What washappening?
Something almost cool brushed across one small spot on my forehead the second before what was obviously his thumb made another tiny path overmyskin.
Aaron had kissed me on theforehead.
I was naïve but not that naïve, and it confused the heck outofme.
But as quickly as he’d come to stand in front of me, he took a step back. His words were that soft, commanding thing he’d given me in the past. “All right, enough talking. Let me teach you whattodo.”
* * *
“Then he mademe throw it back in,” I told them all with a sideways glance to Aaron, who was sitting beside me at the restaurant wewereat.
He smiled, and beneath the table, the side of his shoe bumped into mine. “I told you we werereleasingthem.”
“Yeah, but those had all beentiny. We were out there for what? Six hours before I caught the big one?” I’d gotten fried out in the surf with him and had the sunburn on my neck to prove it. It had taken about an hour for him to teach me how to use the spin casting rig, and even then, my technique had been pretty iffy. But we’d wandered out into the water and cast line after line out for hours, whispering jokes to one another as we tried to stand as still as possible, failing at being quiet at least five times when I’d feel something brush my leg and I’dshout.
Aaron had only made about four shark jokes the entire time we’d been outthere.
I hadn’t touched the first two fish I’d caught that had been too small, but by the third one, Aaron had made me poke it. When he’d caught one, he made me hold it for a second and I might have wailed. By the time I caught one so big I’d figured he would prepare it and make for dinner… I’d held it in my hands—wiggling, thrashing—at least until he’d unhooked it and then tossed it back into the water to liveanotherday.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to eat fish again after holding a live one in my hands, but the day had been a lot more fun than I ever could have imagined. Fishing. Me. Who would havethought?
A gentle hand came up to cup the back of my neck then, conscious of the swollen pink skin that had taken a beating under the sun’s rays, and I could sense Aaron leaning closer to me as he said, loud enough for everyone at the table in the pub to hear, “I’m really proudofyou.”
I did know he was proud of me. He’d kissed my forehead once more after I’d caught the fish and told me those same exact words, and when I’d gone to hug him for the first time since the day he’d picked me up at the airport, he’d hugged me back. Squeezed me. Needy, needy, needy. All warm and solid and affectionate andperfect.
“We were going to meet up with you, but someone suddenly started feeling bad,” Des chipped in with asmirk.
Brittany rolled her eyes from her spot across the table from me. “My stomach was hurting. It’s not like there’s a bathroom out there for me to use. What was I supposed to do? Go in thewater?”
Des shrugged and had her mumbling “nasty.”
“You did great for it being your first time,” Aaronrepeated.
It was sad how much I ate up his attention and praise, like I’d never gotten itbefore.
“Need more time to decide?” came a voice from my left that had already become familiar to me. It was the waitress. The very attractive waitress. One of the handfuls of women I’d already spotted eyeballing the heck out ofAaron.
It had taken all of two minutes after we’d gotten out of his truck for the looks to begin. I wasn’t sure if I’d just been too overwhelmed the first day to notice all the attention Aaron got or if I was just that oblivious, but the truth was: there was no ignoring it now. The teenage hostess at the restaurant had taken one look at Aaron and Max and turned redder than I ever had. She’d stuttered her way through a greeting before leading us to a table, only turning around every two steps to look at bothofthem.
And then the waitress hadappeared.
“You’re back!” the woman had basically shouted before we’d gotten to thetable.
Everyone except Mindy and me apparently knew who she was because they had immediately greeted her. From the bits and pieces I picked up as the four of them greeted her, they knew her from the last trip they’d taken to Port St. Joe. All I could gather was that they had gone out drinking together, or something like that. It wouldn’t have meantanything.
Until she’d turned to Aaron and Max with a smile on her face and asked, justasked, “You both still havegirls?”
Like that. Justlikethat.
To give him credit, it was Max that answered with a “Not anymore” that had me looking away and, at the same time, reminding myself that it was true. At least Aaron was single now. And if he’d been here before he’d shipped out, he hadn’t been back then. Hewasnow.
The woman had taken everyone’s drink order in between playful touches of shoulders and more than one wink I hadn’t been sure who it had been aimed at, but while she’d been gone, Aaron had jumped into our fishing story, distracting me with the way he told it, sounding so pleased. But the waitress was back, and I didn’t like the way my stomach felt in reaction to herpresence.
“What do you recommend on the menu?” Max asked, still holding the menu in hishands.
The friendly, pretty waitress didn’t even think about her answer as she stood at the foot of the table, directly between Aaron and Max. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her because she was so attractive; no one held a flame to the women in my family. Also, I wasn’t that kind of person. Mostly, the ache in my intestines came from the blatant attention she was showing Max and Aaron. Realistically, I knew I couldn’t blame her. I did. They were both too good-looking for theirowngood.
