Chapter Sixteen
“The game is called Stone Man,” Jeremiah said.
Noelle glanced over at him. Then she looked past him at Amara.
It was Saturday morning and ninety-one degrees in Heart Beach, and the three of them were standing knee-deep in the ocean.
On the beach behind them, people were lying out, tanning in the sun, or protecting themselves beneath umbrellas.
Amid the crowd, Robin was lounging in a beach chair, listening to a podcast with her eyes closed, while Harper and Ashley built a sandcastle.
Other kids splashed in the water or swam out on their boogie boards.
It was a little after ten thirty a.m., and the ocean was at low tide.
The water was expansive and far-reaching.
From her vantage point, Noelle could almost imagine that the world was her oyster.
“How do you play?” she asked, turning to Jeremiah again.
“You have to try to stay as still as possible when the waves hit,” he said. “If a wave knocks you down, you lose.”
“And you can’t try to swim into the wave either, because that’s cheating,” Amara added. She smirked at Jeremiah. “That’s what he always tries to do.”
“Lies,” Jeremiah said, but he was grinning. His white teeth sparkled in the sunlight. To Noelle, he said, “Wanna play?”
Water droplets glistened on his skin, and Noelle couldn’t help but gape at his strong, defined muscles.
At the crack of dawn, he’d gone for a run.
Apparently, this was something that he did multiple times a week, and his dedication showed.
As she looked at him, the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose and she involuntarily clenched her thighs together.
She was a hornball. Plain and simple. Last night in his Heart Beach bed, she and Jeremiah had slept on opposite ends without touching. Not even so much as an accidental foot brush. It had been for the best, but now she was starved. Deprived. She knew how amazing it felt when he touched her.
Earlier this morning before they’d left for the beach, Jeremiah had accidentally walked in on her before she had a chance to throw her cover-up on over her new neon pink bikini, another item that she’d bought during that initial shopping trip with Tati.
Jeremiah stood in the doorway, dazed, eyes trailing from her head to her toes as she was exposed to him in nothing but her bathing suit.
Her first instinct should have been to quickly grab her cover-up and shrug it on, but she didn’t immediately move.
She blamed it on her own surprise, but the truth was that she liked to be stared at by Jeremiah. Heart pounding, she’d stared back.
“I’m almost ready,” she’d said.
He’d blinked. Then, slowly, like his brain was coming back to life, he’d nodded, apologized, and said he’d wait for her downstairs.
Now, as they stood side by side in the ocean, he kept his attention trained on her face like he was trying really hard not to let his eyes drift down to her breasts.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking off her hornball thoughts. She kept her attention trained on his face too. “I’ll play Stone Man.”
The three of them waded farther out. When they stopped, the water hit just above Noelle’s belly button.
Jeremiah and Amara immediately locked in, planting their feet and holding their arms at their sides, trying not to move as the waves lapped against them.
Noelle laughed and copied their stances.
A series of waves passed and Noelle squealed when a bit of water splashed up in her face.
Before she had a chance to recover, Amara said, “Shit, here comes a big one.”
Noelle wiped her cheeks and blinked. A big wave was building toward them, formed from one of the boats driving by in the distance.
If she stayed put, the wave would most certainly do more than slightly splash her face.
It would overtake all three of them. Jeremiah and Amara were laughing, like this was exactly the kind of wave that they’d been waiting for.
Noelle’s heart began to pound harder. She knew how to swim but she hadn’t grown up playing this game like them.
She was going to get knocked over and end up swallowing a shit ton of salt water if she didn’t move, and she suddenly remembered that the taste of salt water made her nauseous.
“Actually, I’m done playing!” she announced, the shrill of her voice giving away her panic. She turned and tried to move her legs as quickly as she could back to shore.
“Wait!” Jeremiah called after her. “Don’t be scared! I’ll protect you!”
“What?!” she called back. She spared a glance behind her and saw Amara lifting her arms in the air, ready to embrace the big-ass wave. Jeremiah was laughing as he tried to catch up with Noelle.
