Page 60 of Flirting with 40

“I thought we were coming here for you to get changed?” I set down my notebook and pull my hair up into a messy bun.

“I already have my board shorts on. Get your suit on.”

It’s my turn to laugh. “You actually think I’m going to open myself up to criticism around those perfect bodied women I work with? No freaking way. I’ll take my carbs and my rounded curves and wear my tank top and shorts”—I hold them up as if he doesn’t know what a tank top and shorts look like—“thank you very much.”

Slade chuckles, but when I don’t move to get a suit out, his amusement fades. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“What part of you thought I wasn’t?” I laugh and play it off. “All I hear about at work is how perfect they are compared to everyone else. The last thing I want to do is put myself in the position for them to judge me even more.”

“And what exactly would they be judging you on, Blakely?” he asks as he walks up to me, brows furrowed. “Because I certainly don’t see anything they can pick apart.”

A hundred things zoom through my mind. How the skin on my legs isn’t as firm as it used to be. How my tummy isn’t perfectly flat like theirs are. How my boobs definitely aren’t as perky as they were ten years ago. All the imperfections I see when I look in the mirror blare in my head like a tornado siren.

Most of all, I don’t really want Slade seeing them in broad daylight either. I mean, sure we had sex last night, but it was in the dark. Moonlight glow never makes anything look bad.

“Blakely?”

“It’s nothing. I’m just—”

“You’re just refusing to own how gorgeous you are.”

Thump. There goes my heart when my heart isn’t supposed to have any skin in this game.

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes.

“Oh. I know what it is. You don’t want to show them up with that incredible body of yours.”

“I’m beginning to think that trouble you said you were going to get yourself into was in a liquor cabinet somewhere,” I say, and a coy smile plays at the corner of his mouth. The sight of it says he’s up to something. “What?”

“I dare you to wear it, Blakely.”

“Nice, try, but I’m not like you. I don’t accept dares.” I move toward the small bathroom.

“C’mon, everyone loves a good dare,” he says to my back.

“Not this girl.” I lift my hand and wiggle my fingers.

“I’m so disappointed in you,” he says dramatically, and I hate that I feel like I’m letting him down.

No, not letting him down.

Letting myself down.

The man’s been inside me. Did I really think he was going to balk at seeing that the backs of my thighs might have a dimple here or there?

“Okay then . . .” He sighs and sits on the bed.

Mad at myself and pissed that I’m so in my own head about this that I can’t see the forest through the trees, I blurt out. “Wearing a bathing suit isn’t even a good dare in the first place.”

“No? What exactly is a good one then?” he asks as he leans back on his elbows.

“I don’t know, but that isn’t it.” I laugh because this conversation is ridiculous.

“A dare is something like, I dare you to somehow knock Heather and her perfect yoga poses into the water so she doesn’t look so perfect anymore.”

“Deal.”

Slade replies so quickly that I think I get whiplash from snapping my head up swiftly. “No. That is just an example because I’m pissed at her for now. For earlier.” I force a smile onto my face. “Do not push her into the water.”