Page 35 of Spring Tide

Andhisfriends, well, they all seem to slowly disappear.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asks, gaze drifting down to my empty hands.

“Good idea.” I flash him a grateful smile. “I’ll come with you.”

Without warning, he cups his palm around mine, deftly navigating us through the crowd. The pads of his fingers are rough, but the feeling of his hand is warm and gentle and comforting. Before I realize it, we’re standing at the end of the bar together. He orders us a few beers on tap, letting my hand slip from his as he reaches for his wallet.

He passes me a pint, guiding us to a nearby cocktail table. “You look great tonight.”

“Thank you.” I take a sip from my glass, stifling a wince as I do. The beer has a sour, tangy taste that sizzles on the tip of my tongue. It’s not that I don’t like it, necessarily. It’s just not something I would’ve typically ordered myself. “Sorry that it’s not my uniform again.”

“It’s all good.” He chuckles, tipping back his own beer. “You look hot in anything.”

“Oh, thanks. You, uh, you too.”

I blush. He laughs. And then he asks me about my friends: where we live, how we met, and what we usually like to do on the weekends. He tells me that he lives at the baseball house and that he absolutely loves it. He says he doesn’t know what he’ll do when they all graduate, cracking jokes about the profound lack of communal living in the major leagues.

And by the time he’s done, we’ve both managed to finish every last sip of our beers.

“You want a refill?” he asks, tapping my empty glass.

I muster up a single ounce of courage, glancing toward my friends on the dance floor. “Actually, would you maybe want to dance?”

“I’d love to.”

This time, I’m the one that takes his hand, fingers weaving together as we slide into the middle of the room. My arms slowly snake around his neck, his hands settling somewhere between my ass and my waist. Our hips slot together. As I press against him, that self-assured smile slips from his lips.

There’s an unmistakable heat behind his eyes now. It doesn’t take long for his grip to tighten around me. The rough pads of his thumbs caress a small sliver of exposed skin, stroking me. “You know, I’ve thought about touching you since that first time I saw you on the beach.”

“How come you never approached me?” I murmur, tangling my fingers into the soft curls at the nape of his neck.

“You’re sweet, Harps. Soft,” he adds, gripping my hips. “I’m usually not.”

I press even closer. “Mm, you’re not ... you’re not into being sweet?”

His head dips, the corner of his lips tugging into a smirk. “No, but I can be.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” One hand moves from my hip, trailing up the side of my body until he’s caressing my jaw. “I’m gonna kiss you now.”

“Okay,” I whisper, neck tilted back as he gazes down at me.

He leans forward, and his lips press against mine, soft and sweet at first. The man is true to his word. But then his fingers tightly grip my hips, pressing us together as he caresses my tongue with his. He’s sucking, kneading, pulling me in.

I can undoubtedly feel the bulge in his jeans throbbing through my skirt.

The feeling is ... nice. More than nice, I guess, considering there’s a slow, steady fluttering in the pit of my stomach. I’m definitely turned on. And I’d like to hook up with him tonight, especially since it’s been a hot minute for me. Or two.

But after we inevitably come up for air, I make an excuse to rejoin our crowd of friends.

Nate and I spend the rest of the night innocently flirting and drinking and decidedlynotmaking out again. He does kiss me once more, a quick peck, before the four of us girls stuff ourselves into another Uber.

I probably would’ve invited him back to my place, but I have an early morning shift at Amber Isle.

Plus, that wasn’t even a real date, not that you need to wait for an actual date to hook up with someone. I don’t subscribe to the antiquated “third date” rule or anything. When it comes to consenting adults, we should be free to jump each other’s bones whenever the feeling strikes.

I guess, for some reason or another, tonight simply wasn’t our night. But maybe next weekend will be. Nate invited me out again, so I suppose you could consider our first pseudo-date a real success.

---