“Cuddle with the koi?”
“Same answer.”
“Gallop with the gigantic goldfish?”
“How many more of those you got?”
She squishes her lips together. “I’m done.”
“Good. The answer’s still no.”
Stella’s mouth forms this glorious smile as she steps out and sits on the brick edge of the pool. “Touch your face.”
Uh... “What?”
“Do it.”
Once again, I do as I’m told with this girl and the shock registers. I am smiling. A real smile. Not forced. Not fake. And beyond the smile on the outside, I lost a few weights from the inside.
Wow.
“Thanks, Stella.”
“No problem.”
We hold each other’s gaze. One second. Two. It goes into three. With a flutter of her eyes, she glances away and red paints her cheeks. My own heart beats irregularly and it’s not from panic but from the fact I’m so alone with her.
Water drips from her long, tanned legs and for a second I wonder what it would be like to touch them. To feel them rub against my legs. And my gaze wanders to her lips. How soft would those—
Ah...no. Stella’s been good to me and I need to be good to her. Even in my mind.
“Can we do this tomorrow?” I ask.
“Maybe,” she answers. “Rick says it’s going to rain.”
Jonah
Stella plants the fall mums I bought for Lydia’s grave around the edge of the flat stone, creating a colored pattern of purples, oranges, and golds. “So Joss tells the guy that if he wants to steal her car, then go ahead, because she’d love to file a police report and get some money from the insurance company.”
We’ve been meeting at the cemetery nearly every day for the past month. The October weather is warm, not as hot as September, and both of us are in jeans. A shame since I highly admired Stella’s tan legs. Stella wipes at a trickle of sweat falling from the purple hair she’s pulled into a tiny ponytail. While she’s successful in removing the bead, she is also successful in smudging dirt across her face.
“Here.” I reach over without thinking and the moment my fingers sweep along her face, her gorgeous gray eyes snap to mine.
“There’s...ah...dirt.” I don’t lower my hand.
“Okay,” she whispers and it’s the closest Stella’s given me to permission to be in her space. I rub at the dirt and it easily transfers onto my fingers, but I caress her skin again because her cheek is soft. Warm. And I like the blush forming there.
Stella’s chest rises as she inhales and as she slowly releases the air, I find myself breathing out along with her. Wow. What was that?
I drop my hand and clear my throat. “Did he steal the car?”
Stella blinks several times and I decide to help her out. “You were telling me how Joss found someone trying to break into her car.”
“Oh.” Stella stabs the ground again with my mother’s garden spade. “No. She told him that the engine was going out and he decided to leave.”
I chuckle. “You make up half your stories.”
I expect her to laugh, but instead she mumbles, “I wish.”