She glides through the surface effortlessly, her arms moving in familiar strokes. I expect her to stop as she gets closer, but she doesn’t. Instead, she glances my way and then turns around, swims to the other end. She does this four more times before she finally stops in front of me, wiping her hair from her face and rubbing at her eyes. She focuses on my bare chest, lit only by the pool lights. Head slightly tilted, she says, “I thought tattoo artists weren’t allowed to recreate other people’s artwork?”
I shrug, look down at my torso. “I told them you were my girlfriend, and you’d just died…” I meet her eyes. “Which, honestly, didn’t feel all that far from the truth at the time.”
“Ah.” Her eyes thin to a glare. “So you’re a compulsive liar now?”
I sigh.
She goes back to swimming.
Two more laps later, she swims to the ladder and starts to get out. Swear, the next few seconds play out in slow motion—from her climbing the ladder, slowly revealing her red string bikini, and her glistening wet flesh, her perfect ass, and those thighs I fucking love biting into.
I’m hard.
I’m also a fucking moron because this shit is the last thing that should be on my mind.
She walks the few feet to the pool house and reaches out for the handle. But she doesn’t open the door. She takes the towel hanging from there and wraps it around her shoulders, then makes her way back to me. She sits right beside me, her towel-covered arm touching mine, her feet doing the same beneath the pool’s surface.
“When did you get the stupid tattoo?” she asks, dragging a fist down her hair, releasing droplets back into the pool.
I focus on the stars in the sky instead of her almost naked frame within licking distance. “It’s not stupid,” I mutter.
“My question still stands.”
I grip the edge of the pool, drop my head between my shoulders. “About six months after you left.”
“Why would you do something so dumb?”
Swallowing my nerves, I ignore her hostility and give her my truths, no matter how much it’ll hurt us. “Because I started to forget you, Jamie. And not you, as a person, or the impact you had on me, but… these little nuances about you. The tiny things I never focused on because I just assumed you’d always be around.” I clear my throat as quietly as possible. “It was your laugh at first. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it sounded like. And then it was your voice altogether. And I missed it. I missed you.” I blink back the heartache and face her. She’s already watching me, her eyes drawn to mine the moment I allow it. “I missed you so fucking much, and all I wanted was to hear you say that you love me… and then one day, I realized that before you ever spoke those words to me… your art spoke to me first.”
Her blinks are rapid, clinging tears to her lashes, but she doesn’t speak.
“So I went through all the pictures I had taken on my phone until I found these.”
Jamie sniffs, then says through a pained giggle, “You couldn’t have gotten something smaller?”
“I could’ve,” I admit, a half-smile ticking at my lips. I reach over, wipe the single tear from her cheek. “All your art meant something to me. I could always look at a picture of one and remember exactly where we were and what we were doing, but this…” I say, sitting taller to reveal the tattoo in all its glory, “this one meant the most.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I sigh out. “Do you remember when you did it?”
Her nod is slow.
“You said you drew the compass over my heart because it’s where you felt the most found.” I take a breath, and then another, and focus on the ripples of water in front of us. “I fell in love with you that day, Jamie, and maybe I should’ve told you right then and there. Maybe things would’ve been different. But I was scared. All those feelings I was experiencing for you—they were all new to me. I’d never felt for anyone the way I did with you. Not even an inkling. And I still haven’t.” And this is the part that’s going to hurt. “But I’ve tried. When you left my house the other day, you asked me to tell you how to get over us, and what you saw—with Brianna and Bethany—that’s my attempt to get over you.”
After a stretch of silence, she asks, “Does it work?”
I turn my head just enough to get a glimpse of her. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
She sucks in a breath, lets it out slowly. For minutes, we sit in silence, with nothing but the sound of the water splashing against our ankles. Then, finally, she speaks. “I’m not mad that you slept with Bethany or anyone else you were with when we weren’t together because… we weren’t together.” I open my mouth to speak, but she beats me to it. “I’m mad because you lied to me, Holden. And you did it so effortlessly. So instantly. And then you made me feel like it was my fault for thinking you would do something like that when you actually did do that. And then you told me that you loved me. You used that love as a form of revenge to hurt me. And then you held on to that lie the entire time we were together and every day since.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can say. “I fucked up.”
“I forgive you,” she says quietly. “I just wanted you to know how I felt, and why I was hurting.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Again. I don’t even know why I did it, Jamie, I—”
“Because we we’re just kids, Holden. And we’re human, and we make mistakes.” Her gaze switches, focusing on something in the distance. “Sometimes, I think that the people we were at that time in our lives aren’t the ones either of us deserved. And that doesn’t make what we had less real or less life-changing.” Her eyes meet mine again. “But it’s been five years now, and we’ve both grown up.”
“And growth is good?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs, then gently nudges my side with hers. “Goodnight, Holden.”
I watch her get up and start for the pool house. And I wish I’d come here with a plan because it feels like I’m losing her all over again, and I don’t know how to fix it. Fix us. “Just so you know…” I call out, and she stills, her back to me. “I didn’t sleep with Brianna that night. My head was a mess, and I just… couldn’t. So I let her take my bed, and I slept on the couch.” For seconds, Jamie just stands there, unspeaking, unmoving. When she finally takes a step, I ask, “It doesn’t change anything, does it?”
She makes it to the door, fingers on the handle, before turning to me. “You should talk to Dean.”
“What?”
Jamie shrugs. “He misses you.”
“I...” I heave out a sigh.
“Besides, maybe he’s not as bad as you make him out to be. He kept your secret all this time.”
32
Holden
Dean is staring at my bare chest, and it’s making me uncomfortable. Obviously.
Standing in a dress shirt and suit pants, he looks… like a loser. He also looks just as surprised as Jamie did the first time she saw my tattoo, and to be fair, I highly doubt he was expecting me to be the one opening the door. I crack a smile. “She didn’t tell you about it, huh?”