“Good idea. I’ll hit the water.”
He dives in and starts swimming laps. I don’t end up falling asleep. I watch him, safe in the knowledge he can’t see my eyes following him courtesy of my new shades.
He swims powerfully. He moves through the water like something with gills and fins. He’s more graceful in the water than he is out of it. For some infuriating reason, I can’t stop watching him. I can’t take my eyes off him. I watch him until I have his stroke memorized and I’m able to predict his next one with a horrifying degree of accuracy.
When he gets out, water runs down his face and his chest in slick gullies, splashing onto the ground as he walks. His chest is smooth. Totally hairless. His skin is taut and tanned golden brown. His swimming shorts cling to his thighs as he walks. He shakes his head like a wet dog, sending a fine spray all over me. The cold water against my sun-drenched skin is a shock that almost makes me sit up straight.
“Wanna go for a run?”
“Nah, thanks but I’d rather be bitten on the face by an Eastern brown snake.”
He laughs uproariously at that. I close my eyes and try to tune him out.
“…so the main thing to know about Gould is that he seems like a shit but he isn’t. I mean, I guess technically he is a shit but once you get to know him, you’ll see he’s way less of a shit than you originally thought. He never has a clue where his car keys or his phone are, but he’ll have your back, you know?” I sigh heavily, closing my eyes and tilting my head away from him. “Chase takes some getting used to. At first it’s hard to follow what he’s talking about, but once you realize that most of the time he’s talking about something that’s happening in a game as if it’s happening in real life, it’s a lot easier to understand where he’s coming fr…”
“Please stop talking.”
He laughs again. He gets to his feet and whips his hands through his hair again, purposefully sending a mist of icy water all over me. He has a great big smile on his face and an earnest look in his eyes. Like he thinks we’ve just bonded or something. He reaches down and taps my side playfully. My skin burns hot and cold from his touch, erupting into a rash of gooseflesh where he touched me.
His hands were cold and wet and I’m hot from the sun.
Jesus. Chill.
He heads inside and I follow him in. Our first breakfast was light and I’m feeling hangry.
“How about some fruit and yogurt?” he says.
“Sounds good.”
I toss a handful of berries into my mouth straight from the carton and then tuck into my yogurt. He gets a bowl out and arranges his berries neatly, topping them with oats and some nuts. He opens his tub of yogurt, slowly pulling the foil lid back. He scrapes the yogurt off the lid with a spoon like he did yesterday, savoring every morsel and then lifting the foil to his mouth and licking it slowly. His eyelids drop to half-mast as he does it. I feel intensely uncomfortable. Like I’m part of a voyeuristic fantasy I didn’t agree to be part of. He licks it again. His tongue is broad and pink. Wet. He twists his head as he does it, improving the angle to get what he wants.
I have no doubt about it; what I’m watching is tantamount to the seduction (and or sexual assault) of a yogurt lid.
“Jesus. Get a room.”
He looks up, happy enough to offer me a smile, but he must be startled by my tone, because he drops the lid onto the floor.
“Oh, fffudge.”
My jaw drops. “Did you just sayfudge?”
“Yeah, I try to watch my language.” There’s no embarrassment, no apology, in his statement.
“You called Gould a shit a couple of times out by the pool.”
“I know,” he smiles, “but when you meet Gould you’ll understand.”
“Fair enough, but FYI, you can’t go around saying things like fudge.”
“Oh no? What should I say instead?”
“You could try saying what you mean.”
He leans down and picks up the lid from the floor. He looks at it with regret. If it hadn’t landed yogurt side down, I’m pretty sure he’d be launching a fresh assault on it right now. He sighs softly, still looking at the lid. He talks quietly. His voice soft and deep like always. He draws out the first part of the word, trapping the sound between his upper teeth and bottom lip. His eyes flick up at me as he releases the last letter on the back of a short, explosive exhale.
“Fuck.”
I step back. I feel shocked. Not by what he said but by the way he said it. He changed from sweet to something entirely different.
