15. Harrison
15
HARRISON
“ I ’m going to be incredibly hot when I’m sixty ,” she said. “ You’d be dying to fuck me even then .”
And I thought, yes, yes I would, and you’d still be too goddamned young .
I go to my room once we’ve cleaned up dinner, making a concerted effort to not think about Daisy. To not think about her surfing, to not think about her pulling off a wetsuit, or climbing out of the hot tub, or saying I’d offer to take care of it as she stared at my dick.
I put on movies—first a documentary about Ted Bundy, but the way he inserted himself into his victims’ lives with a combination of charm and good looks reminds me a little too much of my houseguest.
I try a sci-fi movie next. That fails too. When you’re getting hard watching an alien crawl toward its human prey, it’s probably time to just give up. Eventually, I go into the shower, which is the only form of privacy you’ve got when said houseguest is walking back and forth outside of your room and is likely to pick your lock if she wants to chat.
I grip myself, trying to think about someone else. Anyone else. My first high school girlfriend. The woman on the news who found a baby alligator in her toilet. Even Audrey would be preferable.
But as I spill all over my hand, biting my lip to keep in my gasp, I am definitely imagining it’s all over Daisy, bent in half on my deck.
I wake the next morning, ashamed of myself and slightly hungover, and go downstairs for aspirin, fully intending to go back to bed. Daisy’s on the deck doing her exercise, which is the last fucking thing I want to see. I wince, hoping to escape to my room before she spies me.
“That outfit doesn’t work,” she says, walking in, continuing to stretch. Her bra rides up perilously high as she reaches overhead. I see a flash of under boob.
I reach for the aspirin and swallow more than I’m supposed to take. “If we’re instituting a dress code, I’ve got some notes for you too.”
“If you go running in those sweatpants, through which I can already see your dick, you’ll be giving all the little kids outside quite the anatomy show. And probably set them on a course for future disappointment, because from what I could tell last weekend, you’re packing an excessive amount in there.”
For a moment my eyes lock with hers. It’s automatic. Involuntary. When one of the most stunning women you’ve ever laid eyes on is talking about your dick, you consider where you could take the conversation. Reminding yourself she’s practically family comes a moment later and is accompanied by suffocating guilt.
“Fuck that. I’m not going running.”
“ Au contraire , Harrison. You are indeed going running. We had a bet.”
“Right,” I grouse, “like you’d have kept the bet if you’d lost.”
She smiles. “ Obviously I wasn’t going to keep my end of the bargain, but we both expect more from you. You’re one of the few guys I know who lives up to his promises.”
My mouth is dry; my head is pounding. I want to ignore her. And yet…I like the idea of being among the few men who haven’t disappointed her.
“I need coffee first,” I say with a sigh. “And you’re a pain in the ass.”
“It’s my best quality,” she chirps.
“It’s far from your best quality.”
“I have a number of amazing qualities,” she replies. “Which one is your favorite?”
My gaze drops to the jogging bra that barely contains her breasts before I can stop it, and I wince for the third time this morning. “I’m still struggling to come up with one I even find bearable.”
I begrudgingly head to my room and put on boxer briefs and shorts for our run. She, naturally, does not change her clothes. We cross the street to the path and start running south toward Steamer Lane and the wharf. I’ve always considered myself to be a reasonably fit guy, but between the soreness from surfing yesterday and the hangover, this run is pretty fucking miserable.
My chest hurts. My knees hurt. I want to stop, and we’ve barely run a mile. “This sucks.”
“Your hips are too tight,” she says. “You need yoga.”
I roll my eyes. “My hips are fine, Daisy. And I’m not doing yoga, because the last time anyone checked, I still had a dick. And, actually, the person checking was you, and you implied it was excessive.”
“It was adequate ,” she counters. “And lots of men do yoga. I mean, maybe back in your day they didn’t, but they do now.”
“Back in my day? How old, exactly, do you think I am?”
She grins. “Based on your chronological age or your outdated thoughts on gender norms? ”
I drop behind her, worried I might get sick, but this means I’m looking at her ass. I console myself with the reminder that she doesn’t know it’s happening, but quickly realize that’s perhaps even worse. I wish there was one goddamn line of thought I could have regarding Daisy that didn’t wind up with me being the guilty party.
