I was on the verge of giving her exactly what she was asking for. I’d have gladly swept that sweet ass right up and made a night out of getting her naked down the hallway behind closed doors. But that was too much, too fast, and this was just testing the waters. I wanted her, but I wanted her to want me more. If not because that kind of shit made me hot—because then I wasn’t the only one in danger of getting too involved. As selfish as it was.
Instead I pulled away, eyes remaining closed for a prolonged second with our foreheads connected. “Easy.” I smirked. “Don’t let me catch you slipping, O. Wouldn’t want me getting any ideas now.”
She hummed in response, recognizing she’d let those ice-cold walls down at my first touch, but hardly caring in the moment. “Definitely not.”
“Let’s get outside, Trouble.” I pulled her along behind me and whisked us out the door.
“All right, what’s this big surprise?” Mateo asked impatiently as we congregated in the driveway. I stood skeptically beside my roommate and his girlfriend, analyzing O’s expressions under the glowing Christmas lights.
A breeze had blown in when the sun disappeared and everyone but her was wearing a sweatshirt, as if it weren’t seventy degrees. Ophelia and I were different in that very trivial way. I felt things too hot, she was used to the unending cold.
“I figured since we’re doing things a little bit differently this year, and you guys graciously opened your home to me to decorate all day long, I’d also add a little bit of a tropical feel to match the weather.”
“The house is surrounded by palm trees,” Mateo pointed out.
“Technicality.” She waved it off. “Anyways, without further ado…” Bending down to the extension cord on the ground, Ophelia plugged a smaller wire in her hand into the butt end of it, sending a low thrumming spark through the cable.
I winced on impact. “Oh, fuck.”
Above the garage, a neon yellow and green pineapple glowed to life where she'd anchored it secretly. It was ten times brighter than the rest of the colorful Christmas lights Cap and I had spent all afternoon hanging, and Tally snorted out a laugh as her boyfriend looked on horrified.
“Phee, I don’t think you understand.” Tally tugged her lip between her teeth.
“That’s great.” Mateo threw his hands up. “Now the neighbors think we’re swingers, too.”
10
It had been two days since Frankie kissed me.
Nat and I decided on a recovery day after the first few in Florida felt more like a never-ending hangover than a relaxing vacation.
We were both young and shapely, sure, but somewhere along the way we’d also stopped being able to do three rounds of shots without suffering the consequences for up to forty-eight hours following.
Thank God for the highs and lows of Floridian weather, because for the vast majority of the following day it rained like a typhoon was passing through, so both of us were content to drink coconut water in the apartment while we reorganized the Renaissance painting that was the guest bedroom.
Regardless of the distance though, I couldn’t spend more than half an hour without wondering what the man from under the mistletoe was doing or when I would inevitably be graced with his cocksure presence again.
Nat slipped away a few times to talk on the phone or close herself into her bedroom where I could still hear the breathy giggles of flirtation filtering through the thin wood. She and Mateo were so whipped over one another it made me grin just as much as it made me cringe.
I wanted something like they had. The inability to leave another person alone due to sheer adoration. I wanted to wake up to a text from a guy that turned over on his pillow in the morning and the first thing he thought of was me. Go grocery shopping together for no other reason than spending time in the same space. Have a little drawer in a dresser to put some of my socks and panties and a few extra shirts even though we both knew I’d just be wearing his anyway.
Every boyfriend in my life had been a crisis of convenience at best. Someone to accompany me at parties in college, a few months with a coworker to suppress my mother breathing down my throat. A blue-collar guy that brought me to his family’s Sunday dinner—who turned out to also be seeing three other girls on different nights of the week.
I dated a school district administrator, a bartender, a fucking juggler. I figured out the younger they were, the more I was wasting my time, so I started shooting higher. Then I ended up dating married men that conveniently forgot to mention it.
At that point, I’d exhausted every option in Pine Ridge—and wasn’t holding out on finding a forever kind of love anywhere in the city either. But what I really didn’t expect was the hopeful buzz of whatever the fuck Frankie Casado had been injecting me with over the past four whirlwind days.
Doled in tanning oil and the stringiest suits we could find to take advantage of the sun and sand, Nat and I made the drive out to Hollywood Beach.
For mid-December it was unseasonably warm. The beach was littered with families crashing along the shore with each wave, groups of people throwing Frisbee and bumping volleyballs to one another. There were pinwheels of blue umbrellas and nautical chairs dotted asymmetrically down the sand, and the heat of the day beat down so hard on the landscape that the skin under our feet burned with each step to an open plot.
We laid out on towels next to one another, listening to the tiny speaker Nat had packed and sipping vodka lemonade behind the discretion of our travel mugs. There may not have been many rules in Florida but apparently open containers were where lawmakers drew the line.
“That’s it, I’m spending every December for the rest of time in Florida,” I said as I flipped over onto my back. “A white Christmas is so overrated.”
Nat giggled, clinking the metallic edge of her cup against mine. “The invitation is indefinite. I say you stay forever, actually.”
“I wish.” My mind wandered to what my classroom of kids back home might be doing. It was hard to leave them just as the semester was ending, but I was seriously enjoying the break. “How can you take so much time off work?” I asked. “The bank doesn’t mind?”
“What?”
“The bank doesn’t care that you’re taking a vacation?”
Natalia’s confused eyebrow evened out under the thick frame of her sunglasses. “Oh, right. No, I basically make my own hours. I’m at the top of every performance report.”
“Huh,” I mused. “I don’t remember you ever being that great at math in college.” I closed my eyes and nestled my shoulders into the sand, digging my heels into two little divots for support.
“Sometimes it pays to step outside your comfort zone,” Nat suggested. “You never know what you might be missing.”
“Okay, I know we’re not talking about you being an accountant anymore, Natalia.”
“Would it really be so bad to let him in? You fucking kissed him already. You invited the need.”