Page 29 of Fool Me

“Do you remember the first time we saw each other?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“Mmmm,” she mumbled. “I walked into your dorm room on freshman move-in day.”

They’d never acknowledged that moment to each other before. The diminishing part of her that was still awake waited for his next response, but none came. Her senses relaxed into the rhythm of the waves and the soft whoosh of the salty breeze skittling past her ear.

“Sadie?” she heard finally in an almost whisper.

“Mmmm.” Had she ever been this cozy before in all her life? She drifted a little deeper.

“Why don’t you like me? What did I do?”

The question came as if from far away. It took a while to get her sleepy brain to fully understand it. Once she did, she couldn’t find a reason not to answer. There were no more dates, her revenge plan had failed, and they’d both already been sharing personal things.

“You dated and dumped all my roommates,” she said. With no energy to add condemnation to her voice, she ended up sounding like a parent explaining to a curious child why mice don’t much care for snakes. Simple. Matter of fact. “You kept breaking their hearts, and I had to keep picking up the pieces.”

And that was all Sadie remembered of their conversation—until sometime later when excited voices woke her.

17

“Shhh,” Sadie mumbled. People were yammering somewhere nearby, and they needed to stop so she could keep enjoying this glorious nap. Wait, where was she? She opened her eyes, and the crocheted rim of the umbrella instantly oriented her. She sat up and blinked, looking around. Their cozy beach spot seemed the same, except that Grant had vanished.Where washe?

A small group of people, maybe five or six, stood at the raised lip of sand where the beach angled down to the water. Something or someone lay on the sand there, and onlookers busily snapped photos. A shark? A seal?

Fully awake now, she scrunched her eyes as she focused her vision between the people’s legs, trying to make out the cause of the commotion. Were two people on the sand? Wait…was one of them Grant?

After another second of staring, certainty settled into her. It was Grant, and he was stretched out on the sand next to a woman. Sadie couldn’t see who she was, but she could see Grant’s muscled shoulders leaned over her, see the top of his sandy head, see his arms pressing into the sand on either side of her. By the closeness of their bodies, they had to be kissing—and deeply.

Sadie’s heart took a few extra, wonky beats as her breath caught. Who was Grant kissing? The woman’s hair looked fairly blonde and maybe curly. Of course, curly blonde hair is straighter and darker when weighed down by heavy seawater. The only other detail she could make out with certainty from this distance were blood red, long fingernails. The memory of a red-tipped finger tapping an extra-clean water glass cemented Sadie’s suspicions.

Julia.

A dank pit opened up inside Sadie. Her vision blurred and she began to shake. A stinging started behind her eyes for which she had no explanation. She didn’t own Grant. She knew Grant and Julia were a thing. Julia loved him, and he loved Julia. Julia showing up this way to interrupt fake date number three was odd, but not that odd. Her diva reputation—including emotional swings and jealously—made up a good part of her personal brand. Julia obviously knew exactly where they’d be, because she’d arranged the location.

It all made sense, but still—and for reasons Sadie had no time to try to decipher—she had to get away from that place. Immediately. She groped for her towel and sandals, but the sandals were wonky and difficult to put on. She gave up and decided to carry them in her hand. Better to burn the soles of her feet than stay there one more second watchingthat.

The crowd around the pair still clicked away with their phone cameras. Wasthisthe moment she was supposed to stomp off in a huff? If so, she didn’t have the stomach for it. Standing up, she spotted the gray frog hat she’d half buried in sand. She snatched it up, shook out the sand, and smashed it onto her head, pulling the brim low and tucking her hair inside the way Monique had shown her. Not only would it keep her from seeing one more millisecond of that kiss, but it might keep the photographers from recognizing her as she walked—no, ran—to her waiting car.

18

Back at his apartment, Grant paced around his kitchen island, his thoughts tumbling in all directions.

The third date had been going so well. They’d joked and shared stories. She’d fed him a California roll, shared personal information about herself, and had felt comfortable enough around him even to take a nap. He would have stayed on that beach till he mummified if it meant getting to watch Sadie Heppner sleep. Her torso rising and falling with each slow intake and release, her gently twitching toes, her dozy murmurs—like watching a napping angel. The urge to reach out and stroke her hair, curl up behind her, place his arm over her protectively, and pull her to him had nearly gotten the best of him.

But it hadn’t. He’d simply watched her as he thought about the thing she’d said, the thing he’d been dying to know, the reason she disliked him.

He'd thought about it, that is, until he heard the scream. Given the increasing swell of the ocean, he probably had his ears perked for it. Years as a teenage lifeguard at the local swimming lake had ingrained certain sounds into him, including the cry of someone in trouble.

He said nothing to Sadie as he scooted quietly off the blanket and stood up. It might have been someone fooling around, and he would’ve felt terrible waking Sadie from her angelic slumber for that. But it didn’t appear to be someone fooling around. A woman struggled in water at least up to her chest, her head bobbing alternatively above and below the harsh waves. He took off running, his feet pounding across the sand and into the surf, all the while keeping his eyes trained on the woman, trying to mark her location should she go under. He kept running until the sand went out from under him. The taste of salt in his mouth and the sting of it in his eyes met each stroke of his arms.

To his horror, he watched her go fully under. He already swam in neck-deep water, so she was likely well deeper than that. He didn’t know this beach, but some shorelines angle down sharply so that a swimmer can end up in danger without realizing it. Some also have rip tides in unexpected places that can shift a submerged swimmer several yards in the briefest of seconds. He paused to search for signs of her. To his relief, she resurfaced near him. Fear and gratitude filled her wide-set, brown eyes.

She slung an arm around his neck, and they moved toward shore as he continued to monitor her status. She took regular breaths and, once her feet touched sand, her legs supported some of her own weight.

This was good, but the moment they stepped from of the sea, her body went limp. She became as slippery and formless as a greased seal. He lost his grip, and she collapsed onto the sand. He knelt over her, shocked to find her making raspy, choking sounds as if she couldn’t pull in a full breath. A person could drown in an inch of water if the water got too deep into the lungs. He turned her onto her side, patting her hard between her shoulder blades, but her gasping only increased. He rolled her onto her back and told her he was going to give her some quick breaths to keep her conscious.

By this time, a small crowd stood around them. He yelled for them to stay back unless they knew CPR. They obeyed, but a few started recording with their phones. He tipped her head back to open her airway, pinched her nose, and put his lips on hers to blow, grateful he’d taken his recertification course the month before.

But before his first breath could enter her mouth, she sprung back to health again! She opened her eyes, smiled at him, and began to lift herself up from the sand. “You’re so strong,” she said. “Rescue me again!”

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