In fact, by the time he got to his shoulders he wasn’t helping her at all. His hands left hers but she kept going, uncovering each new part like an archaeologist unearthing the bones of an undiscovered dinosaur. She marveled over the slabs of his shoulder blades and the hollow at the base of his back—so deep she felt sure she could have slid right down into it.
And his hips. Lord his hips.
He had those arrows of muscle, she knew he did. Yet it was shocking to feel them beneath her searching fingers. They formed such a deep ridge that—
“Letty,goddamn it!”
She snapped away the second she heard her name.
Though it was not the name that dragged her back to the reality of what she’d just done. It was his tone, sharp and frantic. It was thatgoddamn iton the end, almost cut off but not quite. They were the things that made it clear:she had almost gotten to the waistband of his shorts.Her hands had roamed below his navel, below his abs, below any point of friendly decency.
They might have even gone lower if he hadn’t shouted.
And she suspected he knew it. He wasn’t laughing, or saying anything else. There was just more of that thick silence—only now it seemed more like a nightmare than a secure little safety net. Even the darkness was no longer her friend, because darkness meant she couldn’t read his expression. Was he furious? Was this outrage? It seemed like it, but she had no way of knowing for sure.
She couldn’t ask him. She could barely explain. All she managed was an abruptit was just an accident.
But he didn’t respond. He kept his silence, until she suggested they get out of the pool.
And then he said the worst possible thing she could imagine.
“We…what? Why do we…are you…I think that…things.”
She had broken him, apparently.
Broken him with her wandering hands.
“I…I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It means that I have…thinkings.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Totally. Fine.”
“There were a lot of periods in that last sentence.”
“Youhave a lot of periods,” he said, like a little kid saying I’m rubber and you’re glue. Only then he seemed to realize it hadn’t come out right, and tried to correct himself. He tried to correct himself really, really badly. “In your sentences, I mean. Not in theotherway, because obviously you have a lot of those. And that is a good thing, a normal thing, I wasn’t suggesting that was weird that you have periods.” He took a big breath—big enough that she could hear it. Big enough that she knew what it meant, before he verbally shook his head at himself. “Man, I am just saying a ton of words right now.”
“I know. I hear all of them.”
“That getting-out idea was probably the way to go.”
“Yeah, that seems best, I think.”
“Right, right, right. So lead the way,” he said.
And that was when she realized what her suggestion meant.
She was still in her underwear. Her soaking-wet underwear, which he would now be able to see in full Technicolor from head to foot. There would be no hiding under a veil of water once they climbed out. No darkness to cover her once he flicked on the lights. And he was going to flick them on, too. It was the first thing he mentioned once they’d fumbled their way out of the pool.
“Stay there,” he said. “I’ll go get them turned on.”
Then she had to just wait for her doom, in the dark.
Of course she thought about simply leaving. It would mean putting her wet clothes on, but she could manage that. And there were excuses she could make to him later.I needed the bathroomseemed plausible, as didI felt unwell. But by the time she’d come up with a plan he had returned, the light from the locker rooms now bright behind him. So bright, in fact, that she could see almost all of him.
Which meant he could probably see almost all of her.
