Page 3 of Surfer Girl

Jessie laughed. She wasn’t normally one to go airing her dirty laundry so quickly, but something about Sophie’s warm, expressive eyes and bubbly curiosity made her easy to confess to. “Nothing a new apartment in a better neighborhood wouldn’t fix.”

Sophie clucked her tongue, nodding in solidarity as if she hadn’t just stumbled out of a charming little beach house that was worth six figures, if not seven in this bull market. “I hear you there.”

Jessie rolled her eyes and nodded behind her, at the sprawling beach house in the background. “Yeah, it must get real noisy here in your cozy cottage by the sea.”

Sophie chuckled and gave a self-deprecating nod. “I guess I meant my dorm room back in Atlanta.”

“Oh yeah? Which school do you go to?”

Sophie rolled her eyes, but not in Jessie’s direction. “You mean which schooldidI go to? Peachtree State. I just graduated. Last night, actually…”

Jessie thought her new friend looked a little young to be a college graduate already but didn’t want to press. “Congrats!” she said instead, fighting the vague tinge of jealousy she felt, however irrationally, at someone her own age already accomplishing so much when, after all, Jessie had managed to do so little with her own life.

Sophie gave a wry, almost self-deprecating little golf clap. “Yay, me.”

Jessie winced and asked, “Sore subject?”

Sophie shrugged. “Not to me, but get my parents started and look out. They were never happy that I didn’t get into an ivy league school to begin with, and my lackluster grades at a state college didn’t help matters much. But hey, a diploma’s a diploma, am I right?”

Jessie nodded dutifully. Sophie bit her lower lip. An awkward silence followed, filled only by the waves crashing on the beach at their backs and the soft slurping as they finished the iced coffee.

“So…you’re here now?” Jessie began, trying to jumpstart the conversation back up before her surprise morning encounter could fizzle out before it even began.

Sophie nodded. “All summer,” she said, making Jessie’s heart skip an irrational beat. “The folks said I could stay here rent free so long as I got a job and spent every minute of my free time scouting out the best graduate program to attend in the fall, but honestly? I just needed a place to crash after my lease ran out this month.”

Jessie nodded, struggling not to leap into the air and clap her hands together in glee. Three months of finding ways to run into sexy Sophie and her sumptuous curves and kindhearted smile? Be still her pounding, lecherous heart. “Any leads on a job yet?”

Sophie chuckled, a low, throaty sound that did strange things to Jessie’s already throbbing gut, to say nothing of the already turbulent region just below. “I literally drove in last night.”

“Oh, sorry, I was just saying I’m a manager at Beach Break if you need a good word.”

Sophie brightened. “No shit? I used to go there all the time as a kid.”

Jessie had inched closer, somehow. Perhaps when handing the can of Joltz back. She gave her new friend an appraising glance, up and down and back again. “Who are you kidding? You still look like a kid.”

“And you…don’t look old enough to be a manager, Surfer Girl.”

Jessie blushed, wishing her pale, freckled skin wasn’t quite such a blank canvas for every flush of heightened emotion. It made it impossible to play hard to get. “Yeah, well…” She stopped, unsure where to go next.

Sophie bit her lower lip and crossed one bare, sandy foot over the other. Jessie watched the sand leave a swath across her foot. “You really think they’d hire me? I mean, I did mostly office work back at school, so I don’t have much experience…”

“You’re hired!” Jessie blurted, making them both laugh.

“I already said it was okay for you to use the shower,” Sophie teased. “You don’t have to give me a job just because you’ve been stealing water for…how long now?”

Jessie smiled. “Long enough,” she answered. “But seriously, that’s a lot of water over the years.” Their eyes met and, although they were quiet, the silence was not an awkward one. If anything, it felt like a warm, unspoken embrace.

Sophie seemed to be deciding something and, when she did, her voice was husky and frail. “Are you serious? I mean, once I get settled and unpack, my folks are really on me about saving up for grad school…”

Jessie nodded eagerly. “No doubt. We’re always hiring, especially in the summer when all the new hires flake out and go surfing instead of showing up for their shifts. Whenever you’re ready, I’ll speak to the rest of the management team.”

Sophie’s face scrunched up slightly. “You’re really a manager?”

Jessie nodded, then shook her head before nodding again. “Well, assistant manager,” she finally confessed. “But they always give the new hire applicants to me anyway, so I could sneak you in and before they noticed you’d never waited tables before, boom…it’d be too late. You’d charm them over in no time.”

Sophie wrinkled her adorable little nose. “If I don’t drop a tray of food on their laps first!”

Jessie laughed. “It’s mostly baskets anyway, so they probably wouldn’t mind. So long as we have enough warm bodies to staff the main deck, we’re solid.”

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