Page 56 of The Best Part of Breaking Up

From somewhere that sounds faraway, I hear the latch on the rooftop door click as it opens. My mind seems to register that it’s the real rooftop door and not some imagined intrusion. By the time my eyes slide open, I see a shadowy figure letting the door close behind it.

Shapeless panic seizes me. I quickly snap my legs together, holding my breath and hoping to cling, unseen, to the side of the pool. Meanwhile, my heart is hammering in my chest, seemingly demanding to know – on behalf of my body – why I stopped about thirty seconds short of the much-needed edge.

I can’t make out the figure, but it is definitely a person, and he’s already at the stairs of the pool before he notices me.

“Oh,” he stammers. “Hi. Sorry. I didn’t realize anyone was –”

“Quentin?”

It comes out breathless. I blink at his shadowy outline, wondering in my stupor if I somehow conjured him out of thin air.

“Heidi?” he says, squinting. “Sorry, it’s dark out here. I –”

“Didn’t you read the sign?” I ask, keeping my voice just above a husky whisper. “The pool’s closed.”

The corner of his mouth edges up in a smile. “Then what are you doing up here?”

I know he means this innocently, but absolutely nothing about the heat in my body right now feels innocent. I’m grateful for the dark so he can’t see the evidence burning across my face. I swallow thickly.

“Cooling off,” I say.

There’s a low, sensual quality to my voice that matches the way my entire body is still humming with electricity. It’s the kind of energy that is still seeking pleasure, and if I’m not careful, I imagine it’s going to reach for Quentin the way lightning seeks the ground.

“Mind if I join?” he asks.

“I was just leaving,” I lie, already hauling myself up over the edge.

“Oh c’mon. Stay. We’ve still got at least four and a half minutes of smalltalk.”

I ignore his teasing in favor of wrapping my towel snugly around me as if it can act as some sort of protective barrier, like a cotton blend chastity belt. “What could you possibly need to talk to me about?”

He peels off his shirt and drops it at the edge of the pool. He audibly sighs as he descends the stairs and wades into the water. It’s a sound that gives me a flash of Fantasy Quentin.

“Damn, the water’s perfect,” he says, letting his gaze tip towards the sky as he runs both hands through his hair. “They don’t lock it?”

“Not usually,” I say. “But they will, if they get complaints.”

“We’ll have to be quiet, then.”

He winks at me before he goes under. The words, the gesture – all of it – tug hard through my center, urging me to slip back into the pool so I can wrap myself around him. I’m fairly confident I could do it, too. He might have been respectful of our mutual boundaries thus far, but I have a pretty good feeling that if I wanted to seduce him, I could.

At what cost?

When he resurfaces, I’m still stranding here, clutching my towel around me.

“Have you solved the billboard mystery yet?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Unfortunately I have.”

“Unfortunate because I won’t find you snooping around my office again, after hours?”

When he smirks, my stomach flips, and I wonder why I didn’t kiss him that night, even though I know the answer to that a hundred times over. I perch on a lounge chair positioned at the edge of the pool.

“Unfortunate because it was exactly who I hoped it wasn’t.”

“That’s tough, I’m sorry.”

“That’s business,” I shrug.

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