Our last summer at Blue Yonder, Eli swam whenever we weren’t working. He’d done the same thing every year before, but I’d never allowed myself to look at him. Or at least look at him, not like I did that summer, tracing the curves of his biceps, the soft arc that belied the immovable solidness underneath, and the bare taper of his hips. I mapped the thick swell of his thighs, the way his swim trunks plastered to them when he got out, revealing the paler, vulnerable skin where his tan faded away. I’d watched his body grow into itself year after year, and my awareness grew with it, peaking when every beautiful plane and limb of him met its full potential.
I didn’t do anything with that potential then and can’t do anything with it now, but as I make my way across the grass, I also can’t help but feel what I did then—anticipation. Unbearable awareness. My body remembers everything that happened here, and wants everything that didn’t.
Eli’s already in the deep end, his chin tipped up toward the sky. He looks over his shoulder when my feet meet cement, then turns completely as I halt next to a chaise. The water ripples around him, limned with the moonlight above and the pool lights below, casting him in a captivating mix of shadow and light.
Time is bending again and I don’t know which version of myself I am. I can’t pick out which version Eli is either, and I don’t know if that thrills me or scares me.
“Hey,” I say stupidly, like we didn’t just see each other five minutes ago.
I hug my towel to my stomach.
“Hey,” he replies, his eyes tracing the curves my red one-piece exposes. His hands have taken every path imaginable, and he looks at me like he’s remembering that. He clears his throat, drifting backward. “The water’s perfect.”
It’s the invitation I need. I toss my towel onto the chaise and make my way to the deep end, nearly on top of where Eli’s treading water. He looks up at me. I look down at him.
I’m pretty sure he’s holding his breath, so I hold mine, too. And then I jump.
When I come up for air, Eli has water running down his face.
“What,” he says, blowing out a wet, laughing breath, “was that?” I slick back my hair. “A cannonball.”
“Uh-huh.” It’s a silky acknowledgement that’s more texture than sound; it slides over my skin like water. “Don’t act like that wasn’t a declaration of war.”
“I can’t help that you were in my splash zone.” “You made me your splash zone.”
“That’s very self-important of you to think so.”
He grins. It’s sharklike, sharp-toothed and focused. My heart starts beating fast, latching on to anticipation of something I can’t name.
Eli drifts close. Droplets of water cling to his eyelashes and the thick stubble along his jaw, glide down the pillow of his bottom lip and the length of his throat, settling into the grooves of his thin gold chain. He stops mere inches from me, then dodges left suddenly, circling to my back. The water ripples around us, his chest grazing my shoulder blades.
“You want to rumble, Georgia?” he murmurs, nearly in my ear.
It’s an old, familiar question, one he used to ask whenever I’d jump in after him. It gave me the perfect excuse to put my hands all over his slick skin under the guise of roughhousing, so I always said yes.
I want to say yes again. To get him messy. It’s safe here, right? At least it’s not in my bed.
Maybe he hears that, or maybe he makes the decision for us. Suddenly his arms are wrapped around my waist and he’s lifting me out of the water, lobbing me like a beach ball.
I go down screaming and come up sputtering. “Okay. You’re dead.”
His eyes light up and then darken with intent when I advance on him, his broad shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter at my awkward leap-
shuffle. I give up, diving underwater to get to him quicker. My eyes are going to burn later from keeping them open, but I want to see the body I’m about to conquer.
But my suit is a red flag, so of course he sees me coming. His hands shoot beneath the water, fingers wide and palms out as he twists his hips away from me.
I get my hands on them anyway, pushing to get him off balance, but in seconds he’s got his fingers around my arms, yanking me to the surface. I come up gasping, using his body as leverage to get on his back by planting a foot on his thigh and curling over him. It’s messy business—my boob smashes into his cheek and his fingers dig into my ass—but I manage to plaster myself against him with a triumphant shout.
He’s laughing out loud, a beautiful sound I missed so much it momentarily stops me. But then his hands cup my thighs, hitching me up. I band one arm around his shoulder, curve my free hand around his throat.
“Now what?” I whisper in his ear, and suddenly neither of us are laughing.
There’s a vibration against my palm, the kind of groan he’d feed into my mouth, but held back. His voice is low and even when he says, “You tell me.”
I hook my legs around his waist and my heel brushes against him. I realize then that he’s hard, and I stop breathing. He has to feel my heart racing against his back. He groans for real, a bitten-away sound that echoes into the silent air as his hands come around my ankles, tight. I think he’s going to push me away, but he holds me there. Waiting.
I could stop. I should. But this anticipation is desperate to go somewhere finally. The last time we were here it was straightforward—he wanted me and I wanted him, but we didn’t let ourselves have it. There was no history between us, though, no heartbreak, and now I feel myself craving the ability to go back there. To play it out a different way and keep doing what we’re doing in the simplest terms: wanting each other here. Now. While we have the excuse to. Letting that be enough and then letting it go.
Exhaling, I focus on the nape of his neck. So vulnerable. The perfect place for my mouth.
“Are you giving up?” I murmur, and I almost hope he says yes. I’m scared of what I want.
His response is immediate. “No.”
There’s something immovable in his voice and a spark flares in my stomach, setting fire to any leftover doubt. He’s not going anywhere.
“Put your hands on me, then,” I say, leaning to the side like that’ll topple him. It doesn’t. “It’s not a real rumble if you aren’t even trying.”
Eli’s hands move fast from my ankles to my thighs and suddenly I’m being pulled around his body. He boosts me until we’re nose-to-nose. Until we’re lined up in a way that confirms how much he wants this.
“I am trying,” he breathes out. “You have no idea how hard I’m trying.”
My head tips back at the urgent press of him between my legs, but his thumb notches into the divot below my bottom lip, his fingers holding me in place for the unrelenting latch of his gaze.
