I SPOT HIM SEVERAL FEET FROM SHORE. HIS ARM IS WRAPPED AROUND a woman who is slung upon him, head bobbing languidly against his neck. When the water is waist-deep, Charlie sweeps the woman into his arms, high-kicking his way through the water to the shore.
I calm when I see he’s okay—a relief so deep it surprises me a bit.
When Charlie reaches the beach, he lays the woman down. She’s conscious, though looks dazed as she coughs with her fingertips pressed to her chest. She moves to all fours and Charlie crouches beside her, his arm on her lower back. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she’s a yogi doing a perfect cat pose. Charlie’s chest is slick and heaving, skin clinging to each muscle as his body constricts then releases, over and over again. Once again, I have a flash of him on top of me last night.
Not the time.
As she catches her breath, she rocks back and sits on the wet sand, and I see her face. It’s Maddie. The girl from the beach, then by the pool on competition day, now this.
A couple whom I assume to be her parents push through the crowd and kneel beside her. The man wraps an arm around her while the woman gently moves the clumps of wet hair from her face. They help her to stand, and when she does, the crowd bursts into applause. They are cheering for her safe return to land, yes, but they are also cheering for Charlie. Some of the onlookers are even filming the encounter. Andres emerges from the group to slap hands with Charlie, who has now risen to his feet.
Maddie has seemingly regained her breath, because as the cheering dies down and the crowd begins to disperse, she rises on her tiptoes to throw her arms around Charlie’s neck.
“Thank you so much! I would have drowned without you!”
“It’s no problem. I’m glad you’re okay,” he says when she lets go. I can’t help but notice that as she releases him, her hands slide along his neck and down the top of his chest before she pulls them away. He runs his hand through his hair, sending flecks of water into the air, and somehow, as I watch, it appears to happen in slow motion.
“Please join us for dinner tonight. As a thank-you,” Maddie’s father says, approaching them.
“Oh no, that’s okay.” Charlie slides his hands into his pockets, fumbling a bit as the wet fabric clings to his skin.
“Really, I insist. It’s the least we can do.”
I watch as Charlie looks to Maddie, who has brushed all her hair back in what now resembles a slicked-back red-carpet look. I realize she’s wearing thong bikini bottoms, which make me want to pick at a non-existent wedgie.
Charlie relents. “Sure, that’d be great. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Maddie says, now clinging to his arm.
They make their arrangements and she hugs him a final, lingering time. He looks over her shoulder and sees me, the lone remaining member of the crowd. Maddie and her grateful parents head off, leaving Charlie and me standing a few feet apart on the sand.
“Hey,” he says, closing the distance between us.
“I leave you alone for five minutes and you’re off saving lives.”
He rolls his eyes, pinching at his bad shoulder. “It’s all a bit silly.”
“Mmmmmm,” I say. “So, how exactly does one almost drown in such calm waters?” I make a show of looking out at the perfectly still sea before us—so serene and shallow there’s no need for a lifeguard.
He bites the inside of his cheek through a grin he fails to hide.
“Well, enjoy your dinner,” I tell him before heading back toward the room. The beach doesn’t seem so appealing anymore.
When he returns to the room an hour later, Charlie finds me on the terrace, building in details of the Arsonist Betty cityscape. “Hey,” he says, leaning against the rail. He has his hat on backward, the same black-on-black Dodgers cap he was wearing the night we met, and it makes him exponentially more attractive. Something I didn’t think was possible. With the aquamarine water sparkling behind him, I’m tempted to snap a picture, it’s such a photo-worthy sight.
I rub my lips together and look down at my computer. “Hey.”
“Can I . . .” He stops talking until I look up at him again.
“Can you what?”
“I just . . . I need to shower. Before dinner. I wanted to check if you needed to get in there before I do.”
I can’t help but deflate. Part of me thought he was going to say he changed his mind and wants to stay in with me on the terrace instead of having dinner with Maddie and her family.
I sigh. I want to tell him I can’t stop thinking about last night. That the relief I felt seeing he was okay at the beach earlier was a lot more than worry over a friend. That in the short time we’ve known each other, he is proving to be built in a way I didn’t know a man could be. I want to apologize for being so callous this morning. But I can’t. This whole thing is set up to fail. “Nope, it’s all yours” is all I manage.
I type idiot into the document open on my laptop, trying to decide if I mean him or me.
He kicks himself off the rail and takes a step toward me. “Are we good?”
“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t we be?”
Because we had incredible, mind-blowing sex less than twenty-four hours ago and my vagina is pissed it can’t happen again and if I’m being brutally honest, so is my heart, and now you’re off to dinner with another girl.
“Should we talk about last night?” he asks, an uncertainty in the round of his eyes.
I swallow hard. Of course we should talk about it. But I don’t see how anything either of us might say will change the set of circumstances that make him and me a bad idea. “No need. Enjoy your shower.” I keep my words as light as I can manage, not looking up from my screen, because I don’t know if I can offer him a convincing face.
He folds his arms and surveys me a bit longer while I try to will him away. Eventually, he sighs and makes his way to the bathroom, and all I can picture is Maddie wrapped around him, clinging to his arm and beaming up at him through her fake eyelashes, which somehow managed to stay perfectly intact as she almost drowned.
As it nears eleven, my patience is wearing thin. Charlie left for dinner three hours ago and has yet to return to the suite. I’ve checked the time every four minutes. Sometimes three. I picture Maddie giggling at his gray T-shirt—this one reads SO MUCH PANIC, SO LITTLE DISCO—stroking his arm as she does. When I can’t take it anymore, I down the remaining wine in my glass, remove my resort robe, hit save on my game progress—pleased, as I am quickly approaching a reasonable finish—and head downstairs.
It’s a chilly evening, the coldest we’ve had since we’ve been here. The earlier barely there breeze is now a vicious gust that chills my insides. I wrap my duster tightly around my center as I make my way beachside.
At the restaurant, most of the tables have emptied and I spot them almost immediately. Her parents have gone, so it’s just Charlie and Maddie, sitting together on a ledge outside the dining area, facing the dark sea. They both have drinks in hand, which I believe to be rum punch from the tangerine color. As I step closer, Maddie laughs. It’s this huge, snorty laugh, and she presses her palm into his forearm, just as I imagined.
I’m about to brush it off, the whole thing—her fangirling over him, her supposed almost drowning, her snorty laugh—but then he turns and looks at her and he’s smiling. This genuine, gorgeous smile that pushes his dimple deep into his cheekbone, and my stomach drops. I’ve walked into an intimate moment.
I silently curse biology, the higher levels of oxytocin in women released after sex, blaming it for my unwelcome feelings of attachment.
In our little bubble over the last few days, away from all the things that have dulled us both, Charlie and I have built something. What, I’m not quite sure—but seeing him look at another woman that way, it makes whatever we have a little less . . . Kix.
As I trek back to the suite, I build a whole picture of a life between Charlie and Maddie, these two beautiful, charmed people. I picture a summer beach wedding, him in a navy blue suit and barefoot, her in a silky slip dress. I imagine them with perfectly tanned kids with names like River and Lake and Stream and Puddle. Summers in Hawaii. Sunday dinners with her parents.
Back inside, I crawl into bed, missing Finn, counting the minutes until I can be back with him. The bedside clock strikes midnight and I half expect to see Charlie standing at the bedroom door in his robe, ready to pounce on me again.
Or was that simply some tropical fever dream?
It doesn’t matter. I just have to get through one more day of this trip.