Bouncy basketball?” I demand when she tells me that’s where we’re headed.

“It’ll make sense when you see it.” She leads me through the maze of small alleyways that wind between meshed-off “fun” areas. To my right, small children bounce on trampolines with reckless abandon. To my left, they throw themselves off a ledge into what I assume must be a foam pit, given that I don’t hear ambulance sirens.

We arrive at the bouncy basketball space, a meshed-off area with a trampoline floor and a hoop at either end. Natalie lifts an orange rubber playground ball with basketball-like stripes from a net pocket hanging on the mesh “wall.”

“They don’t issue helmets for this?” I ask. “Feels like a concussion waiting to happen.”

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Really? You look at this and that’s what you see?”

“What do you see?”

She shakes her head and throws the ball at my chest.

I quickly discover that the physics of tramp basketball are like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. The ball doesn’t necessarily bounce straight back up, depending on where you dribble it, and it goes instantly dead if it hits the walls.

It’s a lot more chaotic than I was expecting, and my long-disused pickup basketball skills are even less helpful than I’d hoped.

But that’s okay because Natalie clearly knows nothing about basketball. She runs with the ball—not even trying to dribble—and she doesn’t seem to have any qualms about wrestling it out of my grasp.

In a few minutes, she’s up by three baskets, and it’s clear that if I’m going to have any chance of winning, I’ll have to play as dirty as she is.

So I do. I twist the ball out of her hands and bounce back down the court.

“Foul!” she cries.

“Oh, now you want to call fouls!”

“I call ’em like I see ’em!”

She pursues me to the hoop and, as I go up, makes a sloppy grab for the ball, which bounces away from both of us.

“And that’s not a foul?” I demand. “You can’t hug the shooter.”

“I wasn’t hugging you! That was all ball.”

We chase the ball and wrestle for it. She lets go suddenly, and I fall backward onto the soft surface. She tumbles down, too, landing on top of me. The ball scoots away, leaving us laughing and gasping for breath, her face inches from mine. I stare up into her dark eyes, and her smile slips.

Her cheeks are pink, her eyes sparkling. There are a few adorable freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. I can feel her breath—short and quick—against my lips.

Heat sizzles in the air between us, and I become aware of the full length of her, sprawled on me. She pushes up onto her arms, which brings our lower bodies closer together. Her thighs are glorious, soft and cushiony over a core of strength, and blood surges into my groin. A minute more and I’ll be hard as a rock against her.

She rolls off me before that can happen, and I regret it instantly, the loss of the warmth, the end of that moment of possibility.

“Ha!” she says, retrieving the ball.

I slowly find my way to my feet, scolding my still-heavy cock that it needs to STFU, as Natalie bounces on the tramp surface a few times directly in front of me. Nice and slow. Not too high. Just enough to put her pretty tits and her grab-able ass in motion.

That’s not helping.

Her gaze follows the trajectory of mine.

“Eyes up, Hott,” she teases.

“I wasn’t?—”

She’s grinning at me. “Okay, dude,” she says. “If you say so.” And she makes a fake and a jab and cuts past me with the basketball, racing down the “court” and sinking her shot.

“Try to keep up, Hott,” she taunts.

I scowl at her…but it’s hard.

My smile keeps wanting to break through.

After bouncy basketball, we do some straight-up trampolining, which will soon be forbidden by the Geneva Conventions as a form of torture because the whole time, I’m trying not to watch Natalie’s gorgeous natural jiggle.

She knows it, too. She gives a shimmy of her shoulders, treats me to a few sexy dance moves and hip swivels that make me more light-headed than I want to admit.

Fine. Two can play.

I can’t dance. But I did play football in high school, and the coach believed that every football player should learn some tumbling, so we had an optional workout with the gymnastics coach on Saturday mornings. Plus, you know, we did all those box jumps. So I can get quite a bit of air—and do several different flips.

Without warning her, I demonstrate my skills.

When I finish running through my repertoire of flips and twists, she stares at me wide-eyed.

“What?” I ask, shrugging. “No biggie.” And I do a few more, for good measure.

She claps and laughs, delighted.

“Preston!” she cries. “You’re amazing!”

