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  I hear the up-pull of Cohen’s zipper. “What charms are those again?” He throws his body down in a sagging lawn chair recliner.

  “Badass charms, hot-as-hell charms, got-balls-of-steel charms. The usual charms that tempt the ladies. You may want to learn from my example.” I let the chair thump onto all four legs and toss a red plastic cup at him.

  “So what’s the deal with this girl?” Cohen throws one leg off the recliner, so I know the stars must be spinning like mad for him.

  I rub a hand over my scruff. I need to shave pre-date. “I really don’t know. She’s hot as hell, but she’s kind of…intense.”

  Cohen turns his head and looks at me through one painfully squinted eye. “Intense? That’s so not your type. Are you losing your beach-bunny appetite? Going for responsible girls now? Are you sure you met this chick at a tattoo shop and not the bank or the DMV?”

  “Fuck off.” I chuckle. “She may be a little uptight, but she was definitely running to a booty call. She’s all neat and proper, but sexy as hell. She has a tattoo behind her ear.”

  “Behind her ear?” Cohen drums his fingers over his stomach. “That’s kind of rebel hot.”

  “She’s all kinds of contradictions.” I roll my shoulders out. “And I gotta get to sleep so I have the energy I need for this date, if you catch me.”

  “Cool. I’ll just chill out here for a while.” His voice calls to me before I’m in the house. “And happy birthday, old man!”

  “Don’t fall asleep out here. The mosquitoes will suck your rotten ass dry!” I close the sliding door, but not before I hear Cohen sneak to the side of the deck and heave. Gross, but I’m glad he did it. Responsible ass Cohen is drinking more and more lately. Which probably means his girlfriend is giving him more grief than usual. He never complains about her, but it’s plain to everyone else that she isn’t the right girl for him.

  I collapse into my bed, and my dreams are populated by one very sexy, dark-eyed, uptight girl who’s all about letting her wild side peek out just for me.

  When I finally wake up the next afternoon, Cohen is gone and Grandpa is outside in his overgrown vegetable garden, pulling weeds like a maniac.

  I hop into my Jeep and sail down the highway, driving too fast and whistling totally off-key to the random sappy love songs on the radio. I’m a shit whistler, but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but seeing Whit. And then I pull into the parking lot of the beach that I texted her directions to last night and see her.

  She’s sitting on the hood of her LeBaron, her knees pulled up to her chest, her dark hair blowing back from her face in the salty ocean wind. She doesn’t notice me at first, and I take a minute to watch her, lost in thought, looking small and huddled with the backdrop of the waves crashing around us. She must sense I’m checking her out because she looks up and smiles.

  That smile hits me low in the gut. I jog over and put my hand out, helping her slide off the hood and onto the sand next to me. Her hair smells like the ripe grapefruits my grandpa coats in sugar and eats for breakfast.

  She eyes me suspiciously. “You look pretty damn chipper, considering how drunk you were last night.”

  Last night she was all dolled up, with dark, sexy makeup and glossy hair. Right now, she’s scrubbed clean, her short hair slightly wavy and tossed by the wind, and she’s wearing cutoff shorts and a practically see-through tank. Last night’s look was hot, but today’s is soft and touchable.

  And I so want to touch her. All over. Without stopping.

  “My grandpa has a secret recipe,” I confess. “When we go out and get sleazy drunk, I’ll bring you back to my place and give it to you before we…snuggle.” I box her against the car, and she leans back with a lazy, sweet smile.

  “You have pretty high hopes for our supposed future dates.” She narrows her big brown eyes at me, but she can’t totally tuck away a smile. “Snuggling, huh?”

  “I’m an awesome snuggler. You have no idea. You know that bear on the fabric softener commercials?”

  “Snuggle the bear?” She giggles. I notice she has a whole sweep of freckles on her nose and cheeks.

  “That’s the one. I taught that fucker everything he knows, no joke.” Her laugh loosens something good and happy in me. I take a few steps back and stretch my arms wide. “You want a little sample?”

  She has one hand over her mouth and laughs so hard, she’s doubled over, but she doesn’t accept my hug invitation. “I thought we were supposed to explore the beach.” She edges around the front of the Jeep.

