“Oh?” I turn to her with narrow eyes. “In what ways is it complicated?”
“I don’t want to talk about it now,” she says quickly. “I’m just saying, I think something complicated is just happening to all of us this summer.”
Wendy nods. “Carter and I—well …” She goes a deep red. “Let’s just say, he’s notjusta guest at the bed-and-breakfast.”
“Wait, did you and Carter fuck?” I ask her.
She givesme a look. “No, but …” She grins. “Let’s just say, that man knows how to work his tongue.”
“Whoa.” We all look at Summer next and I can tell she’s nervous about what question we’re going to ask her.
“What about you, Summer?” I ask.
“Me?” She blushes a light shade of pink. “I have zero men. Dayton might or might not have seen some naughty pics of me, and, well, it’s a little intense there, butnothingis going on.”
Oh shit, something is definitely going on.
“What about you, Juniper?” she says, changing the subject quickly.
“Well, I definitely have zero men, and you all know that.” Juniper lets out a deep sigh. “That’s why I run a bookstore selling mainly romance books because I don’t get romance in my real life, so I need it from my books.”
“I’m there with you, Juni. We own the bookstore together, and I love a romance book.”
“Yeah, but you have Luke.”
“I don’t have Luke though. He’s my friend—emphasis on F-R-I-E-N-D.”
“If you say so,” she says.
“Anyway, I don’t know. What should I do? Should I tell Luke we can’t continue down this path?”
“Do you want to continue down this path?” Wendy stares at me. “Did you enjoy whatever went down last night?”
I nod slowly. The truth of the matter is, I more than enjoyed the previous evening. In fact, even though it is still morning, I am looking forward to this evening because I want to see what is going to go down next.
“I just feel like we’ve been friends for such a long time, and this is kind of a slippery slope, and I know many friends don’t recover when they’re intimate like this.”
“It’ll be fine,” Juniper says. “He’s Luke. He’s always going to be there for you. Plus, he lives in New York. Who cares? Even if it doesn’t go well, you’ll stop speaking for a couple of weeks, and then you’ll FaceTime him, and it’ll be all good again.”
“I suppose,” I say, nodding slowly.
My phone beeps, and I look down at the screen. I laugh when I see Luke’s name—speak of the devil. I quickly open his message.
“Luke says he’s going to come join us after lunch and that he’ll bring my swimsuit if I want him to so we can go on an afternoon dip.”
“Ooh, ooh,” Silvie says. “I think the man wants to see you in a bikini.”
“I think he doesn’t really care about seeing me in a bikini when he saw me with nothing on last night.” I laugh, and all the girls join in cackling alongside me. “I’m feeling so tired,” I say, wiping sweat from my forehead as Juniper and I sort through a new stack of books that was just delivered. “It’s so hot already.”
“Well, Luke should be here soon, right? He’ll cool you down.” Juniper winks, and I just shake my head.
“I am definitely going to go for a swim. I told him to bring my white bikini with the pineapples on them.”
“Really, Mia?”
“What? It’s cute.”
“Isn’t it, like, a thong bottom?”