There are smile lines at the bridge of her nose and the corners of her eyes and a dimple in the sweet curve of her cheek. I feel like I’ve won Olympic gold, like her delight is the biggest and best prize of all. It’s a rush of pure pleasure that floods my chest and wraps around the base of my spine. I want to reach out to her?—

You did that once. And then realized it wasn’t fair to her. Remember?

“I need water,” I say abruptly.

Her smile fades, like a light going out.

We find a water fountain near the edge of the laser tag arena. A big party of kids is playing there, and we watch while we drink. Or Natalie watches them. I watch Natalie. The play of smiles and laughs across her face, the way she bounces on her toes when she’s excited about something.

When did I start to crave her joy?

How can I stop?

What if I don’t want to stop?

She nudges my arm. “Do you think we could have laser tag at Hott Springs Eternal?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Preston,” she says, eyes dramatically huge, “did you say something supportive and positive instead of telling me how expensive and dangerous an activity is?”

“Damn,” I say. “You’re right. I take it back.”

Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright. I want to put my hands in her hair and pull her face to mine.

Maybe making sex jokes about Bouncy Town wasn’t so far off.

“I could use a snack,” I say instead of doing something I’ll almost definitely regret.

We wander to the cafeteria, which is packed with kids on summer vacation. I look at my watch. Almost three forty-five. Suddenly the day doesn’t feel long enough. But I don’t say that; I cross my arms and tell Natalie, “There’s nothing healthy on this menu.”

“That’s right,” she says cheerfully. “Suck it up, Hott.”

I like it when she calls me that. Also, I like the sound of the word suck in her mouth. There are a lot of things I would like in her mouth. In fact, I think there is very little about her mouth that I wouldn’t like.

Jesus, Hott, pull yourself together.

It’s looking less and less likely.

She orders a corn dog and a fruit salad, so I do, too. It’s delicious. Or maybe I’m just really hungry.

The kids in the cafeteria travel in packs, and I quickly realize the packs are mostly birthday parties.

“There’s gonna be a lot of leftover cake,” Natalie says, surveying the territory. “We should get ourselves some.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

She ponders, then points to a cake across the cafeteria from us. Chocolate.

“That one,” she says. “Follow me.”

She’s about eight feet away when she looks back and sees me, unmoving. “Preston,” she says. “Do you want cake, or not?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to ask if I can have a slice of cake.”

“You’re going to ask total strangers if you can have a slice of cake.”

She shrugs. “Sure. Why not? That cake is huge . They’ve barely made a dent in it. They need us to help them with it.”

“They’re not going to let us eat their cake.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Okay,” she says. “If I’m right, you have to generate a brainstorm list of fifty possible activities to flesh out our schedule. If you’re right, I’ll do it.”

“Works for me.”

I follow her over to the party.

“Hey,” Natalie says. “Who’s the birthday kid?”

A wild-haired, freckled eight- or nine-year-old raises his hand.

“Happy birthday!” she tells him.

“Thanks.”

“Are you having a good time?”

“Yes!” all the kids cry together.

“I used to always want a birthday party at one of these places,” Natalie said. “You’re super lucky! And that cake looks ah-may-zing . Did you get it at Karl’s in Bend?”

“No, Rush Creek Bakery,” a woman says.

Natalie gives her an open-mouthed look. “Wait a second. You’re telling me that’s Nan’s famous better-than-chocolate cake? That cake is sooooo good.”

“Do you want some?” the woman asks.

“I’d love some,” Natalie says.

And just like that, we’re holding two slices of chocolate cake, walking back to our table.

“Good luck brainstorming that list,” Natalie taunts around a huge mouthful of the best chocolate cake on Earth.

I can’t disagree with her assessment.

“Is chocolate cake your favorite dessert?” I ask.

“As a rule, definitely,” she says, her nose crinkled as she thinks about it. “My all-time favorite though…there’s this bakery in New Haven, Connecticut, that I visited one time when I visited my sister at college. Lucibello’s. And she ordered me this pastry—it’s called a Sicilian cannoli. It’s puff pastry filled with custard, and holy crap —I swear to God, it was life changing . But did you know you can’t get Italian pastry around here for love or money? Maybe in San Francisco, but it’s really hard to come by on the West Coast, generally. I’ve had a lot of Scandinavian pastry, but the custard’s not the same. I have food fantasies about Lucibello’s custard all the time.”

