Four
AS MY GAZE DRIFTS AROUND THE DIM, CRAMPED storage room of Barefoot Joe’s, I can’t help but wonder how many girls Heath has enticed back here in his time.
Without meaning to, I ask just that aloud, and a low, teasing laugh makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. ‘You’re getting a jump on the jealous girlfriend thing, huh?’
My snort is incredulous. ‘I’m not jealous.’
Slumped against the wall opposite me, Heath pouts. He really looks like he means it when he croons, ‘How disappointing.’
‘Stop that.’
‘What?’
‘That.’ The same way I did last night – God, was that really only last night? – I gesture at all of him. Specifically, that cockily quirked mouth and the fucking twinkle in his eyes. ‘I told you, I’m not the one.’
‘No? It worked pretty well before.’
I open my mouth, if only to insist on him shutting his.
‘Ah-ah-ah,’ Heath tuts, head shaking playfully. ‘You forget our deal already? We’re allowed to talk about it now.’
We’re supposed to be talking about something else. Something more important, more important than a drunken kiss at least. Something that would implode before it even began if any inquisitive ears overheard, hence why we’re trapped in a room with the same square footage as a fucking bathroom stall.
When I remind Heath of that, he sighs dramatically. ‘Fine. Go on. Lay the details on me.’
I shift awkwardly, my thumbnail finding its way to my mouth.
Heath raises an insistent brow.
A glower creasing my forehead, I huff. ‘I’m thinking, okay?’
‘Shouldn’t you have done that before you begged—’
‘There was no begging.’
‘—me to be your boyfriend?’
‘Fake boyfriend. Important distinction, I think.’
The corner of his mouth lifts, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a smile. It’s a little tight, like the uncharacteristically clipped way he probes the details out of me. ‘How long are we doing this for?’
I take a second to think about it – I need a second to swallow what’s not quite panic, but something close, because, God, putting a timeline on this thing make it feel real. ‘Until the end of the semester?’
‘I don’t know,’ Heath muses playfully, and I blink at the sudden change in his demeanor, the whiplash-quick shift back to his usual self. ‘Don’t wanna be nursing a broken heart for the NCAA championships next spring.’
‘You are not gonna break my heart.’
Ask around, I add silently, scornfully, I don’t have one.
‘I was talking about mine,’ Heath claims, and I roll my eyes. Yeah, fucking right.
‘March is too far away.’
‘End of the semester it is,’ he concedes . . . begrudgingly? Am I imagining that? He’s disappointed that our fake relationship doesn’t have a longer expiration date? Surely not. ‘What’re the rules?’
My nose scrunches.
His head cocks to one side. ‘No rules?’
‘Rules makes it sound so . . . formal.’
‘No rules,’ he repeats, tongue tracing his upper teeth. ‘Dangerous game, Daniela.’
I huff as I chew on my nail. ‘Well, what rules do you want?’
Heath thinks about it for a moment. Clicking his tongue thoughtfully, he pushes off the wall, one hand brushing over the stubble of his buzz cut, the other slipping into his pocket. ‘Can I touch you?’
Right now? I stop myself from asking, literally right before the question falls off my tongue, more hopeful than I have any right being. ‘Do you usually touch your girlfriends?’
Something dark and heady twists his expression.
I look away. Amend, ‘Publicly. Safe-for-work-ly.’
‘I’ve never had a girlfriend.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘Nope.’
My gaze flicks back to him, narrowed and knowing. ‘Tracey Bellingham.’
‘What about her?’
‘You were dating. I heard her crying in a locker room after a meet once. I thought it was because she came second—’ to me, I don’t mention, but I think Heath knows anyway. ‘—but it was because you hadn’t texted her good luck or something.’
‘We were dating,’ Heath corrects, as he sidles a little closer. ‘She wasn’t my girlfriend.’
An important distinction. Hm. ‘Why didn’t you text her?’
‘Because I had a meet too. I was trying to focus.’
The parallel of that isn’t lost on me; how many times has Ben bitched me out for being unsupportive, for daring to pour all my focus into myself and not reserving any for him? ‘So, technically, I’m your first girlfriend.’
‘Technically.’
‘I’m gonna get shanked if I ever step foot on Cove College territory, aren’t I?’
‘I’ll protect you.’ Another inch between us gets obliterated. ‘You didn’t answer the question.’
I forgot the question. I keep forgetting it. He’s standing too close for me to remember menial things like questions. Only when I side-step, move out of his orbit, out of his eyeline, does it come back to me. ‘You can touch me.’
The noise he makes is incredibly, inexplicably pleased. ‘Where?’
‘Why do I get the feeling you’re angling for an explicit answer?’
‘Because I’m a man and you are an outstandingly beautiful woman.’ He ducks into my line of sight again, his smile a little teasing, a whole lot more serious. ‘Just wanna know what you’re comfortable with.’