I run alongside her to end the mental debate.
“Finally caught up, did you?” she asks with a grin. I want to die, whereas she is positively glowing. “I assumed you were just back there, enjoying the view.”
“I don’t need to run behind you for that. You’re offering that view freely every goddamn time I walk downstairs.”
She stops when we reach the wharf, pointing to a restaurant off to the left. “That’s where I’ll be working, though I can’t guarantee the job will last since I’ve got no experience.”
There’s already a waitress outside setting up tables and wearing a very tight T-shirt that says, “ I got lei’d at The Wharf .”
I have a good idea why Daisy got hired. “I’m not sure I like—”
She isn’t listening. She’s already walking farther down the wharf when we should be turning back for the house.
“Daisy, where the hell are you going?”
She smiles over her shoulder as she continues to walk, her hips swaying. “It’s time for your reward,” she purrs.
My jaw grinds. “I thought we discussed you not making every word out of your mouth sound dirty.”
“I was talking about ice cream , perv,” she replies. “And it only sounded dirty to you.”
I beg to differ, Daisy. There’s not a grown man in the world who wouldn’t hear sex dripping out of half the things she says, especially when she’s purring, “ It’s time for your reward ” over her shoulder.
“Why the hell would you get ice cream now?” I argue. “It’s not even lunch. ”
She’s practically skipping there. “Because I want one.”
I’d like to continue objecting, but she’s so fucking excited about it that I don’t have the heart to shut her down. As I recall, this is how she got her way with me as a kid, too. It shouldn’t still be working.
There’s no line yet at the ice cream stand, which isn’t surprising, given that most reasonable people are just waking up.
“You remember we still have to run home, yes?” I ask, as we take a seat at the nearest table.
“It’ll give me energy,” she argues. “And besides, what’s the point of doing all this stuff to lead a long life if I’m not going to enjoy it?”
There was a time when I’d have agreed with her, back in those days when I surfed every morning in front of my dad’s house and surfed every afternoon at Long Point. The world was like a candy store back then—endlessly colorful, the options nearly infinite. There was so much to choose from I didn’t know where to look first.
Now I don’t even enter the store, but Daisy’s in the thick of it. She’s reaching for one experience after another, and she’s licking that soft serve like she’s never had ice cream in her life.
Which leaves me wanting to lick a thing or two as well.
She swipes her tongue obscenely along its length. She’s being intentionally lascivious, but…it’s been a very long time, and the way she really seems to be enjoying that cone hits me in a way it should not. Beneath the table, I adjust myself.
She grins. “Is it so sexy, watching me eat this?”
“Yes, almost as sexy as it’ll be when you’re throwing it up in someone’s bushes on the way home.”
She licks down the sides again, and I sigh heavily to disguise this thing in my gut that is not exasperation at all.
“How about now?” She deep throats it, shoving the entire cone in her mouth and pulling it back out. “ Now is it sexy? ”
I’ve had it with this. I’d walk away entirely if I could walk away. I adjust myself again. “Just for the record, this is what I mean when I accuse you of making everything sound dirty.”
She laughs. “You love it.”
Do I? Perhaps. Much like my love for jalape?os, however, it causes me far more pain than pleasure. And at least I don’t have to feel guilty about the jalape?os.
My phone vibrates and I flip it over to find a text from Oliver, telling me he’s flying into LA on the tenth and wants to hang out in Malibu for the weekend. It’s been the plan for a while. I’m not sure why, but when I look at Daisy—still going after that ice cream cone with a skill porn stars only wish they had—I find myself reluctant to agree to the trip.
She throws out the rest of her cone, presumably because she’s had enough and probably because she was just tired of getting no reaction from me, and we start walking back toward West Cliff. And as much as I did not want to go on this run, there’s now a strange part of me that’s actually eager to stretch myself and take a nice hot shower when it’s done. To watch her dance around the kitchen as she makes lunch and sit across from her over dinner.
I’d never admit it to her, but I’m happy she came. And I sort of don’t want her to leave.