Page 70 of Knockin' Boats
It wasn’t sarcasm. It came across like an honest question.
I sat up, and my board shorts shifted, wet and sticky, against me. “Let’s go talk in the water. If we wait and customers show up…”
Sawyer hopped to his feet. “Good idea.”
For a moment, I thought he might use the opportunity to escape this talk. Escape me. But then he grabbed my hand and hauled me to my feet.
“Race ya,” he said with a smirk. “Last one in is a rotten egg!”
Then he took off, yanking his shirt over his head and tossing it aside as he ran.
“Hey!” I ran after him, doing the same. “You cheater!”
It reminded me so much of our childhood I lost some momentum from laughing. Sawyer reached the edge and took a flying leap, looking like he was running through space for a second before gravity took hold. He plunged into the lake with a splash. I followed with a more graceful dive.
The cool water swept in, washing away the evidence of what we’d done. Or most of it, anyway. I used my hand to scrub away the rest.
Sawyer treaded water a few feet away. I swam toward him. “So…you really don’t hate me?” I asked.
“You think I should?”
I bit my bottom lip. This was hard to say. “I messed up. Big-time. So, yeah. Maybe I deserve that.”
“You apologized to me once already,” Sawyer said. “Did you mean it?”
“Of course I did.”
He nodded. “And you and Mel…”
“Friends only. For years now.”
He tilted his head. “I thought you guys were sorta on again and off again? Friends with benefits? Something like that.”
“Eh…not really.”
“Ash,” he said tightly. “This isn’t gonna work if you’re evasive. If you want me to believe you?—”
“I didn’t mean to be evasive,” I said quickly. “It’s just, our relationship is weird. Not everyone gets it.”
“Great,” he muttered. “You’re so fucking special.”
“No, no. That came out wrong.”
Sawyer started to float away from me, so I slung my arms around his neck and pulled myself tight against him. Our bare chests slipped and slid in the water, and damn, I never knew it could feel so good to press up against all the hardness of a man.
But I should have.
I’d been noticing guys for a while. Mel had clocked it before I had. When we hung out, she’d occasionally point out a guy she found hot on the television or even around town. Sometimes I agreed. Sometimes I wrinkled up my nose and pointed out the much hotter guy we’d seen a few minutes ago.
She’d called me on it. I’d denied it meant anything at first, but after a while, I’d come to see that maybe I did have an appreciation for the male body that went beyond the strictly straight bounds.
I’d even realized that my hookup with her in high school had been more about missing Sawyer than it had been about wanting her.
But…over the years, we’d occasionally used the excuse we were dating as a crutch.
“Mel has an asshole ex who lives in town, and so sometimes, if he’s giving her grief, we tell people we’re dating again,” Itold Sawyer. “And sometimes, when my parents started making noise about setting me up with someone, I’d tell them Mel and I were together. But we weren’t. We haven’t been in a really long time.”
“How long?”
