Chapter Five #2
Just as Greyson and her dad turned back around, Mia and Kitty burst through the gate, their laughter ringing out into the pool area.
“How hard were you freaking out?” Mia said. But when she and Kitty realized I was out of the pool and not alone, they paused.
“You’re back!” Greyson called, racing over to the girls and clearly undisturbed by the events that had transpired.
“I am going to kill you,” I hissed at Mia.
Kitty’s lip trembled. “I’m sorry, Aunt Jo. It was Mia’s idea, and then we found a nest of turtles hatching and lost track of time.”
“You found baby turtles?” Greyson said.
“Yeah.” Kitty turned back to me. “You’ve got to come see, Aunt Jo, there’s so many!”
“I can’t exactly go look at baby turtles right now, Kitty.”
“Oh, right.”
Mia approached with my clothes, her barely contained smile infuriating me. I snatched them from her and strutted over to the pool shower, ducking behind the wall to get dressed as quickly as possible.
I combed my fingers through my wet hair, willing my pulse to slow.
I needed to play this cool. Not because I cared what a possibly attractive stranger like Greyson’s dad thought, but because he and Greyson were my neighbors, and I didn’t want them thinking I was some sort of weirdo, which wasn’t going so well at the moment.
Greyson’s dad was probably calling his landlord to get his deposit back right now.
When I emerged from behind the shower wall, Greyson perked her head up. “Can we go see the baby turtles now, please?” She whirled around to face her dad. “Can we? Please?”
Greyson’s dad shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
Before I could say anything to Mia and Kitty, they raced off with Greyson, probably trying to get away from me and my anger as quickly as possible.
But maybe that was for the best, because I didn’t want them to hear whatever lecture I was about to get from Greyson’s dad.
I turned around, an apology on my lips as I walked over to where he stood beside the pool.
Look apologetic, I told myself, keeping my gaze on my feet until I stood right in front of him.
When I looked up, finally close enough to make out his face, I froze, realizing I’d already made out with his face. Two nights ago. At Mitch’s.
“Alex?” I said before I could stop myself.
His eyes widened. “It’s Jo, right?”
“That’s me.” Heat crept up my neck. How could Hot Guy from the Bar be Hot Single Dad? How could Alex be here? Beside my condo pool? Having caught me completely naked? Nina was going to love this. I tried not to stare at him, but it was impossible.
Alex looked like he was struggling not to laugh when I handed him the towel. This was not the face of an angry parent ready to call the cops on some creep in the condo pool.
“I don’t usually do this,” I said. “There’s a whole story to it.”
Alex slung the towel around his neck. “I’m sure there is.”
“And the other night at the bar,” I continued, “when, you know . . .”
“When you kissed me.”
“Right. I have this list, you see, of thirty things to do before I turn thirty—”
“Like a bucket list.”
“Basically. One of the items was to kiss a stranger, and the other was—”
“Skinny-dipping.” He snapped his fingers. “I knew kissing strangers wasn’t a real Floridian tradition, but a bucket-list item?” He shook his head. “And here I thought you kissed me because I’m irresistibly handsome.”
“No!” I said, then realized I might have offended him.
“Not that you aren’t . . . or are . . .” I shook my head.
“You know what? Forget the kissing. Tonight I only meant to get in and out of the pool, but my nieces grabbed my clothes and ran off, and then you and Greyson came along and . . .” Alex didn’t say anything, waiting for me to finish my sentence.
“And I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of perv .
. . Because we’re neighbors,” I added, just to be clear about my intentions.
Alex laughed. “Actually, I thought it was kind of cute.”
Cute? “I don’t date,” I blurted out.
He raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t say I thought you were cute.”
“Oh.” My blush returned with a vengeance. Was it possible to die of embarrassment?
I tried to read Alex’s expression. Was this as awkward for him as it was for me? He clapped his hands together and nodded toward the beach, apparently not feeling awkward at all. “So about those baby turtles?”
Yes. Movement. That would be good.
We left the pool area for the beach, walking side by side in the sand. I kept glancing at him, expecting him to disappear, but there he was, as handsome as he’d been at Mitch’s. Maybe I was having a stress-induced breakdown. Maybe he wasn’t even real, and I’d made him up.
“I’m glad to see you,” Alex said. His arm brushed against mine as we followed the sound of the girls’ voices down the beach, and the sensation was definitely that of a real person and not an imaginary dream man my brain had cooked up to distract me from my problems. “Not because of . . . you know,” he continued.
“I was worried I’d be the only one under sixty in this place. How long have you lived here?”
“About seven years,” I said, grateful to move on from both the kissing and pool incidents. “I inherited my unit from my grandmother.”
“So you’re a local.”
“I grew up in North Carolina.”
“Wow, so you’re not even from Florida, Florida Girl?”
