I was glad she hadn’t met Aaron.
But as soon as I thought that, another thought followed right on the heels—I wished she’d met Wes.
It hit hard enough to knock the breath out of my lungs.
“I would’ve gotten you one,” Wes said as I handed his ice cream back to him.
He’dinsistedon getting me one and I’d had to convince him the whole time we were standing in line that I really,reallydidn’t want one, that there were parts of my life when I’d practically lived on ice cream and the shine had kind of worn off it now for me, but now, Iwanted.
Not the ice cream, exactly. I wanted what it represented. The comfort, the nostalgia, all the love and warmth and happiness that revolved around it in my memories.
I wanted Wes, too. So much it hurt, even though I could reach out and touch him right now. I wanted more than that.
Dammit.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. It’d just been about sex, and maybe about having someone to have a little fun with, and now…
Now there werefeelings.
“Hello beautiful people,” Andre’s distinctive accent rang out behind us. We both turned to look at him as he threw a long leg over the fence and climbed over it, sitting down on our side. “You need to check your phone,” he said to Wes.
Wes passed me the ice cream while he licked his fingers clean again, wiping them on his shorts like a toddler before extracting his phone from one of the pockets.
“Ah ha,” Wes said, looking down at his phone. “Seth wants us to come to the beach for the midnight fireworks. He’s promising a bonfire, beer, and marshmallows. Are we in?” Wes asked, looking at me.
“If you’ve got nothing better to do, sure,” I said, determined not to ruin today by thinking aboutfeelings. Company and fireworks sounded good.
Especially since I was turning thirty at midnight.
Well, technically at about fifteen minutes past, but that seemed like splitting hairs.
“I have nothing better to do,” Wes said, tapping out a response to Seth.
I licked his ice cream once more before handing it back to him, electric sparks bouncing between us as his fingers brushed against mine.
“Shame that place is selling up,” Wes nodded to the ice cream parlor.
“Selling up?” I asked, surprised. The line outside told me they couldn’t exactly be struggling. Ice cream wasn’t the cheapest possible thing to make, but the overheads couldn’t have beenthatbad out here.
“Yeah,” Andre spoke up. “The couple who runs it are retiring to Costa Rica,” he said. “As soon as someone buys it, anyway. They’ll probably turn it into a Starbucks.”
“Nice for some,” Wes mumbled. “Retirement to Costa Rica, I mean. Not Starbucks.”
“You wouldn’t move out of Otter Bay if you were offered a million dollars and a pony,” Andre said. “You love it here. Thisisyour Costa Rica.”
“In fairness, a million dollars wouldn’t get me very far these days. And I don’t evenlikehorses,” Wes said. “I do like it here, though, that’s true.”
“Me too,” I said, fingers digging into the crumbling mortar between the bricks of the fence under me, toes itching to curl into the warm sand ahead. “I’d forgotten, but it really is a nice place.”
“Well,” Andre said, throwing his legs back over the fence. “I love you two, but I have a hot date. See you at the bonfire?”
“See you,” Wes said, and I smiled at Andre saying he lovedbothof us.
It was nice to be liked. To fit in, to have friends my own age—which made me sound like a precocious kid, but maybe that wasn’t all that far from the truth.
We sat in silence as Wes finished his ice cream, and I jumped when he wrapped his fingers around mine.
“Come on,” he said, tugging me away from the fence. “We’ve got so much more to do.”
