Page 25 of What It Means To Be Found

And be at someone else’s mercy in case I get bored and want to bail? No.

Me: I have some things to do beforehand, I’ll meet you guys there.

Me: Who is going?

Courtney: Everyone, minus the band. So be nice to Eloise.

Me: I was perfectly nice to her last time.

Courtney: Yeah, perfectly nice as you stared directly at her ass.

Courtney: You’re lucky that I caught you and she didn’t.

I frowned. I didn’t respond to that text until I had driven all the way home from the rink. I currently lived on the outskirts of Irvine, bordering Tustin where the gym that Courtney and I attended was. I lived in a small one-bedroom apartment and had for years. Most of the other guys on the team felt like they needed to blow their paycheck on luxury living, but I wasn’t one of them. I liked simplicity. I didn’t need much, and I liked the comfort of having spare funds in case of emergencies.

Courtney’s text still bounced around in my brain. What would have happened if Eloise caught me staring at her ass?

Me: You’re right. She probably would have dumped her water bottle on me or something.

I figured just admitting that I was an ass-starer would be the easiest route to go with Courtney.

Courtney: Probably.

I frowned again. Would Eloise react that way? Or would she be pleased to know that I appreciated her body like that? Would she tease me, wearing those little shorts more often whenever we were together with our friends?

I was getting ahead of myself. I still wasn’t sure where I stood with Eloise. I felt so unstable like one wrong move could send me plummeting down a black hole of nothing but hate and frustration from her. More pies squished to my chest, more insults to my genitalia.

I didn’t want that.

I generally didn’t care if people liked me or not. Such was life. You win some, you lose some. Even if I had let my little crush on her grow a little larger than was appropriate lately, I would settle for her simply not hating me anymore. She didn’t need to like me like I was starting to like her.

Because, let’s be honest, a grown man didn’t think about a grown woman as much as I thought about Eloise unless he was very romantically interested in her. It was bad. I was constantly thinking about her in my spare time, especially late at night when I was plagued with dirty thoughts and made-up scenarios about what the two of us would be like together physically.

The last time I had masturbated this much I was a teenage boy.

I needed to do something about this, to get out of this weird limbo I felt like I was in with her. Attending the beach day, and successfully having another outing that didn’t result in Eloise glaring daggers at me, seemed like a good start.

7

ELOISE

“Thanks for getting us in, Lo.” Courtney squeezed my bicep as she trudged to where everyone else had found a spot to set up. Three Arch was a private gated community in Laguna Beach, with its own beachfront. It was smaller, cleaner, and ideal when you wanted to spend the day at the beach with your friends, if one of them was a popular, noticeable celebrity.

Half of my parents’ friends lived here. It took one single call to get my name on the entry list.

“No problem,” I smiled. I was a little relieved because Logan hadn’t driven with us. Courtney told me to put his name on the list anyway and to let the guy at the gate know that he would use ASL to spell his name, but I figured the chance of him actually showing up was slim. He was known to bail and didn’t hang out with us nearly as often as the rest of us got together.

Plus, I wasn’t thrilled about Logan seeing me in my bikini.

…Okay, that was only a little bit of a lie.

I was still a little unsettled by the last time we were together. Where he had blatantly stared at my ass as I did pull-ups, but also didn’t deny that he wanted to turn down my accidental advances on him.

Beck and Adam, the two paler people in the group, had set up their towels and umbrellas. I had brought one as well, but I actually looked forward to getting some sun on my skin.

“I’m sitting with the albinos.” Taylor had pulled their sunglasses down off of their hat and slid them on their face. They were wearing a cutoff shirt with dark blue board shorts that matched their eyes.

“Do you need sunscreen on your scalp?” I asked them as I laid my towel down a little bit away. Taylor had a faded haircut, with fun geometrical designs shaved into the back of their head.

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