揥hen I抦 her, there抯 a point to it all.?He pressed his mouth into a line. 揑t抯 just for me, it makes me happy, and I love it. It scared me but I抦 glad I did. It抯 my true self, or one of my true selves, up there.?
He shot me a skewering glance, like he was daring me to laugh or make fun of him.
I nodded and swallowed with a smile. 揥ell, you抮e amazing.?
His expression softened and he looked down at his makeup case. 揟hanks.?
揅an you show me how to do eyeliner??
He laughed. 揝ure. I can do that.?
Div finished cleaning up and we walked to our cars together. Something daring streaked through me.
揌ey, Div??
He sent a text on his phone and looked up at me. 揧es, Hannah.?
揧ou should come hang out at my bookstore sometime.?I shrugged. 揑 mean, I know you抮e busy working all the time, but if you have a day off or something. You don抰 have to棓
揝ure.?He smiled. 揟hat would be fun. Avery won抰 shut up about it.?
A laugh bubbled out of me. 揙kay. Cool.?
He tilted his head. 揝o, you and Wyatt.?He raised an eyebrow and his eyes glittered. 揅amping.?
I groaned. 揙h my god. Mortifying.?
The corner of his mouth rose. 揑 expect all the details of what made you howl like a werewolf.?
揑 did not howl like a werewolf,?I sputtered, shaking with laughter.
揗aybe, maybe not. Maybe that抯 what Miri抯 telling everyone. Wyatt likes you, and you should go for it.?
I bit back a grin, flushed. 揗aybe I will.?
He lifted his eyebrows once. 揃ye.?
揃ye.?
We climbed into our cars and I pulled out my phone. When I unlocked it, the picture Wyatt had taken of me in the bookstore was on screen.
Div had said he was his most authentic self up on stage in drag. He said it was scary but brought him happiness and made life worth it.
The bookstore made me feel like that. Not the old version of the bookstore, but the new one. The one where we sold mostly romance novels, had a stand at the farmer抯 market, and would soon have a huge, beautiful mural outside.
My bookstore.
Being with Wyatt made me feel that life was worth it. Pacific Rim was in a few weeks and he might be leaving but memories of us camping and surfing and sitting at the bar, watching karaoke, would last forever.
My heart squeezed up into my throat. I opened my social media and posted the picture of myself that Wyatt took.
The girl behind the books, I typed.
20
Wyatt
Hannah beamed at me the next morning, looking back to see if I had watched her catch another wave. I grinned back and rested my torso on my board as I bobbed up and down in the water. The sun had just risen and it was going to be a beautiful day.
For days, what Hannah and I had done while camping replayed in my mind. Her soft, sweet moans as I touched her. How she arched against me. How she tasted. The way she clamped down on me hard. Her dazed, sated expression after. That dreamy, lazy smile she had shot me as she sunk back into the pillow.
How fucking incredible it felt when she wrapped her pretty lips around me.
I groaned and leaned my head on my board. Her eagerness and enthusiasm far surpassed any skill required and I had jerked off many, many times in the past few days thinking about her.
This was a problem, but I抎 deal with it in the future, when it didn抰 make my chest hurt to think about not doing this every morning. All things came to an end, but they wouldn抰 end today. Today was all for us.
This morning, a registration email appeared in my inbox for a surf competition in California in December. The conversation with Hannah over the fire while camping played in my head, where I had spilled my dark secret to her.
I watched her on the water, brilliant blonde hair catching the morning light. California wasn抰 that far away. I could go down for a weekend.
Hannah had never been to California. Would she want to come with me? I pictured us going out for Mexican food, sipping margaritas and while she swatted my hand away from her food.
I rubbed the back of my neck and tried not to smile so hard at the thought. It was her birthday in a few weeks, on the last day of the Pacific Rim competition, and I抎 been wracking my brain for a gift for her. It had to be perfect, but everything I had come up with so far wasn抰 good enough.
She paddled back to me, pushing the wet hair out of her face with a big smile.
I winked at her. 揧ou抮e getting good at this, bookworm.?
She flushed under my praise and my heart squeezed.
She nodded over my shoulder behind the break, further out in the ocean where the waves were bigger. 揑 want to try one of those.?
The waves crashed hard as they broke. We didn抰 do lessons out there unless they were intermediate surfers we had worked with before. Those waves required comfort and intuition with the ocean. I frowned, studying their height. They were a big level up from the baby waves she had been learning on. The period in between waves was long enough that she would have a decent recovery time if she bailed.