15. Ryan
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ryan
I glance at Paige as she narrows her eyes and nibbles on her bottom lip, listening to the instructions with rapt focus.
It’s a contrast to the frazzled look she sported after I took my shirt off.
My chest puffs at the memory. There was heat in her eyes, there’s no doubt about it.
A heat that was reciprocated after she took off the robe that covered pretty much her whole body.
Her green bikini consists of two small triangles acting as the top and high-waisted bottoms that do wonders for her figure.
I tried jumping straight into the ocean, hoping the cool water would help with my bulging Bermuda shorts, but the water is hotter than what I shower with at home.
Luckily, this insane Survivor rip off intro was enough to deflate my dick.
Why are they acting like this is perfectly normal?
I try to connect my gaze with Mom’s to find some common ground in this obviously crazy family, but she doesn’t look away from Roger for a second, staring at him with a wide grin on her face.
“The first game is a classic egg relay race,” Anthony tells us.
There’s a curve on his whiskered upper lip, and I’m guessing this must be a fun day on the job. The other two crew members extract multiple items from the mysterious leather chest perched on the beach and start placing the cones for the race.
“The rules are simple. Each member must carry an egg on a spoon. You have to go around these obstacles and back before transferring the egg to your partner’s spoon.
The couple who finishes first without breaking their egg is the winner of the first game and a serious contender for the overall title. ”
An eye-roll fights to escape as Anthony and another crew member act out our task for the first game.
Each course has four cones you have to maneuver around, which seems redundant.
Still, when they hand out spoons, everyone rushes to get one.
Paige emerges from the small crowd, looking victorious with two spoons and an egg lifted high in the air.
She takes one look at my relaxed posture and the hands in my pockets and lets out the world’s longest sigh.
She hands me a metal spoon, and I weigh it in my hand. The bowl is nice, but the handle is too wide. It’s not one I would personally pick for my own home, but it’ll have to do the trick. Paige is already at the start of our course.
“You go first, so I can catch up for your lost time,” she comments, and I shake my head.
Her confidence in this stupid game is astonishing.
I look over to other groups. Mom and Roger are giggling romantically, not bothering with the spoons, while Jordan is showing Emma the right way to carry the egg.
It’s not my interpretation of the scene, but something that Jordan mentions multiple times. I guess it runs in the family.
“Everyone ready?” Anthony calls out.
Paige confirms for us, placing the egg onto my spoon. She casts a glare that screams ‘Don’t fuck this up.’
I don’t have time to respond before Anthony shouts, “Three, two, one, go!”
I haven’t done an egg race since I was a kid, so I start slow, trying to gauge how much the spoon can wiggle while still keeping the egg safe.
My partner obviously deems it too slow because she yells, “Come on, Ryan. Faster!”
A ‘that’s what she said’ joke gets stuck in my throat, but I pick up the speed.
Once I pass the final cone and start my way back, I’m on a roll.
Paige still groans loudly when I get back.
She grabs my hand to transfer the egg, and my annoyance suppresses the tingle that sparks through my arm at the contact.
She starts off strong, zipping and zapping around the cones, but my attention snaps to Roger, who’s now lying on the floor along with his egg. Mom drops to her knees laughing, and I’m stunned for a second. Pure, unadulterated joy beams from her, and a knot in my chest unravels.
A string of ‘Fucks’ coming from my left breaks the beautiful moment. Paige kicks the sand as Anthony announces Jordan and Emma as the winners of the first game.
Like a good sport, I give them a polite clap, though Jordan definitely doesn’t deserve it.
Not after what she pulled on the boat. She’s dead set on the idea of making Mom look bad, and it’s exactly why I needed to be on this vacation.
She lands a kiss on her wife’s lips and darts a smug look at Paige.
After another long sigh, my partner signals me to the side with a snap of her head.
“Look,” she starts as soon as we’re out of earshot. “I know we have our differences, but I really want to win this, so I need you to lock the fuck in.” Her eyes glare with intensity, and I barely suppress a chuckle. She looks adorable this pumped up. But I’m not an idiot.
“And why would your victory be important to me?”
“It’s your victory, too, dumbass.”
I let out a snort. “I’m not really a competitive person. I just want us all to have fun.”
Her nose scrunches with disgust before she pulls herself together, pointing an index finger at me. “Well, you throwing this on purpose would make me look like an angel for doing my best, and you’d look like an immature brat who doesn’t care enough about his mom to respect the fucking game.”
A scoff escapes me, though I know she’s right. I need to put in the effort. My mom would be disappointed if I threw this. Pissing off Jordan wouldn’t be too bad, either.
“Fine,” I mutter, and her face brightens.
Throughout the day, I’ve been unlocking Paige’s new facial expressions. I still haven’t found one that looks bad on her.
Anthony hands us an ice bucket with water bottles, and we each take one, replenishing our fluids.
While we did the egg race, the other crew members were busy building the second course.
This one consists of three water-filled troughs, with two towels next to them.
Around thirty feet from them are three empty plastic buckets. What the hell is this?
Our trusted game leader is somehow already there, ready to instruct us again. I follow after Paige who practically marches through the sand to the next course.
Anthony lifts his hand to bring our attention to him. “The goal of the second game is to fill the empty buckets”—he points to them—“with the water from the troughs using only the towels. The first team to fill their bucket wins.”
