LAUREN
Emerson treated me like I was her own personal Beach Party Barbie.
She’d tossed aside my worn cutoffs and my favorite Star Wars tee, threatening to burn them if I tried to wear them to the party, and convinced me instead to shimmy into one of her halter dresses, a cute teal number that, on her, would have only been moderately revealing.
On me . . . I felt like I was redefining the word cleavage.
Emerson slapped my hand away from my chest when she saw me readjusting my top for the umpteenth time. “Stop. You look amazing.” She sighed dramatically. “Seriously. It’s a party. At least try to look like you’re having fun.”
“I’m trying to look like my boobs aren’t making a break for it,” I grumbled, glancing around.
I hadn’t known what to expect when Noah had invited me, even though he’d said everyone would be there. I’d expected more of a house party with a lot of people, I guess.
But a lot of people didn’t begin to describe the hordes that seemed to have converged from all over the state to pack the beaches. There was music from several live bands that came at us from every direction, and smoke from bonfires and barbecues and cigarettes and joints filling the air. Tiki torches flickered from one end of the sandy strip to the other, and people danced and laughed and shouted. Some people even waded out into the darkening waves, disappearing into the water.
There was little to no chance I’d be joining them out in the waves.
I wasn’t the most scantily dressed, not by a long shot—a lot of guys wore only swim trunks, and a lot of girls were dressed in only itty-bitty bikinis—but I still felt like there was a neon arrow pointing directly at my chest.
Em nodded toward my boobs. “Good on them if they do decide to burst out for the night. At least they’ll get some much needed attention.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?” Of all people, Em knew better.
“I’m not talking about those pervos who paid to see them online. I mean in real life. You remember what that is, don’t you? That’s when a boy meets a girl . . .”
I laughed and shoved her. Her drink sloshed over the side of her red Solo cup. We’d each handed over our twenty-dollar entrance fee, which entitled us to a blue wristband and unlimited mai tais. The drinks were god-awful sweet and wicked strong.
“Hey! I got it!” Em squealed, licking the sticky drink from her hands. “Maybe your Knight in Neoprene Armor will notice what a great rack you’ve got and sweep you off your feet. Again.”
I giggled. Emerson was a sucker for a good love story, and the one about Noah saving me at the beach yesterday had gotten her all worked up. Even better because it had landed us an invitation to a beach party. “A girl can dream,” I told her.
In reality, with this many people, finding Noah was starting to seem like the whole needle in a haystack challenge.
“Oh . . . my . . . hell.” She nudged me. “There’s Lucas. Act cool.”
So . . . maybe not a needle. And since when did Emerson start searching for guys anywhere? Usually they were the ones hunting for her.
“As opposed to . . . ?” I asked.
“You know what I mean.” She ran her tongue over her teeth and flashed them at me for a lipstick check. I gave her the all-clear nod. “I don’t want him to know I noticed him.”
“But . . . you did . . . ,” I prompted.
“Yeah. But I don’t want him to know that.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re so weird.”
Lucas strolled up to us then, wearing just a pair of shorts and his Casanova smile. “Hey, ladies. Great party, huh? I was hopin’ I’d bump into you here.”
“Really?” I asked, a little too enthusiastically. “Em here was just saying the same thing.”
Lucas’s bare chest puffed up. “Yeah?”
Emerson’s foot came down on mine, her warning to be cool. Seriously, I’d never seen her so worked up over a guy before. She’d changed outfits three times tonight, which was two times more than I’d ever seen her change before.
I sidestepped her before I answered him. “She was just commenting on how lucky we were to have you as a neighbor. How . . . considerate you were to help us get our keys the other night.”
He grinned, his focus completely shifting to Emerson. “I was just happy to help. You know . . . ,” he said, talking only to her now, and just like the other night, it was like I had disappeared. “If you ever need anything . . .”
Em let out a soft sigh. “Like what?” she teased.
He closed the distance between them and took the drink from her hand. “I can think of a few things.” And then his mouth was covering hers.
You’re welcome, I told Em silently.
I slipped away, even as I realized I’d just lost my “date” for the party. It wasn’t the first time I’d lost her. Em was a great wingwoman, but she was also easily distracted by shiny objects. Case in point: Lucas Harper.
Whatever. There was plenty going on to keep me distracted.
I went to the bar and got a refill. Too many more of these and I’d need some food too, otherwise I’d end up facedown in the sand.
