Chapter 16 In Search of a Good Timea Minister #2
She grins. “That’s where the good news comes in. He needs to stay in for equipment pickup later tonight, but…we can bring snacks and come hang out with him and all of his hot friends, then lure them back to the campsite with us.”
I cringe a little. “He told you his friends were ‘hot’?”
She dismisses my skepticism with a wave of her hand. “Of course not, but hot people have a way of finding each other. I texted Peter, and Jonah is out of urgent care and checked into a motel. The rest of the guys can meet us at Ted’s. It’s perfect.”
“Ooh. I love a joint bachelor-bachelorette party,” Harlow adds gamely. “And one of them might be ordained!” She flags down the bartender to close out, and I try to conceal whatever the memory of a particular bachelorette party (and accompanying penis straw) does to my face.
—
“So you lived in Peru and you never did Santa Cruz?” Wet Ted’s travel buddy Russell asks while handing me a LaCroix.
“?‘Lived’ is a stretch,” I respond. “I think I was two.”
He shakes his head, a flirty smile creeping up his implausibly handsome face. “Still. It’s criminal.”
Laurel was very right about how hot people attract other hot people. They must feel more comfortable with each other, the same way celebrities have an easier time making friends with other celebrities.
From the moment we walked into the apartment behind the canoe outfitter, Ethan had the role of “most interesting man in the room” all wrapped up. For the past hour, he’s been trapped in a corner of astonishingly attractive humans, comparing adventures on the road.
Still, no matter where I am, I feel his attention on me, tugging me back into his orbit like I’m a rogue planet.
“Do you climb?” Russell’s question breaks into my consciousness and I realize I haven’t been listening to him.
“Climb?” I stall for time.
A hand snakes around my waist, and I turn my head to find Ethan. What does it say about me that my impulse is to curl into him like a cat?
“Charley’s not a big fan of heights.” Ethan’s baritone voice vibrates against the shell of my ear. “Unless she’s taking a photo.”
“Are you a photographer like Harlow?” Russell asks.
His eyes clock Ethan’s possessive hand on my body—mine do too—and in a second, I watch myself plummet from the object of Russell’s desires to suspected cousin .
“What’s Harlow’s deal?” he inquires, chomping on a chip and eyeing Harlow, who’s casually leaning against the frame of the open back door and looking arrestingly gorgeous while doing it.
I tilt my head in her direction, my heart hammering against my ribs from Ethan’s prolonged physical proximity. “Harlow? Oh, she’s very available.”
What is this arm about?
“Very, you say?” He brushes the chip grease off his hands and does a practiced hair ruffle that gives him the perfectly unkempt look of a wilderness catalog model. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” I barely get out around the lump in my throat.
Ethan gives him a wave as he walks away. His thumb hooks into my belt loop and tugs me closer to him. Something raw and hot flips in my belly. The way his eyes cling to me is new and unfamiliar territory.
“You weren’t enjoying that conversation, were you?” he asks, concern swimming at the edges of his face. “You had that look in your eyes. Like when strangers pitch inventions at you, Shark Tank style.”
Ah, the joys of being the only patent attorney at a summer barbecue.
“You weren’t interrupting anything.” As if I could think with him touching me like this, all greedy and possessive.
His eyes search my face and must find something he likes, because he rewards me with a perfect smile that sends crinkles all the way into his eyes. God, I love that smile. The sight of it crashes into my chest like a hot rock.
“Good. How was your trek from camp with the girls? Did you point out the spot where we…you know…” He sits up on the kitchen counter, his hand dragging along my abdomen every step of the way. “Cliff jumped?”
His question is a provocation. He wants me to think about the kiss. The way he was pressed against me. How feral I was. How feral I still am. He curls his fingers around my hips, and I all but turn to goo.
This whole thing between us reeks of regrettable ideas, but that just makes it more enticing somehow. I don’t usually regret things. Regrets require taking chances. But we’ve been teasing each other mercilessly for years. Something was bound to happen eventually.
I step forward between his legs, goading. I can go toe to toe with you , the movement suggests. I tilt my chin up, luxuriating in the way his jaw tightens at my unexpected advance into his territory.
“I didn’t,” I finally respond. “Laurel is in a highly suggestible state, and I’m not about to give her any new, reckless ideas. Accomplice liability and all that.” It’s so stuffy in this house packed with bodies. The walls are sweating.
