Page 63 of Break the Ice
Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.
I know I’m not doing anything wrong, looking isn’t bad. Still, thatunknown pang hits me harder. A twist in my belly that has all my muscles tightening around my bones.
“You can help yourself to anything from the kiosk. It’s fully stocked with drinks, snacks, and towels. There’s also light beer on tap and Prosecco.”
“I don’t drink.”
“I know. But if you ever want to bring Christina up here, she might like it,” he retorts, unwinding a rope from the post next to him so that a hanging table lowers in the middle of the sun bed. As he goes about laying out our drinks and his book on the polished wooden plank, he asks, “Eli doesn’t drink alcohol either, is that also a thing where you’re from?”
“Your body is a temple and?—”
“Didn’t Jesus turn water into wine?” He levels me with a challenging quirk of his brow.
“Jayden, the Bible is like any other book. Words designed to tell a story, to make you feel, and believe in something.” I flick through the dog-eared pages of the book he lent me to a heavily highlighted and annotated spread. Holding it between us, I tell him, “No different to this.”
Jayden smiles, a warm glow flushing his cheeks while he sinks down onto the blue and white striped mattress. That unknown wrench twists tighter, like it’s pulling at a place inside me that’s just as new.
“I believe in science.”
“Me too.” I sit opposite him, across the table, crossing my legs the same way he crosses his while he opens our sodas. “Science is fact. It’s undeniable, right?”
My eyes drop to the half-heart, silver pendant hanging from his neck by a black and silver beaded chain.
“Yeah, science is fact,” he nods, twisting the ring on his thumb.
“Doesn’t fact always start off as faith?” I take a sip of my soda, enjoying the way the sweet burst fizzes on my tongue while he watches me pensively.
“Faith? Like God?”
“No. Just faith. Belief that something is possible. That it exists. That if we keep searching, we’ll find it or if we keep trying, it’ll happen.”
Jayden’s stare fixes me with a frown. I should probably look away or say something lighter. Maybe comment on the worn state of his books so I can swerve the conversation into comfortable territory. I don’t.
Holding his gaze, I take a long gulp of the orange soda. Just when Ithink I’ve gone too deep for him, Jayden’s mouth stretches into a slow grin that grows wider than I’ve ever seen it before.
It’s cute and my insides go all gooey.
The breeze murmurs through the warm rays of the early fall sun, lazily blustering through my messy hair. It doesn’t feel like fall with the sound of the waves in the near distance and the brine of the ocean salting my lips. The only thing that would make it any better is Elijah.
I’m closing my eyes when Jayden shifts. Bracing himself on his forearm, he reaches for his book, but at the last minute he grabs my journal.
“What do you write in here?” He asks, holding it up like a trophy.
“Words. Sometimes I draw and paint, too.”
He narrows his eyes on me. “Like?”
“Depends on what I’m feeling.”
Jayden makes no move to open the notebook when he rests it on his thigh. He’s looking at it like it’s going to tell him my deepest, darkest secrets. As though it’s going to give him a side of me he doesn’t have.
“It’s not a diary.”
“Can I?”
The hopeful optimism in his eyes gives him a puppy-like expression that has my chest squeezing while I take him in. Thick, wavy hair that’s as dark as the long lashes framing his bright eyes. Brown, green, and amber with the rare speck of blue that I’ve never noticed before.
“Sure. Go for it,” I tell him, trying to distract myself from the fact that I’m admiring him too much for too long.