As I sipped my drink, I wandered around listening to a couple of the bands that were set up along the beach. Most weren’t half bad. But even better than the bands was the ocean. Even after my harrowing experience, I doubted the rhythmic sound of the waves could ever get old.
Letting the breeze hit my face, I took a breath and felt my shoulders relax.
My mom was wrong to keep me away all these years—I belonged here. The water might hate me, but I definitely didn’t hate it.
And just when I thought I’d found the perfect spot to write a sonnet or a song—an Ode to the Ocean—a voice interrupted my alcohol-induced musings. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Will.
Just hearing his voice caused my nerve endings to tingle. I wanted to walk away. To hold on to the way he’d made me feel yesterday, when he was in my kitchen and he’d made it clear he was disappointed to find me there rather than Emerson. But I was frozen.
“Are you following me?” I quipped, hoping he couldn’t read minds, because what I really wanted to know was whether he was shirtless the way Lucas had been. Could I peek without him noticing?
His voice was husky when he answered, “Would that be so wrong of me, Brown Eyes?”
I knew he was probably only calling me Brown Eyes because he didn’t know my name, but the fact he’d given me a nickname still made my knees wobbly. When it came to Will I felt like my instincts had gone on sabbatical.
His feet scratched through the sand until he came to a stop beside me. It was darker here, away from the flickering lights of the tiki torches. The silence that settled over us stretched out, going on for longer than I was comfortable with. I wanted him to say something first . . . anything. But he just stood there. He hadn’t exactly struck me as the silent type, so this felt . . . odd.
I opened my mouth, deciding I would have to be the one to break the ice. That’s when his skin grazed mine. It was nothing, really. Less than nothing. Just the slightest brush of his elbow, bare where it skimmed my arm. But it was enough to light my entire body up.
I shivered, despite the warmth of the breeze, and both our heads turned at once. Even in the dark, his eyes were so intense I could have identified the exact shade of green.
“About yesterday . . .” he started. He didn’t finish. He just shook his head, like I was supposed to know what that meant.
I didn’t. And then it became even more confusing when his hand closed around my shoulder, his thumb searing a path along my arm.
This time when I opened my mouth, I wasn’t sure what I planned to say.
“Hey! You made it. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Noah’s cheerful voice cut through the moment, putting a stop to whatever might have been about to happen.
Disappointment—or maybe that was relief—unfurled inside me. Considering the mortifying scene in my kitchen yesterday, getting too close to Will was likely a mistake.
Taking a step back from Will, I saw Noah converging on us with a group of three other guys who looked like his surfer buddies from the day before.
“What’s up, man?” Noah acknowledged Will as they approached. Will just nodded back at him in a way that made it clear they already knew each other.
In fact, they all seemed to know one other. A couple of Noah’s friends decided I was worth a second, and even third glance, finding my cleavage more enticing than the ocean. None of them bothered to be sly about it, either.
Will moved to stand in front of me, blocking their view. “You two have met?” Will asked Noah.
“Yeah, man,” Noah explained with a sideways grin. “This is Lauren—the girl I was telling you about—the one I rescued yesterday.”
Awesome. So now Noah was telling people what a hero he was . . . and I was the damsel in distress.
But I never got the chance to be embarrassed, because suddenly Will spun to face me. His teeth were clenched and the muscle at his jaw twitched. “Are you fucking nuts?” he said. “What the hell were you thinking? Noah told me you don’t even know how to swim . . . and you just . . . what . . . dove right into the ocean to figure it out?” He ran his hand through his already-tousled hair, agitation clear on his face. “I’ve heard a lot of stupid things in my time, but never—never—anything as fucked up as that. You’re lucky you’re not shark bait right now, you know that?”
I glanced around at Noah and his friends who were all gaping at Will and me. Useless. Then I spun on Will.
What right did he have to preach at me about anything? I was embarrassed, but more than that, I was furious.
I stabbed him in the chest with my finger. “No one asked for your input. If I want to learn to swim by jumping off a ship, then I’ll damn sure jump.”
A couple of Noah’s friends snickered, and I turned to glare at them too. That shut them up, and then I started back in on Will again. “You know what? You’re a piece of work. You come to my place and treat me like crap, then you think you can just apologize . . .”
