| |
VIVIANNA
Everything moves fast after the first episode is aired. The week of lazy days and ease draws to an end, and it’s now time to enter the next phase of Lovebound: the “communal living” phase.
Early Monday morning, the Amadors move us to the Beach Villa. The Beach Villa’s been standing for a good fifteen years. It’s got pillars and sky-blue granite and balconies upon balconies. Even though it’s got a few years on it, it’s been refurbished with new layers of paint, a few balconies remodeled, and furniture replaced.
There’s a pool outside of the house, despite the fact that the beach is maybe a fifteen-minute-walk away.
Each couple shares a room, but each room has a sofa-bed, so no one is forced to share one. The Amadors leave us with the plan for today: unpacking, getting settled, and beach festivities.
With that, we’re left to our own devices.
Once Griffin and I arrive at our room, Griffin begins to set up the sofa bed as I crouch down to unload my suitcase.
“Well,” Griffin says, flopping down on the sofa-bed once he’s finished setting it up, deciding that’s enough work for today. “At least I won’t have to sneak up to your room anymore.”
I pause from where I’m sitting on the floor, emptying my suitcase and look over my shoulder at him. “When you put it like that, you make it seem like we’ve been having trysts or something.”
Griffin pulls out his phone to shamelessly search the word up and looks up at me with a wicked grin. “I got you pizza at the dead of night, regularly. And we talked. If that’s not a tryst, I don’t know what is.”
“Says the guy who learned the word two seconds ago.” A smile rises to my lips regardless, and I whip around.
“I saw that smile,” Griffin definitely has a shit-eating grin on his face right now. I don’t have to turn around to know that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The smile is still there, so I keep my back to him.
“Are you gaslighting me?”
“Gaslighting?” I turn around, a hand rising to my chest. “Me?”
“You’re so...”
“So what?” I ask, abandoning my suitcase and facing him completely.
“So.” He finishes, ditching wherever he was going with that thought.
I snort, turning back to my work. “Stop distracting me, Griff. I have clothes to unload.”
A pause, eerily silent.
“What?” I ask, unpausing my work.
“Did you just call me Griff?”
I blink. “Sorry,” I say, getting up and arranging my clothes in our closet. “I had you saved as Griff in my phone.” Somewhere along the line, I hadn’t bothered to change it.
“Don’t be,” he says. He pushes himself off the sofa bed and stretches out an arm to stop my pacing.
Heat travels throughout my entire body and he spins me so I’m facing him.
“I like it,” he says.
Flecks of golden-brown litter his eyes. I’m used to seeing the way his eyes spark—but now, there’s something more behind that spark. I shiver and Griffin watches me. His hand stays on my wrist. Even though his grip is gentle, it burns.
My eyes flick to the ground, any smart-ass comment I have prepared flitting out of reach.
A sharp pounding on our door has us jumping apart.
The door is slammed open and Brody’s voice bellows, his blue eyes excited, “Time to head to the beach!” He beams between the two of us, then whoops, bounding down the hall and leaving the door open in his wake.
The moment from before is gone and Griffin rolls his eyes, fishing out his swimsuit from his suitcase and making his way to the bathroom. “Remind me to lock our door.”
I nod, unable to form words. As easy as it might’ve been for Griff to brush aside our moment, I’m still caught up in it, replaying the scene in my head.
His eyes lock onto mine for one second before he’s out of the bedroom, and I entertain the belief that maybe, maybe he’s almost as flustered in its wake as I am.