Page 3 of Thick & Thin

Even now, two years later, I could taste their forced kisses and feel their touches on my skin. It was a night I refused to talk about—a night I pushed to the back of my brain and locked away—a night that changed me forever.

Jealous and angry or not, dating wasn’t something I was ever going to bother with again. It wasn’t until our senior year and Josh’s fifth girlfriend that I realized my jealousy stemmed less from sharing my best friend’s attention and more from me wanting the part of Josh his girlfriends were getting.

I stopped paying attention to his highest scores on our favorite games and started noticing other things like the way his ab muscles flexed when he threw the ball or the way his football pants hugged his perfect ass. How he calmed a horse with soothing strokes and how sexy he looked when he rinsed off with the water hose by the barn and shook his dark hair dry.

These were all things I never mentioned to anyone. It was hard enough to admit those things to myself. And when those nasty little thoughts of Josh’s smile or laugh, of his body or the way he looked when he was hot and sweaty, began to creep into my mind, I would push them away and try to replace them with disgusting things only I knew about him. Like how he once ate a beetle on a dare or peed the bed until he was seven. Our junior year, he puked out the window of Marshal Wade’s truck after drinking too much at a party and sprayed the car behind us with chunks of pizza.

Thinking these things worked.

Kind of.

My flip-flop caught on a rock, and I stumbled, but before I could fall, Jimmy Jones, aka JJ, caught my arm. He grinned down at me, his eyes moving across my T-shirt covered boobs, and I jerked my arm away.

“Whoa, Scrappy. I was just making sure you didn’t trip and drop the beer.”

I had earned the name Scrappy our freshman year when I had climbed over the lunch table to punch Jody Samuels for calling my dad an alcoholic. Sure, he was a drunk, but only Devin and I could call him that.

“Nice.” I chuckled. “Worried more about the beer than me falling on my face.”

He laughed. “Basically.” He reached down and took the twelve-pack of Budweiser from my grip before trotting the rest of the way down the hill to the landing.

“Eat a dick, JJ!” I called after him.

“I would if you left some for the rest of us.”

I shook my head, laughing at his words.

The truth was my mouth had never been near a dick, and everyone knew it. With all the testosterone around me, I wasn’t sure my sleeping with anyone would fly. My brother would have a heart attack and kill someone, and Josh … well, I wasn’t sure what Josh would do. We never talked about our sex lives much. I knew he had been with girls, but while we talked about everything, that subject was still weird for us.

I paused just before reaching the landing and took in the sight before me. Almost the entire senior class was there. People I had known most of my life, since we lived in a small town, and we were almost finished with high school. Some of us would leave for college. Some wouldn’t. And others, like Josh, would leave us all behind and go into the military.

I couldn’t think about that right then, though. If I did, my day would be ruined, and I would spend the day floating down the river bitchy and sad.

“What did JJ say to you?” Josh asked, stopping beside me.

Now that I had two empty hands, I took my float from him.

“Nothing. I almost tripped, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t drop the beer.”

Josh snorted. “Yeah. I bet that’s all he wanted. Asshole.”

I pulled my shades from my eyes and pushed them into my hair. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. You want your float linked with mine or what?”

“Yeah, the usual.”

Once we reached the small beach area, we threaded a slim red piece of rope between our two float handles and attached the Styrofoam cooler so we could grab drinks when we wanted them. I stood to the side and watched as he pulled his jeans down and tossed them next to everyone else’s stuff. After floating all day, we would eventually end up at the same beach, so it worked.

He pulled his hat from his head, pushed his hair back, and adjusted the hat back on his head. The actions drew my eyes to the muscles of his arms and chest, sending a wave of heat over me that had nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with my hormones.

We walked out in the river, the cold water shocking me and making me shiver, until we were knee-deep. Then we climbed onto our floats, Josh holding mine until I was settled in, and drifted off along with the rest of the group.

I leaned back and relaxed, letting the cool water rush up through the center of my float and rinse away the sweat from my back. It probably would have been better to take my shirt and shorts off, but again, showing my body made me super uncomfortable.

Josh floated with his shorts and shades on, his hands dragging along the sides of his float, making the water ripple at his fingertips. His long tan legs were submerged from the calf down, and every now and again, I would get a peek at his upper thigh when his shorts shifted.

I did the same, my fingers and feet skimming the surface of the water, except instead of facing the sky with my eyes closed as I was sure he was, I took in the scenery. The way the large oak trees seemed to drip into the water from the banks as we passed. The large rocks we navigated, one with a turtle sitting on top.

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