“You got me.” I smiled down at the sand. “Greyson said you just moved here?”
“New job. We moved up here from Miami.”
“Did you grow up there?”
“Sort of. I lived in an RV as a kid,” Alex said. “We traveled all over the place, but Miami was home base.”
“Greyson said your parents were hippies.”
Alex laughed. “Yeah, I’d say that’s accurate.”
“You don’t really seem like a hippie,” I said. “You seem mostly normal.”
“Mostly normal?” Alex looked at me, but I couldn’t make out his expression. “That’s because you don’t know me yet.”
Yet. I didn’t know what Alex had in mind for the future of our neighborly relationship, but after tonight, there was no way I’d be getting to know him better.
Whether he was devastatingly handsome or not, I refused to risk embarrassing myself again.
It would be more than enough to admire him from afar.
Luckily, the conversation didn’t last long, and we found Mia, Kitty, and Greyson sitting beside each other in the sand.
I sank down beside Kitty. It had been years since I’d seen a nest hatch, and all of it—the turtles wriggling down the beach, their papery eggshells scattered in the sand—took my breath away.
“Isn’t it beautiful, Aunt Jo?” Kitty said.
“Dad, can we keep one?” Greyson leapt up and pulled on Alex’s arm.
“Absolutely not,” he said, and at her disappointed face added, “It’s illegal.”
Greyson groaned and collapsed back down beside Kitty.
“Samson always wanted to see this,” Kitty said.
Mia’s face changed then, and she stared at the baby turtles as if she blamed them personally for Florida’s beach erosion. Dread settled in my stomach. One moment, I had the girls happy and distracted, and the next, wham.
“Who’s Samson?” Greyson asked, looking between Mia and Kitty.
No one answered her. It was cooler down here by the water, and I rubbed my arms to brush off the chill. Was I supposed to explain or let the moment pass? I glanced at Alex, who seemed to be purposefully keeping his eyes on the turtles and pretending he hadn’t heard.
“This is boring,” Mia said. Before I could stop her, she sprang to her feet and bolted in the direction of the condo.
I watched her, unable to move. The sudden change in atmosphere made piecing my thoughts together like swimming against a current.
My mind and body were too slow to call out or run after her.
The sound of the gate closing with a bang made me jump. Kitty and I exchanged looks, and I hoped she’d know what to do, like Mia had earlier.
“Did I say something wrong?” Greyson asked.
I gave her the best smile I could manage. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong.”
I turned to Alex, who had his eyes on Greyson.
“I’m sorry, she . . .” I let the sentence trail off.
How could I explain this to a stranger? What was I supposed to say?
Sorry she’s being rude, her brother died?
I shook my head. “We’d better go after her.
” I helped Kitty to her feet and dusted the sand from the backs of my thighs. “Thanks for the towel.”
“Anytime,” Alex said, and I forced myself not to look back at him as Kitty and I trudged up the beach.
—
Mia was hunkered down beneath the blankets on the sofa bed when we returned, music blaring through her headphones. I stared at the lump of her. Even if I could coax her out, what could I say that would make a difference? I couldn’t bring her brother back.
Kitty crawled beside Mia on the bed and curled around her.
“Should I talk to her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Kitty whispered. “It’s usually me.”
“She probably wants to be alone, right?”
Kitty shrugged.
I sank into the chair at my desk and checked skinny-dipping off the list. “One down, seven to go,” I muttered. I scanned the remaining items, starting to suspect my plan to distract the girls might not be as effective as I’d hoped.
“Sorry, Aunt Jo,” Kitty said.
“For what?”
“For all the crying, I guess.”
I joined her on the bed and rested one hand on her and the other on Mia.
Kitty had always been sensitive, but this was different.
And Mia, she was a different kid from the girl I’d snuck a sip of my champagne on New Year’s—the last time I’d seen the kids before the accident.
She had the same personality, the sarcasm and tough attitude, but now there was a current of anger beneath it that hadn’t been there before.
“You’re forgetting I lived with you when you were babies,” I said. “I can handle a little crying.”
“Do you think she’s okay?” Kitty asked.
I looked at Mia, a girl who was pranking me one minute and having a meltdown the next. Obviously, she wasn’t okay. None of us were. But I didn’t want Kitty to worry. “I think she’ll be fine. She just needs some sleep.”
Kitty nodded and said she was going to bed.
I tried not to worry about them as I changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth, but did anyway.
I’d been just like them once, a teenager wading through grief that seemed like it would never end.
And it hadn’t, not really. It only changed.
But I knew that wouldn’t help Mia or Kitty right now.
I ran over the events of the day in my mind, amazed the girls had only been here for twenty-four hours.
But if there was one good thing about this whole night, it was that after this, Alex would never want to speak to me again.
Which was perfect, seeing as I’d be avoiding him for the rest of my life.