Nope. No thoughts of Annie. I stretch out on my chair, let the sun soak me. It’s been so much easier, turning it all off. And it works better, too. It’s like back when they’d force me to fight. As soon as I’d give up and disengage my feelings, myself, I could go on pure instinct and everything made sense, everything was action-reaction with no thought necessary.
Being with James now is like that. I don’t have to think. I don’t have to feel. I put myself on the path he wants and just go. I’m not happy, but I’m not unhappy. I am perfectly nothing, and it is easy. James takes care of me.
“Should I call Eden to meet us?” he asks, pulling off his shirt (I love I love I love it when he does this). He’s on a lounge chair right next to mine. They are touching. We are not touching, but we could be. He never touches me without a reason.
He is very, very careful. I wish he wouldn’t be.
“Why on earth would we want Eden to meet us?” I ask.
“She might feel bad.”
“Ah, but that’s the glory of not being Eden. She can feel bad all she wants and we never have to feel it!”
“You, beautiful girl, are mean.”
I smile and pull my sunglasses down. “You love me.”
He laughs (I wish he hadn’t laughed, why did he laugh?) and leans back into his own chair. The beach isn’t crowded, but there are enough people to populate the rush of the bay with noise and laughter and it is all a happy, busy hum in the background.
I tap, tap, tap without urgency, because I am nothing and nothing matters.
“James? Is that you? I don’t believe it!” A man’s voice, with a trace of an accent I can’t place. I don’t sit up but turn my head to see an olive-skinned, dark-curly-haired guy around James’s age laugh and raise his arms as though he expects James to get up and hug him.
“Rafael,” James says, sitting up but not standing. Rafael slaps his hand on James’s back.
“It’s, what, two years? Where have you been?”
“Some of us have to work for a living, you know.”
Rafael laughs, tipping his head back, his Adam’s apple bobbing under a hint of dark stubble in the sun. Before he even looks my way I know he is wrong. Not dangerous wrong, but…potentially dangerous wrong. And there’s something else. The way he stands over James, the way his smile is stretched to show all his teeth. He knew James would be here. This wasn’t a chance encounter. But I don’t think it’s one James expected.
“And who is your beautiful friend? Is she—she isn’t one of those girls, is she? The ones you told me about?”
James waves a hand dismissively in the air, but I see the lines of his shoulders, they are tight. He isn’t happy, but you would never know from his voice. “I said a lot of things when I was drunk, Rafael. Which was pretty much all the time. You really believed my stories?”
“About women who can see into your head? Of course I did. It explains my ex perfectly. But you never answered who your friend is.” He leans over James’s chair to mine and I feel very vulnerable laid out in just a bikini, I want to stand, to get in a defensive stance, but I don’t need to.
Not yet.
“Emilia,” I say, and he takes my hand (he shouldn’t touch my hand) and brings it to his lips.
“Charmed. So you cannot see the future or read my thoughts?”
“Judging by the way you’re staring at my chest, I’m glad I can’t read your mind.” I sit up. (Well-muscled but in a carefully sculpted way. No practical use. I could snap his wrist.) I pull my hand away.
He laughs, turns, and slaps James’s shoulders again. “I like this one. Is she yours?”
James shifts closer to me, puts an arm behind me, crossing the full length of my back. His skin is on so much of my skin, and he did it on purpose. “Yeah.”
I lean my head on his shoulder and I can’t help it, there is a smile blooming on my whole face, my whole body. I feel this smile, like I haven’t felt anything in a very long time. I am his. I am.
Tonight I am going to dance with James. Tonight I am going to dance with him and he will kiss me, and we will be together. I don’t care if there is the little wrong buzzing at the back of my head. I want this.
Rafael winks. “You always had the best taste. Come back to the yacht with me; it’ll be like old times. You can share your good fortune.”
Again Rafael smiles at me and he is wronger than wrong, but there is no danger here on this bright beach next to James. Still, my smile drops and my eyes narrow and I could break-snap-break him.
“We have other plans.”
“Cancel them. You and I have things to discuss. So much to catch up on.” Rafael has lost the false good-natured tone of his voice; it’s brimming with intensity now.
James pretends not to notice Rafael’s mood, waving a hand in the air as he leans back in his chair and pulls my head onto his shoulder, draping his fingers on the curve of my waist and it is nice, so nice, I think I have never been this happy.
Rafael slides back into a smile. “You know my number. And I know yours.” He leaves and I do not move, will not move, not ever. Right, right, right. I will make this feel right.
“Sorry about him,” James mutters.