CHAPTER 7 #2
“You made Jamie be the pack mule, Daisy?” a voice asked from behind me, and I turned to find Raelynn walking up with Lydia at her side, both wearing their bikinis proudly without a cover-up.
Raelynn’s bikini was a beautiful blue shade, one that made her eyes pop. “You couldn’t have carried anything?”
Oh, the direct snark from her was new. Normally, it was Lydia who’d throw quips in like that. I had a feeling it correlated with the angry expression that’d twisted Raelynn’s face last night when she’d walked in on Jamie and me.
I smiled at her sweetly. “What else is a boyfriend for?”
Lydia’s expression was far friendlier than her bestie’s, almost like they’d swapped bodies. “Boyfriend,” she echoed with a little squeal, crouching beside Nellie, reaching for a can of soda from her cooler.
“That is true.” Dalton came up alongside me, holding two slushies, one red and one blue.
He wore a pair of white swim trunks and nothing else, his broad, tanned, muscular skin on display.
He seemed firmer than he’d been last summer, like he’d been hitting the gym.
I fought the urge to swallow hard, knowing if I gulped now, it’d be audible.
“Boyfriends are supposed to be good for their muscle.” Dalton not so discreetly eyed up Jamie’s narrow frame.
I blinked at his dig, caught off guard. Jamie, though, didn’t bat an eye. “Things matter more than what a body looks like.” Jamie shifted things around in the bag Nellie had packed. “Like mutual respect.”
Dalton’s expression darkened, but he said nothing.
Beck stretched his hand out to Dalton. “Thanks, man. Blue raspberry me.”
Dalton’s scowl deepened as he held the blue slushie out to Beck. Dalton didn’t like cherry. “It was five dollars.”
“I’ll consider it my chauffeur fee.”
As Jamie unpacked the towels from their beach bag, I caught his lips twitching. Then he looked up at me, the sunlight threading through his hair and giving it flecks of gold. “Sunscreen?”
“Duh.” I was a freckled redhead. “Unless you want me burnt to a crisp.”
“We can’t have that.”
My gaze locked onto Dalton’s as he moved to sit on the blanket beside Beck, straw to his cherry slushie in his mouth.
My stomach flipped at the idea of sliding my cover-up off, suddenly self-conscious.
He’d muscled up in the year since we’d last seen each other, but I’d been stress-eating my butt off from our breakup, dealing with the kids, and the NYU rejection combined. I suddenly didn’t want him to see me.
Jamie rose to his feet and towered over me.
Though he was thin, he blocked Dalton entirely from view.
He held an aerosol can of sunscreen in one hand, tipping it one way, then the other.
With his other hand, Jamie’s fingers snuck underneath the white strap of my cover-up and slid it over my shoulder.
It’d been a light pressure, but I found myself freezing at the touch.
Jamie reached for the other strap, doing the same—slipping a finger underneath the material, easing it over my freckled shoulder.
My white cover-up fell to the sand beside the quilt, pooling at my feet, revealing my light green one-piece swimsuit.
It had cute lace and a cut out on the sides, so my pale skin stood out against the stitching—and would probably lead to a pretty odd tan line—but I liked the way it looked.
I wondered if Dalton would like the way it looked.
Jamie still stood between us, eyes on the slice of skin at my side as if they’d been magnetized to it. Acting as if he liked the way it looked. “Close your eyes,” he ordered in a strange voice, and without waiting, he started spraying sunscreen all over me.
I sputtered against the taste, squeezing my eyes shut. “Jerk.”
I turned around and lifted my hair so he could get the back of my shoulders. As I did, I locked eyes with Raelynn and her death glare. This was an unforeseen complication of the fake relationship—I hadn’t anticipated gaining an enemy out of it.
“So, come on,” Lydia said as she crossed her legs. She batted her eyes at Jamie and me. “Tell us everything. Why did you hide it, anyway? To think, if we hadn’t walked in on you last night, we’d never have known.”
Okay. It was time to officially, officially kick this fake dating thing into gear. “We were just… testing it out, I guess,” I told them, recalling our rehearsal this morning. “We knew it could make things awkward, so we just went slow. Kept it between ourselves to see how we felt first.”
“They even kept it from me,” Nellie said. “Which, yeah, fine, I get. I would’ve talked them out of it if I had known from the beginning.”
“When did you find out?” Lydia asked.
“Uh, did you not see my face last night?” Nellie gave a full-body shudder. “Same as you.”
We’d all figured that’d be the most believable answer, given the way Nellie had reacted. “You should’ve knocked,” Jamie said simply, to which Nellie sputtered out a gasp.
