“Natalie’s made it pretty clear you’d rather not occupy the same spaces as me. I don’t blame you.” He gives a soft laugh. “Man, being around you makes me feel like a dumb twenty-year-old kid again.”
“I don’t hate you. I was pretty mad for a year or so. But I didn’t hate you.” I consider that. “Well, except the first summer when I didn’t come back for camp, and I was working in a kitchen sixty hours a week during the hottest summer in Virginia’s history. I hated you a few times that summer.”
“I wish you would have come back,” he says. “That last summer wasn’t the same.”
I shrug. “It would have been pretty uncomfortable if we were both here. Trust me, you had a better summer with me not around.”
“But not better food. We never had better meals than the summer you ran the kitchen.”
“That’s why I’m really here, isn’t it,” I say, careful to keep my tone teasing. “You’re trying to reclaim the glory days of Oak Crest, and you know you need my cooking to do it.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Busted.”
I study him frankly. The fit of his shirt, the light gold of his skin, the fall of his hair. It’s all working for him. His smile fades as he watches me back, slowly clocking my eyes, my mouth, my mouth, my—he is really staring at my mouth a lot.
I can dish it back. Why not? He’s forgiven, but it would have been nice to hear,I never should have dumped youinstead ofI should have dumped you myself instead of by proxy. Will it hurt anything to show him what he missed out on?
If we were going to see each other regularly? Yes. But we’re not. I’ve had plenty of friends meet, fall in vacation love, and say goodbye to their fling without a backward glance on either side at the end of a week.
What if I really gave myself over to play this week? To youthful abandon like it’s the last year of my twenties and not the last year of my eighties?
Will it affect our ability to be awkward juice box friends? No. It will onlyenhancethe awkwardness. I’d practically be doing us a favor. We’re talking one juice box event a year, max, that we’re likely to cross paths. I’m seeing only upsides here.
I think about it for another moment as Sawyer recasts his line. His shirt rides up about an inch above his waistline as he draws back to cast. It’s a tight, toned inch, and I enjoy it until he straightens to talk to me again and his shirt falls.
I curve my lips into the slightest of smiles. An invitation. A challenge. This is the level of dating I’ve mastered since college. The higher my star rose, the more men wanted to date me. I’ve gone out with some of the healthiest egos in New York, and I’ve learned all their smoothest moves.
Thisis my comfort level. It’s almost instinctive, the urge to flirt as a form of control. I set the pace. I decide what happens and when. Or if anything happens at all.
Sawyer catches my smile and goes still for a couple of seconds. Then, with a slow blink, he leans slightly toward me, watching my mouth the whole time. What has he learned to do with his quick and generous mouth in the last nine years?
I’m on a beautiful lake with a gorgeous man, who wants to be friends. Why not be friends with benefits?
I could rewrite that summer but walk away with my heart intact. Best idea I’ve had in ages.
When his face is inches from mine, my eyes flutter closed. I wait for the familiar brush of his lips, the skitter of electricity I’ve never felt with the same intensity with anyone since.
But instead of his lips, I feel the softest puff of his breath, as he says, “No way.”
My eyes fly open to find his staring right into mine. “Excuse me?”
“No. Way.”
“Are you…laughing at me?”
“I am definitely laughing at you. I’m earning your friendship, and I’m not giving you any chances to wiggle out of it by claiming I changed the terms. We were good as friends. Great as friends.”
“What makes you think I was going to kiss you?”
“Like I could forget your ‘kiss me’ face.”
I grip my paddle. “You must have because that wasn’t it.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, Tab. Makes sense we might slip into old habits as we get comfortable with each other again.”
I watch him for a second, giving him my pleasant smile I use when we’re doing a transition into a commercial break. He was flirting with me. You don’t get to twenty-nine and miss signs like that. What is he up to?
“You’re getting too much sun, I think. Misreading signals.”
