Andrew comes up next to me, gazing out at the deserted beach. He takes my hand. “We can turn back now, there’s still time,” he taunts me. “Once they get us away from the car, it might be the last time we ever see each other.” He squeezes my hand and pulls me closer to him playfully.
“I think we’ll manage,” I say just as the last of them pile out of the Jeep and meet us at the back of the vehicles.
Tate opens the back of the Jeep and lifts out a giant ice chest and drops it in the sand. “We’ve got plenty of beer,” he says, lifting the lid and reaching inside.
He tosses a bottle of Corona to Andrew. Not Andrew’s first choice of beer, I know, but he won’t turn one down, either.
Bray and her fiancé, I can’t even remember his name, step up together beside me while Tate pops the cap on another bottle of Corona and hands it out to me.
I take it. “Thanks.”
Andrew pops the cap on his with the bottle opener he keeps on his key ring.
“If you’ve got any blankets to lie on, might want to bring one,” Tate says. His girlfriend joins him, passing me a smile as she walks in between us wearing her skimpy white bikini. “And I’ve got a kickass system in this baby,” he adds, patting the back of the Jeep with his hand, “so I’ve also got the music covered.”
Andrew pops the trunk and grabs the blanket he always keeps back there, the same one we used the night we tried to sleep in that field last July. Only now, thanks to me, it has been washed and doesn’t stink like oil and car funk.
“Where are my shorts?” I ask, rummaging around in the backseat.
“There right here,” Andrew says from the trunk. When I lean out of the car, he throws them toward me, and I catch them in midair.
“I don’t plan on swimming in that abyss at night,” I say, slipping them on over my red bikini bottoms.
Overhearing, Bray says, “I’m glad I’m not the only one!”
I smile over the roof of the Chevelle at her and then shut the door. “Have you been out here before with them?”
Tate and the others are walking toward the beach now carrying the ice chest, beach bags, and other random items. They leave the doors open on the Jeep with the speakers blasting rock music.
“We did last night,” Bray says, “but Elias got drunk way too early and started puking up his insides, so I drove us back to our hotel pretty early.”
Elias, yeah, that’s her fiancé’s name. He shakes his head and gives her the sarcastic yeah-thanks-for-telling-everybody look.
Andrew and I walk alongside Bray and Elias, hand in hand toward everybody else already setting up camp not too far out, closer to the water. As we step up and lay our blanket out on the sand, Tate lights a match and tosses it onto a pile of tree branches. The flame ignites the lighter fluid he had already squirted all over the pile. A tall, searing rod of fire curls up over the top of the pile and illuminates the darkness all around us with a dancing orange glow. Already the heat from the flames are making me hot, so I slide our blanket a few feet farther away from the bonfire before Andrew and I sit down on it. Bray and Elias follow suit with two giant beach towels. Tate, his brother, and the other three girls all share a large quilt. I dig the bottom of my beer bottle into the sand beside me so that it sits upright.
Tate makes me think of those really blond, tanned California surfers. Like every guy here, including Andrew, Tate sits with his knees bent upward and his arms propped on them at the wrists. And as I’m quietly checking everybody else out, I catch something briefly in the corner of my eye that instantly puts me into territorial mode. The blonde sitting next to Tate’s brother, who I doubt is his girlfriend because they don’t act like they’re together, is watching Andrew with hungry eyes. I don’t just mean the innocent look-but-won’t-touch kind. No, this girl would try to sleep with him the second I walked away.
When she notices me watching her, she looks away and starts talking to the other girl beside her.
I don’t have anything to worry about where Andrew is concerned, but if she disrespected me knowing he’s my fiancé, I would not think twice about kicking her ass.
I wonder if Andrew noticed.
Andrew
I hope Camryn didn’t notice the look that chick was giving me just now. Five seconds alone with that one anywhere out here, and she’d try to get me to fuck her. No way in hell would I ever entertain that, but this bonfire party just got a bit more interesting.
I’d bet my left nut she has slept with Tate and his brother already. Probably not Elias—he seems like the loyal type—but she’d do him, too, if he was up for it.
Shit, she just looked at me again.
I glance over at Camryn to keep from meeting the chick’s gaze and sure enough, Camryn’s got that telling smile on her face. Yeah, she definitely saw it.
I reach out, pick Camryn up, and set her between my legs.
“Don’t worry, baby,” I whisper into her ear, and then I kiss her neck to make sure the chick sees it.