I looked away. I had to quit thinking about how I’d had my hands and mouth all over every inch of her incredible body.
She was laughing, standing next to Carrie at the side of the pool. “Ready?” she asked.
Carrie nodded and the two of them did back flips into the water.
“Still feel like a moron, huh?” Drake asked, coming to sit next to me.
“Yup.” I watched as she crawled onto a float and put an arm over her eyes to block the sun. “Hey, is she dating some guy named Thorn?”
Drake chuckled. “No. They went out once or twice. She thought he was a tool.”
I felt a sense of satisfaction.
Drake was looking at me with concern. “You know you and her aren’t going to happen, right?”
I did. But hearing him say it out loud was like a gut punch. “Yeah, man. I know.”
He clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not trying to be mean. I just don’t want to see either one of you get hurt.”
“I get it.” It still hurt, though. I knew I didn’t deserve her. I just wish I did. I got up to get a drink. “I’m getting a beer. Want one?”
“Sure.”
Later, we were all sitting around eating and talking. I knew I was being uncharacteristically quiet, but I was having the hardest time not listening in on her conversations. I was trying not to be obvious, but I was pretty sure I was failing.
The girls were all talking about things they’d done to get in trouble at the high school over the years, and I couldn’t help grinning. They were all so good—we all had been—that there wasn’t much any of us had done that had been too terrible.
“Oh my God,” Melinda said, putting her hand over her mouth since she was eating one of the brownies her mom had made for dessert. “What about senior prank?”
Sadie threw back her head and laughed.
I stared at her, watching the way her neck lengthened, her hair draped down her back, and her beautiful face transformed to breathtaking. I sucked in a breath at how stunning she was. And that’s when she turned to me. “Harrison, do you remember rolling the goal posts on the practice field?”
“How could I forget?” I grinned.
She started laughing so hard she could barely get the next sentences out. “We had to climb over the back fence from that neighborhood behind the school to avoid the night watchman.”
I started laughing, too. “And I went over first and turned around to catch you.”
“But I jumped before you were looking, so I knocked you down.”
Blair, Melinda, Drake, and Carrie all started laughing and talking at once. “I can’t believe how much toilet paper we used,” said Carrie.
I noticed that her husband, Thatcher, was on his phone, ignoring the rest of us. He was obviously texting someone. I frowned and looked between him and Carrie. She seemed okay, but there was a slight worry line between her eyebrows that made me know she was aware of what he was doing.
I hoped everything was alright between them.
“And then the night watchman saw us,” Drake gasped out, pulling me back into the story, “and we had to run from him.”
“Everyone made it back over the fence except Sadie,” I said, shaking my head. “I went over first again…”
“And I was so scared the night watchman was going to catch me I launched myself at you before you were ready again…” she said, tears running down her cheeks from laughing.
“And you knocked me downagain. But that time you landed on my back, stood up, and ran as fast as you could away from me. You just left me there at the mercy of old Mr. Pate.”
She wiped her eyes, still laughing. “Oh, you were fine once you got up. You passed me like ten seconds later.”
“And I threw you over my shoulder.”
