Chapter 3 — Pool Deck Flashing
Day two at sea meant a full ocean horizon in every direction and a pool deck packed by ten in the morning, and Julia had claimed two loungers near the swim-up bar before the good spots disappeared, sunscreen and a paperback she had no real intention of reading stacked on the little table between them.
“You’re watching the door,” Mark said, not opening his eyes behind his sunglasses.
“I’m watching the pool. There’s a difference.”
“You’ve checked the entrance four times in the last ten minutes.”
“I’m invested in the outcome of today. Sue me.
” Julia adjusted her sunglasses and let her gaze drift, unbothered, back toward the water, where a group of teenagers had commandeered the deep end with an inflatable flamingo nobody else wanted to fight them for.
“Besides. You’re the one who ordered a beer at ten in the morning and hasn’t touched it.
I know exactly what you’re waiting for too. ”
“I’m hydrating.”
“You’re loitering. There’s a difference, and it’s the same one I just used on you, so don’t get smug about it.”
He laughed, low, and reached over to trail two fingers along her thigh, slow. The touch was entirely hers, nobody else’s, and they both knew it. “I like this version of you. Smug and scheming before ten in the morning.”
“I contain multitudes.” Julia caught his hand and pressed a kiss to his knuckles before letting it go. “Also, there she is.”
Chloe and Sienna came through the pool deck’s arched entrance a little before eleven, and Julia clocked it the way she clocked everything today — sideways, over the top of her book, cataloguing without seeming to.
Chloe had skipped the cover-up entirely this time, just a white bikini so minimal it barely qualified as fabric, the string ties at each hip doing more suggesting than actual covering, and she made straight for the swim-up bar like she’d already decided exactly how this hour was going to go.
Beside her, Sienna wore a simple navy one-piece that did nothing to disguise a figure Julia had already spent considerable time appreciating from a distance, hair twisted up off her neck, sunglasses hiding eyes that kept darting toward the loungers before catching herself and looking away.
“Morning,” Chloe called, loud enough to carry, wading into the pool a few feet from where Mark had gone in to order his beer. “Didn’t peg you for a pool guy. Figured you’d be off doing something responsible. Reading the news. Doing a crossword. Husband things.”
“It’s vacation,” Mark said, easy, unbothered, exactly the register he’d need for the rest of the week. “Even responsible guys get a pool day.”
“Good. I like that you’re flexible.” She said it with a straight face and a look that made clear she meant nothing about scheduling, treading water close enough now that he could see exactly how little the bikini top was actually holding in place. “You’re a good swimmer. I’ve been watching.”
“You’ve been watching a man drink a beer in four feet of water.”
“You have no idea what you’re missing.” She grinned, unbothered by her own joke, and drifted a fraction closer. “You know what’s criminal? A wife who lets a guy built like you just sit around a pool bar unsupervised. I’d be worried, if I were her.”
“Julia’s not the worrying type.”
“Lucky her.” Chloe let her gaze drop, slow and obvious, down his bare chest and back up, taking her time about it in a way that had nothing subtle left in it at all. “I bet she doesn’t even know how lucky. Ten years married, right? People stop looking after ten years. I never stop looking.”
“That’s a very specific philosophy for a twenty-one-year-old.”
“I’m precocious.” She ducked under the surface and came back up closer still, water sluicing down skin gone gold from two days of sun, and reached up as though to fix the strap at the back of her neck — except the motion pulled the whole top askew instead, the thin triangle of fabric slipping sideways just long enough to bare one full breast to the open pool deck before she “noticed” and tugged it back into place, slow about the fix, entirely unbothered by who might have seen.
“Oops,” she said, not sounding sorry in the slightest.
“Careful,” Mark said, mild, not looking away fast enough to pretend the sight hadn’t landed exactly where she’d aimed it.
“I’m always careful.” She smiled, slow and pleased with herself, and let herself drift backward through the water toward the pool’s shallow end, hips swaying with more intention than the current required.
Halfway there she reached down as if to adjust the tie riding low on one hip — and instead of retying it, tugged the fabric aside entirely for a beat too long to be accidental, giving him a clean, unobstructed view of bare, smooth skin with absolutely nothing left to guess at.
Mark’s jaw tightened, and Chloe caught the reaction before he could smooth it away, delight flashing bright across her face.
“There we go,” she said, retying the string with visible satisfaction, like she’d been waiting the whole morning for exactly that flicker of a reaction. “Knew you were paying attention.”
“You’re going to get thrown out of the pool for that.”
“Worth it.” She waded backward another step, putting distance between them like a woman who’d made her point and had no intention of overplaying it. “See you at dinner, Mark. Try not to think about that too hard beforehand. Actually — do. Think about it as hard as you want.”
She was out of the pool and toweling off before he’d finished his beer, and Sienna, who had been standing at a careful distance the whole time pretending to reapply sunscreen, watched her go with an expression that read less like approval and more like a woman recalculating something she didn’t love the answer to.
Julia had watched the whole performance over the top of her book without turning a single page, and when Sienna finally drifted toward the loungers — sent, Julia suspected, on some reconnaissance mission Chloe had dressed up as friendliness — she set the book aside entirely and gave the girl her full, warm attention.
“You survived the pool,” Julia said, patting the empty lounger beside her. “Sit. Tell me you’re having a better time than you look like you’re having.”
“I’m having a great time.” Sienna sat, a little stiff, sunscreen bottle turning over in her hands like she needed somewhere to put her nervous energy. “The ship’s beautiful. The food’s incredible.”
“You’re a terrible liar. It’s genuinely one of your more charming qualities.” Julia said it warm, not unkind, and watched Sienna’s mouth twitch despite herself. “How long have you two been friends?”
