Page 71 of A Summer Mismatch
He got off the phone with his sister’s threat to hunt him down if he didn’t have fun, which made him laugh. He was trying not to put too much pressure on this one single date, but he really liked Julia and wanted to be with her. They needed to figure out how to get their grandparents’ approval, but with or without it, he was all in.
He walked over the bridge and stepped onto the beach, feeling like he was stepping into an entirely different world. A long row of boards were set out on a lantern-lit walkway across the beach to where the gala was in full swing. A woman playing an acoustic guitar sang, her sultry voice carrying over the din of conversation.
Then he saw Julia. The wind teased her hair around her shoulders. She was talking to two of her grandma’s friends, and when Julia laughed, she threw her head back, and he wanted to place a kiss on her long, slender neck.
He swallowed hard as his gaze drew down the rest of her. That dress. Wow. He hadn’t realized that Julia’s legs were so long until this moment.
She must have felt the heat of his gaze because she turned and saw him. Awareness of her flooded his every sense. She tugged down the hem of her dress while she said something to the women she was talking to, and then turned and walked toward him.
He gave in to the overwhelming urge to pull her into a hug.
“You look beautiful,” he whispered, his voice coming out raspy.
“That’s really saying something in this dress,” she said.
“You’d look beautiful no matter what. But I happen to be a fan of this dress. A big fan,” he replied, taking her in appreciatively once more.
Her face flushed, but she raised an eyebrow in challenge. “So I’m beautiful even when I’ve let second-graders do my make-up?”
He laughed wholeheartedly. He would have never thought he’d be glad for that horrible day, and how stalling had led him into a gas station for snacks. What would his life look like if he’d never met Julia? He didn’t want to know. “Especially then.”
He took her by the hand and their fingers interlocked like they were made to be connected. She tipped her head against his shoulder, and he breathed in the floral scent of her hair as he pressed his cheek to it. He loved the sense of belonging that one simple movement could give him.
They found a table to place her purse at, and then went to go fill their plates with some of the food he could now smell as they got closer. His stomach growled at the sight of the large culinary displays, showing off every kind of cuisine he could think of. Most of them had watermelon tied into the recipe in some way or another, and he was eager to try it all. Watermelon shrimp ceviche was definitely calling his name, along with a grilled chicken breast drizzled in a watermelon and balsamic reduction.
“It all looks so good,” Julia said. They piled their plates high and then took their seats. Logan nearly groaned when Julia crossed her long legs.Focus on your food, Logan.
“How are Raza and Adia doing?” Julia asked him.
He cleared his throat and had to remind himself of her question. “Raza and Adia? Raza’s improving again, and though he’s still temperamental, his leg is fully healed, so he won’t be under such close care anymore.” Logan was going to miss singing to Raza, but his relief outweighed any other feeling. As for Adia, she still wasn’t doing well, something Logan couldn’t bear to dwell on. Just the morning before, Logan had noticed a more significant elevated white blood cell count in Adia’s blood sample that he’d analyzed, so he’d drawn a larger sample and overnighted it to a lab in Washington D.C. It took everything in him not to check his phone every few minutes to see if the lab had sent the latest results over.
Thankfully, the conversation shifted to something funny one of Julia’s students had said to her that week, and Logan was able to set aside his cares for a while.
As Logan listened to Julia tell another story, he tried to pinpoint exactly how he was feeling as he ate delicious food with a gorgeous woman whose smile and conversation filled him all the way up with something… so good, it was hard to describe.
Tranquil. Perhaps that was the word he was looking for. He could live in this moment with Julia forever, caught up in peace. She tipped her head up to look at the sky, her sparkling earrings grazing her shoulders.
“This is my favorite thing about Diamond Cove,” she told him, glancing over at him.
“What is?” he asked. He tore his gaze from her profile to look up at the sky.
“The stars. You can’t see them in the city, but we’re just far enough away out here that we get the full constellations.”
The pinpricks of light glowed in her pupils. “I used to look at the stars in Africa,” he told her. “When it was my turn to take the night shift at the conservation center I worked at. I’d lie on the ground, pillow my head with my arms, and chat with the elephants as I looked at the stars. I worked through a lot of problems that way.”
“I love picturing you like that.” Their eyes met, and time stopped. It was just the two of them alone in this universe of stars. He leaned forward and tenderly touched his lips to hers.
It felt as though they were floating among the very stars they had just been admiring, as she leaned into the kiss. Memories of that day on the dock flooded through him, and he wanted more. More Julia. More closeness. More of this absolute transcendence that came with touching her, talking to her, kissing her.
She tasted like mint, and as they pulled away, he breathed in her fresh scent of sunshine and happiness. He hadn’t known sunshine and happiness had specific scents until he met Julia, but that’s the only way he could describe it. And when he was with her, it filled him up like a plant absorbing necessary light and water to grow.
He knew they had only known each other a couple of months. Had only kissed three times. Had nearly insurmountable issues with their grandpas. Had their own worries and daily concerns about life.
But he also knew that he had fallen in love with Julia Peters.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Horace
