“I have some things I have to do tomorrow.”
“Well, then I’ll stay behind with you. Take a pool day, yeah?”
“You’re still going on the drive tomorrow,” I said. “I’d like some privacy.”
“Privacy?”
When I looked at Alex, I thought I’d see anger. Instead, his brow was creased, a frown tipping his lips down.
“I thought we were getting on better. You know, we haven’t really fought, and it’s been…what? Thirty-six hours?”
“And let’s keep it that way. Give me a day off.”
His frowned deepened, his eyes narrowing. “Fine,” he bit out, rolling back to turn the lamp off.
One would thinkafter an exciting few days of early wake up calls in the morning, wildlife sightings all day, and long social dinners, I would have enjoyed a lovely lie-in on my morning off from the drive.
Given that I needed daylight to take my pictures, I had expected to sleep in while Alex crept out. But I was woken up again by Alex jerking in bed at the drums, nearly knocking me off the mattress. He was extra loud getting dressed and ready to leave, presumably payback for telling him I needed some time alone.
At least I’d gotten to watch him pull on the leggings over his underwear. Usually I was too busy dressing or using the toilet.
When he finally unzipped the entrance to our tent and left, I should have slipped right back into dreamland. Instead I tossed around a bit, a little unmoored. Yes, I was disappointed to be sitting out the drive, but I was here in my capacity as a photographer, and I was excited and nervous to spend the whole day on a photo shoot.
That was all this was, right?
It had nothing to do with not getting to spend the day with Alex again. It was certainly easy to slip back into friendship with him, but I had to remember that he was wily.
Right. I tried to focus my thoughts. He used to be so passive-aggressive on Ion’s Instagram, always making comments with an undertone of snark.
And I thought back to Alex waiting for me at the finish line of the London Marathon, looking smug and startlingly refreshing, as if forty-two kilometers had been nothing for him.
He’d been shirtless, his hair a little long at the time, slicked back with sweat and the dampness that was October in London. Unlike most of the runners who were bold enough to go shirtless, Alex wasn’t painfully lean anymore. His height, for a while, had surpassed his muscles, and he’d been a gangly teen. But adult Alex, while still lean, had been surprisingly muscled.
I think it was the first time I’d seen Alex without a shirt on as an adult. Long gone were the pool parties of our youth.
Focus back on the smug face, Nikki.
Right, smug and confident, knowing that not only had he had more money pledged than me, but he also roundly beat my time.
I curled up on my side a bit more. Without Alex in bed with me, the temperature was dropping fast. I tugged the blankets toward me from either side to tuck myself in tighter. A hand with a mind of its own wandered over to Alex’s side of the bed. It was still warm, but maybe that was just my imagination.
I flopped over face first, checking with my cold nose. No, definitely not warm anymore. Mmm…but it smelled good.
We were four nights into this crazy trip, and sharing a bed with Alex hadn’t been awful. No, my accidental titty-fuck while watching lions feast was stuff of dark porn, but that had been the worst of it.
And he’d been surprisingly kind about it, making me laugh rather than teasing me.
The sheets smelled like Alex, reminding me a bit of the ocean. I breathed in deeper, trying to memorize the scent.
There’s something to be said for pheromones. A few wayward thoughts about Alex’s chest and a few whiffs of his bed, and I was clenching my legs together again. Well, I supposed it helped that my sex life had been remarkably unsatisfying too.
I squirmed on the bed, twisting my hand under my shirt and into my pants. It was easy to close my eyes, to remember the way his body felt when we’d been pressed up together in the Jeep. I thought about the way he said my name in the mornings, voice still gritty from sleep.
Dipping my fingers in, feeling how slick I was, I tried to imagine the parts of him I didn’t know. What if we’d had that first kiss, not in the hallway of a loud party, but in one of those quiet moments we’d had at my house? I hadn’t been brave enough to kiss him when we were alone, and teenaged me somehow thought a party was better.
Kids are idiots.
What if we had kissed in private? What if we kissed here? I used to think Alex didn’t respect me, didn’t think I was good at anything. I wasn’t so sure anymore.