“Accomplice liability, huh? Is it exhausting, the way your lawyer brain never shuts off?”
“This brain is how I earn the almost big bucks.”
His head moves side to side, achingly slow. “God, I would kill to see you in action. I bet you’re incredible.” The word buzzes down my skin. Incredible.
This is how he gets , I have to remind myself. I’ve seen it before. When he’s in front of a woman, he can’t help but lay it on thick. He makes them dream it’s real, that he wants it all with them, but in the end, he always drives away.
“So are we finally going to do something about this or what?” he asks, pointing between us.
“Do something about the way we’re running dangerously low on beverages?” I deflect. “You should’ve let me buy even more Gatorade. It’s yet another thing I was right about.”
His grin widens. “Charlotte Beekman is always right. I have that tattooed on my rib.”
I laugh. “No you don’t.”
“It’s very small.”
The air around us is thick and sticky, getting hotter by the second. It’s as though I’m moving through honey when I inch closer.
“Prove it.” It falls from my lips on a puff of air. “Lift up your shirt.”
His gaze drops to the shirt I’m wearing. His shirt. “Only if you lift yours.”
I lick my lips. “I don’t have a tattoo.”
His nod is heavy, his eyes hot. “Unfortunately, this is a show you mine, show me yours situation.”
“That is unfortunate.”
I hesitate, but then my fingers drag the soft fabric up an inch. Then another. He lifts his shirt too, revealing hard stomach and smooth sun-kissed skin.
Why can’t we…why can’t we… It’s a partial thought, but that’s all that comes together before he drops the fabric and covers himself up.
“Fine,” he says. “I don’t have it, but I should.
” He takes a long, languid drink of his hard cider.
“Careful, Chuck. You’re getting dangerously close to daring me to get a tattoo. ”
Careful. Dangerous. Daring. Each word makes my stomach jump.
I stare him down, inhaling through my nose. He smells like apple cider and sweat. “I’m not Petey,” I tell him in a hush. “And even he outgrew that.”
He swirls his bottle, and I refuse to unpack why I find the movement so devastatingly sexy. “Not quite. When Jonah’s foot went numb, Petey bet him we could row to the car in under thirty minutes. It took thirty-four minutes and now there’s an outline of a foot on my guy’s left delt.”
“Wait, what?” I pull back an inch. It severs the flirtatious current flowing between us. “So he’s camping for the rest of the week with an open wound? For what? A laugh?”
Is that gigantic man determined to never grow up?
Ethan grimaces. “He might not have thought it through, but Jonah was pretty scared and that Walter guy kept asking whether they’d ‘have to amputate,’ which was…unhelpful, to say the least. I think Pete was just trying to distract Jonah.”
My eyes find Petey and my sister swaying in front of the record player. “Between Laurel and Shoulder-Foot, there are no adults in the room, are there?”
Ethan tugs my face away from the more chaotic Beekman sister. “Charley, Petey’s a hockey coach who owns his own home and Laurel is an award-winning high school English teacher. They’re gonna be fine. You don’t need to worry about them.”
“I hate this feeling,” I groan, flopping my head onto his shoulder, releasing myself into the safety of leaning on someone.
Or maybe just on him. “My stomach seizes up whenever I think about Laurel getting married. It’s this…
motion sickness. I can just feel everything’s going to go to shit, and I don’t understand how everyone else can’t feel it too. ”
He places his chin on the crown of my head, so that I’m completely enveloped in him.
“It’s normal to want the best for the people you love,” he tells me.
“And it’s even more normal for it to hurt when you watch them struggle for it.
Or wonder whether there was something you should’ve done that would’ve made it all easier. ”
His T-shirt is so soft beneath my cheek that I’m overcome by one of those absurd childish thoughts that doesn’t make any sense: What if I lived here? I think. Right here, on Ethan’s shoulder like a tiny parrot person. I could be happy like that.
“Loving people is so unbearable,” I whine, inhaling the scent of his neck like it’s an aromatherapy candle.
He laughs into my head, and his exhalations ruffle my hair. “I know, honey.”
I look up at him and catch the smile he reserves for only those intolerably happy moments. When everything is exactly right and your stomach is fizzy like uncorked champagne and the world around you glows gold. Or maybe it’s that smile that casts a shimmering light everywhere I turn.
My eyes dive into his—pools of warm water—as he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Unbearable,” he repeats.