She’s all riled up, talking a mile a minute, face flushed. I reach out and swipe a tiny bit of chocolate frosting off the corner of her mouth. I want to lick it off my finger so bad that I can already taste it. I lift my hand to do it, and her eyes go dark. I feel like I’m balanced on a narrow ledge, and I don’t hate the rush of adrenaline it gives me.

My phone buzzes, and at the last minute, I drop my hand and wipe my finger on my napkin.

Natalie bites her lip.

I pull out my phone. It’s my boss, Anjali. Just checking in to make sure everything’s going okay there. We on track with everything?

I close my eyes and text back, Absolutely .

When I glance back at Natalie, she’s eating cake with all her attention.

“Your birthday parties must have been a trip when you were a kid,” I say.

She shrugs. “Not so much. My parents weren’t big on birthday parties.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “Like, you didn’t have them?”

She shrugs. “My parents were both pretty busy, and they had ideas about what was important. Chocolate cake and Bouncy Town didn’t figure in. When I was nine, I started planning my own parties. That’s part of how I got good at activities planning.”

My chest is tight. I can imagine little-kid Natalie, a bundle of fun energy looking for any outlet. What kind of parents wouldn’t want to do everything in their power to make that kid smile and laugh?

I want to give little-kid Natalie every birthday party she never had.

“Forget that,” she says, waving a hand, grinning. “Old news. C’mon. Let’s go play in the arcade till we aren’t so full and can bounce again.”

We play Skee-Ball. I score 50,000. She scores 7,500.

“You hustled me,” she accuses.

“You didn’t ask if I was the Skee-Ball champion of the Western world,” I point out.

“It feels like information you should have shared when we discussed whether there’s anything you do for fun.”

“I haven’t played since I was a teenager,” I say.

“And yet you’re still this good.”

I cross my arms. “It’s like riding a bicycle.”

She shakes her head, rolling her eyes. “Do you want to jump into the foam pit?”

I frown. “I don’t know. I have issues with the foam pit.”

“What kind of issues?”

“Trust issues. What if there are sharks?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “You’re more seriously wounded than I thought.” She grabs me by the hand and drags me over to the foam pit. “We’re going to jump in together.”

We do. Then she goes back and does it again, this time with a flip.

“Cheer squad. What?” she asks, squinting at the expression on my face.

“Nothing,” I say.

I’d been picturing her in a flippy little skirt, but I don’t say that. I have the feeling again, of balancing on a narrow ledge. To vanquish it, I run and do a flip into the foam pit. It feels great, like flying.

When I come out, I’m grinning.

“Are you having fun ?”

“If I say yes, what happens?”

She shrugs. “Probably nothing. I guess there’s an infinitesimal chance the earth might stop spinning on its axis.”

I give her a tiny, playful shove. She shoves me back. I pretend to stagger. Then I right myself. The expression on her face is oddly intense. She’s waiting for my answer.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’m having fun.”

She pumps her fist. “Yes! We found your fun!”

“I guess we did,” I say, and her smile gets even bigger.

She might be wrong, though. It might not be that Bouncy Town is my fun. It might be that Natalie is my fun.

She’s grinning and bouncing on the springy surface under us. Her cheeks are still that pretty flushed pink, and I can’t stop staring at her mouth. I take a step forward. I’m not thinking. I’m just doing .

But before I can do whatever it is, a form darts between us, knocking us apart. I grab Natalie’s arms with both of mine to steady her, and a whole stream of children run between us like they’re tucking under a bridge we’ve deliberately made for them.

When they’ve finally passed, Natalie tugs away. I hadn’t realized I was still holding on to her.

“We should probably head home,” she says, not looking at me. “They close soon, and the parking lot will be a zoo.”

I want to take her chin in my hand, to turn her face so she has to meet my eyes. But I don’t. The moment of recklessness has passed, and I remember all the reasons kissing Natalie is a terrible idea.

“Yeah,” I say instead.

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