Page 36 of The Other Side of Paradise
He raised a hand in a wave. “I don’t mind a little interruption. The job’s boring today, thankfully. Plus, some interruptions can be very enjoyable…”
I was going to be sick. Especially when Stella nudged the side of his chair with a, “Someof them, huh? Any chance I get to know where I fall on that spectrum?”
“Hey, I mean, I haven’t run off. You know how easy it is to get out of a conversation as a lifeguard on duty? You can literally just run away and everybody will sayoh, yes, what a hero, go save somebody.Take it as a mark of high esteem that I’m still parked here in my chair.”
Stella laughed. “Yeesh, when all a girl wants is a direct compliment.”
Jacob grinned, and it was Jessica who said, “Allison was paying you lots of direct compliments, but she’ll try to drown me if I tell you all of them…”
I considered drowning myself. Jacob put a hand up. “Hey, go for it. You’ve got a lifeguard on duty if she starts trying to drown you.”
“Oh, do,” Stella said. “I’msofragile and I need constant reassurances.”
“Well, let’s see,” Jessica said, putting up one finger. “We covered the pretty one, she said—”
“That’sreallymore than enough,” I said, pulling Jessica’s arm down. Some ten minutes later, when I’d seen more than enough of Stella and Jacob flirting and I’d escaped the conversation, we’d barely gotten out of earshot before I huffed and said to Jessica, “Are you trying to kill me? Or get me to kill you?”
She laughed. “She gave you permission to smack her ass.”
“I—I know—how that sounds. She was talking about how she does it as this joking thing with her friends, and when I didn’t quite seem to understand how that was a thing for friends, she was like,oh, try it, c’mon, you can do it to me.”
“I think she might be a little less straight than you billed her as…”
“No—she’s not. She’s just—sostraight that she can slap a girl’s ass and it’s still completely straight, because she’sthatstraight.”
She furrowed her brow. “Is that a thing?”
“Yes. Apparently. You and I are finding this out together.”
She laughed. “She was talkingtoyou andaboutyou more than she was with the guy she was supposedly flirting with. I don’t know…”
“Yes, because—because she’s myfriend.That’s all.”
“Right… your friend who likes when you think she’s pretty. And who tells you to smack her ass.”
I really didn’t need her giving me false hopes like this. But here we all were, I guess.
We spread out our towels and sat down on the sand before long, and we made small talk as the wind rolled in off the waves, talking about her vacation and my working summer, and it was a nice distraction from the rattling, broken thoughts in my head—enough I was a little disappointed when her friends came back up off the surf and she was finally able to rejoin them, and I wound up on the beach alone, which wouldn’t have been a problem if I’dactuallybeen alone—I’d had plenty of days enjoying a solo trip to the beach when I wanted some quiet, but I was currently accompanied by spiraling thoughts about Stella Valerie Bell.
I tried to bury my nose in a book on my phone, underneath the umbrella that Stella had set up, and it almost worked until something drew my eye away, and I looked at where Stella cameacross the beach towards me, a bright-red Solo cup in hand and a loaded smile, and I could only imagine what that meant. Probably something likehey, keep an eye on my stuff, I’m going to go ride Jacob’s dick until sunrise.
“Hey,” I said, sitting up taller and trying to pre-empt her, putting the phone away. “Did it go well with—”
She dumped the cup on me. I let out an embarrassing squeal, trying to bat it away—ocean water, turned out, not a drink, so it wasn’t ice-cold, but for an instant when she dumped it down my front, it felt like it, and I jumped up to my feet, whirling on where she was laughing so hard her cheeks were red.
“Just when I let my guard down,” I sputtered, bristling, and she laughed, again, just when she’d started regaining her composure.
“You—you look so funny with your face all scrunched up at me like that—”
“Give me that—” I reached for the cup, and she laughed, pulling it away, and I lunged again to grab it. She squealed, turned and ran, and I chased after her, sand soft underfoot while we ran a course across the beach, until I was laughing too and I managed to catch up and grab her by the arm, and she wrestled against me in a battle that ended with both of us on the sand, me pinning her down and wrestling the cup away, and she squealed, giggling while she tried to push out from under me, but I got my shot—used the cup to scoop up sand, and I dashed it over her front, both of us laughing breathlessly.
“You’re faster than I thought,” she said, eyes sparkling.
“It’s the sand. I’ve probably run on beaches more than you have.”
“Ah, yeah. Beach girl.” She grinned, brushing back a long lock of my hair that had fallen down between us, and it was only really then that I realized I was pinning Stella Valerie Bell down underneath me. Oh, god. My thigh was touching hers. Stella’slaugh didn’t do as much as I needed to pull me out of the reverie. “Sorry for throwing water on you,” she said.
“You’re not remotely sorry.”
