“Nice. You got my go for it vote.” I turn to Vivienne. “And you, Viv? I don’t want to leave you on your own.”
“I’ll be fine,” Vivienne says. “Aya and I are having dinner with her family tonight.”
“So is tonight the night?” Kimba eyes me over the rim of her glass. “Do we need to have the talk before it goes down?”
My uninhibited peal of laugher takes me by surprise. God, where’d this happiness come from? It feels good to be happy about something. Truly giddy, which is how Maxim’s kisses and his touch and his words, his company make me feel. And to feel certain about something. For weeks I’ve circled my future warily, unsure of what I’ll do next. I’m pretty sure tonight, I’ll do Maxim.
“I think it’s tonight, yeah,” I admit. “But I’m good on the talk. Just because I haven’t used the equipment doesn’t mean I haven’t read the manual or played with the knobs.”
Kimba cackles and runs a hand over her closely cropped golden brown hair. “Yes, those knobs have gotten me through this drought, but I think I may give David the controls tonight.”
“What time are you meeting Maxim?” Vivienne asks, still grinning over Kimba’s comment.
“Uh, I’m not sure. He said he would text me, but of course . . . ” I roll my eyes. “I left my phone in the room.”
“I know. Sorry, girl. We’ll be back soon,” Kimba assures me and bites into a lime wedge.
“I was listening to yet another voice mail from my dad when I was brushing my teeth. I think I left it at the sink.”
When we dock and deboard, I force a leisurely pace to match Viv and Kimba’s, but I want to run, find my phone, and see if Maxim tried to call or text. We’re still talking about the art we saw at the Van Gogh Museum and the gorgeous country hillside from the bike tour when we reach our hostel. Maxim sits on a low stone wall across from the building, reading a book and looking delectable in aviator sunglasses.
God, save me from this man in aviators.
“Well so much for thinking he’d be deterred by a lost phone,” Vivienne murmurs with a smile. “Right here waiting for you.”
I send them a gleeful look before walking a little ahead to approach him. He seems completely absorbed in whatever he’s reading.
“Hi,” I say once I’m standing right in front of him.
His smile packs a rush of adrenaline, a needle plunged right through my heart, deploying blood and endorphins and electricity to all my vital parts. “Hi. Hope it’s okay that I just showed up. I called, but—”
“Sorry. I left my phone. And of course, it’s okay.”
He glances past me and offers another smile, this one more polite, less familiar. “Hey, Kimba, Vivienne. You guys have fun today?”
“Yup, so much fun,” Kimba says, already turning toward the hostel’s entrance. “See you upstairs, Lenn.”
“It was great,” Vivienne replies, right behind Kimba, both rushing to leave us alone. “We went to the Van Gogh and rode bikes, and took a canal ride.”
“Oh, I was hoping we could take a canal ride, Nix,” he says to me, his eyes and voice private, intimate even though we don’t know each other’s bodies yet. The abbreviation of my name, for some reason, is so damn sexy. My father, all my friends shorten my name to Lenn. Nix is just . . . yeah. I want to be Nix this week. Tonight, I want to be Nix for him.
“We still can,” I assure him, my voice softening so only he will hear me. “There were lots of people. Maybe there’s one for just two?”
He folds the book facedown on the wall and clasps my hips, pulling me to stand between his legs. He reaches up to roll his closed fist around and down the length of my ponytail. “Exactly what I had in mind.”
He’s seated on the wall, but so tall, we’re almost eye level. We met four years ago for a couple of hours. We clocked some time last night and even shared kisses. How can we be here already? How can I want this with him after never wanting it with anyone else before?
But then he tugs on my ponytail and pulls me close enough to kiss. Every doubt and question follows common sense out the window. I cup his face and press deeper into the V of his thighs. I open to him, take him in, taste his groan, and relish how he tautens under my hands.
“Jesus,” he breathes, palming my ass. “I’ve been thinking about this all day. About how you tasted last night.”
“You have?” I smile against his lips.
“Could you please ignore the eighty-four text messages and thirty-six missed calls on your phone when you get upstairs?” His husky laugh behind my ear makes me shudder. “Let’s just pretend those didn’t happen.”
“Do they escalate in desperation?” I ask hopefully.
“They do a little, yeah.”
“Then I’m saving them.”
He narrows his eyes and drops his hands from me, but the corners of his mouth twitch. How can lips be firm and so lush?
“I’m as bad as your dad. I kept thinking maybe something happened to you or . . .” His shoulders lift and fall, and he looks away.
“Or?”
“Maybe you changed your mind about getting to know each other.” He looks back to me and there’s an unexpected flash of uncertainty. Maxim doesn’t strike me as an uncertain man.
“I have the feeling you’re the kind of guy people like to get to know. I’m no exception. Sorry if I worried you.”
“You can make it up to me over dinner.”
“I’d like that.”
“Great.” He stands and picks up his book. “I’ll let you get inside to relax a little, get changed. Eight o’clock okay to come back for you?”
“Sure,” I reply distractedly, my attention caught by the cover of his book.
“Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer.” I turn down the corners of my mouth, simultaneously intrigued and already half dozing. “The Antarctic, huh?”
“I know Ernest Shackleton isn’t exactly a household name . . .” he laughs, picking up the book and closing it, holding it, “。 . . but he’s kind of a big deal as far as expeditions go.”
“Are expeditions your thing then? Is there even any place left to expedition to?”
“Oh, yeah.” He lifts his brows and studies the cover. “On both counts. There’s a ton left to explore and most of it interests me very much. I’m actually leaving for Antarctica next week.”
My heart wobbles and my whole body goes still. If I counted up every minute I’ve ever spent with this man, it wouldn’t even equal a day, but hearing he’s leaving next week . . . hell, I’m leaving next week. Whatever this is or could be, it’s most likely short-lived. I need to remember that.
“Wow, Antarctica. A trip to the most remote place on the planet. Were you drafted? Is it a condition for your degree or something?”
“I applied and it’s actually a pretty competitive process. I’ll be there all winter and staying through November, which is Antarctic summer. The research you can get in the two seasons is completely different, and I want exposure to both. I’ll be inland until around September and then will study along the peninsula on an ice-capable ship for the summer. Some of the best clues we have, some of the best predictors of how the planet is changing and what the implications of it will be, are in the Antarctic.”