Feeling something pretty close to panic, or maybe it was desperation, filling my belly, I reached over to poke him, not knowing what else to say or do to get him to stop making that distant face.
Luckily that was enough to get him out of his trance because he blinked once and turned to face me, an easygoing expression on his face finally, not the strange one that had been on there right before. “You okay?” he asked, looking at me like it was the first time he’d seen me in a long time, his gaze going from my face down, being totally obvious about checking out my bathing suit.
I wasn’t going to think about it.
“Yes,” I said to him, noticing he still hadn’t taken his shirt off. “Are you?”
He did that quick nod again that made my stomach clench. What was going on with him?
“Sure?”
“Yeah,” he said, his gaze finally swinging slightly lower, a dimple prickling at his cheek. “That’s cute.”
My face turned as red as my bathing suit. At the rate I was going, I needed to get a sunburn all over so it wouldn’t be so obvious every day.
His index finger touched my right strap so lightly, I almost didn’t feel it. “Did you make it?”
I fought the urge to squirm. “My bathing suit?”
“Uh-huh,” he said, now checking out the little gold clasp right between where my barely B-cup boobs were.
No one had ever looked anywhere below my neck before. “No. It was Jasmine’s, but she gave it to me.” I picked at the strap he’d just finished touching, giving it a pop. “It looks better on her, but I like it.”
The smile that came over Aaron’s mouth was the most gradual, slowest thing I’d ever seen. It was almost pitying, but something about it cut that corner and made it so sweet, it confused me even more. And of all the words he could’ve said to me, he went with, “I doubt it, RC.” And with that expression still on his face, he lifted his chin and frowned down at my skin. “You don’t have a scar.”
I made a noise in my throat loud enough for him to glance up at. “From my surgery?” I basically croaked, even though I knew that had to be what he was talking about.
Aaron nodded, his gaze flicking back down at the triangle of exposed skin on my chest.
“They didn’t… the catheters were by my…” I waved my hand around my groin. “Hips.”
That had him glancing back at me, one eyebrow up. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I smiled.
Another slow smile crawled across that mouth I’d probably be daydreaming over for the rest of my life. “All right. Hurry up and finish putting sunblock on then, would you?”
I wrinkled my nose but reached for the tube, part of me glad he was letting the surgery talk go. I put more sunblock on my palm as I bounced my gaze from my palm to Aaron and back again, attempting to move the conversation along before he changed his mind. “Did you not bring any?”
Like every other man I’d ever known, he didn’t “need” any.
I tipped my head to the side and gave him a flat look that had him cracking into a grin like he hadn’t just been staring off into space minutes ago and then staring at my bathing suit and chest. “Fine,” he finally groaned, taking the sunblock from where I’d left it balanced on my thigh.
Trying my best not to be obvious as I spread the cream over my forearms before moving up to my biceps and shoulders, I watched as he rubbed the barest amount into his legs, the white getting stuck in the light brown hairs and over the tops of his big, almost pale feet. There was a line somewhere a few inches above his ankle bone where the color of his legs changed almost dramatically to the shade of light tan his feet were. From his boots, I figured.
“Hey, don’t be stingy. Get some more sunblock if you need it,” I told him.
He let out this little snicker in his nose. But that was all. I smiled at him and he smiled back at me, before he dropped his hand and went back to applying sunscreen, his hands dipping beneath the hem of his shirt to rub at his chest without exposing more than a sliver of a lean hip and an inch of skin above his swim trunks.
I finished putting sunscreen on my face when Aaron rolled up to his knees on his own towel, his body facing mine. He didn’t move for a second, and I didn’t want to look at his face to see what he was focused on, until finally he said, “You missed a spot.”
When his thumb went to the shell of my ear, smoothing sunblock on it before swiping down to rub at my earlobe, moving the small star-shaped studs there, I let him. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Keeping my gaze on the center of my chest so he couldn’t see the struggle going on inside of me was harder than I’d ever imagined, especially when he did the same thing to my other ear, and I had to hold in my breath to keep from panting.
He was touching my ears for freaking sakes. If I didn’t know how sad my experiences with men were, I would have been more surprised at how pathetic I felt getting excited at him touching my earlobes of all things. Lame.
I swallowed and waited until Aaron moved his hand to the center of my face, his thumb swiping across my chin slowly before pulling back and saying, “There.”
All I could do was manage to grind out a “thank you” that sounded like I was out of breath.
Aaron got to his feet and I did the same, rubbing some more cream under the seam of the bathing suit on my bottom. I was doing that when Aaron’s shirt fluttered to the sand. He was shirtless. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, because how many times had I seen a shirtless guy? A thousand? Thank you, Internet. I could be calm. Be cool.
I made sure not to suddenly look up and ogle him or make him self-conscious as I kept rubbing sunblock into my skin. When it had been long enough, and I couldn’t think of anything else to stall with, I let out a breath and had a smile already on my face when I raised my eyes all casual and friendly. Standing under the sun, the difference between the almost bronze color on his face, neck, and arms, and the lighter, slightly tan shade on his chest, legs, and feet, was pretty apparent. I would never call it a farmer’s tan though. There was no hint of red or pink on his skin, like my mom or Tali would get if they were under the sun for too long. No matter how much those two tried, they never got tan. They were either white or red, there was no in-between.
Aaron was not one of those people. He was light gold and he was gold, there was no hiding it. But the main thing that there was no hiding from was that body under the three different shades of his skin tone.
Stick a needle in me, I was done.
I saw the rest of my life in that split second.
There was never going to be getting over Aaron. Ever. I was going to die alone. I accepted that as I gave up trying to be sneaky, taking in the way he was built. He wasn’t big and bulky, or barrel-chested in any way. Aaron was slightly thicker than a swimmer but had their physique, all abs and shoulders and long biceps. He was perfect. Absolutely perfect. That saying about God breaking the mold when they made someone had been written with Aaron’s birth in mind. Each muscle looked like it had been chiseled, each bone perfectly sculpted. Even his nipples were perfect. How? How?
How was I supposed to look at this for nearly an entire week and know he was just my freaking friend?
The answer was: I had no idea how that was supposed to happen. I really didn’t. I’d lied to myself and tried to convince myself it was possible, but it wasn’t, was it?
I swallowed and looked away, reminding myself not to be that person. I could do this. I could survive this week. I had to.
“Ready?” he asked, making me glance back at him, but that time, keeping my gaze on his face.
There was a knot in my throat as I nodded. “Yeah. But if you want to go ahead of me and hang out with your friends, it’s fine. I don’t mean to take up all your time.” His mouth did that turn thing. “I can be alone.”