  “I’m a man of many talents.” I point to the ocean and the surging swells that always feel like home. “You ready for this? It’s not a snuggle-a-thon, but it has its perks.”

  She nods, walks to me with those damn sexy swaying hips, and traces her fingers over my arm while I focus on not hyperventilating. I clear my throat and try to keep things light and loose. “The deal is, I show you all the super awesome secrets of this particular beach, and you let me ogle you in your bikini. But God I hope it’s a super small bikini. If it isn’t small enough, I’m totally cool with hunting down a nude beach.”

  She rolls her eyes and pulls her shirt over her head slowly. Two tiny red triangles and some string cover her smooth skin, and I feel like I’m twelve years old again, sneaking my grandpa’s Playboys in the crawlspace under the porch. As I’m doing my best to cover the beginnings of a raging hard-on with a well-placed beach towel, she lets the tiny shorts slide off her hips and there is a very limited amount of black fabric and some more string. My head spins like I bailed off my surfboard and straight into a coral reef super hard. All normal body functions shut down, and I am fairly sure I’m drooling down my chin. And I don’t give a flying fuck.

  “Small enough?” she asks, but there’s a hitch in her voice, and I notice her arms stiffen at her sides, like she’s resisting the urge to cover herself up.

  “It’ll do,” I manage to get out. I attempt a laid-back smile, but I realize it probably looks like I’m having a stroke. Which is fitting, since it damn well feels like I am. “So, did anyone ever tell you that you were made to wear a bikini? Because I’m going to go ahead and suggest you only wear them, like exclusively. The only thing I can imagine you looking better in is nothing, and I get that you’d be cold a lot of the time if you took that route.”

  She laughs and her arms relax a little. “Um, no one’s ever told me anything about how I look in a bikini, because this is my very first one.”

  A flare of possessive goodness flicks through me. “Your first bikini? Right here, today?” With me. For me?

  She nods. “I’ve had it for a few weeks, but I never actually wore it. Before.” She seems like she has no idea where to look, so she’s kind of letting her eyes dart on anything and everything. Except me.

  “Right here, right now, we’re popping your bikini cherry?” I clarify.

  She nods, and that shy way she moves her head mixed with those sweet freckles set up against that sexy barely-there bikini knocks the wind right out of me. “What is it?” She wiggles her toes, painted a sparkly blue, in the sand.

  “I’m just thinking that twenty-two is probably going to be the best year of my entire life.”

  Chapter Six

  WHIT

  His words hang in the air around us. How do you even respond to a statement like that?

  Especially when he’s looking at me like that? Like he really wants me for more than a few tosses in the sack.

  So I don’t.

  I change the subject. “What do you wanna do?”

  “I’ve got a few ideas,” he says as we stroll onto the warm sand. I close my eyes and let my toes sink in, tilt my head back and bask in the warmest sunshine I’ve ever felt. I know it’s the same sun we have back east, but I swear it feels different—or maybe it’s the warmth that radiates off Deo. I can feel him watching me and I don’t mind a bit. His voice coaxes me to open my eyes and look into his. “You’re not in Pennsylvania anymore, are you, Dorothy
?” His smile is ridiculously contagious.

  “Yeah. It’s been an adjustment.” I roll my shoulders and inhale the smells of wet sand, seaweed, and crisp ocean water. “A really nice adjustment.”

  “So, what brought you to our lovely hamlet? School? Family? Strapping young man who blows up your phone with inappropriate text messages while you’re at work?”

  My face is on fire, and it’s not because I forgot to slather on the SPF. I should deny it, but I don’t. I just let him stew in his vision for a minute. Let him think what he wants.

  “Mostly school. And that young man? You know, I wouldn’t say he’s strapping, but he makes it worth my while,” I say with a wink.

  His jaw goes slack. He’s surprised. And turned on.

  “You’re trouble. I can tell.” He points at me and shakes his head slowly, his words trying to be stern around the tug at the side of his lips. “I mean, the bikini was a dead giveaway, but that right there, what you just said? Hardcore proof.”

