“He thinks that I don’t meditate and deliberate things through properly or rationally, and he’s worried about me. He’s nervous for me, and he’s nervous because he loves me and he wants to protect me. He’s my older brother, and I love him for always looking out for me, but I’m also so aggravated. I’m not a kid anymore.”
“I know, but I’m glad he was there for you when I wasn’t.” Luke frowns. “I’m fucking pissed that I wasn’t there to help you.”
“Luke, you don’t even live in town anymore. What would you have done from New York?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug. “Maybe the same reason you didn’t tell me about Talia and skinny-dipping.”
“I doubt it was the same reason,” he says, “but I guess there are things that we just aren’t able to share when we’re so far away.”
I nod slowly. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“I have an idea,” Luke says, his eyes intense, and he grabs my hands. “What if we get engaged?”
“What are you talking about?” My voice rises. Has he finally lost it? “We can’t get engaged. Are you crazy?”
For a few moments, I wonder if this is him trying to tell me that he likes me. Is this real?
Hope expands in my heart as I gaze into his eyes, and he grins.
“Imagine Rex’s face if he thought we were engaged.” He gets serious suddenly. “Look, I didn’t appreciate how my brother spoke to you. I didn’t appreciate what he said to you about me never committing to you, and I just want to show him you are special. And I realize I want him to know that he can’t get away with?—”
“No,” I say, grabbing Luke by the arm and squeezing. “We will not keep doing this, Luke.”
“What do you mean?”
“We will not keep letting our relationship be defined by Rex. We got into this fake dating situation because we didn’t want Rex to think we were single and couldn’t get dates for the wedding. Now we’re going toget fake engaged just so we can prove something else to him? No. We will not act defensively because of him anymore. You hear me?”
Luke stares at me and nods slowly. “I guess I understand, but it would be so cool to just see that smirk wiped off his face.”
“But we come first, Luke. Who cares what he thinks? I don’t want our relationship to be affected by him anymore. I don’t want you to constantly be fighting that battle because your brother is a jerk.”
“I get it,” he says.
He reaches over and brushes hair away from the side of my face. His fingers trail down the side of my cheek and across my lips. He runs his fingers down the side of my arm and leans forward and kisses me softly. Time seems to stand still as his lips press against mine.
I can smell his musk as I hold him to me, and we fall back onto the bed. I run my fingers down his arm as he murmurs against my lips, as he slides his fingers up my top and caresses my breast through my bra. His tongue slowly enters my mouth, and I suck on it as if it were candy. He tastes so sweet.
We roll around on the bed until I’m on top of him, and I kiss him with passion. I feel like my body is on fire. His eyes gaze into mine, and he slowly pulls off my top. I unbutton his shirt, and we’re both touching each other gently and more and more intensely. He slides the straps of my bra down and unclasps it and throws it to the floor before kissing down and sucking on my nipple. I close my eyes and cry out as he kisses down toward my belly button.
He stops and looks up at me with hooded eyes, and I run my fingers through his hair.
“You’ve got such beautiful, silky hair,” I say, and he just laughs as he kisses back up and touches my lips gently.
“Did you know that when I was about to go to college, I nearly canceled?” he whispers.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know if you remember, but there was one night we went out to the beach to stare up at the moon, and then you started falling asleep. And I remember you whispered, ‘I wish you weren’t going to Harvard. I wish you would stay,’ and I was going to cancel my admission package. I was going to tell them I wasn’t coming. I was going to stay in Coconut Beach. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave you. I didn’t know what that was going to mean for our friendship. And you have always been the closest person in my life.
“Then, the next day, Rex came into my room, and he made fun of me, and he called me a loser, and he said that I shouldn’t worry because he’d always make sure that I had a job, working for him.”
“And I remember thinking to myself,I don’t want to work for you, Rex. I don’t want you to be in charge of me. I want to prove to you and I want to prove to our parents that I have what it takes to be better than you. And I knew I couldn’t do that, staying in Coconut Beach. I knew I had to go to Harvard. I knew I had to leave town, and so I decided not to reject my acceptance.
“And you know what, Mia? You’re right; I did that because of Rex, because of how he defined our relationship. And I’ve been doing so many things in my life defensively and not offensively, and I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want us to do that anymore.
“I love being with you. I love spending time with you. I miss the us that was in each other’s life every day. I miss laughing with you, and going to lunch with you, and playing games with you, and practicing guitar, and just lying in the sand, staring up at the stars and wondering how this universe was so uniquely and beautifully made, and watching the crabs as they crawl on the sand, and watching the fish as they swam and the dolphins as they jumped, and just staring at you as you swam like a mermaid in the water.” He smiles at me as his fingers lazily trace down the side of my arms. “I miss just being us.” He takes a deep breath and his nostrils flare. “Who knew I could talk this much at once?”
