Page 9 of Those Heartbreak Scars

“In your dress?” His gaze runs over the fabric clinging to my curves. “Do you want to borrow a shirt or something, so you don’t ruin it?”

“Uh.” The idea of wearing his clothes makes my brain stutter. The soft, worn material against my skin. The scent of his skin and his cologne against my nose as I inhale. It would either be heaven or torture. “No, that’s okay. I’m going to take it off and go in my bra and panties.”

He covers a cough with his fist.

“Damn drink has bones.” His voice is raspy.

We take our drinks out to the pool. Set them on a small table between two loungers with lemon print cushions.

I shuck my shoes, wiggling my toes to release the tension from the balls of my feet. Party shoes are fun, but there’s nothing like being barefoot.

Gray takes a seat on the end of one of the loungers as I grab the hem of my dress with both hands and wiggle it up until it won’t go any further. “Shoot.”

“You okay in there?”

“Forgot to unzip,” is my muffled reply. I expected to do this in a much classier way. Shirk the dress and dive under the water in a solitary move. “Probably should have thought this through a little better.”

“Do you need some help?” His voice is much closer.

“Whoa.” I jump, my heart beating faster.

He steadies me with a hand to my bare midriff before I can take too many steps backward and end up in the pool. “Hang on. I’ve got you.”

My tongue puddles with saliva at his assured and strong tone. A girl could fall in love with a guy who tells her things like that.

I recall a specific memory. Gray was twenty. Dressed in his baseball gear, his gym bag in his hand as he came marching toward me and the boys who were harassing me because I said I didn’t want to date one of them. They’d called me frigid. A tease. I’d developed curves much faster than the other girls, so apparently there was an assumption that I was ready to start dating. They’d backed me up until I tripped and landed on my butt in the grass. I was so freaked out I started crying.

Gray grabbed fourteen-year-old me’s hand and tugged me to my feet, directing me to his car where he made sure that I was okay.

“I’ve got you,” he said before he drove me home, and for some reason, I felt like he really did. We were both only children. Both adopted in one way or another. Me, literally by my parents. Him, figuratively into EJ and Indy’s family.

For a biracial girl on the spectrum, who had no ability to read social cues, who more often than not felt like she didn’t fit anywhere, that sentiment, that connection was everything.

But Indy’s perfume seeps into my thoughts again. He also had Indy. By the time I was sure I was in love with him, she was too.

By fifteen she’d planned their future together. By eighteen there was no denying that he would fall for her. I never stood a chance. Not when Indy wanted him too.

She was the one he fell for. The one that he loved and wanted to marry. The one he’s still not over.

Even if that wasn’t the case, she’s my best friend. Through thick and thin. Which means nothing can ever happen with Gray and me.

That’s okay though. A teenage girl with a crush that never ends grows up to have hopes and dreams she knows she’ll never experience. I’ve made peace with it.

He finally lifts my dress free of my arms.

Despite my peace, those words, from him, put me in a spin. Because tonight has felt different.

Easy.

Like it would be okay to pretend that there’s a chance for us. Only for tonight. Only in my head. I can imagine he keeps touching me because he wants me. That the way he looks at me as I sit on the edge of the pool and slide in means he wants to kiss me. And not just my palm.

I swipe my damp hands over my face and push the wet strands of my hair back. “Are you coming in?”

“Do you want me to?”

“Would I have asked?”

“Fine. Hang on.” He moves our drinks to the tiled edge and sheds his shoes and shirt, revealing a taut, bronzed torso andwide shoulders. He reaches for his belt, tugging on the leather until the buckle uncouples, and then moves onto the fly.

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