Chapter 11 #3
Mia shoots me a look and then shakes her head.
“Ignore Luke. You know he’s just trying to show off that he has abs now.”
I notice that her eyes linger on my chest, and as I take a step back, her eyes meet mine and then dart away quickly. So, she’s thinking about my body as well. The idea that I’m also in her head pleases me.
“Juni, we’re about to head down to breakfast. Would you like to join us?”
“I wish, but I really do have to get to the beach and open up Salty Pages. I think a couple of tourists are coming by to grab some psychological thrillers for their boat ride later today. So, I need to go through and see what we have.”
“Ooh, awesome, I think we have some books by Steve Cavanagh. I loved his book Fifty Fifty.” Mia gazes over at me as she grips her towel.
I can see that her body is still damp. I try not to look at her legs or her exposed shoulders. I try not to think about her naked body under the towel.
I will not let my mind swim in the gutter. I will not think of her ample breasts.
“I think you would like it as well, Luke.”
“Like what?”
“The book I was just talking about.”
“Oh, okay.” I’m not going to tell her that I wasn’t paying attention to what she was talking about.
“On that note, I should be going.” Juniper spins around. “I’ll see you guys later.” She heads to the door and waves goodbye before she leaves. “See you guys. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She closes the door behind her.
I turn to look at Mia, who is staring at me with a guilty expression on her face.
“What Juniper doesn’t know is that we already have, right?” Mia says, gripping the towel tightly to her body.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, Juni just said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ but I feel like we already crossed that line, don’t you?”
She stands there, looking beautiful and sexy, and I feel like I’m seeing her as a woman that I can’t resist.
“I wouldn’t say that exactly.” I shrug and take a step forward. “Do you think we crossed a line?”
“Luke, don’t play dumb with me. We’re best friends for a reason, and I can read your mind.”
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking. We both remember what happened early this morning.”
I can’t stop the smirk that crosses my face as I gaze down at her parted lips. “I might remember some of it. So, what do we do? How do we approach this, moving forward?” I run my fingers through my hair as I wait for her answer. “Do you think we crossed lines that—”
“Luke, we were drunk. We were tired. We got a little carried away. You haven’t been with a woman in a while, from what I can remember, and you know I haven’t been with a man, and I guess we were in close proximity …” Her voice trails off. “These things happen.”
I take another step closer to observe her better. She’s taking this way too casually. I’m kind of annoyed by how unbothered she seems. She’s just going to play it off as us being drunk?
“So, you’re okay that we were practically naked and—”
“Luke,” she cuts me off, “we don’t need to talk about it. We can just move on from here.”
She touches me on the arm, and I want to pull her into me. Not only is it irritating, but it’s also making me wonder if she regrets it. Or if I just wasn’t good enough for her.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” I ask her, pushing it. “You always want to talk about everything.” Which is an understatement.
Mia talks as much as anyone I’ve ever met in my life. She analyzes almost everything that anyone ever said or did to her. Yet she doesn’t want to discuss this? Why not?
“No, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t always want to talk about everything, and I don’t want to talk about this either. It happened, and we can just …” She plays with her hair, curling some strands between her fingers. “We can just pretend it never happened.”
“We nearly had sex, Mi-Mi, but we’re going to pretend that didn’t almost happen?”
She looks away again before hurrying to her duffel bag.
“We just got caught up in the emotions of the night.” She opens the duffel bag and mumbles under her breath, “These things happen.”
“Not between us.”
We’d never been in that position before in our lives. I had never touched her intimately. She had never touched me intimately. This was a path we’d never gone down before, and I am kind of astonished that I am the one who wants to talk about it and not her.
“So, we’re not going to discuss what happened then?”
“I don’t really think we need to, Luke.” She sighs as she looks up at me. “Don’t you think this summer is complicated enough as it is?” She rifles through her clothes.
She looks cute, standing there, half-naked, bent over.
Get your mind out of the gutter, Luke.
“Fine. If that’s what you want. What did Juniper bring you? Anything that might work for me to wear?”
“Not unless you want to wear a skirt.” Her eyes finally meet mine again. “Or a bikini.”
“What would Talia say if she saw me in your bikini?” I tease her. “Maybe she’d be impressed if I said it was couture.”
“She’s such a bitch. And, yes, I would say it to her face.”
