Page 44 of Triple Play

“Wow, Felix,” she says, “I didn’t realize you had a face under there.”

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Try to ignore the tan line—that’s the cost of working outside.” Because the skin of his cheek is slightly darker than his newly revealed jaw.

“You look good.” I immediately cough like I misspoke, but not before Shira’s eyebrows rise minutely like she caught that. “I mean, you look fine. Tan-line-wise.”

“So,” he says, “finish up so you can get in the hot tub with the girl you’re dating.”

That prickles. The girl I’m dating. Shira isn’t just that.

“Yeah”—Shira looks up from where she’s piling her hair on her head—“finish up.”

I speed through the last round of shaving that leaves Felix looking like he has the world’s worst five o’clock shadow. Or would be worst if he didn’t look like him. If baseball doesn’t work out for him, he can always model flannel.

If baseball doesn’t work out for him, it’s because you’re taking his job.

That’s enough to ground me. “I think I’m done.”

Felix scrubs a hand over his face. A few stray hairs rain down onto the pile of them by his feet. He uses his T-shirt to gather most of them and dumps that into a nearby trashcan, then shakes out his shirt. “I’m gonna shave. I always forget this itches like crazy.”

It’ll be easier with him walking away, I reason. I didn’t account for the flex of muscles in his back. I’m just looking to see if he has any tattoos to rib him about. He doesn’t. I watch him anyway.

When he scans his room key on the sensor by the door and slips back inside the hotel, the invisible band that’s been constricting my ribs loosens.

Right. Hot tub. Room service. Shira, who’s sitting by the water, steam rising around her.

“They gave us a voucher for room service,” I call. “You want a drink?”

She laughs. The steam from the hot tub haloes her hair around her face. “You don’t just want to have a glass of warm milk and go to bed?” she asks, faux-innocently. She draws her foot through the water for emphasis.

“I’m thinking not.”

“What happened to nice, humble Blake Forsyth?” She manages to make humble sound like an insult.

“He can’t come to the phone right now.” I peel off my T-shirt and toss it onto a chaise. “Aren’t your shorts getting wet sitting on the deck?” I ask.

“You’re right.” She stands and shimmies out of them then kicks them away, leaving her in only that white bikini.

The strings sit on the curves of her hips, like I could run my thumbs under them, like they’d be easy to peel off her. My body throbs. That’s the thing about wanting. Pushing it down only intensifies it.

“Better?” Shira asks with a tease in her voice. She offers the limber line of her leg. Her muscles shift. Her tanned skin gleams with tiny droplets of water I want to chase with my mouth.

I don’t trust myself to say anything, so I just nod, and she laughs as she walks down the gradual stairs leading into the hot tub. Water laps at the narrowest part of her waist. My hands ache for her, the same want I had with Felix—to take her in my arms, to hold her, to press her close to me.

It wouldn’t be fair to reach for her now, to treat her as an easier option. From the sound of it, too many people in her life have given her cause for doubt. I won’t be another one.

What’d Felix call her? The girl you’re dating. Who’s currently skimming her fingers over the surface of the water. “Order us something to drink,” she says, “then come in here.”

I do as I’m told—a quick call to the hotel room service line. It takes some convincing to get them to bring the order out by the pool deck. “We’ll be good,” I promise the clerk.

“I never said that!” Shira splashes around in the hot tub, sending dots of water over to where I’m standing on the deck.

I step aside to avoid the splash, then concede defeat, letting water slide down my skin.

“Put a thousand on the room as a tip,” I say into my phone.

And get a noise of disbelief. “Oh, you’re serious?”

“Absolutely.” It’s not exactly playing things humble, but screw humble. Fuck humble.

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