So, yes, I did a double take the first time I saw Drew Wilson on the cover of Maxim. I imagine the number of straight men who did a double take at that cover was—well, all of them. It’s meaningless that the mere sight of her was enough to take me directly from thinking about the surgery I’d be performing that evening to thoughts of bare skin and soft lips and breasts barely contained by a little pink dress.
But that doesn’t mean I have to do a double take every time she comes into view.
I’m poolside—forced into a chair next to my father, who’s droning on about the evils of managed care—when Drew appears. She’s in a t-shirt and shorts instead of some skimpy bikini, thank God, long blonde hair piled beneath a hat.
My mother pats the chair beside her. “You look like you need a nap, young lady,” she says affectionately. Drew seems to make her motherly side go into hyperdrive, for reasons I can’t understand.
Drew smiles but there’s something uncertain in it, something fragile. It’s almost as if she doesn’t know how to react when someone is kind.
“I was up before five today to run,” she says. “Between that and the hike, I’m pretty beat.”
Sloane, reading beside me, stiffens. I didn’t mention to her that I ran with Drew, since she’s already weirdly jealous. She seems to be putting it together now.
“Well, you sit down here and take a little rest then, hon,” says my mom.
Drew nods and then her hands go to her waistband and I stiffen in sudden panic. Drew is removing her clothes and my God that’s nothing I need to see. I know I should stop looking, for my own sanity, but I just don’t.
The shorts slide off. My gaze travels involuntarily along the smooth bronzed skin of her toned thighs, and up, up up to the curve of the perkiest ass I’ve ever laid eyes on. White bikini bottoms tied with string. A single tug and she could be freed from them.
She then pulls off her hat. Her hair spills down while she pulls the t-shirt over her head, revealing a bikini top that barely contains her curves. She is lush and soft, and before I can stop myself, I’m imagining her under me and wanting it so fiercely I think I’d give up anything to make it happen.
I have to drop a book in my lap to hide the fact that my cock is reacting to her like I’m new to puberty.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but the image of her is still seared in my brain.
I’m worried it’s going to stay there.
8
DREW
January 23rd
I manage to sleep a little later the next day, but it’s still dark when I head out to begin my run. Josh’s bedroom door clicks shut as I approach the elevator. I’m no lawyer, but I’m fairly certain he’s meeting the legal criteria for stalking.
He leans against the back wall of the elevator and closes his eyes.
“Why are you so tired?” I ask. “Please tell me you were murdering Sloane and hiding the body all night.”
He opens one eye. “What makes you think it would take all night?”
Joshua Bailey, making a second joke in twenty-four hours. I laugh at the unexpectedness of it more than anything else.
“It must take a lot of time,” I continue. “Movies make it seem easy, but, like, sawing through all that bone takes some upper body strength.”
“Jesus Christ,” he says, stepping off the elevator and walking ahead. “The way your mind works frightens me.”
It’s absolutely black outside; no noise but the crickets and the fountains and our soft steps falling into line with each other’s. We reach the road and start to run. This time I don’t bother trying to stay ahead of him or falling behind. I clearly can’t outrun him anyway, and I’ve had worse company. Davis, for instance, ran with me once and spent the whole time talking about the importance of keeping my weight down.
“I get it. I’ve thought about murdering Sloane too,” I tell him, picking up where we left off. “Although just an FYI, wanting to murder someone is not a legally justifiable defense. I checked into it after we met for the first time.”
He scowls. “You talk about murder a lot. You might want to lay off the crime dramas for a bit.”
“I don’t need to watch crime dramas,” I reply. “My mother and my stepfather practice criminal law.”
His gaze jerks toward me. “Your mother?”
I sigh. Everyone assumes simply because I sing about sex on occasion that I must be the product of foster care or a single mom who supported the family via prostitution.
“It’s flattering, how shocked you are by that.”
He shrugs. “I just figured you were raised by someone…a little more shallow. Like, an aging model or a pageant winner, someone who’d have you out there auditioning at age five to model swimwear for sexy toddlers in the newspaper.”
“Ads for sexy toddlers,” I muse. “Is that what you use for porn in Somalia?”
“Only when the internet’s slow,” he says, and I give another startled laugh. I just made the world’s most distasteful joke and he doubled down on it. I respect that.
“Wow,” I say.
He smirks. “I think I even grossed myself out with that one.”
We pass the banyan tree. There are surfers out this morning, pulling boards off the large rack in the sand and heading into the dark water. “I can think of nothing more terrifying,” I say as we pass, “than surfing when it’s pitch-black outside.”
“I can’t imagine waking up this early by choice,” he replies, which has me wondering, once more, what kept him up last night. I’m fairly certain Sloane does not stay up all night for sex. She’d want it rigorously scheduled, with as little touching as possible and a wet towel at the ready to promptly clean up the mess.
Was it satisfactory, she’d ask at the end. He won’t ask her the same, because her release is not critical to the continuation of the species.
“I’m trying to imagine you and Sloane having sex,” I reply, mostly because I know it will make him uncomfortable.
He stumbles and catches himself. “What?”
“Don’t worry, it’s not sexy. I picture more of a Ken doll, Barbie doll situation, with you two rubbing your smooth parts against each other. Or two robots fucking, in some kind of simulation set up for scientists to observe. I’m not entirely clear on why scientists would need to observe robots fucking…still working that part out.”
“Please stop talking,” he begs, but I see that twitch to his lips.
I can’t imagine why, but that smile he’s repressing is the first thing about this trip that’s really made me happy I came.
By the time we approach the hotel, daylight is starting to break and I’m utterly destroyed. He thought he was running slow on my behalf and I was too proud to admit we were running at least a minute per mile faster than I have ever run.
We reach the gardens and he turns toward the pool. “I’m heading this way. I like watching the light come up over Diamond Head.”
“Can’t you watch it from your balcony?”
Something passes over his face, a hint of trouble he doesn’t want to share. “Sloane’s a light sleeper.”
He isn’t exactly inviting me along, but I follow him to the lounge chairs facing Diamond Head and the bay anyway. He glances at me, undoubtedly irritated I’m crashing his sunrise party, and that irritation only encourages me.