“Would it make you feel better or worse to know that I enjoyed it?”
Better. “Worse.”
“Well, then I hated it.” Bo reaches out, tilting up my face with his bent knuckle under my jaw and his thumb pressed to my chin. Slowly, I drag my eyes up to see him. “I truly am sorry I made you feel embarrassed. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I’m glad we’re on the same page now. Keeping myself away from your bedroom was nearly impossible, but now, with these rules, I—”
I interrupt him, removing his hand from my quivering chin by stepping backward, my ass hitting the wall of the entranceway, next to our coats hung on the wall. “Just…” Stop talking, I beg with my eyes. That’s not helping. I breathe in slowly, allowing my eyes to softly close as I do.
Then it’s worse.
The second my eyes are closed, my imagination is overrun with images of Bo bursting into my bedroom and pinning my hands above my head, tossing my vibrator across the room, and using his mouth in its place. His teeth tugging at my flesh, his lips kissing across the swell of my belly, his tongue lapping at my breast. I can practically hear those perfect whimpering noises he made as he came undone beneath me.
Pressing my knees together, I open my eyes with a newfound stubbornness. I try to remind myself of the reality here. What I know versus what I wish could be.
I know that Bo is a good guy.
I know, unfortunately, that Bo is great in bed.
But I also know that Bo is at least a little hung up on his ex.
And I know my heart wouldn’t be able to take having sex with him again. It’d be far too easy to fall for him now, with all these increasing layers of circumstance and proximity between us. And I don’t think he’s ready for what that could lead to. I don’t think he wants that with me. I think he wants her, even still. He’s, perhaps, loyal to a fault. Which is only more upsetting. Even his bad traits are good ones.
I cannot confuse being here with being wanted.
I cannot convince myself that he’d want me more than his ex.
I cannot let myself fall for a man whose heart belongs to someone else.
“Bring a girl home,” I say with a false indifference. “A loud one, preferably. Get even, and we can forget about the whole thing.”
His face falls, then hardens into a scowl. It’s an expression I’ve yet to see from him. I don’t like it. It doesn’t suit him at all. “That would make you feel better? Me having sex with someone else down the hall?” he asks harshly.
“Yeah, sure. Why not?” I reply, unfittingly blasé.
He brings a hand to his face, sighing out as he pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s late. We should get some sleep.”
I nod, folding my arms across my chest. I will my legs to move, but they refuse.
“I am sorry, Win. I didn’t mean to—”
“We’re fine,” I interrupt, standing straighter. “Tricky topic, but it’s settled now. Friends, right?”
Bo begins slowly walking backward until the backs of his legs hit the back of the couch. He lowers against it, looking rather defeated as he nods his agreement. “Friends… Always that.” Bo smiles softly, his eyes filled with equal parts discomfort and reassurance. It upsets me. Seeing that he’s trying to set me at ease.
And for the first time, I find myself wishing a man was more of a jerk.
“Okay, well, good night,” I say, brushing past him toward our bedrooms. Once in the hallway, I press the heel of my palm into my forehead, wincing on impact.
As soon as my hand reaches my bedroom’s door handle, I still.
Desperately torn between what I want and what I know, I linger. Hoping that maybe he’ll bring me that nightly glass of ice water and slip into bed next to me, harmless in his approach. Wondering, desperately, if he feels this too. This tension, like a force, like a tether, so tightly wound between us. All these strings attached that were never supposed to be there.
I remind myself of them. One by one, plucking at each string, each reason, like an instrument in my mind. Telling myself, as I have for years, that logic needs to conquer my reckless heart.
So I go to bed. Alone.
Quiet as a mouse.
CHAPTER 20
This will help. It always does.
Every dazzling second of fractured, flickering blue-hued shadows projected onto the pool’s floor. The whoosh of the water between strokes as I lift my head above the surface for quick gasps of air. The smell of chlorine, and the sensation of my feet pushing against tile as I roll forward into my next lap.
I repeatedly keep telling myself this will help while exhaustively becoming more and more tense.
I’ve been pent-up since last night. After tossing and turning for hours, I decided the only solution was to spend an early morning at the pool, exerting some of this tension as best I can. Pushing my body to its limits in cathartic release.
While I’ve always felt most at peace inside a natural body of water, swimming anywhere can bring me relief.
But not today, it seems.
This is lap seventeen. I’ve yet to determine how many it’ll take to feel like myself again, but the number keeps increasing with every turn. I’ll be swimming until I forget the very loud memory of my conversation with Bo last night. The mortification of living down the hall from someone who knows you touched yourself thinking about them and has heard you doing it.
And, simultaneously, I’ll be here until I muster the considerable amount of self-control I need to hear that Bo enjoyed hearing me and still not make the reckless, short-sighted decision to sleep with him again.
I lift my left arm up and over my body, carving a stream into the water ahead of me at full speed, then switch to my right.
Left, right.
I haven’t had sex since Halloween. But… has he?
Left, right.
He’s not actually going to bring another girl home, right?
Left, right.
What if he calls my bluff?
Left, right.
When I reach the edge of the pool, I pull myself up and over and catch my breath as I tug off my goggles, bringing two palms to cover my eyes. Fuck. This is definitely not working.
All I can see is Bo’s face, his arm leisurely draped across the top of the archway, his frame towering over me. His lips repeating keeping myself away from your bedroom was nearly impossible over and over and over until I want to scream, so why did you?
I could ask Sarah to spend the night at hers… Give myself a day or two to cool off. But am I seriously going to have to do that every time I find Bo attractive? I’m an adult, for fuck’s sake. We’ve slept together. It’s not exactly surprising that those urges didn’t go away the moment the complications multiplied.
But something has to give.
And I’m increasingly aware that it might be my self-restraint.
“Win?” a deep, friendly voice calls out, echoing around the pool.
I twist to look behind me, looking up to the lifeguard tower to find a familiar face. “Cam?” I call up to him, smiling broadly.
I trained Cam three years ago at Westcliff Point, and he’s been back every summer since as a lifeguard. I’ve only ever bumped into my summer people outside of summer months a handful of times, and it always throws me off a bit. But Cam is a sweetheart. Though the timing of running into him could be better.