39. Harrison
39
HARRISON
B aker is thrilled that I’m working on a Saturday.
The condescending little “ good to have you back ” he sends my way grates like nails on a chalkboard. I’d like to ditch work for a week just to make him understand I’m simply here to avoid an empty house and not because of his threats.
I thought I’d recovered my love of surfing, my appetite, my anticipation of weekends and evenings and hours off, but they’ve again lost their appeal in Daisy’s absence. I need them back. I need her back.
She arrives on Sunday morning smelling of coconut and rose and sunlight. She’s got a bikini on under her sweatshirt, and I’d assumed we’d surf but I want too much from her in the limited time we have.
No sooner has she reached the main floor than my mouth is on hers and I’m tugging that sweatshirt overhead.
“I’m sorry,” I groan as I lift her onto the counter. “If you’re dying to surf—”
She laughs, reaching into my shorts. “I came here for something else entirely, I promise. ”
I untie the bikini and groan as I palm her breasts, leaning down to pull one tight nipple and then the other between my teeth.
I slide her shorts and bikini bottoms off and sink to my knees, pushing her thighs wide. She leans back on her forearms. “Fuck,” she hisses, sliding her palm along my scalp. “So much better than surfing.”
It passes too quickly. I’m flicking my tongue over her swollen little clit one moment, moving her to the couch, taking her to bed—and she’s gone the next. And in her absence…what is the point of anything? Why am I working? Why am I living alone in Santa Cruz? What did I even want from life before she entered the picture?
And how am I going to continue like this?
On Tuesday morning, I tell the office I’ve got a meeting, and she arrives after her mother has left for work.
I’ve already got my wetsuit on, a concerted effort on my part to make this not all about sex.
She drops her keys on the counter and grins. “Are you serious right now?”
“You said you wanted to surf,” I counter.
She crosses to where I stand and pulls at my zipper. “Going forward, just assume it’s a euphemism.”
Later, when she’s collapsed above me, her sweaty chest clinging to mine, I run a hand down her spine.
“Cabo,” I tell her. “That’s where we’d go if it was possible.”
“Mmmm,” she says dreamily. “Is this before or after the trip to Costa Rica?”
I laugh. “After. And then we’ll go to Portugal and surf there.”
She presses upward, smiling. “And will we stop at ?le du whatever-it-is that Oliver suggested?”
“No,” I whisper, cupping a breast, pinching a nipple. “I want this view to be mine alone. ”
She sighs, glancing at her phone. “I should go. You’ve got to actually be at work, and my mother’s never going to believe I was surfing for four hours if she comes home for lunch.”
“When will I see you again?” I ask, pulling her back to me.
“Sunday, I guess.” I hear the disappointment in her voice and it matches my own. Sunday is too fucking far away and I’ll get too little of her when it arrives.
I throw on clothes and see her to the door, watching from the deck as her car sputters down the road. When I turn to head back in, the emptiness of the house hits me hard, along with the pointlessness of it all. Why am I here? Why am I at a job I hate? How did I end up in this fucking place, where the only thing I want from life is the one I can’t have? I distract myself by ordering the couch Daisy picked out before I get ready to head to the office.
I suspect I’m mostly doing it to feel like there will be a little of her still here after she returns to school, and I already know it won’t be enough.
The following morning, Caleb calls. I’ve been expecting a lecture about Daisy ever since that day I lost my shit at the theater.
“Hey.” My voice is cautious. “What’s up?”
“Had a few things I wanted to run by you,” he says, “but I thought I’d better check in anyway. I just heard Daisy moved back to Bridget’s. You good?”
“You’re worried now? You didn’t seem too happy a few weeks ago.”
He sighs. “I wasn’t. It’s still weird. But as Lucie pointed out, she and Daisy are only a few years apart. I think it’s just that she was always so much younger than us. That’s how I knew her.”
“Yeah, I get it,” I tell him. “And I’m doing fine. What did you need to run by me?”
“I was wondering if you might want to come out to your dad’s place on Saturday. Our office party is Friday, but we had to rent it for the whole weekend. Lucie thought it might be fun to have everyone over since the twins will be with their grandparents. We’ll surf, maybe go to a beach bar? Just like old times.”
I silence a groan. It’ll be two couples and me, and they’ll spend the whole goddamned weekend grilling me about Audrey, trying to set me up and acting besotted with each other. I’m just not in the—
“Daisy’s coming,” Caleb says. “Daisy and Bridget.”
Oh . “That’s a weird thing to add, given the way this conversation started.”
His laugh is rueful. “Lucie’s behind that too. I’ll survive.”
How am I going to spend a day by her side without making my obsession apparent? It’s the worst fucking idea ever.
