I wanted to run to him, but that would look too eager. So I held myself back, strolling down to the dock. “Hi,” I said casually.
“Hi yourself,” Andrew said, his back still to me as he leaned over to tie up the skiff. I watched his fingers as they wound the rope around the cleat. His hands were strong and practiced.
He stood up, wiping them on his wrinkled khaki shorts with a small grease stain on them.
Then he gave me that look… like he was the dying fire, and I was the kindling. I thought about being cool, but cool had gotten me these last few days of regret. I didn’t want to regret anymore. Andrew took my face in his hands and kissed me with so much intention that I thought I might have melted into him, that my lips might not even be my own anymore. He smelled intoxicatingly of boat fuel and seawater, the back of his shirt damp from the humid night and sea spray.
“Hi, pretty girl,” he said, putting my fingers, which were wrapped in his, to his lips.
“Hi,” I whispered back, acutely aware of those dimples and of how completely like a teenager he made me feel. “You could come hang out on the porch if you want to.”
“Really?” he said, feigning shock. “Mom and Dad won’t mind?”
I smacked his arm with the back of my hand, feeling butterflies at the mere act of touching him. He must have felt them too because he kissed me again for what seemed like a very long time.
As we walked up to the house, the warm night air, still humid and sticky but with a refreshing hint of crispness, crept onto my skin. I grabbed a few pillows and a blanket from the basket on the porch and arranged them in the yard, then collected the bottle of wine I’d opened a few minutes earlier and two of the Lucite cups from the outdoor bar.
“So does this mean I’m welcome here?” Andrew asked.
I nodded and whispered, “I think it does.” I almost added:But only if you want to be. But I stopped myself. If he didn’t want to, he wouldn’t be here.
“I know you’re trying to keep this whole thing on the DL,” Andrew said. “I just wanted you to know that I don’t kiss and tell.”
Then he leaned in and kissed me, and it occurred to me that I kind of wanted to tell everyone. I wrapped my arms around his tight torso, and for a minute I felt so safe in his embrace that I forgot to worry about everything in my life that had gone wrong.
“Julian knows,” I said.
“Oh no,” he groaned. “So the DL lasted twenty minutes.”
“Less.”
Andrew sat down, reclining into the pile of pillows, and put his arms out for me to lie on his chest.
“I just wanted you to know,” he said, “that when I said that thing about you being the perfect sugar mama, I was only joking.”
I placed my head in that sweet spot and said, “I know you were. I wasn’t offended or anything.”
“I’m really impressed,” he said. “I mean, you’re so young.”
I sat up, smiling. “One, thank you for saying I’m young. Two, are you fishing for advice?”
He laughed, putting his hands under his head, his elbows open wide. “No. Money isn’t important to me. I’m only getting my MBA to please my dad.”
Andrew was studying at the College of Charleston, and just thinking about the fact that he would be back in the same city as my sister in a couple months made me cringe.
“I want to play tennis forever, and I’m no Federer, so I’m never going to be rich. I don’t want a big house or new cars orfancy stuff. I just want to be happy.” He paused and added, “I love kids, and I love teaching them.” Under his breath he said, “Plus there’s this tennis mom I’m kind of into too.”
I smiled. “I never saw all of my success coming, to be honest. I started a blog when I was in college, when blogs were the new thing, and I got a lot of followers really fast, and companies started to approach me about advertising their products.”
“But that’s not ClickMarket, right?”
I shook my head. “I got the idea to go back to them and ask for a percentage of the sales from my site instead of charging traditional ad fees. Most of them said yes, and the site kept growing, and as soon as I graduated I started hiring staff, and it grew more, and before I knew it I was this twenty-two-year-old making tons of money.”
Andrew laughed. “A little Zuckerberg over here.”
“It’ll always be my first baby,” I said.
“And Greg is trying to take it.”