Beck chuckled around the straw in his mouth. “Thatta boy.”
I bit down on the side of my lip to fight off a smile.
“Here,” Jamie said, having finished spraying the sunscreen on me and offering the can out. “My turn.” Something in his eyes looked like a challenge. Your turn was what he really meant. Your turn to prove how good of an actress you are.
Oh, game on. I tossed my red hair over my shoulder, picking at the buttons on his shirt. “Your turn,” I agreed, eyes flicking up. My turn.
I let my fingers linger on the fabric, gently sliding the button through the hole and brushing the fabric aside. See, I thought at Jamie, undoing the second button from his collar. I’m totally good at this. Better than you.
My confidence, though, flickered when I got to the middle button, and my knuckles grazed against the hot skin of his stomach.
Jamie’s frame was definitely more thin than muscular. He was the kid who was always picked last in gym class, and would usually sneak off to read underneath the bleachers without the teacher noticing. Worlds different from Dalton, where the muscle obviously corded his arms and bulked his shoulders.
I’d always been more partial to the muscular look—because, hello—but with my romance brain turned on, something about the moment…
shifted. I forgot my task, brushing my knuckles against Jamie’s stomach again, the skin just above his navel.
The hot, hard skin, because even though he didn’t have a rippled six-pack, there was still muscle underneath.
Quiet and hidden, just like Jamie himself.
When my eyes finally crawled their way up his chest, skimming past his prominent collarbones and to his face, I found Jamie staring down at me, unblinking.
It was the intensity in his brown eyes that knocked me off-kilter, because it wasn’t a look he wore often. Jamie’s expressions were usually a language I spoke fluently, every glance and smirk loaded with meaning I could almost always translate.
But now I had nothing. I swallowed hard, the sound of it loud in my ears.
In a soft but level voice, Jamie murmured, “You’re taking your time.”
I snatched my hands back from his shirt to the chorus of laughter, because though his voice had been soft, everyone heard it. And then, to make it worse, Beck cooed out, “Oh, she’s down bad.”
All at once, heat flooded through me, so sharp and suffocating that I thought I was about to drop dead right there on the sand. I did not—could not—look at anyone. Definitely not Dalton. To Beck, I threw back, “Look who’s talking, lover boy.”
Beck laughed, nudging Nellie, who looked vaguely nauseous.
Raelynn’s voice sounded irritated. “What, have you never seen him shirtless before, Daisy?”
I’d seen Jamie shirtless tons of times. We’d gone to pool parties before. I’d seen his shirt rise up when he’d taken off a sweatshirt. This skin was nothing new to me—and yet I’d nearly just had an aneurysm over it.
The sun was so stupidly hot. “Shut up. All of you.” I couldn’t look at Jamie. He started spraying sunscreen to his own skin, not asking for my help again.
“Well, I don’t know about you all,” Dalton said suddenly, awkwardly shifting his feet in the sand. “But I came here to swim.”
Lydia objected, “Your slushie—”
“The heat’s making me feel a little sick, actually. I think I need to cool down before I drink anything sugary.”
Is it us? I wondered. Are we making him feel sick? My stomach knotted, conflicted.
Beck reached his hand up for Dalton’s drink. “I’ll guard it closely.”
“Oh, no.” Nellie slipped her tan cover-up off, revealing her blush pink tankini with ruffles at the hem. It was the perfect color with her skin and dark hair, and Beck stared up at her for several seconds as if the sun suddenly started shining in his eyes. “You’re swimming.”
Beck grumbled as he let her pull him to his feet, but as he stood, he lunged forward, hooking an arm underneath Nellie’s knees and sweeping her up into a princess carry.
She let out a little shriek, but hugged onto his neck.
“Let’s go, children,” Beck called back to us, looking into Nellie’s eyes.
“If I have to swim, so does everyone else.”
“You’d be bored on the beach all by yourself,” Nellie told him, words punctuated by a soft giggle.
Beck kissed her temple. “You’re right.”
Now I was certain my expression was much like Raelynn’s, mildly disgusted.
“It’s weird to see Nell in love,” I murmured to Jamie.
Lydia scampered off after them, Raelynn slow at her heels, but Dalton still stood by our blanket, slow to put his slushie down.
“I’ve never heard her laugh like that. Like she’s been abducted by aliens. ”
Jamie nodded. “Or infected, like a zombie virus.”
“Hopefully she eats your brain first.”
“Probably will.” Jamie dropped the sunscreen onto the blanket and dusted his hands. “She’d starve with yours.”
“Oh, pfft, sure—and she’d choke on yours, stuffed full of all the literary nonsense—”