“Oh, okay,” Casey said, feigning indifference despite the fact that my insolence drove her insane. “Suit yourself, but don’t come crying to me tonight when you’re the shade of asolocup.”
“When have I ever come crying to you?” I asked, all bravado,nobite.
“True. You’re more of awhiner.”
“I preferbrooding.”
“Brooding suggests a level of cool that you just seem to lack,” Caseyteased.
“Excuse me. I’m pretty sure if you looked up the meaning of the wordbroodingin the dictionary, they’d skip the definition altogether and just place a picture of methere.”
“Yeah, I guess,” she said, pulling her sunglasses off to look at me. “What word would be next to mypicture?”
“Hmm… that’s a tough one. Let me think,” I said, pretending to waffle on the answer before blurting out, “Loquacious.”
“That’s a big word, sweetie. Goodforyou.”
“I know. The only reason I know what it means is because when I was writing my vows, I looked up synonyms for talkative, and just like that, I had anewword.”
She laughed, but it died off more quickly than expected. I glanced over. Her eyes were closed, but she wore a frown on her face.Shit, did I offend her?Using my hands as paddles, I splashed my way over to her and grabbed her mattress to pull ustogether.
Taking her hand, I said, “Hey, I was just kidding. I love that you’reloquacious.”
“No, it’s not that.” She hesitated. “Can I ask yousomething?”
Figuring it had something to do with my dream from earlier, I steeled myself for herquestion.
“Do you think I should quitmyjob?”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told me she wanted to quit math… if you could even do such a thing. I attempted to sit up on my inflatable, but miscalculated and tumbled into thewater.
“I’m not sure how to interpret that answer,” she said, after I’d resurfaced and shaken out my sodden hair. I pulled her mattress into the shallow end and stood nexttoher.
“That’s because I didn’t give one. I didn’t know you wereconsideringit.”
“I love my job, and when you were still in LA, it was great, but now that you’re gone all the time, I don’t like missing you. I go home to an empty house, and I wish I were with you. Sometimes I wonder why I’m even doing it, you know. It’s not like we need the money. But then, I also feel this need to get some use out of my degree. I just don’t know whattodo.”
“That’s not a question I can answer for you, Casey. I don’t want you to resent me later if I give you the wrongadvice.”
“But if you had a choice, would you prefer I bewithyou?”
“You’re my wife. Of course I’d prefer that, but I don’trequireit.”
“Wow, look at you, all politicallycorrect.”
Swinging her mattress toward me, I bent down and kissed her. “I know, I’m dying a little inside right now. I want to tell you to drop everything and come with me, but if I make that decision for you, I have a feeling it’ll come back and bite me in the ass. So my answer is, whatever you want,honey.”
“Blah!” She pretended to vomit. “Terrible answer. You’re luckyyou’rehot.”
“I know,right?”
* * *
Wincing,I stepped out of the shower and checked my sunburn in the mirror. Dammit. How was I going to hide this from Casey? After boasting of my superior skin tone, I had some explaining to do. Nursing the ache, I didn’t have a chance to cover up before she walked into the bathroom and smirked as she ran her eyes over mycharredskin.
“Wow, such a beautiful tan. You were right, Jake, no lotion needed,” she said, grinning, then slapped my naked butt. “And hurry up. Gabriel will be here in a few minutes, and we don’t want him to mistake you for alobster.”
The knock came on schedule.Gabriel was nothing if not punctual. My stomach growled at just the sound of his knuckle hitting wood. Gabriel was our personal chef, and today would be the third night he’d come to our room to whip us up atastymeal.
