Page 16 of Feels Like Falling
Ellison Fucking Mills.
My lips twitch as my eyes lock on my very sexy and very naked best friend as she treads water in the deep end, thankfully cast in shadows.
“Eddie, where the fuck are your clothes?” I ask even though it’s pointless. To this day, no one believed me that the girl in this pool, with her angelic smile and sweet-as-pie personality, was the cause of ninety percent of the trouble I got into growing up.
She looks down at her chest, and I have to work really hard not to do the same. “You’ve seen my boobs, Max.” Her grin is wolfish. “Done a lot more than that if memory serves me correctly.”
“You know,” I say calmly even as I try and fight a smile, “most people just come over and sayhellowhen they haven’t seen someone in, like, ten years. You know—knock on the door, offer a casserole…”
“Where’s the fun in that?” she asks. “Also you knowdamn wellit hasn’t been ten years.” Taking a mouthful of water, she spits it in my direction.
“Eddie…” I warn but there’s no heat behind my words. Not anger at least. Ellison’s always made my blood run hotter than apple pie in a truck bed, and aside from takin’ each other’s virginities on the last night before she left for college, I’d never gotten the chance to touch her.
Not the way I wanted to.
“You could come in—the water is divine. What do you keep it set at?”
“I’m not swimming.”
“Why not?” She pouts and I narrow my eyes, because she’s baiting me and damn if I don’t love it.
“You’re naked.”
“You afraid I’ll see yourpenis?” she mock whispers, and I can’t help throwing my head back and laughing.
“I know you’ve seen my penis.”
“It was pretty spectacular. Nice shape—aesthetically pleasing.” She points at my dick, her finger making a circle in the air as she talks. “Not all penises are created equally I’ll have you know, but luckily, you got a prize-winning member, sir.”
“Oh my Lord, would you please stop talking?” I beg as I drag my palms down my face and will myself to calm down. There’s no point trying to hide the fact that she’s making me hard—my dick is shameless and she knows it.
It’s also easier to ignore the idea that she’s seen enough guys naked to rate me against them.
“You used to be a lot harder to fluster, Max.”
There it is again—Max.
A nickname born from spite instead of adoration. We’d been seven or eight and she was mad I still called herEddie.It hadn’t been my intention, but when her family had moved in next to mine—still a country mile away—a couple of years before, I’d been unable to say Ellison. My missing two front teeth had made it impossible to say the l’s in her name and so I’d started calling her Eddie.
It stuck, but she hated I’d given her a boy’s name and retaliated by changin’ mine. It was hardly punishment back then. I knew a pretty girl when I saw one, and Ellison Mills was the prettiest.
Still is.
“I wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow. Thought I had time to mentally prepare for your arrival.”
She smirks. “It’s because I’m so fun, right?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
“Oh, that reminds me, can I stay with you tonight? My rental isn’t ready until tomorrow.”
“Because you weren’t supposed to be here till tomorrow,” I say with my head cocked to the side. I’d checked and rechecked the date like a madman—not that she’d know that.
Technically I could let her in. It was my property after all. Well, Sundown Realty’s property but that was semantics.
Hell, I was sure she could stay here at her parents’ house, but selfishly, I liked the idea of her stayin’ with me tonight. It’d be just like old times except one of us wouldn’t have to sneak down the road and into the other’s window. We must have done it a hundred times, and I smile at the memory and the fact that we’ll be neighbors again.
“You know you never have to ask to stay.”
