Page 39 of The Heiress
“Are you coming in too?” he asked, his lips curling into a teasing smile.
“Me?” I gulped, already about to shiver. “I think it’ll be a bit cold for me.”
“It’s warm.”
“Warm?”
“It’s a hydrotherapy pool. Basically a jacuzzi, but in the ground.”
“Oh, I thought it was one of those ice cold plunge pools that maniac sports people use.”
“You mean the football team?” he said with a laugh, giving me a close up of his straight white teeth.
I smiled. Leading up to the state championship final, no one had escaped reading about the football team’s training regime, having dominated the front page of the Covington Times in recent issues.
“So?” Phoenix asked, pushing back the stray wisp of hair. It was a welcome distraction from his mouth and lips which I seemed to have stared at for far too long—the rounded peak of his cupid’s bow, the full lower lip, dewy, soft...
“Uh, I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” I said.
“I’m sure we can figure something out,” Phoenix said with a hint of amusement. He opened the door fully and stepped out. “After we eat.”
I followed him out to the kitchen, my cheeks flushing at his somewhat suggestive comment—did he mean his mom’s swimsuit, an ex-girlfriend’s, underwear, or skinny-dipping?
“What do you want to eat?” Phoenix asked, sitting himself at the breakfast bar. He pulled out his phone and said, “Have you got the Food Dash app?” When I shook my head, his tone was filled with disbelief, “You don’t have a phone?”
“I do,” I mumbled, “but it’s up in my room.”
“Can you grab Mom’s iPad over there?” he said, pointing across to the counter that I was leaning against.
I brought it over and perched myself on the seat next to him. He set the iPad between us and scrolled through to pages of menus.
“What do you feel like?”
“Anything,” I said.
“Why don’t you use your phone?” Phoenix asked, pausing on the page for Mexican food.
I shrugged. “It’s not like I need it here.”
“You never use it at school either.” His observation was delivered in a straight forward way, but it made me stop in my tracks, because for Phoenix to have noticed that meant he’d been watching me. My heart trembled, and I drew in a deep breath.
“I’m trying not to use it,” I said, “so my parents don’t know what I’m doing.”
Phoenix frowned. “Why’s that?”
I stared back at the screen, now on a page for Asian food. At the same time that I pointed to the chicken and shrimp bento box, I said, “I didn’t want to come to Covington Prep, so it’s kind of my payback to them. Don’t let them know what’s happening in my life.” My eyes were still fixed on the menu. “Warped, I know.”
But there was an unexpected burst of liberation at finally verbalizing my weird vengeance plan out loud, as if confessing validated it in someway. The pounding of my heart was so forceful that I feared it was about to break through my rib cage. I clasped my hands together, tensing my body to stop it from shaking. I was pretty sure that any moment now Phoenix was going to announce I was indeed certifiably mad.
But he tapped on his phone and said, “So, one chicken and shrimp bento for you?”
“Uh huh,” I breathed.
“And I’ll have the teriyaki beef bento,” he said, more to himself I think. His phone chimed and he said, “Twenty three minutes.”
I nodded, and he put his phone down, pushing it to the side. There we were, two people sitting side by side, virtually strangers except for taking the same photography class and waiting for bento boxes. And then he said, “Why did they send you here? Were you in trouble?”
I shook my head with violent denial. “No. Not at all. I’m not a trouble-maker. I’ve never done anything wrong. Oh, except that one time I let my cousin drive Dad’s Lam—” I cut myself off, “car.” I’d convinced Jackson that it was okay to take Dad’s orange Lamborghini out for a spin. Well, Dad had been away for six weeks, and he’d said cars were meant to be driven, that there was no point in them sitting in the garage going nowhere. (Dad conveniently forgot and couldn’t recall saying such a thing when he grounded me for two weeks.)
