“You’re staring again.”
“I can’t help it; you’re a magnificent woman. If it helps, my dick hasn’t joined the party yet, so you don’t need to fear making eye contact with my trouser snake.”
As I’d hoped, that makes her laugh again. It’s not the brittle laugh she has been giving the whole week we’ve known each other; it’s warmer, more textured and deeper. I like this Rhiannon a lot. I need to hold her boundaries with all I have because if I don’t, I can see myself actually liking this woman enough to want to make this fake agreement not so fake. And we’re in close enough proximity that the opportunity might present itself.
She sweeps an arm toward the view. “All this to look at, and you’re fixated on my bustin’ bake?”
I take a long drink from my glass. “Like I said, you’re a stunning woman.”
“Which one of us has been taking too many hits to the head on the pitch?”
“Ah. You forget I know the game. You’re probably more likely to get whiplash than concussion as a fly-half.”
“True. But I’m targeted because I’m a playmaker,” she counters.
“Which would be more of an issue if you weren’t as quick as a whippet.”
She beams at that, like she’s not used to having her game complimented, so I make a mental note to praise her more when it comes to her love of the sport. “Don’t you have a gossipy toilet-paper story to write instead of lying here ogling me in the sunshine?”
The shot cuts too close to the quick. Idohave an article towrite, and it’s about her, and her sport, and her friends. And I haven’t told her that’s the plan, even if I’m not writing a piece of trash and want it to be a real, human-interest story. She’s not going to feel the same way about it that I do.
An idea hits me like a lightning bolt, so I sidestep the topic of my work. “What about coordinating outfits? Like matchy-matchy without being completely matching. Like any time we’re in public, we wear things that complement each other, same color palette. It’s subtle, easy to do, and non-permanent.”
“That’s not really an inside joke.” She stretches her hands toward her toes, folding her body into a forward bend.
“Could be, if there’s a reason for it. Like maybe the first few times we went on a date it was accidental coordination, but then we clocked it and decided to do it on purpose.”
Someone knocks on the door to our suite, and I move to grab my crutches.
Rhiannon flaps my hand out of the way. “I ordered it, I’ll get it.” She leaps off the lounger, throws her sun cover over her bikini, and heads back inside the room.
“If you keep talking to me like that, I might start to think you care.”
“Only in the way I care about recycling—mildly, and mostly out of guilt.”
I smile to myself as she deals with the room service. She’s a formidable banter opponent. I’m not sure there’s a single woman—or person—in Northern Ireland who doesn’t have a quick-fire banter bone somewhere in their body. But Rhiannon’s is impressive. Her banter boner gives me a real boner.
I shift in my seat, once again muttering to my crotch. This thing is out of fucking control.
When she returns, she’s got a tray full of lite bites, but there’s a notable absence of the orange juice she ordered.
She huffs. “Not to sound like a diva…”
“Buuuuut?”
This is where she is going to sound like a diva. “But how hard is it to bring the fucking juice?”
I snort. The phrase tickling my funny bone. It’s not lost on me that people call anabolic steroids juicing, or that I investigated her family for that very thing, and here she is, calling for the juice. Where I’m from, you either laugh at the darkest thing in the room or let it swallow you whole.
Maybe this is what becomes one of our inside jokes.
“What’s so funny?” Her eyes narrow as my laughter continues.
“I can’t tell if you’re calling for steroids, or for me to big you up. ‘Bring the fucking juice’ sounds like the title track of your first album but also could mean anything from you wanting actual juice, to you needing bigged up because you’re feeling like crap about something.”
She stares at me like she doesn’t get the joke, but she’s clearly tickled that I’m laughing so hard, which only makes me laugh harder. If I stop finding things funny, it means I’ve started feeling it—and that’s worse.
“That’s it. That’s our first official in-joke.” I pause to catch my breath. “Any time you say that, I’m going to rub your shoulders like a boxer at the edge of the ring and tell you how fucking amazing you are.”