It sounds pretty simple. I’m determined to show that I actually am doing my best. Anthony counts us in, and Paige and I both drop to our knees next to the trough, dunking the towels underwater.
Most of what we collected drips onto our sand-covered feet on our way to the bucket, but I wring out the rest. Paige bites into her bottom lip as she stares at my straining biceps, struggling to wring out every last drop.
“Stop distracting me,” I mutter.
Her neck and chest flush and her brows lower, determination coursing through her. We work like a well-oiled machine, not paying any attention to others, until Anthony yells, “And we have a winner. Congratulations, Paige and Ryan!”
My eyes drop to the bucket, realizing it’s full, and a grin forms on my face.
“Fuck, yes.” Paige pumps her fist in the air, taunting her sister. She’s absolutely ridiculous, but I have to admit victory tastes good.
“So far, we have Emma and Jordan, and Paige and Ryan with one point each. We also have Kim and Roger, who are obviously having a good time, and they still have a chance to make this a tie in our third game,” Anthony comments.
I look to my mom, who is currently chasing Roger with a wet towel. Once again, she looks carefree. Happy. How can the woman next to me look at them and see anything other than a couple sickeningly in love?
The taste of victory turns sour in my mouth, but Anthony is already leading us to the third and final course.
“The last game of the day is the blindfold race. One of you will be blindfolded and you’ll have to maneuver these obstacles before throwing the ball into the hole. The other one will be the caller, guiding you through the obstacles.”
“Is your father a Survivor fan? Or possibly a fan of The Office?” I ask Paige. This reminds me of episodes in both shows.
“What?” she asks, not even looking at me. Her focus is on the rules of the game, nothing else.
“Never mind.”
The course is pretty impressive. There are some chests and poles as obstacles, and the board with a hole we’re supposed to aim at is about fifteen feet in the water.
Paige decides I’ll be the one blindfolded. “This is it. We just need to win this one, and that’s it.”
“Is that your pep talk?”
She rolls her pretty eyes at me. “Stop taunting and focus on the game.”
“Me? We almost lost the last one because you were too busy staring at my arms.”
“I wasn’t…” she starts to say, but I flex my biceps, pulling her attention to them. “Stop it! Focus.”
“Are you talking to me or to yourself?” My teeth dig into my lip to hide my smile.
She rolls her eyes before motioning her finger for me to turn around so she can blindfold me. Instead of dainty fingers, I get the rough treatment. She ties the blindfold like I’m cattle, snapping my head back a few times.
“Geez, buy me dinner first.” It’s my attempt at a joke, but she grabs a strand of my hair, tugging it playfully, and I fight to swallow a moan.
“Callers, place your players at the starting mat,” Anthony tells us.
Paige wraps her fingers around my shoulders, leading me to my left. Then she’s gone. Anthony counts us in, and we’re off.
“Over, over!” Paige’s voice pierces my eardrums like she’s right next to me. I lift a leg, but there’s nothing in front of me. “Not yet! Take two more steps and then go over.”
Jordan matches her, shouting at Emma at full volume. Finally, I find a chest with my hands and climb over it. I stumble on the way down, but Paige is having none of it.
“Get up. Hurry!”
I hear a low thud and a groan next to me, right before my stomach smacks into something, knocking the breath out of my lungs. “Under! You need to go under.”
“Thanks,” I murmur quietly, making Emma giggle next to me. “Are they always like this?” I ask her.
“Yup. You should join us for game night. It’s a massacre.”
I huff a laugh, but Jordan and Paige don’t appreciate our two-second pause, each screaming at us to keep going. Since she’s the only one who has made no snide comments about Mom, I can exclude Emma from my hate train.
Paige, on the other hand, is moving up on the list. “Can you fucking listen to me, Ryan? Right! I told you to go right.”
I’m more careful now that I’ve sustained a few injuries from the objects in my way. I’m pretty sure both my knees are bruised. Rolling my closed eyes, I take a step to the right.
“Other riiight!” she yells at me.
My teeth grind together. “You mean left?”
“Focus. We’re almost there.”
She leads me to pick up the ball, and I trudge through the water until she tells me to stop. “Now you have to aim straight for the middle.”
I look back as if I have my vision. “And how would I do that? You need to tell me where to aim. Maneuver me directly across the hole.” I move half a step to the left before she tells me to throw.
She groans, letting me know I’ve missed. It takes me a minute to find my bag again. Then she maneuvers me back to where I stood. “Do I need to go longer or shorter?”
“Longer, but just maybe half a foot.”
Inhaling deeply, I channel my high school-baseball playing self and throw. A high-pitched scream is the first thing I hear before something slams into me.
My face scrunched, I pull the blindfold off, finding Paige wrapped tightly around me. Her eyes sparkle with glee, her smile as wide as I ever saw it. She’s also holding me in a hug while jumping up and down, which creates a not so uncomfortable friction in my mid area.
“We won! We won!” she squeals, as if she thinks I don’t understand what happened, but I’m simply trying to stop my dick from growing hard. She’s a head shorter than me and fits perfectly into my arms, which is not the direction my thoughts should be heading in.
I glance at others, seeing Mom and Roger smiling at us, and Jordan huffing with annoyance. Emma slips the blindfold off her hair and flashes me a wink that no one else notices. My mouth parts, and I take a step back, extracting myself from the hug.