Page 51 of What Are The Odds?
“That’s months away,” Ava pointed out. “Plenty of time to have some fun.”
Fun sounded, well, fun. And of course I bloody liked Levi. I liked his confidence, and his smugness, and his mattress topper, and even his cockiness. And call me vain, but I also loved his appearance, including his body and the things he could do with it. I’d never been with a guy other than my first and only boyfriend. Even then, we’d gone from childhood friends to something more. So things never felt rushed, more like a natural step. With Levi, things had been a lot quicker. Spending the night. Hooking up. Being comfortable enough with him to come. Twice. It wasn’t a bad thing. Just different. And I knew that’s how the casual thing went. You didn’t waste time getting to know one another. If you were attracted to them, you made it known and went from there. Now here we were. Attracted to each other. And I had no idea what would happen next.
29. Crisis averted
Levi.
Grace was out the front of our lecture building, pacing back and forth. I snuck up on her, whipping her around to kiss her. The kiss probably bordered on too much for public, but I made no effort to tone it down. Grace melted against me, leaving it up to me to support her bodyweight. Easy. If we weren’t about to go into a lecture, I’d carry her to the building wall and press her against it. Hell, maybe I could talk her into skipping the lecture and let me pin her against my car door. Then my front door. Then my bedroom door. Someone clearing their throat interrupted my heated imagination. Frowning, I looked around, expecting Ryker to be waiting for us. But there was no one nearby. Grace blushed as she held up her phone. It took me a moment to realise why. She’d been mid-FaceTime with her brothers. Well. Shit.
“Is there someone you’d like to introduce us to, Gracie?” one of them drawled in an accent matching to Grace’s.
The two guys on the other side of the camera also had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Grace. The younger looking of the two was smirking, whereas the older one had a firm expression. Grace and I definitely hadn’t reached themeet the familypoint, but I guess we didn’t really have a choice.
“Yeah. Um. This is–”
She looked to me for confirmation. I shrugged. I was just at a loss as her.
“A friend,” she finally finished with.
I nodded. That seemed like the safest thing to say.
“I, um, should go,” Grace said. “We have a class. Don’t forget to send me the video.”
“Got it, Gracie. Miss you,” one said.
“Love you, Gracie. Stay safe,” the other added.
Her brothers had been sitting outside in what looked like the warm sun. Grace on the other hand was dressed in baggy grey slacks, a thick black knitted turtleneck, an equally oversized camel coat and baseball cap. I was wearing a baseball cap too. We were matching.
“You’ve just made tomorrow’s phone call a nightmare,” she told me.
She rolled her eyes while smiling simultaneously. Good. She wasn’t mad. She peered down at her phone, which had just lit up with a notification. She opened the video that had been sent through. It was of a guy surfing. The wave was huge, yet the surfer smoothly sailed over it, all the while whipping the board back and forth in ways that would guarantee most people to eat shit. Grace typed out a text.
Nice, Dyl. Can’t wait to be back in the water with you guys.
“You surf?” I asked.
Grace nodded.
“That’s hot.”
It really was. I visualised Grace at the beach in a bikini. It was a really good image. Though with the reminder we were about to go into class, I forced myself to think about something else.
“Show me a video.”
“No way.”
“You’ve seen me play hockey,” I countered.
“You’ve seen me swim.”
“Barely.”
I’d always caught her at the end of her practices and hadn’t been to one of her swimming meets, and the hungover swim session didn’t count. I put that on my list of things to do. Watch Grace swim. That could come soon. But right now, I wanted a snapshot of Grace’s life back home.
“Come on, Hughesy,” I whined. “What’s there to be embarrassed about? I literally had you for breakfast yesterday. There are no lines we don’t cross anymore.”
Her jaw gaped in surprise before she nervously glanced around, checking for anyone who could’ve overheard. There was nothing to be embarrassed about. Grace was the best meal I’d ever had. She scrolled through her camera roll. There was a lot. I’d got to know the Grace who was living in Philadelphia well. But I didn’t know a whole lot about her life back home.
