Penelope turned to study me. “Why do you find that amusing?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t expect you to say that.”
“You must have noticed the way he looks at you.”
“So?”
“So would you want him to court you?”
“I don’t know,” I hedged. “I hadn’t ever given it much thought.”
“Do you…like it?” Penelope murmured, gaze falling to the wine jug in her lap.
“Like what?”
“The way he looks at you.”
“Why, are youjealous?” I laughed as I said it. I had only meant it as a joke, something to ease the tension inside me.
But Penelope did not laugh. Instead, she grew horribly quiet, her silence sucking all the air from my lungs until it felt as if I could not breathe.
“Perhaps I am,” she said.
I wondered then if I was more drunk than I realized. “You…are?”
“You cannot be surprised that I am protective of you, Melantho.”
She lifted her gaze to mine, her eyes filled with a rich swirl of emotion. In so many ways, Penelope was as familiar to me as my own self, like an extension of my body. Yet a simple look like that still raised my pulse as if she were something new and dangerous.
It was frightening, how easily she could unleash all those wild feelings inside me, feelings I had spent so many summers trying to rationalize, to force into the restrictive confines of friendship, even though I knew they would never fit.
I leaped to my feet. “I’m going for a swim.”
Penelope glanced away. “Now?”
“Why not?”
She paused, then chuckled, the sound chasing away that sudden tension.
“Try not to drown, please,” she sighed.
“I make no promises.”
I crashed into the waves fully clothed, the water so cold it made me shriek. Penelope called out something from the shore, her voice tilted with amusement, though I couldn’t hear her over the water rushing around me.
Floating on the moon-brushed waves, my body felt lighter than itever had. Around me, it was impossible to see where the sky ended and the sea began. I smiled, breathing in the dark, those rich midnight blues, and I swore I could taste the stars themselves crackling on my tongue.
You cannot be surprised that I am protective of you.
I turned Penelope’s words over and over until they became smooth in my mind, their thrilling edges worn down into something dull and unremarkable. She was merely protective because we were friends. That was all.
That had to be all.
After a time, I made my way back to the shore. The shock of the water seemed to have sobered me slightly, the ground feeling steadier beneath my feet.
Penelope smiled as I approached, but then she lowered her eyes, and a strange look tightened across her face. I glanced down at myself, realizing that my drenched gown was now clinging to my body, the soaked material leaving shamefully little to the imagination.
A heated shyness crept over me, words stalling in my throat.
