Chapter 18 #3
I would love to keep dating you too.
“Might we perhaps be friends when we’re not in the same place, and more when we are?”
I raise my brow, lips pursed skeptically. “That sounds like a recipe for disaster.”
Trouble flashes in his eyes. “But think of the fun.”
A smile creeps up my face. It would be fun. To have someone wonderful to look forward to seeing every so often. To adventure with when I’m here or when he’s on the East Coast.
“All right,” I say slowly.
“All right?”
I nod. “Accepting the proposed rule, if we add a clause.”
“Hit me with it.”
“Friends when we’re not in the same place, more when we are, but no sex unless we do mutually decide to start”—I throw up air quotes—“something real.”
Reed tilts his head a few degrees to the right, lips curling into a wicked smile. “Interesting addendum, Romona.”
“Less messy, R. Tyler.”
His hands sweep under my jacket, up to my shoulders, and drift down my back, caressing the skin with his nails through the thin fabric of this dress. I shudder as they brush over my ass, a flush of gold dust sweeping up my torso. Reed’s pupils dilate, eating away at the hypnotic neon blue.
“Doth thou accept the clause?” My voice is quiet.
He nods. “Thou accepts the clause.”
I reach up, placing my thumb over the middle of his wide mouth, pressing into his lips. Want pulses under my skin, like a shock. “So if we’re in the same place, and one of us has started seeing someone else, we’re friends?” I pull my thumb down to his chin.
“And if we start seeing someone else we actually like, we let the other know?” He tugs me closer again, so our stomachs are flush. “That’s what friends do.”
I chuckle, dropping my hand from his face. “Slow-mo short-distance dating, long-distance chill.”
Reed grins, touching his nose to mine. “Are you going to tell me every time you’re in the area?”
“If you want me to. I don’t want to be weird about it.”
He squeezes my legs. It sends corkscrews of shivering light bounding up my thighs. “Tell me. And I’ll tell you—let’s make that a rule so there’s less chance of miscommunication. Even if we don’t have time to see each other. Let’s just inform anyway.”
My brain whirs through the lust fog, testing for cracks in the boundaries we’re setting up. “All right. Should we make an escape clause?”
His fingers come up to trace my temple, down the sides of my face, and tuck my hair behind my ears. “Should we?” he says skeptically.
I bob my chin. “I think it’s the smart thing to do. How ’bout if we want to pull the plug on this whole ordeal at any time, we can say . . . ‘The Sunrise Away bag is lost.’”
He frowns. “What then? We’re just friends in person and away?”
I nod. “Yeah, and if we need a complete break with no contact, maybe, ‘The Sunrise Away bag is lost for good.’ That way we don’t have to ever get weird about it. We can be adults. No ghosting. Just healthy moving on.”
“Okay,” he says quietly, the hint of a smile returning to his eyes. “Organized, thorough. I like it. Can we also have a code phrase that means the opposite? Something stealth for ‘the game is fucking on—I’m having an amazing time.’ It feels like bad karma to not balance that out.”
A toothy smile breaks across my face. “Okay.” I slide off him, settling back onto the blue wood of the lifeguard tower, against his right side where there’s no danger of me violating the sex rule I just instated. “What’ll it be?”
He peers out at the ocean for a beat. I watch as it comes to him—something softens in his jaw. He quirks a brow. “I’ll see you at the airport?”
I close my eyes, smile burning deeper into my cheeks. “That’s perfect.”
I relax my head against the hutch. Lean into the heat of Reed’s side. We sink into the quiet, listening to the waves break and recede. I don’t know how long we’ve been like that when he breaks the silence.
“For me, love is . . . feeling safe,” Reed says pensively toward the water. “Honesty. Loyalty. Leading with kindness. Being gentle with your hard truths.
“Yes and-ing during an argument instead of making excuses and throwing up walls. Everyday things. Respecting each other’s quirks.
Picking up the slack when you know your partner’s struggling, and knowing they would do the same.
Going out of your way to sync up your schedules so you can climb into bed at the same time. ” He swallows. “Yeah.”
My heart’s wiggled its way back up into my throat.
I blink at the uncalled-for emotional response building behind my eyes.
A faint noise breaks the silence of the night, and we both startle, scrambling to our feet.
A car crunching over gravel. A door slamming shut.
A hundred yards down the beach, a car just dropped a man off in the parking lot.
He lumbers toward the Ford Explorer.
I hit the sand at a sprint, rage flaring to life in my chest. My legs are screaming after thirty seconds. I open my phone camera and hit record as I’m rounding Glenn’s car. His trunk is open, and he’s sitting, hunched forward, legs dangling, holding an empty bottle of rum like a drunken pirate.
I step out in front of him, heaving in gusty, dramatic breaths and clutching a cramp on my right side. “Get out of the car, Glenn.”
Glenn glares at me, frustration shining in his eyes for a brief moment before he deflates and hangs his head. “Sorry.”