“Would you really?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t.” She grins. “She looks like she can fight, and I don’t want to ruin my flawless face.”
“No, you don’t.” I take a couple of steps over to her, which I know is a dangerous thing to do, seeing as I’m still standing in my briefs and she’s just in a towel, but I need to look her in the eyes. I need to make sure we’re really okay. “So, last night—”
“Luke.” Her voice cracks as she glances up at me, her eyes wide. There’s a small smile on her lips, and she grabs my hands and squeezes. “We’re okay, trust me.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. It might have been a different story if you had accidentally slipped it in, but you didn’t.” She smiles, looks at the front of my briefs, then grabs a skirt from the bag.
“True, I also think you should get changed because I don’t want an accidental slip to happen right now.”
“What?”
“I’m just saying that your towel’s about to slip off.” I point to the top knot that is starting to unravel. “And if your towel slips off and you’re naked and then you accidentally trip and slip on top of me, well, who’s to know what could happen?”
“You’re funny,” she says, grabbing the knot quickly, “but not that funny. I’m going to change.” She heads off to the bathroom with some clothes.
“Thank you for asking. I know last night was kind of weird. This whole thing is kind of weird, but … I love you. You’re still my best friend. We had a little fun, and we stopped it before we went too far, and that’s the main thing.” She walks into the bathroom and closes the door.
I wonder what she would do if I headed into the bathroom behind her, ripped her towel off, and said I wanted to make another mistake with her.
Only it wouldn’t be a mistake. I don’t know what she’d say.
From the sounds of it, she also enjoyed the moment, but it didn’t seem to mean anything to her, which fucking pisses me off because it meant something to me.
I can still smell her. I can still taste her. My cock twitches, and I push my hand down to adjust myself.
“I do not need this right now.”
I think about going for a jog, but stop when I hear my phone ringing. I grab it, surprised to see Rex’s name on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Hey there, bro. Just want to make sure you’re going to make it down to breakfast on time.”
“We’ll be down.”
“What do you mean, we?” He sounds surprised.
“Mia and I.”
“She spent the night with you?”
“She’s my girlfriend. Of course, she spent the night with me.”
“Lay off it, Luke. What’s really going on? We all know that Mia’s always wanted me.”
I stay silent.
“You guys didn’t even look like you’d banged. Last night, you looked like two goofy-ass friends, just hanging out, not touching each other, not doing anything with each other.”
I press my lips together. Was that really how we came across? I’ll have to ask Mia’s friends to see what they thought.
“Was there something you wanted, Rex? Because Mia’s getting changed right now, and then I’m hopping into the shower.”
“So, you didn’t have shower sex this morning?”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, you haven’t seen your supposed girl in how long, and you didn’t think to have shower sex with her?”
“You know what, Rex? I’m not a pig, and I’m not going to discuss with you the intimate details of my relationship with Mia.” I don’t bother to tell him that if she really were my girl, I’d be in the shower right then, letting her feel the full length of me.
“You know if it were me, she’d want to hit it.”
“I’m going to go, Rex.”
“Well, I also wanted you to know that it was really uncool of you to just walk out on the family business the way that you did.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dad was counting on you to take over some of the accounts when I became CEO, and you kind of bailed.”
“The plan had always been for us to be joint CEOs,” I say. “And Dad made you CEO. I did what I had to do.”
“You’re still fucking upset about that? I’m the oldest son.”
“I know you’re the golden boy, Rex. You’re the Haverbrook who will inherit it all.”
“You’ve always been jealous of me, haven’t you?”
He hangs up, and I just stand there, staring at the phone, wondering if he’s right.
Have I always been jealous of Rex?
I must have spaced out for a little bit because the next thing I know, Mia’s walking out of the bathroom in a long, flowy cream skirt and a midriff green top.
Her hair hangs straight down her back, and she’s got a glittery headband on.
Her brown eyes are warm as she gazes at me.
As she comes closer to me, I notice her expression change.
“What’s wrong? Who was on the phone?”
“Rex.”
“What did he want?”
“He doesn’t seem to believe that we are really together, and he just made some comments about the family business.”
“He sucks.” Mia presses her lips together.
“He does.”
“You know you should have become the CEO yourself. You shouldn’t even have been joint CEO. You’ve always been the one with the business prowess.”