Sabrina and I exchange a look, then take off after her, around the dark side of the house. Cleo throws the gate to the patio open, kicking her shoes off as she runs through, unbuttoning her pants.
Sabrina thumps my arm to get me to run faster, and we round the bend in time to see Cleo, now pantsless, leap into the pool. The others come around the bend, and Sabrina spins toward Parth, uses her full weight to shove him in.
Without hesitation, Kimmy cannonballs in after him, one shoe still on. Sabrina whirls on me. I shriek and swat her hands away. “We’re too old!” I cry. “Don’t make me do this!”
I get hold of her wrists. Her yelp turns into laughter as we struggle at the water’s edge.
I’m swept off my feet from behind. An arm tight around my rib cage, a clovey smell, as I’m pitched off-balance.
We fall together, tangled, breathless. The water folds around us, and I open my eyes beneath the surface, turning in his arms. Everything is glitter, shimmering bits of silver blue at first, and then there he is, paled by the pool’s strange light. His hair waves out, dancing around his face, and bubbles slip from his nose and the corners of his mouth.
He catches my hands and draws me closer. I don’t even think about holding myself back. I’d like to blame the weed, but I can’t. It’s him and me.
My thighs skate over his, nesting loose against his hips. He brings my hands to the back of his neck, and we sink like that, descending from the glowing legs treading water. He pulls me flush to him, his heart pumping against my collarbone.
And then we’ve reached the bottom of the pool. We can’t go any deeper. He pushes off against the tile, sending us back to the surface.
Cold air, laughter, screeching from the edge of the pool, where Kimmy and Cleo have now teamed up to get Sabrina into the water.
And I don’t feel young. I feel alive. Jolted awake. My skin, muscles, organs, bones, all somehow more concrete here. Wyn’s face and eyelashes glisten, his shirt plastered to him. His fingers are gentle on my jaw, his thumb tracing over my bottom lip as his eyes watch it drop open, as if to breathe him into me. Our lungs expand, pushing into each other, and his gaze lifts to mine, and here, with everyone to see it, where the rule I set won’t be broken—where I can act like it’s an act—I tip my mouth up under his.
20
NOT QUITE REAL LIFE
But still Wednesday
HIS TONGUE BRUSHES my bottom lip first, like he’s just tasting. Like he doesn’t plan to kiss me at all. But my lips part for him anyway, and he sighs as his mouth sweeps upward, catching mine in full.
He captures my face in his hands and angles me up to deepen the kiss, the heat of his mouth scorching compared to the mild warmth of the water.
There’s no thought, no logic, no feeling other than him. My hands slip up the back of his shirt, nails sinking into his shoulder blades, and his hands sweep down my body, barely touching, leaving trails of goose bumps. My breath catches, spine curving into him, and his grip tightens against my thighs, scraping up beneath my hem to press me flush to him. His erection rocks against me, sending sparks showering across the backs of my eyes, and my nipples pinch as I arch into him.
My back meets the corner of the pool. Our hips angle together as his mouth glides down my neck, kissing me, biting wherever shivers erupt.
My skin burns everywhere it wants him.
The saving grace of this situation is that we’re not alone. That I can’t take this as far as I want to.
Behind us, Cleo and Kimmy finally manage to shove Sabrina into the pool. The splash carries a torrent of swear words up to the night sky. Wyn pulls back from me, his forehead resting against my temple, his heart slamming into me.
All I want now is to go to bed. I’m vaguely aware that there are reasons this is a terrible idea, but I’m having trouble pulling any of them to the forefront of my mind.
“You’re full of surprises tonight, Clee,” Parth shouts.
Cleo backstrokes past us, grinning up at the visible sliver of moon overhead. “Then I guess I’ve met my goal for the week.”
Still sputtering over the water and pushing fistfuls of honey-blond out of her face, Sabrina says, “Your goal for the week was to throw your bra off a Ferris wheel and bodycheck me into a pool?”
Cleo sits up, treading water. “More or less.”
Kimmy spikes a beach ball right at us, and I dive away from Wyn, my face tingling, my smile aching, my whole body buzzing.
Try as I might to bring myself back to reality, to the world outside the bubble of Knott’s Harbor, I am fully, terrifyingly here, where nothing else seems to matter.
* * *
? ? ?
AFTER WE’VE TOWELED off, climbed the stairs, and said our good nights, my bravery flags a little. Wyn holds tight to my hand as we make our way down the hall and into our dark bedroom.
He presses me back into the door the moment it’s closed. We’ve barely taken our hands off each other since that first kiss in the pool, but now that we’re alone, we’re both so much less certain. He’s trembling, or else I am—it’s always been hard to tell where one of us ends and the other begins—and our hands twist together, our breaths shallow.
It’s not that I think what happened downstairs was an act. But it was part of an agreement.
This isn’t. And neither of us seems to have decided what happens next.
My body has one idea. My brain isn’t a fan of the plan.
You’ve spent months trying to forget what you’re missing, I tell myself. How will you survive being reminded? Living the loss of it all over again?
His pulse is drumming into my chest. My weight shifts into him, my breasts brushing against his soaked T-shirt, and he lets out an unsteady breath.
I’m starved of him. I’ve been stranded in a Wyn-less desert, my throat bone-dry, and that first sip downstairs has made the thirst worse. My nervous system doesn’t care that this is a mirage. The violent kinetic thrumming is back, the air particles between us sparking.
“Is this okay,” he asks thickly.
I lift toward him like a charmed snake, my knees buckling a little when his palms touch my stomach through the damp satin, start to glide heavily up me. His lips skirt along my collarbone, his breath diffusing over my skin.
His dark eyes lift as his palms settle against my chest. I rock into his touch. His hands move to cup me more fully. When his thumbs graze my nipples, he groans, catches them between his fingers, watching the way my breath staggers and my body bows upward.
He slips one of my straps down my shoulder, kisses the bare skin where it used to be. His fingers find the other strap and tug it away too. My head tips back as I try to get a good breath, and he slips a hand into the now loose top of my bodice, his fingers curling against me.
He steps in close, his knee batting my thighs apart. I wrap my hand around his neck to keep from collapsing when his mouth drops to my chest, his lips closing over me. My existence narrows to that point, to the gentle pressure and fierce heat of his lips. He yanks my dress down until I’m bare to the waist, kisses his way across me, his palm moving to roll heavily against me.
“Tell me to kiss you, Harriet,” he rasps.
I don’t know if it’s wounded pride or fear of this all-consuming want or something else, but I can’t stand to ask for more of him.