A handful of seconds extend between us, the water putting its hands on each of our backs to sway us closer together. His nose grazes mine, and in the total silence surrounding us, his soft groan sounds like a sonic boom.
It’s such a needy sound, a thing I crave with a perpetually empty stomach. I chase his mouth and after a hesitant second, he gives it to me. There’s water on his lips and mine, and it makes for a perfect slide in tandem with his desperate tongue. He makes another sound, like it hurts but it’s good. Our kisses get harder, needier, his whiskers burning my skin as his mouth traces my jaw, moves down my neck.
He asks, “Do you remember our last summer here?” “Wh—what?”
“Do you?” His fingers dig into my thighs, pulling me closer. “Yes.” It’s a sigh, then a groan as he bites gently at my throat.
“There were so many things I wanted with you. So many ways I just wanted you. It’s how I feel now,” he murmurs, and my heart takes off. “I knew as soon as Adam asked us to come up here that it would happen and I
still did it because I—” He stops, and time does, too. I’m terrified of what he could say.
Please keep it simple, I think. I tip my head back, make eye contact with a star. Wish for it.
Eli lets out a breath. “Because deep down I wanted it to. But I don’t know how you feel. What you want. And every time I start to ask, you change the subject.”
My tongue is slow to form a sentence. It wants Eli, not conversation. “I want to keep doing what we’re doing.”
He pulls back, even when I grip his hair in protest, his eyes wandering over my face. That glimmer of determination is back. “Try a line you didn’t steal from Adam.”
“Don’t you see his point? This time last week we weren’t even talking to each other, and now we’re kicking ass together, and that was just because of a half-asleep makeout this morning.”
“I wasn’t asleep,” he says stubbornly. “Not even five percent.” “I’m just saying, imagine what we could accomplish if we—”
His eyebrows drop, his voice a warning rumble. “Don’t say it right now when I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”
“Your fingers are currently digging into my ass, so you’re picking a terrible time to want a conversation.”
“We’ve been dancing around this for days,” he says, unmoved. “Not to therapize you, but I need you to communicate your needs. I need to know where your head’s at before we do anything else, no matter how much I want it. Whatever this is, it has to be honest, because last time—”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupt. I don’t want to talk about last time. Simple. Clean. No mess.
“I do want to keep doing what we’re doing, even though a week ago I couldn’t have fathomed I’d be in a position to accept it,” I say. “But I also recognize that we’re here to help fix Adam and Grace’s wedding, and that we need to concentrate on that.” I swallow hard, tracing the slash of Eli’s collarbones with my eyes, watching goose bumps raise on his skin. “It’s just hard when I’m…”
He stays silent.
“When I’m wanting this,” I say, frustrated. I watch his pupils dilate, his eyes turning hungry. “Wanting you again, like that summer, like—” Always. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“It’s all I can think about,” he breathes out. “Me, too.”
“So tell me what you want.” “I did.”
“Say it again,” he demands.
“You.” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it, an echo of last night when Eli was in my bed for the first time in five years, telling me with a racing heart that I was all he saw, felt, heard, tasted. I’m compelled by the low, rough texture of his voice and the way he’s looking at me, like he’s starving.
I lick my lips just to watch him chase the movement. “I don’t want to complicate things, especially in the middle of saving Adam and Grace’s wedding. There’s so much in my head and it’s so messy—”
“That’s okay,” he insists, and I can hear how much he believes it. But I don’t.
“I just know I want this right now, at least until everyone shows up. I need it to be that simple,” I press on. “And I think we’re becoming friends again, and I…”
I trail off as his eyes flutter shut. Uncertainty draws a hand around my throat. “Or I don’t know, maybe—”
His eyes pop open, latching on to mine, clear of any emotion. “No, we are,” he says quietly. “We are.”
“I don’t want this to mess with that, or with fixing the wedding. So if you’re not in agreement, please get your hands off my ass, because—”
He does take his hand off my ass, but just one, and only so he can wind it through my hair to keep me steady as he sucks at my bottom lip, teeth scraping. A second later, he seems to find himself again, and places the softest kiss on my top lip, then my bottom, his eyes open and searching mine, so deep and warm from beneath heavy, wet lashes.
“I’m in agreement,” he murmurs against my mouth. “We’ll do this, keep it simple.”
My relief is drug-like. “Okay.”
He pulls back. “But when we leave, if we’re really friends, we’re not going back to the way we were before.”
A curl of pleasure works through me, knowing I’ll have him in some way. “I know.”
“I hated it,” he says, voice low. “I did, too.”
He takes my response for the confession it is and resolve darkens his eyes. It’s coupled with an X-ray-like awareness, like he sees the wanting in me. The fear. Like by agreeing to this, he’s letting me get away with something.
Sure enough, he says, “You and I are going to have a reckoning, Georgia. It doesn’t have to be this week, but it’s going to happen.”
“Fine.” I say it quickly, like the F-word it is, not like a promise. Reckonings are messy. They ruin things. I can’t deal with that future possibility right now, and under the terms of this new agreement, I don’t need to.
It’s now, not the future. A blissful thought. A boundary we won’t cross, no matter what Eli says.
He’s still watching me. “This is going to mean something to me.” It’s a last warning, but I don’t need it.
“It’s going to mean something to me, too.” His expression slackens with relief, then tightens with a need I feel between my legs. I reach up to frame his jaw, pressing my thumb to the corner of his mouth. It lifts beneath my touch, just a millimeter. Enough to count. “I mean, of course it is. We’re not strangers. We’re…”
“Us.”
That single word fuses me to him. A tiny voice whispers, oh hell, but I push it away. “We’re us.”
He lets out a soft, slow breath. And then he says, “Then that’s enough.”