“Since freshman year. She’s — Chloe’s a lot, but she’s loyal. She’d do anything for the people she actually cares about.”
“I believe that.” Julia turned onto her side to face her properly, taking her in without any hurry about it — the soft brown hair drying in loose waves from the pool spray, the modest one-piece that did nothing to hide a figure that clearly hadn’t needed Chloe’s approach to get noticed, the faint, unconscious way Sienna’s shoulders had started to relax now that the conversation had turned away from her friend. “You’re not much like her, are you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”
“It’s absolutely a compliment.” Julia let her eyes travel, slow and open, down the length of her and back up, no attempt at all to disguise the appreciation in it.
“She’s loud in a way that’s fun for about an hour.
You’re the kind of pretty that sneaks up on a person.
I noticed you before I noticed her, actually, and she was the one laughing. ”
Sienna’s whole face went warm, color rising fast up her throat, and she looked down at the sunscreen bottle like it had suddenly become very interesting. “That’s — I don’t really know what to do with that.”
“You don’t have to do anything with it. I just like saying true things out loud.
Married twenty-two years, it’s one of the few luxuries I’ve kept for myself.
” Julia reached over and tucked a loose piece of hair behind Sienna’s ear, slow, the touch brief and easy and entirely too intimate for the amount of time they’d known each other.
“You blush easily. I find that unbearably charming.”
“I don’t usually,” Sienna said, voice gone slightly unsteady. “Blush. Easily. I don’t know what’s happening right now.”
“Nothing’s happening. I’m just being friendly.” Julia’s fingers hadn’t quite left her jaw, tracing one slow line down to her collarbone before dropping away entirely, leaving Sienna’s skin buzzing where they’d been. “Though if you wanted something to be happening, I wouldn’t exactly stop it.”
“I don’t — I came over here for Chloe. She wanted to know if you two seemed suspicious of anything.”
“Do we seem suspicious?”
“You seem like you’re enjoying yourselves. Which is somehow worse.” Sienna managed a small, helpless laugh. “I don’t actually know what I’m supposed to report back.”
“Tell her whatever makes her happiest to hear. I find the truth is usually more interesting anyway, and I’d rather spend my energy on you than worrying about what she thinks she’s learned.
” Julia’s voice dropped lower, private, meant for nobody else on the crowded deck.
“Are you going to keep sitting a foot further away than you actually want to be, or should I just close the distance myself?”
Sienna didn’t answer with words. She shifted, an inch, maybe two, close enough now that their shoulders brushed when either of them breathed, and Julia smiled like she’d won something small and important.
“There,” she said. “Was that so hard?”
“Everything about this is hard. I don’t do this. I don’t — I’ve never even really wanted to do this, with anyone, and now I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Good.” Julia let the word sit a moment, savoring it.
“Thinking about it is the whole point. I want you thinking about it all day, through lunch, through dinner, right up until the moment I finally get you alone. Go tell Chloe I said hello. And tell her the top trick was cute. She should workshop the timing, though — Mark’s a lot harder to fluster than she thinks. ”
Sienna opened her mouth, closed it again, and got up on legs that didn’t look entirely steady, retreating back toward the pool with a backward glance she clearly hadn’t meant to give.
Mark dropped into the lounger on Julia’s other side a minute later, toweling off, sunglasses pushed up into wet hair. “You broke that girl a little.”
“I barely touched her.” Julia picked her book back up, entirely pleased with herself. “Chloe get her flash in?”
“Twice. Top first, very smooth, then the bottom tie a minute later. She’s got range.” Mark stretched out, unbothered, closing his eyes against the sun. “Bare underneath both times. Not an inch of anything left to guess at.”
“She’s twenty-one and thinks confidence is the same thing as skill.” Julia turned a page she hadn’t actually read. “Sienna’s the interesting one. She’s already halfway gone and she doesn’t even know why yet.”
“You’re enjoying this.”
“I am having,” Julia said, “the best anniversary of my life.”
Dinner that night was a loud, four-top affair that the girls invited themselves to, and Julia watched with private delight as the tension she’d spent all afternoon building found new ground to grow in — Chloe’s foot finding Mark’s ankle under the table sometime between the appetizer and the entrée, Sienna’s knee pressed just slightly into Julia’s the whole meal like she couldn’t quite make herself stop.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” Julia said to her, low, under the general noise of Chloe recounting some story about a spring break trip that had clearly ended in property damage.
“I’m thinking about this afternoon. Like you told me to.” Sienna’s voice had gone soft, private. “It’s very distracting, actually. I got sunburned because I forgot to reapply. I was too busy thinking.”
“Poor thing.” Julia’s hand found her knee under the tablecloth, slow, deliberate. “I could make it up to you. Somewhere quieter than this table.”
“When?”
“Soon.” Julia’s fingers trailed higher, just enough to make Sienna’s breath catch audibly, then withdrew entirely, leaving her wanting. “Patience. Good things are worth waiting one more day for.”
Across the table, Chloe had gone quiet in her own way, watching Mark over the rim of her wine glass with an intensity that had nothing to do with the story she’d been telling a moment ago.
“You’ve got sauce,” she said, reaching over without asking and dragging her thumb slow along the corner of his mouth, lingering there far longer than the correction required. “There. Better.”
“Thank you,” Mark said, dry, not moving away from the touch.
“Anytime.” Chloe sucked her own thumb clean, deliberate, eyes never leaving his. “I mean that. Anytime you need cleaning up, I’m right here.”
Julia caught Mark’s eye across the table, and the look that passed between them said everything neither of them needed to say out loud — that the week was building exactly the way they’d hoped, and that by tomorrow night, neither girl was going to have any patience left at all.