Page 30 of The Summer I Destroyed You

So she’s not wearing much of anything, or anything at all, under that sweatshirt. Against my better instincts, I imagine how easy it would be to drop my towel, to close the distance between us. To shove that sweatshirt over her hips, lift her onto the table…

Fuck my life. This is not the time for thoughts like that.

“I just realized I left my phone out here,” I reply. “I was worried JP might call.”

She slides her fingers along the hem of the sweatshirt. “It’s interesting that you explain why you’re wandering around in no clothes but not why you have children’s shorts in your home.”

I laugh as I reach for my phone. “They were my niece’s. I found them in the laundry room. I’ll be out in a sec.”

I’m trying not to act like a teenage boy who’s somehow gotten the hottest girl in school alone, though it’s how I feel. Mostly because, like that hypothetical teenage boy, I have no idea what to do with Emerson now that she’s here.

In an ideal world, I’d take her over my knee for driving downtown in the first place. I flinch. Let’s avoid thinking about Emerson’s bare ass in your face for the next hour or so. You can think about it at your leisure once she’s gone.

She impressed me today. She worked her tail off on behalf of people she thinks the worst of, people who seem to have hurt her in the past. It’s dangerous to start letting myself think there’s something good inside her, something more than she wants the world to see.

I seem to be thinking it anyway.

When I get back to the living room, she’s setting her pile of wet clothes by the front door.

Even from here I can spy a pair of red lace panties in that pile. Yep. Nothing on under the sweatshirt. Outstanding. “You can throw that stuff in the dryer if you want,” I say gruffly. “It’s in the kitchen.”

She nods, bending over to retrieve her clothes, and I’m looking before I can stop myself. The sweatshirt rides up high enough that I glimpse the curve of her ass before she tugs it down.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. I walk into the kitchen and stab the button on the coffeemaker almost violently.

Think of something else.

Grandma’s funeral. The tsunami in Thailand. My other grandma’s funeral.

She passes me to throw her stuff in the dryer. I hand her the first cup of coffee as she emerges. “I assume you take it black.”

“Why would you assume that?” There’s something soft, almost sweet about her face in the kitchen’s dim golden light. The lush curves of her bare mouth beg to be kissed.

Tsunami. Grandma.

“Because you don’t seem to let yourself enjoy a lot of things,” I reply. Her face dims a little, so I’m compelled to clarify. “I’d just assume you think of coffee as, I don’t know, a device to encourage greater efficiency at work.”

She takes the mug from my hand, suddenly somber. “I’m not a robot. I enjoy things.”

“Then you’d like some milk and sugar for that, I assume?”

She hesitates. I suspect she wants to say yes just to prove me wrong. “Just a little milk, please.”

I turn to the refrigerator and she moves away, walking across to the living room, looking at my pictures. Since the day she walked into the theater with her high heels and her perma-scowl, I’ve fantasized about her. I’ve pictured her bent over the tailgate of my truck or on the table in the back of the theater with her heels still on, one of those short skirts she wears bunched around her waist.

I’m pretty sure the fantasy will now involve her in my living room with her hair wet, wearing nothing but a damn sweatshirt.

“So what’s the deal?” she asks. “Are you taking me home?”

“Yeah. JP said he’ll be here within the hour. Are you hungry?”

She pauses, as if the question is a trick. With what I’ve heard about her life in high school, I guess I know why. “I’m okay.”

“Bullshit,” I reply, opening the refrigerator and grabbing the chicken. “You got down to Main Street just after four this morning and it’s nearly lunch. You like stir-fry?”

“Yeah, though I’m not sure it’s a good idea to accept food made by my competition.”

“If I decide to kill you off, I’ve got enough sense to do it in a way that can’t be traced. But you can come over here and watch me if you’re still suspicious.”

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