“Well?” I asked. “Is she okay?”
“Oh, she’s fine. She has just been going to work and mysteriously avoiding the lobby of the hotel. But now I guess I know why that is.”
“She’s avoiding me?”
“You know,” Bree said. “I know I’m young, and this is probably going to make you want to roll your eyes. But I’ve always been good at reading people. Andi, she’s a lot more delicate than she lets on. All the jokes and sarcasm are just like her walls. Relationships have never really worked out for her, so maybe she’s too scared to try again.”
“I see,” I said. “So tracking her down and pushing the issue might just push her farther away?”
Bree thought about that. “I’m not sure, but I have a feeling if you wait long enough, she’ll find you.”
“What makes you so sure?”
Bree shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve always been good at reading people. That’s just what my gut tells me.”
“Comforting,” I said. I slid my goggles back on over my eyes. “Any last nuggets of wisdom?”
“You’re arching your back too much. Try to keep your core a little tighter on those front strokes.”
I squinted at her.
“Swim team for four years,” she said. “You could be really good, you know, if you had a hint of form. And if you weren’t an old geezer,” she added with a grin.
“I’m thirty-four,” I said dryly.
“Yeah, nearly double my age. See ya, geezer,” she said, standing and walking off.
I shook my head. Maybe my judgment of Bree hadn’t been entirely accurate. She had some of that patented Andi obnoxiousness lurking in her, as well.
I started swimming, but no amount of exhaustion could push Andi from my thoughts.
One night in the club together. One date. That had been all it took to plant a seed that seemed to want to grow out of control. The way she kept vanishing out of my life only made it worse.
I wasn’t sure I could follow Bree’s advice of leaving Andi alone for any longer than I already had, but I knew I had to try.13AndiI pulled up the neckline of my dress, only to have it fall right back down into its revealing position a moment later. I was just outside the wine cellar entrance to The Golden Pecker.
It had been exactly one week since our little dolphin extravaganza at the aquarium. My plan had been simple. Cool off.
There was no point denying it. My experience with Landon had been hot. Like, microwave hot—the kind of hot you could only get by accidentally adding a zero when microwaving a potato and you leave it in for twenty minutes instead of two. There was only one thing to do in those situations. You step back from the potato that is glowing like the core of an angry, dying sun, and wait. Even when you think it might be safe to touch, you still don’t.
Except I had unfortunately learned that my potato was still in the microwave. Waiting had only intensified everything I felt. All the confusing desires and the curiosity and even the grudging admission that I was starting to like Landon. No, I’d liked him from the first encounter. I was starting to crave Landon, and that was a much, much more dangerous proposition.
Tonight, I was going to put an end to it. Waiting was only making me crazier. If my goal was not to get emotionally tied up with a man, I was sure would eventually break my heart, I needed to get this over with.
So there I was, dressed a little more to fit in at The Golden Pecker, but still mostly within my comfort zone.
I’d texted Landon and asked him to let me in. I could’ve used Audria’s dildo again, but that would’ve involved asking my sister to borrow her dildo. For obvious reasons, I went with the more direct approach. It was the most straight-to-the-point, I’m-definitely-not-into-you text I could think of: “Let me in, asshole.”
His reply of “K” came a few minutes later.
I wasn’t exactly expecting him to send a gushing, grateful text that I’d finally stopped blowing him off, but still. The bastard could’ve at least typed the whole word out.
I leaned against the door and tried to look bored, annoyed, and casual all at the same time. I even ran over some biting things I could say when he showed up. Let’s get this over with, dickface. Or maybe… Yes. I grinned to myself. I had the perfect idea.
There was a faint clicking noise from behind me, and then the wall I was leaning on fell away.
I pinwheeled my arms for a few seconds and then wound up plopping on my ass, which was currently clad in a shortish dress that was much less conservative than what I wore my first night.
Landon hooked me under the arms and lifted me to my feet as if I weighed about as much as a loose booger—not that I knew how much boogers weighed, for the record.