Roxie
“So, what’s your over-under on James and Hallie getting married?” Sebastian asked me the next evening.
We were sitting in the backseat of the car on the way to a Memorial Day weekend party on the beach. He was nursing a bottle of sparkling water like it was champagne, elbow propped on the open window, the salt air ruffling the collar of his shirt.
Of course, he looked effortlessly handsome. Of course.
I rolled my eyes. “Wow. Jumping right to marriage? You skipped a few steps there, didn’t you?”
He grinned without looking at me. “I’m just saying, the tension is thick enough to eat with a spoon. And we both have eyes. Come on.”
I scoffed, leaning my head against the window as the car curved along the narrow, sandy road toward the beach. The glass was warm against my temple, the golden-hour sun casting everything in an impossibly soft light that made even my most cynical thoughts feel a little romantic.
“Just because there’s tension doesn’t mean it ends in a wedding,” I muttered.
Sebastian glanced at me sideways. “No, but it might.”
I could feel him watching me, waiting for a reaction, but I kept my face neutral.
“I give them until Labor Day,” he added. “Either they’ll be madly in love by then or trying to destroy each other.”
“You seem extremely interested in their relationship. Which is strange coming from a man that I don’t think has ever had a long-term relationship and who probably doesn’t even believe in love,” I said, turning back to him with one raised brow.
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I never said I didn’t believe in love.”
Sebastian shifted in his seat, setting his water bottle down in the cup holder like he suddenly needed both hands free to argue. “I just don’t think most people know what to do with it when they find it.”
I snorted. “Wow. That’s somehow worse.”
He smirked. “I’m a realist, Rox. That’s not a crime.”
“No, but it’s depressing.”
He looked out the window again, his expression unreadable now. “Depressing doesn’t mean untrue.”
The breeze lifted the edges of his shirt collar again, and for one stupid second, I hated the wind for touching him like that. As if it had any right.
I folded my arms and turned away, pretending to be interested in the sand dunes coming into view through the windshield. “I still say you’re full of shit.”
“That so?” he asked, voice lower now, but not sharp. More curious.
My instinct was to snap back, and reveal that this image he cultivated, the one of the Wall Street playboy living fast and loose, was nothing but a fabrication. But the car pulled to a stop in the parking lot before I could say anything.
Sebastian stepped out first before rounding the car to hold the door open for me. As I slid out, his hand lingered near my lower back, and I despised the sudden warmth that bloomed there because of him, and heat simmering between us despite everything.
The beach stretched out before us in a hazy golden sprawl of movement and sound. People danced barefoot in the sand, music pulsed from speakers hidden behind mismatched wooden tables, and the scent of wood smoke tangled with saltwater in the air.
Already ahead, Hallie and James were making their way to the central area, in search of a server. When she laughed, she leaned in, prompting him to wrap his arm around her shoulders and pull her closer still.
Sebastian followed my gaze. “I mean, if they’re not sleeping together already, they’re doing a pretty convincing impression.”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of more commentary.
Especially when it came to my best friend and her happiness.
Hallie and James had clearly come to some sort of mutual agreement—they go on dates that Hallie can write about for her article and James got …
whatever it was he was getting out of this arrangement.
But it seemed like there was something more like a real relationship behind whatever it was they’d arranged.
I didn’t know the ins and outs of it, but I did know Hallie was happy, and that was all that mattered.
I grabbed two drinks off a passing server’s tray. One looked bright and citrusy and the other was something darker that looked like scotch. I shoved the darker drink into his hand without looking.
“Here,” I said. “So you can keep your mouth busy.”
He laughed quietly. “You’ve been staring at my mouth then, King?”
I felt my face burn at his question, but I wouldn’t give him the acknowledgment of an answer.
“And you remember my drink order?” he asked, not at all deterred by my silence.
“Don’t get all flattered,” I warned him. “I also remember you stealing expensive bottles of scotch from your father’s office as a way to get back at him growing up. Doesn’t mean I’m sentimental about it.”
“Sure,” he murmured as he sipped, watching me over the rim of his glass. “We can go with that.”
We wandered closer to the bonfire, where the heat cut through the early evening breeze. People were already dancing, some tipsy, some barefoot, some clearly trying to make memories they wouldn’t remember tomorrow.