I was gearing up to tell him where he could shove his stupid apology, but he cut me off mid-rant when his hand clamped over mine. The expression on his face went rigid, and even in the dark there was no mistaking that all the color had drained from his face.
“Holy hell,” Will ground out. I had no clue where he was looking, or what he was looking at, but whatever it was, he was even angrier than he’d been at me.
Scowling, his fingers gripped me even tighter. His absurdly green eyes dropping to mine. “We can talk later. I need to deal with something.”
Dumbstruck, I watched as he stalked away.
He was heading straight toward a couple who looked like they’d stolen away from the rest of the crowd. It was hard to see them clearly. For the most part, they were camouflaged by shadows . . . not to mention the way they were practically fused together. The guy’s face was so buried in the curtain of the girl’s long hair that it looked like he was trying to eat her neck.
But the girl wasn’t exactly pushing him away. Her head was tipped back, and on her face she wore a look of sheer bliss.
Suddenly, I felt like one of the subscribers to my webcam, like I was spying on something I shouldn’t be. A private moment none of us should be watching.
Will obviously didn’t agree. I could hear his roar above the waves, and then behind me, one of Noah’s friends muttered, “Aw, shit,” just as Will reached the twosome and I saw his fingers close around the girl’s arm.
As he yanked her away from the guy, I wasn’t sure who was more shocked by Will’s actions, me or her.
The guy shouted something along the lines of, “What the hell, man!” but it was hard to make out his exact phrasing. All I knew was that when he caught the look on Will’s face, which even I could make out from all the way over here, he shrank away and kept his mouth shut. I saw Will’s lips move, and from the dark look on his face, I imagined it wasn’t anything pleasant, and then the guy turned tail and fled.
Chicken shit.
The girl’s reaction wasn’t nearly as cowardly. She stood her ground. Her expressive face was almost as easy to read as Will’s, even in the dark. She went from astonishment to indignation in about three seconds flat.
I couldn’t blame her. I was still trying to process the whole scene myself.
I might’ve thought Will was a jerk before, but I was still having a hard time reconciling the charismatic bartender from The Dunes with the brute I was witnessing now.
I would have laughed when the girl poked Will in the chest, the same way I had a few minutes earlier, except I was pretty sure nothing about this was even remotely funny. I suspected I had just witnessed Will catching his girlfriend cheating on him.
Then Will was shouting at the girl again, and I was almost glad I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Her outrage was nothing compared to whatever he was unleashing on her now. The poor girl didn’t stand a chance.
I heard fleeting bits of his words, and even I couldn’t believe the things coming out of his mouth. “How dare you . . . warned you . . .” and something about “. . . should have known better . . .”
When she burst into tears I thought he might take pity on her, but instead he grabbed her arm again and started to drag her across the sand.
That’s when she twisted around and punched him. Hard. Right in the face.
“Daaamn,” one of the guys behind me cracked.
I told myself to stop watching, that none of this was my business, but I was in too deep. I had to see where this was going.
Will lifted his hand to his nose, a dazed expression on his face.
The girl didn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. She looked fed up, and I figured I’d just witnessed the end of something. The two of them stared at each other for several long angry moments.
And then she stormed off in the opposite direction of the guy who’d been making a meal of her neck.
Will muttered something under his breath, and then ran his hand under his nose, wiping it across his board shorts, leaving a streak I was pretty sure was blood. Part of me was glad she’d hit him so hard. Maybe he’d gotten what he deserved.
“Guess poor Will’s in the doghouse,” Noah said, his arm settling heavily over my shoulder.
Poor Will.
I wasn’t sure I agreed. I might’ve felt sorry for Will, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d basically backed the girl into a corner. What kind of man treats a woman he cares about—even if he did just catch her with another man—that way? He had no right to manhandle her like some sort of caveman.
I felt sick, and suddenly the weight of Noah’s arm was suffocating.
“Where you going?” Noah asked, sounding disappointed when I shrugged out from underneath him. “I thought we were gonna hang out? See where the night takes us.”
I took off the way I’d come, away from where Will was standing, and where his girlfriend had just gone. I hoped I’d find Emerson, but if I didn’t, that was okay too. She and Lucas were having fun and I didn’t want to spoil that.
“Thanks but no thanks,” I called back to Noah. “I’m not in the mood for a party tonight. Maybe some other time.”
But I already knew . . .
Noah wouldn’t be the guy.