  “I’m not all trouble,” I assure him. “Despite my job at a tattoo joint and my teeny bikinis, you’ll be shocked to know I graduated top ten percent in my high school class, rocked my SATs, and my college GPA so far would make any nerd salivate.” Because I had to keep it up for Wakefield.

  The way he drinks me in pushes the line of flirty. I guess because it feels like he’s not just seeing my barely covered curves—he’s looking at me. The me I try so damn hard to keep locked away.

  “I can totally see you as a professor.” He says it like he means it, no come on, no naughty teacher innuendos. “It takes guts to leave your family, your friends, everything you grew up around to come across the whole damn country on your own.”

  And then it hits. It’s like I’m being sucked into a swirling abyss. I think about what I left. I think about the people I love who are so far away, and I start to have trouble breathing.

  I see my parents’ faces, heavy with a kind of sadness I never imagined possible. The kind of sadness I catch reflected in the mirror when I’m not careful about keeping up a neutral mask. And I think about the one face I’ll never see again…

  No, no, no!

  It’s too dangerous to think this way, and if I don’t stop right now, I’m going to panic. I’m going to run away and spend the rest of the day sobbing. I promised myself I’d stop doing that. I can’t live that way anymore. So I grasp for anything else to focus on until the urge to break down passes.

  “What about you?” I ask, my words rushed. “What do you do other than get tattoos and whisk random girls on surfing dates?”

  “‘Girl,’ not girls,” Deo corrects in an easy way that makes my throat go dry. “Tell you the truth, I’m kind of in a transitional place right now.”

  “Hmm, really?” I give him a side-eye, relieved that I’m able to push the whirl of emotions back. “That sounds like code for ‘I’m unemployed.’”

  “I prefer the term ‘professionally undeclared,’” he says with a shrug of those muscled shoulders. “I’m helping take care of my grandpa.”

  “Ah. My mom moved my grandmother into our house when she couldn’t take care of herself anymore. She lived with us until she died, and it was really nice having her around all those years,” I say. I’m half-shocked to hear the words come out of my mouth. As good as it feels to share that tiny memory of Gram with Deo, it also scares the crap out of me.

  This is supposed to be fun and light. If I have any chance of actually keeping it that way, family talk needs to come off the table.

  Deo kicks his feet in the sand. “Oh, um, my grandpa isn’t… It’s not like he can’t take care of himself,” he fumbles, then blows out a long breath. “Honestly? I crash at his place. He has double my energy, and he lets me know on a daily basis what a layabout he thinks I am.”

  “Really?” I cross my arms and cock an eyebrow his way. “So why don’t you quit being a layabout who mooches off his grandpa?”

  “Because if I was all tied up with something stupid like a job, how would I have any time to take the most interesting girl I’ve ever met out on dates?”

  I tap my forefinger against my chin. “Here’s a thought. Keep in mind, I’m just spitballing. You could get a job, pick me up after work, and be able to afford a nice dinner or a movie or something.”

  “I’ve got enough socked away to buy you the most delicious tacos you’ve ever had from the food truck down by the pier,” he says, leaning close to me. “Plus that, I could spend a million dollars on the world’s fanciest date and never be able to show you anything more beautiful than this ocean.” He gestures at the ocean beckoning us from the near distance.

  I raise an eyebrow and try to keep things breezy. Flirting is easier than admitting the real reasons I bailed. Because there was no way I was going to let my parents pay for school after everything that happened. Because I was determined to change my life and take care of myself.

  “You’re raising the stakes pretty high. Are you sure you can deliver?”

  He takes a deep breath of salty, scrubbed-clean air and throws me another version of that lazy, sexy smile. “Let me get this straight. You’ve seriously never seen the ocean?”

  I nod. I don’t know why, but I feel embarrassed by this fact. Like I’m not as experienced or worldly or something. Probably because I’m not.

  “Awesome. I can definitely deliver. Let’s do this up.” A confident smile covers his face. He grabs the back of his collar and yanks his shirt off. He’s all lean muscle and gorgeous tan skin. There is a wrap covering his new tattoo, and his board shorts are slung low around his waist. As he leads me toward the water, he rests his rough hand on the small of my back.

