“I doubt it. I’ve been here four days and the last text I got from anyone was when I landed. Well, and Cindy my substitute who lost the fucking thumb drive with all my lesson plans on it. I had to log in to the school network from Nat’s hardwired computer. Mateo has so many security walls on that thing that Snowden couldn’t crack it.”
“Fucking Cindy,” he humored me.
“I’m old enough I shouldn’t care, but it’s still a reminder I’m no one’s center of the world anymore. Not like a kid is supposed to be for their parents.” I frowned. “I guess a phone works both ways, huh?”
Frankie worried his bottom lip with his teeth for a second as we walked. “I’ll text you then,” he decided. “I’ll text you every day. You should have my number.”
“Oh, should I?” I laughed. “I don’t know how many more unsolicited dick pics I can handle.”
“How many do you get?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“So…zero. Smooth way to admit you’d want mine though.”
“I don’t.”
“Phone, please.”
Hesitating briefly, I gave in and handed it over to him. The dim blue light illuminated his mischievous grin as he tapped away eagerly before handing it back.
I looked down at the screen. There was a text to my new contact labeled Frankie <3.
God damn, you know your way around a woman.
“Perfect.” I snorted sarcastically. “And I was worried about a dick pic.”
“Just keeping it for my records.”
“Are you this forward with all the women you date?”
A smirk tugged at the corner of his lip. “I haven’t dated anyone in ten years. I was with my ex for seven of them.”
Ten years. He’d been out of the game longer than I’d been in it. Curiosity flagged me. His ex was with him through his years in the military, then. Mateo definitely knew her.
“That’s a long time,” I commented.
Frankie adjusted his hat on his head. “It was. And to answer your question with another question, are the guys you date not this forward with you?”
Obviously whatever had happened with his ex-girlfriend wasn’t a topic Frankie loved revisiting. He was a confident exterior, but every now and again the cracks did show.
I shook my head. “I can hardly tell if the men I date actually even like me.”
“You’re making my stomach hurt, Ophelia,” Frankie groaned. “I’m all about a woman exploring her sexuality, but please, God, please tell me you don’t sleep with these fucking idiots.”
“Not all of them,” I admitted, wincing.
“What am I doing wrong?” Frankie joked. Then, more seriously said, “That makes me crazy. Hearing you’re not getting what you deserve.”
I was thankful for the veil of night at that moment. If I could, I would have made like a sand crab and buried myself in the ground to hide. Instead I stared down at my feet, wondering how I was going to keep my own promises. With Frankie, nothing felt disingenuous. He always said exactly what he was thinking and that made him all the more attractive.
“I guess you’re forgiven,” I mumbled.
He stopped in his tracks. “What was that?”
“Never mind,” I decided, continuing a few steps until I felt the familiar hold of his fingers around my bicep.
“Not never mind.” Frankie blinked down at me with a sweet grin. “Say it again.”
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“It’s important to me.”
In all the relationships I’d been in, I didn’t think one man had ever told me my approval was important to them. Of course the first man that did was thousands of miles beyond my wildest reach, and an unbelievably bad idea. The latter reason was becoming less and less convincing by the minute.
“You’re forgiven,” I repeated.
“Good,” he said. “Now I won’t think about it before I kiss you again.”
I paused in the sand, but Frankie continued on as if he’d just said the most normal thing in the world. Like my heart hadn’t stuttered and my feet hadn’t stumbled over one another before I built up the courage to follow.
“You coming, slowpoke?” He asked over his shoulder.
There was something so simultaneously comforting and terrifying about the ocean at night. The way I couldn’t see ten feet in front of me but still knew exactly what lay ahead. The milky light of the moon was the only thing keeping us from being completely shrouded in darkness, and while I could still make out Frankie beside me, there wasn’t another soul around to bear witness to us.
“I’ve never gone swimming in the ocean at night,” I said, taking a few steps into the water.
“There are sharks in there.” Frankie bristled next to me, apparently hoping I wasn't about to do what it looked like I was about to do.
“They’re all sleeping.” I laughed.
“No—nope, I don’t think they are.”
Throwing every caution to wind, I gave him a teasing wink and pulled the hem of my cover-up over my head, unveiling my bathing suit. The cool breeze sent a wake of goosebumps over my skin.
“What are you doing?”
Ignoring him, I tiptoed into the surf until the foam tickled my knees, and then sunk in even further, submerging the entire bottom half of my torso.
Frankie stood with his hands on his hips at the shore, worry wrinkling the gap in his brows that I could see all the way from Alaska. “C’mon, O,” he complained. “Stop playing around.”
“Join me, Francesco. The water’s fine.”
“I won’t be doing that.” He swiped his hat off his head and scratched nervously at his scalp. “I’ll actually be standing here with the Hollywood Beach EMS on speed dial while you get your ass cheek ripped off by a great white.”
I snorted, his unease enticing me to take it a leap further with the incentives. Giving the shoreline another quick onceover I hooked my thumbs into my bikini bottoms and shuffled the stringy material down my legs, bunching them into a ball then chucking them to land at his feet. “Better give them something good, then.”
Frankie registered what was soaking on the ground in front of him in slow-motion. His eyes rounded and his pacing stopped. “Oh, you little cocktease,” he groaned.
If there was anything more beautiful than the soon-gone look on Frankie Casado’s face right then I’d yet to see it. Suddenly all I could think about was that sweet, heated kiss under the mistletoe and what I wouldn’t give to taste it again.
“Me?” I pouted.
“You,” he confirmed, unironically at the same time that I pulled the flimsy tie at the back of my neck loose and let my whole top fall.
Frankie’s first instinct was to shoot a protective glance at the beach behind us to shield me from prying eyes. Such a gentleman. When he knew we were alone his eyes fluttered closed and I glanced down to appreciate the effect I had on him in his tightening swim trunks.
He turned his face to the stars and mumbled something incoherent to me over the crashing waves.
“Still waiting,” I taunted, dipping down into the water.