I turn on my side to face her. “I saw and heard you watching an episode in the pool house. You were watching it with what sounded like a perverted Golden Girls crew.”
She laughs, her entire face transforming into sunlight. The silk of her long hair a stark contrast to the rough rock. Unfettered, joyful Annie Li. “Those are my friends from the library. Fernanda and Betty like to objectify the aggressively male chefs on cooking shows, so I shared your channel with them. They’re obsessed. We try to have a watch party for every episode.”
I trace the purpling hickey I left on her chest with puffed up satisfaction. “Do they know you’re ghostwriting my book?”
Her face shutters a little at this. “No. No one does. I’m contractually not allowed to tell anyone.”
“Why the long face?”
She chooses her words carefully, but gone is that wariness that came before telling me anything at all. I internally roar and beat my chest with pride. “Remember how I said I didn’t exist? That I didn’t have a voice? I’m someone else’s voice? I meant that literally. The term ghostwriter couldn’t be more true. I am a ghost. I don’t exist. My name is on nothing. Not the work that’s famous, the shit that people quote. Nothing.”
I pinch a nipple through her bikini. “This is something.” Now that I’m looking closely, I can see both barbells poking through the fabric. How the fuck did I miss that?
She sighs—a deep, satisfied sound. “That is something.”
“If you could do anything, what would it be?”
“You mean what did I want to be when I grew up?”
“Sure.”
“A writer. But not this fucked up, Sad Invisible Peter Pan version.”
I want to growl when she talks about herself like this. I twist her nipple as punishment.
“Ouch! Nico!” she says, shoving my hand away.
“Stop talking about yourself like that,” I warn.
“It’s true!”
I pinch the other one.
She sits up and tries to run away, but I grab her arm and tug her back down. I notice her shoulders are getting pink, so I dig into my pocket.
“Here,” I say, handing her the sunscreen bottle. “You’re pinking, and not in the good way. That’s comin’ later, though.”
Annie stares at the bottle as if it has suddenly sprouted wings and a tail. She looks at me. “Did you bring that for me?”
I shrug. “Yeah. On the beach you said the best form of tattoo aftercare is sunscreen.”
Her face becomes unreadable.
But now I’m the lucky motherfucker who’s learned how to read her.
“Come here,” I order, sitting up.
She doesn’t move.
“Sit in my lap and let me fuckin’ take care of you, Annie.”
Annie grumbles (So adorably! Like a disgruntled kitten!) and shuffles into my lap.
“Good,” I whisper in her ear and wait for… yep. The goosebumps down her neck, the stiff of her nipples poking through the fabric of her bikini. My Annie Li likes a bit of praise. And how lucky was I that I figured it out with my dick in her mouth?
Makes sense though. After spending the entirety of her youth trying to impress people, convince them that she was the best or whatever?
I squeeze some sunscreen onto my hands and start rubbing it into her shoulders and arms. On my way down her left arm, though, my thumb brushes against something under her skin. Something maybe two inches long and the width of a glow stick.
