My heart stutters in my chest, unsure what this means or if it even means anything.“Yeah, me too,” I reply, not looking away.
Beneath the table, Kai kicks at my foot, and when I glance across at him, he’s grinning.“Sounds good, let’s do it.”
Thirty minutes later, Daisy, Kai and I are sitting out on our boards, waiting for a wave.While I’m grateful for my brother’s attempts to get her to hang out with us, I’m not sure her coming surfing means anything more than we all know the ocean is a great way to cure a hangover.
And Daisy is definitely hungover today.
“Whoo, I’ve got this one,” Kai says, his face lighting up as he lies down on his board and starts to paddle.
Daisy and I hang back, watching as he slips into the wave, just as it crests, popping up on his board as he raises both arms in the air and lets out a loud whoop.Beside me, Daisy laughs, and when I turn to her, she’s smiling, watching Kai as he surfs in.
“He’s such an idiot,” I mutter.
Daisy chuckles, nodding as she glances over at me.“He is, but he’s fun too.”
“Yeah, he is,” I concede.
“Where was he last night?”she asks, still watching Kai.
I snort.“Where he always is, picking up tourists.”
“He’s still doing that?”Daisy asks, a surprised look on her face.
“Yep.He’ll probably still be doing it when he’s like eighty and gray.Total fucking creeper.”
She laughs again, watching as Kai reaches the shore and jumps off his board before strolling over to a couple of girls standing at the shoreline.“I don’t know, maybe eventually he’ll find the one and stop.”
I turn to Daisy, my eyes taking her in: the blue bikini she’s wearing, the long brown hair, the body I spent so many years learning and worshiping, the tattoo she got.
The tattoo that I know still decorates her inner thigh and is a permanent reminder of what I once was to her.
Fuck, I can still remember the day we got them, the way we both knew we wanted them to be somewhere intimate, dirty almost, like no one else was going to get to see them but us.Hers less so maybe, and I’ve no doubt that fucking asshole has seen it up close many times.
But at least it’s my fucking name he’s staring at.
Dick.
“I doubt it,” I say, as Kai turns to us, waving his arm before he points at the two girls.I already know what’s about to happen.The fucker is ditching us for them, which means it’s just me and Daisy out here.Shit, maybe that was his plan all along.It doesn’t take much to catch Kai’s interest, and clearly these two girls have.
“Is he leaving?”Daisy now asks as she registers what’s happening.
“Sure is.”
She turns to me, swallowing hard as she says, “So it’s just you and me?”
I stare at the girl who stole my heart back in junior high.The girl I can’t stop thinking about and the girl I would do fucking anything for.“Yeah, Daze, just you and me, I guess.”
Fuck Kai.He did this on purpose, leaving Miles and me out here alone, alone for the second time in twenty-four hours.Although nothing happened, it’s still dancing too close to where I want to be, especially with Isaac already pissed off at me.
I wish I knew how we even got to this point.Everything feels like such a mess, but how do I admit that to Miles?I’m struggling to even admit it to myself: that I need to end things with Isaac, but to me, that feels so disingenuous, like now that Miles is back, I don’t need Isaac anymore.Like he was just a place filler.
Cutting through the awkward silence, the deep timbre of Miles’s voice vibrates through me, and I want to close my eyes and bask in it.I love the sound of his voice, something I couldn’t bring myself to listen to when it would randomly pop up on the radio.
But in the night, when I was lonely or when Isaac was awful to me, I’d listen, the tears spilling from my eyes without warning.Missing him so much it hurt always led me to his Instagram, and then to the band’s, only to find pictures of him with gorgeous women.
I would tell myself it was just an act.He was, after all, on tour with a band, and fans are what keep shit like that going.
But that never helped.If anything, it just drove me closer to Isaac, clinging to the one thing I felt like I had control over.