I shrug. It’s not like it matters. It’s just touching. Intimacy in all its forms has always been a somewhat blasé concept to me, so why should this be any different? ‘Anywhere.’
Again with that noise. Blown pupils and a clenched jaw and a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head, a stiff body as he backs up like he’s forcing himself to. Slouching against the wall again, he crosses his arms over his chest, his fingertips digging into his forearms. ‘Kissing?’
Before I can stop myself, I quip, ‘Not like we haven’t done that before.’
‘Oh, so you can bring it up.’
‘Jesus, Heath. What, you want me to rate it? Full marks, congratulations.’
Another noise. A different noise. A low, satisfied hum that would make my knees tremble, if I were the kind of girl to develop trembling knees when faced with humming, satisfied men.
Which I’m not. Definitely not. I’m lock-kneed and steady, and not at all croaky when I quietly, oh-so-nonchalantly, completely professionally, let him know, ‘You can kiss me.’
His lips part.
‘Ask where, and I will punch you in the throat.’
They press shut again, twitching like they’re trying not smile.
Jackass.
‘Anything else?’
Chewing on my bottom lip, I pretend to think about it some more.
Stall a little because, honestly, one thing did immediately come to mind.
A can of worms that I’m not entirely willing to open, but I force myself to anyway.
‘If you, uh, don’t wanna do this anymore, can you tell me before you . . . y’know.’
Heath crooks a brow. ‘Before I . . .?’
Fuck my life. ‘Before you . . . move on.’
He blinks. ‘Are you asking me not to cheat on you?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be cheating. I know that. But no one else does. I just don’t wanna do that . . .’ I swallow, my throat almost too tight to add a quiet, ‘again.’
Like freaking clouds covering the sun, Heath’s expression darkens. ‘So Ben did cheat. Fuck, I didn’t think he was actually that dumb.’
My chin drops. Absently pulling at my fingertips, I admit, ‘I always figured you didn’t know it was happening.’
‘Why?’
‘You never threw it in Ben’s face. But sometimes I kinda also thought maybe you did know and you didn’t say anything because you liked holding something over him. Over me too.’
Heath clears his throat. Shifts, sneakers scuffing against the tiled floor. ‘I didn’t know, Daniela,’ he insists, so adamantly it’s like convincing me is the single most important thing in the world.
I hum again. Fiddle some more. Find myself saying, for some reason, ‘Everyone on my team knew.’
‘Seriously?’
‘I’m pretty sure they encouraged it. Helped them.
Shit,’ I laugh and it’s only a little humorous, a lot humorless, so bitter and embarrassed.
‘I keep thinking of all these times that someone held me up for some silly reason, like they wanted to know what pre-workouts I take or if I’d had a certain professor before, and I just wonder now if they were stalling me because Sienna and Ben were banging around the corner or something. ’
‘That’s really fucked up, Dani.’
‘They didn’t owe me the truth. We’re not friends.’
Heath says nothing.
Clearing my throat, I straighten up. Shift the subject elsewhere before this one kills me. ‘Speaking of friends. What do we tell yours?’
‘That we’re dating.’
‘Like, really?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And they’ll believe it?’
A small smile curls his mouth, wry for reasons I don’t understand. ‘They’ll believe it.’
How ominous. And unsettling. Prompting a question that I’m not sure I want the answer to. ‘So, how do we do this? How do we start?’
Heath smiles.
Ominous.
Unsettling.
Prompting a question that I know I don’t want the answer to, but I get one anyway.
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’
‘What?’ Brows high and lips parted, Heath paints his face with aghast confusion so fake my eyes damn near roll out of my head. ‘You don’t like this?’
I cast my gaze around the pier, brimming with people and noise and bright, flashing lights that are already giving me a headache. ‘Why the hell would I like this?’
He laughs like I’m joking. Which I’m not.
Genuinely, I’m baffled as to why he thinks I would enjoy somewhere this loud and busy and reeking of grease and ripe bodies.
God, if this is what the boardwalk is like on its last legs at the very end of the season, when the tourists have cleared out and kids are back in school, I dread to think what it’s like at the peak of the season.
I literally shiver. ‘If you try to get me to eat a corn dog, I’m gonna punch you in the balls. ’
‘Tempting.’ His mouth quirks briefly before flattening. ‘You’ve never been here?’
‘Shockingly, this isn’t my scene.’
‘But Ben comes here a lot.’
‘Impossible, considering we were surgically attached and all.’
Heath tugs on my hair, his turn for an eye roll. ‘We want people to see us together, darling. This is a good place.’
There’s nothing good about this place, in my opinion, but I can admit he has a point. I can concede – slightly. ‘You get an hour.’
‘So generous,’ Heath croons. ‘You really don’t like corn dogs?’