  “Okay,” I say. But what I want to say is, Can we leave because when you touch me all soft and sweet like that, I want you? Bad. Because you call to the forever in me that’s no longer there. Because that person is gone.

  We walk down the beach to the water. There are half a dozen guys on surfboards, sitting out in the vast expanse. Just sitting. I don’t get it at first. Until I really relax and look at the water.

  “So it’s safe to say you’ve never surfed? Unless there’s some kind of Pennsylvania lake and stream surfing we ocean dwellers don’t know about,” he says with a small laugh.

  “That’s a negative.” My feet sink into the soggy sand. It’s slimy and cold and wonderful.

  “I’ll teach you someday. If you want. But you need to be ready to surrender to me, body and soul. Surfing isn’t just a sport, it’s really an art form.” His eyes are a warm light brown, almost a gold, and they shine when he talks about the ocean and surfing.

  The passion in his eyes transforms him in a way that’s even more appealing, even more crazily attractive, and it honestly throws me off-balance. I’m already slipping dangerously deep into lust and maybe more than like. So I attempt to joke it away.

  “Oh Jesus, dramatic much?” I swat him playfully in the ribs before I realize. “Shit! I forgot about the tat. Sorry!”

  He winces and shakes his head. “Damn, you’re lucky you’re gorgeous.”

  We stand there for a while, like the surfers out in the water, just watching the waves lap up onto the sand with a fricative whisper. We wade up and down along the shore, and I’m surprised when I realize the endless ocean isn’t exactly blue. In fact, it isn’t any one color. It’s a mix of grays, deep greens, and sudden pools of purple water where the darker patches of sky reflect on the waves. There are spots tinged with red seaweed drifting in, and dark patches that move fast and then disappear. I want to grab Deo’s hand and hold tight when it occurs to me that those dark forms might be sharks, but I’m not sure what the protocol is.

  Though I doubt Deo would have an issue if I reached out and held onto him for dear life. As it is, he smiles every time we brush shoulders or bump elbows. The desire to grab onto him intensifies as my feet sink into the wet sand over and over, and the muscles in my thighs start to burn as I wade against the waves. When we get to the end of the beach,
we finally stop and just soak it all in, my eyes squinting against the sunlight that dances on top of the water.

  The biggest body of water I’ve ever seen is Lake Erie. I remember going on summer vacations there when we were younger in the RV. I’d get up early, before everyone else, and go and stand by the lake. It felt massive, and I was just a miniscule speck. I feel the same way right now, staring out into the Pacific. Totally and completely insignificant.

  I close my eyes and imagine Wakefield sitting here. Watching the waves with his new friends. I think of the photos he sent, and how they don’t even come close to doing this scene justice. I know why he begged me and my parents to come out and visit him. And we planned on it. We should have all been here together this summer.

  Now it’s just me.

  I wonder if Mom and Dad will ever come here, if they’ll be able to inhale this salty air and feel any joy or wonder, or if the smell will choke them with grief.

  This is why I haven’t come here before now. Exactly this. I squeeze my eyes tighter, trying to stop the tears that I refuse to let fall in front of Deo.

  “Come on, there’s something I want to show you.” Deo is wriggly-puppy excited, and it’s a weird contrast, his bold, uninhibited energy mixed with his laid-back, tough-guy sexiness. I stay back a few paces, watching the confident way he walks back up the beach. The sun beats down on his back, deepening his tan by the minute, but it’s like he isn’t even aware of his clothes or lack of clothes or body.

  I, on the other hand, feel like every single person must be staring at me, because I’m practically naked in public. I wasn’t lying about my choice of swimwear; this is the first time I’ve worn this or any bikini. My best friend back home, Lindsey, bought it for me as a going-away present. She said it was a first step, a necessity in my new life.

  We walk for a while, Deo glancing over his shoulder every few paces to make sure I’m behind him. I’ve lost my footing several times, and, I swear, all I need to add on to my feeling of being watched by every person in a mile radius is to eat shit on these rocks in this bathing suit that offers about as much coverage as a Kleenex.