Page 102 of Pick-Up
I definitely like her naked and pressed up against me. Though Iwillhold out.
I like her. And now I’m gonna show her how much.
TO-DO
Sasha.
35 | PostproductionSASHA
We are reliving the sarong saga. Again. At least, Ethan is. The more he rehashes it, the funnier the story becomes to him. I am lying in my bed next to him, glowering. Grumpy Smurf.
Apparently, now that he knows I like him enough for naked stuff, his ego is less fragile. He is no longer worried about pissing me off.Typical.
Luckily he is an appealing sight. A late-afternoon fairy-tale light glows through the shades, dusting us with happy endings—of all kinds. His brown eyes are lazy, easy, even as they spell mischief. The Demon Dad, the runner, the editor in chief, has gone out of them. He’s just him.
Surrounded by cumulus bedding, his skin looks especially taut and tan. His chest is exposed at the top; one leg pokes out from beneath the comforter. I trace the scar that meanders down his left forearm, taking its time before dead ending at his wrist. When he got it in a skateboarding accident at sixteen, you could see bone. His mother almost threw up, even though she’s a surgeon. These are just some of the things I’ve learned in the past hours, as we swapped stories and fluids. I am getting an Ethan education.
“And you just careened into the water!” He laughs now. “Why didn’t you break your fall? With your hands?!”
I tilt my head and glare at him, pointedly. Because obviously he is about to tell me to keep my hands up. I beat him to the punch, grabbinghishands and pinning them to his chest before he can make the move.
He doesn’t even need to say it. He just dissolves into laughter again, the bed quaking and me quaking with it. Needless to say, I have never seen him lose it like this before, and I would love it more than anything. If it wasn’t atme.
“Maybe it was all a ploy,” I say, releasing his wrists and flipping haughtily onto my back like I’m a noblewoman sleeping with a stable boy. As if I have the upper hand. Which I clearly do not.
He raises an eyebrow. “A ploy to…?”
“Seduce you.”
“That was definitely not necessary.” He rolls over and kisses my bare shoulder, a large hand palming my thigh.
“Well, whatever! I still think the incident with the jellyfish cemented things.”
“Actually, oddly, I don’t usually think of pratfalls as foreplay.”
I grab an extra pillow off the bed, where the duvet is in blissful disarray, and hit him in the head with it. It’s easier to make contact at close range.
“Oh, hell no,” he says. All authority is lost, as his voice is muffled absurdly by the pillow. “You messed with the wrong man!”
He tosses it aside and flips me on my side so he’s pressed up behind me, kissing down my neck and the middle of my back, making me giggle. We are so cute.
He stops, lying on his side, and I roll onto my back. For a moment, I’m overwhelmed by how much I like him. He exhales, maybe having a similar thought, and brushes my hair from my face. “In all seriousness, I would have been on board no matter how many times you tried to save that sarong.”
“Well, I’m about to questionmychoices if you bring it up again.”
“Okay, okay.” He raises a hand in surrender, then lies back and sighs. “Thank God this finally happened. I was losing my fucking mind.”
This, I like to hear. I roll over to face him now, resting my chin on his chest and tracing the lines of his collarbone with my finger. No perfect T-shirt to cover it up. Now that I get to touch Ethan, I willnever stop. Well, at least not today. I push the concept of timelines from my head.
Not today!
“Tell me more about how much you wanted me,” I say.
He shakes his head and smiles.
I have basically had at least one point of contact with Ethan since we absconded, damp and dangerous, from location A (the shower) to location B (my bedroom), and made a mess of location C (my bed). If I thought I liked outdoor showers before, now they’ve eclipsed all other fauceted environments forever. Bathrooms, mudrooms, hammams, kitchens (even the Nancy Meyers kind).
“Honestly, I kind of have that effect on people,” I joke. “Make them lose their minds.”