“Here it comes!” Amara shouted.
Oh, fuck.
Noelle squeezed her eyes closed and waited for the wave to knock her over.
But then Jeremiah appeared by her side. He scooped her up in his strong arms like she weighed nothing.
He carried her as he ran toward the shore, laughing the entire time.
If she weren’t so shocked, she would have swooned.
He was almost to shore when the wave knocked into him, and they both fell over into the shallow water, with Noelle landing right on top of Jeremiah.
Her heart pounded as he grinned up at her, trying to catch his breath.
“I guess you don’t like Stone Man,” he said.
“Not my favorite game.” Laughter bubbled up inside of Noelle.
Her skin was buzzing from Jeremiah’s touch.
She wanted him to wrap his arms around her again, even though she definitely shouldn’t want something like that.
Plus, there were children present. She disentangled herself from him and stood up, offering her hand to pull him to his feet.
She couldn’t help grinning back at him. “Thank you. You’re my hero. ”
He shrugged and winked as he stood. “All in a day’s work.”
After she’d agreed to extend their agreement last Sunday, Jeremiah had wired the first half of her payment.
She’d never see that much money in her bank account at once.
(He also told her he’d give her his credit card again so that she could go shopping for new clothes whenever she needed over the next few weeks.) In total, he was paying her fifteen thousand dollars.
She still couldn’t believe it. That amount was significant to her, but clearly not for Jeremiah, since he’d proposed it to her so easily.
Right away, she’d set aside bill money for August, and she’d put the rest of the money in her savings account.
By the end of the summer, when Jeremiah sent the second half, she’d have enough money to cover the rest of her tuition for her final year of college, as well as fees and books for her classes, with a couple thousand left over.
Receiving this money also meant that she could take her time looking for a new job instead of rushing into the next available opening.
To imagine, none of this would have happened if Harold hadn’t fired her.
Yesterday evening, Jeremiah had picked her up and driven her back to Heart Beach.
She’d prepared herself for an awkward welcoming, but the Smiths had acted as if her and Jeremiah’s breakup had never happened.
They’d exchanged hugs and smiles, and they’d ordered pizza for dinner.
Afterward, they’d sat outside on the back patio and played charades.
Celeste was the only one who seemed to be treating Noelle a bit differently.
Noelle couldn’t necessarily put her finger on how.
Celeste certainly wasn’t being mean or rude.
But Noelle caught Celeste looking at her sometimes, like she was trying to figure her out.
She just hoped that Celeste didn’t look too closely.
Because then her and Jeremiah’s lie could go up in smoke.
And she also hoped that after summer ended, Jeremiah would try his best to be honest with his family.
“I won!” Amara declared now, as she ran toward them.
She was wearing a black strapless one-piece bathing suit.
If she owned clothes that weren’t black, Noelle hadn’t seen them yet.
The chic goth look suited her, though. The wave had flattened her curls against her head and the back of her neck. “Now I’m hungry.”
The three of them trekked through the sand back to their spot on the beach.
Robin lowered her sunglasses and smiled, still listening to her podcast, and the twins were laser focused on building their sandcastle.
Amara opened a bag of chips, lay flat on her towel, and reopened her copy of Rosemary’s Baby.
Noelle sat on her towel too and flipped open to her place in her fantastical thriller novel, The Apothecary’s Secret.
Jeremiah plopped down in front of Noelle.
He reached past her and grabbed her old copy of the first book in the Pirates of the Deep series.
He’d asked her to bring it so that he had something to read on the beach.
He’d started reading last night in bed, and from the current placement of his bookmark, he was getting through it pretty quickly.
Instead of reading her book, Noelle was busy admiring Jeremiah’s back muscles, when he glanced over his shoulder at her and caught her staring. She flashed an innocent smile, and he smirked like he knew exactly what she’d been doing.
“Do you think you can put some more sunblock on my back?” he asked.