“Wow, you really think highly of yourself, don’t you?” I can’t keep the laughter from my voice.
“Damn straight!” he says and pulls me along beside him. “Before these two weeks are over, I can guarantee you three things.” He holds up three fingers as we continue onward toward the water. “One”—he holds up one finger—“you’ll never want to go back to San Diego once Hawaii is done with you.” He holds up two fingers. “Two—that photography love of yours will start to take the place of everything else in your life. And three”—he wiggles three fingers and we stop on the beach where the water can pool around our feet—“you’ll kiss me at least once before you go home.”
I blush hard and it feels like my eyes are bugging out of my head. “I might peck you on the cheek or something, but—”
“No,” he says, smiling and quite serious, “it’ll be a full-on, tongue-dancing kind of kiss.”
I smack him playfully on the arm—something is fluttering around inside my belly.
“Geez!”
Luke grabs my hand and pulls me out to the water with him, where we swim and hang out on the cliffs until late in the afternoon. People come and go throughout the hours, sometimes leaving us with Alicia, Braedon, and a few of their close friends to have the area to ourselves for a while before more people show up in intervals.
“Backflip!” someone says just before Luke jumps into the water for probably the twentieth time.
And every time he does it, it ties my stomach up in knots. But there’s something about him that I can’t quite figure out when I watch him leap off the edge of that cliff; it’s not overconfidence or showing off or recklessness, but something deeper, more profound. Maybe it’s a sense of freedom, or a natural high that consumes him while he’s in the air, as if he had been born with a pair of wings that only he can see. But the more time I spend with him, the more intrigued I become. Sure, he’s gorgeous and funny and polite and all the kinds of things—so far—that would make my mom love him to death. But what intrigues and excites me more is how he kind of makes me want to jump off that stupid cliff regardless of how scared I am of it.
ELEVEN
Sienna
After nightfall Luke and I head to the barbecue at Alicia and Braedon’s place. It’s a tiny house just minutes from the beach, and apparently someone else other than them live here as well, because I can smell the food already cooking from the backyard as we walk up. Voices carry around the side of the house, laughter and conversation that may or may not be accompanied by alcohol.
“Luke!” a voice calls out when we step outside into the backyard from the back door of the house. A girl, about my height but maybe a little shorter, springs to her feet from a lawn chair and falls into his arms. She has blond hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of her head, and she’s really fit, like she works out regularly; little knot-like muscles flex in her biceps as her arms hang about Luke’s neck. She’s cute, more tomboy than girly girl, but not so tomboy that I feel like I have nothing to worry about when it comes to Luke—she’s actually kind of adorable.
I stand next to him, coiling my fingers together down in front of me, my eyes straying from them and toward the fresh-cut grass, instead. But then suddenly Luke’s hand hooks around my waist and he pulls me closer.
“Kendra, this is Sienna. Sienna, this is my good friend Kendra.”
She smiles at me close-lipped, her brown eyes studying me for a brief, secret moment that usually only other girls can detect. She glances at Luke once, and something passes between them before she looks back at me.
“Hi, Sienna,” she says, her smile slowly lengthening.
“Hi. It’s nice to meet you.”