I wasn’t drunk enough for any of it. Not yet.
So when a hand appeared in front of me, palm up in a kind of question, I raised an eyebrow in Sebastian’s direction.
“Want to dance?”
His voice was a low rumble, barely audible over the rhythmic beat of the music coming from the beach speakers.
If there was one thing Sebastian was good at, it was being persistent.
Despite agreeing to this barely there truce that we had, I still had my guard up.
But that didn’t seem to bother him one bit.
That damned crooked smile of his played at the edges of his mouth like he already knew what my answer would be.
“I don’t dance,” I said, even though we both knew that wasn’t true.
He rolled his eyes at me as if it was the most ridiculous thing I’d said to him yet. “Growing up, any time you had even a sip of alcohol and we were in the vicinity of music, you’d make your own dance floor.”
“I’m not that girl anymore.”
For a fleeting moment, I saw a shadow cross Sebastian’s face as his grin faltered. But what I thought I saw in his eyes was not an emotion I was used to seeing on him—guilt.
“No,” he said, dropping his hand but not backing away. “You’re not.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, my fingers stretched out to meet his, skin against skin.
I’m not sure what I was doing exactly. Nothing ever made sense when it came to me and Sebastian. But he had extended an olive branch this weekend. The least I could do was meet him halfway.
He gazed at our intertwined hands, a flicker of disbelief crossing his face, as if he hadn’t anticipated this. As if he was expecting a resounding “no.”
Which only made the sting in my chest worse.
Sebastian’s fingers curled around mine, slow and deliberate, and that tiny movement sent a ripple of heat up my spine. We didn’t speak. We just walked—hand in hand—toward the edge of the makeshift dancefloor where the sand was warm beneath our feet and the fire crackled somewhere behind us.
I’d expected him to start dancing immediately, to make some snarky comment or pull me into some dramatic dip just to show off like he used to do when we were kids.
But he didn’t. He just stood in front of me, still holding my hand, the music humming low and steady around us.
The crowd faded to a blur of movement, a smear of laughter and flickering flames.
And then he stepped closer.
His other hand found my waist, warm against the exposed skin just above my hip.
My breath caught in my throat, but I didn’t pull away.
My hands settled awkwardly on his shoulders, then slowly slid up until they were around the back of his neck.
I hated how easy it was to remember what this felt like.
But a small part of me that had been missing for years felt like it was coming back to life.
We began to move, bodies swaying to the rhythm of the music. Just as we had done countless times before. When we were Seb and Rox—two kids wanting to take on the world together.
His thumb brushed against the bare skin of my waist, just the lightest touch, but it sent goosebumps racing up my arms.
“I don’t know if I can remember the last time we did this,” he whispered softly, his voice nearly drowned by the music and the crash of the waves.
I swallowed. “I remember.” How could I forget? “The White Party Memorial Day weekend that final summer. You pulled me onto the dance floor after stealing me way too many margaritas from the bartender and we danced to a Norah Jones song.”
Sebastian’s mouth curved, but it wasn’t the smug smirk he usually wore. It was something quieter, sadder. “You kept humming it for the rest of the night,” he said. “I thought you were drunk. But you said it was stuck in your head.”
“I was trying to relive it,” I admitted after a few beats of silence.
Sebastian’s brows pulled together in confusion.
“I wanted to make sure I remembered every second of it,” I continued. “Because it felt like a promise.”
My chest tightened at the memory. Because it was a promise, at least to me. But like so many other things between us, it had gone unspoken.
“God, we were such idiots,” Sebastian murmured.
I let out a short, breathless laugh. “Still are, probably. I mean look at us. Reliving our teenage years.”
We were quiet then. Just moved in a slow, lazy circle, as the sky melted into brilliant colors. The music shifted into something low and smoky with a saxophone curling through the beat. The party sounds faded into the background.
“I missed this,” he said eventually. Not loudly. Not some grand statement. Just a quiet confession of someone who didn’t say things unless he meant them.
I looked up at him, startled by the way he was looking at me. Like he was missing more than just dancing with me.
“That makes one of us,” I said lightly, but it came out more brittle than I intended.
He smiled. “Liar.”
I couldn’t deny it.
Because he was right. I had missed this. Missed him.
I was just too scared to admit it.