“You’ve got time. It’s not too bad,” I tried to lie. Her deadpan stare told me I failed. “Okay, so the carpet is shot, but everything else is fixable.”
“My TV remote is missing.”
“Replaceable.”
“There’s a mustache made out of spitting tobacco on my face in one of the only family pictures we have.”
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my dress pants. “Yeah, you’re kind of screwed.”
“I told you what would happen if I mixed alcohol,” she teased, and I loved the way her sleepy, still slightly buzzed smile lit up that bleak moment.
“Let’s get out of here for a while.”
“Are you crazy? I need to clean. I need to…” She waved her hands around. “Do something. About all of this.”
“You’ve already admitted that you’re screwed, B. What you can do is only going to take a few hours, so why not send out tonight with a bang?”
She chewed her lip as she debated, and the way her eyes flicked between mine, I knew there were warning bells sounding in her head.
Luckily, she didn’t listen to them.
“What do you have in mind?”
• • •
Thirty minutes later, Chad Lawson’s The Piano album played on my phone speakers, B and I spread out on a blanket on the beach. I’d slid our cab driver an extra ten bucks to take us through the only drive-thru open in town, and so we unwrapped our breakfast burritos while the sun struggled to rise over the water.
I’d grabbed us a Vitamin Water, knowing we both needed to hydrate, and I took a long pull before passing it to B.
“Think this will save us from a hangover?” she asked, taking a sip before passing the bottle back to me.
“I think it’s one of my more brilliant ideas. What cures a hangover better than greasy eggs, Vitamin Water, and the beach?”
“So modest,” she teased, but then she took her first bite, and I took great satisfaction in the melty goodness cleaning her of her sarcasm. “Homahgawd.”
She groaned, taking another bite as I watched her, amused.
“You’re welcome.”
She smiled back at me, and then we fell into that comfortable silence we so easily did, our eyes on the water as the sky slowly turned from blue to purple.
B was still in those tiny shorts and that damp tank top, and she shivered, the morning breeze cool and refreshing, and so far from the hellish heat that had existed in her house all night.
“Here,” I said, unbuttoning my dress shirt. I yanked my tie off before shaking one arm out and then the other. I didn’t miss the way her eyes were stuck on my chest, my abdomen, as I draped my shirt over her shoulders.
When she sighed, I swallowed at the sight of her wearing my clothes, at the way the wind blew tendrils of her hair out of the bun she’d fixed it in.
“Thank you,” she said. “So, you excited to get out of here? Ready to cause trouble at UC San Diego?”
I shrugged. “Yes and no. Remember our talk over Christmas break?”
She nodded.
“I’m still feeling a bit of all that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for this next chapter and all that, but it’s still a little scary.”
So much for the macho shit I’d felt earlier.
Maybe it was being there on the beach. More specifically, there with her. It was our place. This was where we could be exactly who we were — no walls, no secrets.
“It’d be weird if you weren’t scared,” she said.
I tried to smile, but it fell flat — because as I watched her dig into her burrito like an animal, I realized I wanted her more than I wanted anything or anyone.
But still, I couldn’t have her.
I didn’t know what I was thinking. What? Was I going to take her to the beach, lie her down in the sand and make love to her, and then just leave her? Throw up a peace sign and say, “Sorry, baby. College calls?”
My chest pinched at the thought because I knew it would kill her.
Hell, it would kill me.
She wouldn’t graduate for another year. I couldn’t reasonably ask her to wait for me, and yet that selfish plea was ready to roll off my lips.
Luckily, she spoke first.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
She didn’t look at me, just watched the sun slowly rising over the horizon.
“Not just you.”
“I know,” she said, but I saw the hurt in her eyes when she continued. “I just thought maybe you’d call me. Or want to go for a drive. Or…”
She didn’t finish that sentence, but it gutted me just the same.
“I wanted to,” I said, leaning back on my hands. “I don’t know. Jenna hit me at a time that was already so hard for me, you know?” I frowned at the lie, because I hated telling it, but it was easier than admitting the truth — that I’d stayed away for fear of not being able to control how much I wanted her. “My parents were high school sweethearts.”
I knew without looking at her that those words hurt. She didn’t want to think of me having a life with Jenna any more than I wanted to think about having a life without B.
“It’s okay that Jenna wasn’t the one.”
“I know,” I said quickly, and I decided to tell at least some truths. “I think I always knew. She was fun, we clicked, had some great times together. But there was something missing.”
I turned to face her then, but she kept her eyes on the waves, refusing to meet my gaze.
“You’ll find someone,” she said softly, eyes still on the waves.
And that’s when my stupid idea clicked into place.
I sat up straight. “Well, I don’t like leaving my life to chance. So, I have a proposition. If you’re game, that is.”
She finally looked at me, cocking a brow. “Why do I feel like I should run right now?”
I laughed to hide how hard my heart was beating.
“I say we make a pact.”
“A pact?”
I nodded. “If neither of us are married by the time we’re thirty, we marry each other.”
“Oh my God,” she scoffed, leaning up to mirror me with an incredulous look on her too-beautiful-for-this-world face. “That is so stupid, Jamie. It’s also the plot line for every cheesy Rom-Com ever.”
I shrugged, wiping the sand from my hands before I looked out at the water. “Sounds like someone is scared.”
“I’m not scared. It’s dumb.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m going to be married by thirty, Jamie. And you’re definitely going to be locked down by then.”
“So then you have nothing to worry about,” I challenged, pinning her with my gaze again. I shot my hand out for hers. “If we’re not married in twelve years, you become Mrs. Shaw.”
She eyed my hand like it was poison. “That’s not fair. You turn thirty before me.”
I shrugged. “My pact, my terms. Do we have a deal?”
Her dark eyebrows bent together as she stared at my hand, and then with a roll of her eyes and a dramatic huff, she grabbed it and shook firmly three times.
“Fine. But this is dumb, and pointless.”
I smiled a winner’s smile.