Page 54 of The Lovers
She buckles against me, cackling, and manages to work the hose between us. The water soaks us both through—shirts, shorts, jeans, underwear, all the way to my socks—it’s too much, I have to let go.
“Mercy,” I manage to say.
But she presses her hand to my back, holding me in place. Her mouth hovers near mine, her breath heaves. This close, the ridge of cream lace around the cup of her bra is visible through her shirt.
She lets the hose go and it drops between us. Her hand raises, fingers touching lightly on the edge of my jaw.
Is it too much to hope that Kit Larson is going to kiss me again in this lifetime?
Her hand tenses to tug my chin closer.
The crash of footsteps on the Saloon’s wood plank porch sends us shooting apart. Worry flashes in her eyes. She looks over to where the bachelor party emerges.
“Of course,” I say, clipped, bitten off with disappointment but not surprise.
I yank the hose up from the ground and walk back to the trough to turn off the water.
It’s definitely too much to hope for.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kit
The silence on the car ride back is the deafening kind.
Julia’s eyes are lasers on the road away from Bachelor Town. Her teeth grit into a clench that looks like it could crack her jaw right at the joint. She smoothed her ponytail back into pristine order, patted herself dry with the towel the Saloon manager offered us both after the guys embarked on the bus, but it doesn’t erase what almost happened.
I almost kissed her. I tugged and she leaned in. It was happening, and I know if we hadn’t been interrupted, it would have. For real, not just in my head.
She smacks the knob on her radio and static shoots out of the speakers before she turns the station. After a few angry swipes past rock and country, over current pop beats, through commercial breaks, she lets it stop on an early-2010s pop hits station playing the beginning of Miley’s “Wrecking Ball.”
Her lips twitch. Miley purrs the iconic opening lyrics.
Julia knows exactly what she’s doing, stopping on this song. I remember us in the hammock hanging on the trunks of two talleucalyptus trees beside my parents’ pool house. Our legs curled together as we shared a pair of headphones,Bangerzplaying from top to bottom.
“You wre-e-eck me,” she belted, and I knew already she meant it like a compliment. We were devastating each other’s ideals of the perfect life, making each other the one and only, heart-eyes emoji forever, and in the bubble of that summer haze, it was easy to imagine nothing could ever tear us apart.
We weren’t supposed to wreck each other. We didn’t believe the cards when they said that Twin Flames tear each other apart as they make each other whole. Right then, how could that ever be so?
I blink back the stinging in my eyes.
Iwas the wrecking ball against the future I wanted, but was too afraid to have.Iwas crashing into the friendship that should have meant more to me than anything else, destroying it in a single blow.
The last bar of the song plays as we pull up to the entrance of Celestial Sands. She slams the car into park, not looking at me before she yanks the door open. I see the glint of moisture on her cheek, and I know it’s not a remnant of our water hose battle. I know I can’t just walk away this time. I can’t let her close her eyes and swing. We have to talk about this. We have to give this another chance.
No matter how terrifying that is to me.
I chase her down through the lobby, out into the courtyard. She’s fast even with her shorter legs, but when I catch her, right at the break in the path that leads away from the building to the Homebase bungalow, my fingers close around her wrist to hold her in place.
“Talk to me,” I say, when she tries to tug free of my grip. She spins around to face me, pulling me forward when I don’t let her go. I’m afraid she’ll bolt if I do.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says, venomous.
“There’s definitely stuff to talk about,” I retort. “We almost kissed back there.”
“Youalmost kissedme.” She pauses. “Again.”
I chew on my lip, stumped for a second with how I should rebuff her insinuation that this almost-kiss was the same bait and switch as the last time. I don’t want that to be the case.
