“You have to stay here with the boys and the beer. It’ll be more fun than coming back with me.”
“I don’t mind, if you want company. We can do something fun at your place.”
“No. It’s fine. It’s already been a good night, and all good things must come to an end. A late-night swim was just what I needed,” Kelly said, although it wasn’t even nine o’clock, so it wasn’t all that late at all. “It washed away all stress and any leftover stuff from school. I’m fine to go home alone. You stay and have some proper fun.” And she winked.
“Proper fun?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Well, the boys bought us bikinis as graduation gifts. Is that sweet or strange?” Still standing in my new swimwear, I looked down at it. I had to admit it was my size and exactly what I would have chosen for myself.
Kelly came closer, wagging her finger conspiratorially. “Do you think it’s because they planned to get us out of our clothes and finally have their wicked way with us?” she asked with a grin. “And now you get to choose whichever one of them you want.”
I sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if these were bought by one of our mothers, because we come over all the time and only sometimes remember to bring our bathing suits with us.”
Still, Kelly had put the thought in my mind. The evening was coming down to two gorgeous guys in swimming trunks alone with me.
CHAPTER TWO
GRACE MILLER
Are they talking about us?
The boys were both out of the water and lounging on the pool chairs when we emerged from the poolroom, Kelly dressed ready to go, and me still wrapped up in the big towel.
When I say lounging, I mean they were sitting huddled close together, side-by-side for a hushed conversation. It appeared we girls had interrupted an intense discussion as the brothers abruptly stopped talking and turned to us.
Suddenly I felt nervous about being left alone with the twins, though I had no reason to be. I’d been alone with them plenty of times before.
We said our goodbyes, and Kelly saw herself out, which was natural enough as the place had become like a second home to us.
And it had always felt like we were a family until hormones and beer pumped through my veins.
“Well then, I guess we’re all alone with cute ol’ Grace,” Ryan said.
“Yeah. Just the three of us, no one in the way.” Sam’s smile curled. His intentions seemed all too clear, but I must have been reading him wrong.
“You know,” Ryan continued. “We need to do something to celebrate.”
“Um, bro. That’s what we’re doing.”
“Nah, we’re celebrating the end of an era. But we gotta celebrate the start of a new one.”
“Nice, bro. Any excuse for another party.”
“I wasn’t thinking about a party.” Ryan looked at me in a way that he never had before. A strange mixture of intense and serious like as if he were a cannibal considering trying me as his next meal.
“Like, how are you thinking of celebrating?” I consciously stopped myself from shuddering under his gaze, because I didn’t want him to know he affected me.
“Well...” Ryan’s gaze shifted to his brother, and I guessed they were having another of those subconscious telepathic conversations.
“I think Ryan’s trying to say, we’ve been holding ourselves back from...”
He looked over his shoulder as if he were glad of an interruption. “You know,” he said, as if it made any sense at all. It probably did to the boys, but it made no sense to me.
Perhaps wishful thinking on my part?
Of course, there being two of them was a constant boogeyman in my head too. They were so perfect, but they were... well, perfectly perfect. Why couldn’t one of them just be an utter asshole, which would make choosing between them very much easier?
Ryan finished his beer and then threw his bottle toward the trash can. “How come we’ve never made something more of this, Grace? How come we’ve been playing coy all this time?”
“What?” I asked. He couldn’t possibly mean what I wanted him to mean.
“You’re a hell of a friend. You’re a blast to be with, but we ain’t blind, Grace. And you can’t possibly pretend to be either. You must have noticed how we looked at you.”
“What? What do you mean?” I added, as proof that I could still form sentences.
Sam leaned forward into the conversation. “You do know we both want you.”
“I... do?” I frowned. “I don’t know any such thing. What are you two talking about?”
Over the years, I’d gotten used to the way the twins talked between themselves, often interrupting each other or just finishing each other’s sentences, and sometimes trailing off mid-sentence into nothing, as if they were having a conversation between themselves in their heads and only saying half of it aloud.