“How many do you want me to do?” Chris replies, grinning.
“Are you going to take your turn?” I snap at Jules.
“I don’t know,” she says testily. “Chris, I need your help. . . .”
As soon as she bends over, taking her stance, Chris spoons himself around her. “Ready? One . . . two . . .”
As he counts down, I pull Delilah close. On three, I start to kiss her. Deeply. Passionately. Wishing every second that shewere Jules—who swings at the ball and sends it flying over the fence into traffic.
Delilah stumbles backward. “What the hell—” She breaks off, realizing that Jules and Chris are staring at us. “—did you stop for?” she finishes feebly.
Chris grins at Jules. “Maybe for your next turn you don’t have to go full Hulk,” he says.
After Delilah smashes the ball—almost as angrily as Jules did—we move on to the next hole.
“You know what I never asked?” Chris muses. “How did you two meet?”
Delilah and I look at each other, briefly panicked. She opens her mouth to explain, but I cut her off. “Babe, let me.” I meet Jules’s gaze. “She was helping me find something I’d lost,” I begin. “We were searching everywhere. Through a field, in the ocean, on a boat. Finally we gave up and just lay on the beach, stargazing.”
Jules’s cheeks turn pink.
“So did you find it?” Chris asks.
“Find what?”
“The thing you lost?”
“Oh, yeah. My, um, car keys. They were in my pocket the whole time.”
“Sounds like fate kicking in,” Chris says.
“Doesn’t it?” I ask pointedly.
For a long moment, Jules glares at me. Then she announces, “I’m going to go to the bathroom,” and stalks off.
“And I’ll help you find it,” I say, hot on her heels.
I follow Jules into the ladies’ room and lock the door behind me.
“What are you doing?” she cries. “You’re screwing everything up.”
“I’mscrewing everything up? ‘How many push-ups can you do, Chris? Your biceps are so big I can barely wrap my hands around them!’ ”
“I’m surprised you noticed, since you were so busy making out with my best friend!” Jules yells. “You can’t just walk into my life and assume I’m going to drop everything that came before you.”
“You think it’s easy watching the girl I’m crazy about flirting with another guy?”
Jules shoves me. “You’re the one who agreed to this date.”
I shove her back, pinning her against the wall. “Yeah—so I could spend time with you.”
“Then you’re a moron!” Jules shouts.
“So are you!” I shout back.
There is one breathless, furious beat of silence between us, and then suddenly her hands are all over me and mine are tangled in her hair, and I’m kissing her in a frenzy of lips and teeth and heat, like I could devour her.
When we come up for air, my arms are still on either side of Jules, as if I’ve caged her. She smooths her hair into place and straightens her shirt. “We’d better be getting back,” she says, and she pushes me aside, opening the bathroom door.