“Sounds great,” I reply. “I’ll be there.”
It’s the worst fucking idea ever and wildly irresponsible. I’m smiling for the first time since she left.
When I get to the beach on Saturday, Liam and Caleb are already in the water while Lucie and Emerson sit on the sand. There’s no sign of Daisy or Bridget, but I don’t feel like I can ask where they are.
“Daisy and Bridget are on the way,” Lucie says with a knowing smile, lowering her glasses.
I act as if I don’t see it. But Jesus, I hope she and Emerson don’t start comparing notes.
I carry my board out to the water where Liam proceeds to grill me about his sister’s divorce, asking for details I can’t share.
“I just want to know why, man, and she’s not admitting anything,” he says. “I’m not asking you as her lawyer. I’m asking you as her friend. Because he must have done something wrong. ”
“And as both her friend and her lawyer, I’m telling you to discuss it with her. I have nothing to say.”
“If Scott cheated on her, he and I are going to have words.” He frowns. “Daisy’s coming. We’ll talk more later.”
Her name alone is enough. My gut clenches as if it’s being squeezed in a fist, and I turn to watch her wading into the water. Her gaze meets mine and holds a half-second too long as she climbs on her board and starts to paddle out. Everything she feels is written all over her face. I’m sure it’s written all over mine as well.
We’re never going to pull this off.
“Little Lazy Daisy finally got out of bed,” says Liam as she reaches us. “Took you long enough.”
“Little Lazy Daisy wasn’t the issue,” she grouses. “It was Busy Bridget , who needed to bake a fucking pie before we drove out here.”
I laugh, remembering all the summers when Daisy would arrive here fuming because Bridget had moved too slowly for her liking. Some things never change.
“You sure you even remember how to surf, Miss East Coast College Girl?” Liam asks.
Her gaze meets mine on the way to his. “Unlike you ,” she says, turning her board as a wave approaches, “I have youth on my side.”
She grabs the wave easily and even catches some air going over its back. I can’t help it—I’m grinning.
“Damn,” says Liam, disappointed. “I assumed she’d be a lot worse. Watch. She’s going to give me the finger in three, two—”
Daisy gives him the finger, and we both laugh. And then I sigh. How the fuck am I going to stay away from her all weekend? She’s the only part of it that matters to me.
In the evening, we go to a dive bar down the street—a shack with a roof but no wall facing the beach, where we take over a long picnic table in the sand, away from the noise of the dance floor inside.
Daisy is across from me, pink-cheeked and glowing. She’s impossible to look away from, though I do my best. I picture her cheek against my palm, her breath against my neck. The way she gasps when I go down on her. I can’t even look at her now without wanting to act on it.
“So, what’s up with the girl in LA?” Liam asks me.
Every head turns my way.
I shrug. “It ran its course.”
He raises a brow. “Ran its course? You sure acted like it was a bigger deal than that a few months ago. Anyhow, you need to get back on the horse. Try some dating apps.”
Daisy was smiling before, but she isn’t now. Her gaze drops to her plate. She doesn’t want to think of me getting back out there . I know this because the thought of her getting back out there makes me sick to my stomach.
“I just got out of a five-year marriage, Liam. There’s nothing wrong with taking some time to figure things out.”
“Of course not,” he says. “But that’s what I mean. You figure things out by doing a little experimenting. You were always in a relationship with someone. Have a couple one-night stands, followed by a couple of threesomes—” He looks over at his niece, who’s gone pale beneath her tan. “Cover your ears, Daisy.”
Her laughter is forced and unhappy. “A, you’re supposed to tell me to cover my ears before you say the offensive thing, and B, I’m twenty-one, Liam. I’ve actually heard of both threesomes and one-night stands. I might’ve even had some.”
Liam groans the way I’d like to. If I can barely stand the thought of her with one guy who isn’t me, I sure as hell can’t stand the thought of her with two. At once. Fuck .
“Do not even joke about that,” Liam warns her before he looks back at me. “My point, Harrison, is that you’ve always tended to be a little too monogamous. You met Audrey and that was it. So don’t make the same mistake again. Don’t fall in love with some chick and marry her just because the sex is good. Live a little first.”
“Look who’s suddenly an expert on relationships,” jokes Emerson. “You’re thirty-two, and I’m your first serious girlfriend.”
He wraps an arm around her. “That’s because I waited for the right girlfriend.”
“Who should I set him up with?” Bridget asks Liam. “What about Holly?”
I’m about to stop her, but Daisy’s already rising from the table. “There are some guys from high school inside. I’m gonna go say hi.”
Bridget and Liam continue discussing Holly while I sit frozen. I can’t follow Daisy without attracting attention, and what would I say if I did? Even if I’ve got no desire to live a little , as Liam suggested, I still want marriage, stability, children—and that’s all a long way off for Daisy.
“I’m not interested in being set up,” I say firmly, and the topic moves on at last, but I’m no longer listening…because Daisy’s now at a table full of guys, chatting with some douchebag in a backward baseball cap, and I fucking hate it.
She’s a foot smaller than him—anything could happen to her. He could follow her into the bathroom or lure her away with the promise of a party down the road. The fact that it’s going to happen a million times in the coming years without me around at the night’s end kills me. Every night for the rest of her damn life, I won’t be there to stop it.
And my desire to stop it is exactly why I shouldn’t have begun this in the first place. This is what she’s supposed to do—spend a few months dating some dumbass from high school in a backward baseball cap, then dump him to date some other dumbass, and continue the cycle until she’s certain of what she wants.
The guy she’s talking to rises and pulls her toward the dance floor. My gaze is laser-focused on his hand, which slides from her rib cage to her hip. Other people join them, and his distance from her shrinks until they’re maybe two inches apart at most. My hands wrap around the bench to keep myself in place.
“Do we trust this kid?” Liam asks Bridget, finally fucking aware of a situation I haven’t been able to cease being aware of.
She bites her lip. “He’s not the one who was accused of raping that girl on the soccer team, right?”
She and Liam are getting out their phones to check, but I’m not willing to wait that long.
“I’ll handle it,” I say, rising from the table before anyone can stop me. They’ll assume I’m just being Harrison, the upstanding citizen and all-round good guy, when it’s the fucking opposite. I no longer care.
I march inside, pushing through the crowd on the dance floor to tap the guy Daisy’s with on the shoulder—though tap might be underselling the amount of force exerted. “Can I borrow her for a moment?”
He looks like he wants to argue, but something in my expression must make him decide against it. Daisy’s eyes narrow, but she doesn’t argue either as I guide her across the room to the back side of the bar, where we’re blocked from view.
“Shouldn’t you be out sowing your wild oats?” she asks, arms folded protectively over her chest. “Enjoying a variety of threesomes and one-night stands?”
I roll my eyes. “Liam’s an idiot. You know I’m not interested in that. ”
Her tongue prods the inside of her cheek. “I didn’t see you shutting it down.”
I reach out to squeeze her hip. This situation is impossible, and what I’d really like to do is throw her over my shoulder and walk out the back door when I shouldn’t even be touching her. “Daisy, obviously that’s not what I want. But Lucie and Caleb already know about us, and I think Emerson suspects something too…I’m doing my best not to make it any more obvious than it already is.”
Her shoulders begin to relax. “Then why are you in here, pulling me off the dance floor?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious why I cut in,” I reply. “It’s because Liam and your mom think that guy is a rapist.”
She grins. “And you weren’t concerned at all. What a good guy you are, selflessly coming over here to cockblock me.”
I look over my shoulder before I lean toward her. “I’ve got something to fill your mouth with if you keep smirking at me like that.”
She looks up at me from beneath her lashes. “You say that as if I don’t want my mouth filled, Harrison.”
Jesus . “Don’t do that to me with your mom and your uncle twenty feet away.”
She bites down on a smile. “Don’t talk about how I want you to fill my mouth? All the way to the back of my throat?”
It’s too much, and she knows it’s too much. There’s a part of me wondering where we can be alone—not later, not next week, but right this fucking minute. My hand tightens on her hip. “Tomorrow, after we leave, come to Santa Cruz.”
“I can’t. My mom’s doing some big Sunday dinner.”
“Then Monday.”
Her eyes dance. “You’re going to make me wait a full forty-eight hours?”
She’s right. With the way she’s looking at me now, waiting even five minutes feels nearly impossible. Maybe there’s a bathroom in the back of this place where we could… no, fuck , I’ve already been gone too long, and one of them will be in here any second now to see what’s up.
“I’m gonna try. And come back to the table with me. I don’t want you talking to those guys.”
She leans into me, her breasts brushing my chest, and goes on her toes. “Kiss me and I’ll consider it.”
God. “Daisy, anyone could see us. Your baseball friends are watching. Please come back to the table.”
“Admit you were jealous.”
“I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to admit it. Anyone watching us over the last five minutes is well aware.”
She waits with her brow raised.
I squeeze her hip one last time. “I was jealous. I’ve never been so fucking jealous. Now, for the love of God, go back to the table. And stop looking at me like that.”
She goes back to the table with an extra sway in her hips, and I tug at my hair in frustration.
There’s no way I’ll make it until Monday.