My body perks up at the memory, need spiraling though me with terrifying speed.
Down, girl.
At the very least, I’m glad I know what it feels like to be with him.
Against my better judgement, I check my phone again and log in to the Hearts First app, and only see what I expect: our messages from last night and nothing more. I have no new texts either. Bryce has my number. He’s always had it. Needed it, since our families text a fair amount. I’ve been left out of most of the group texts the last few years because I don’t live as close anymore, but I’m still on some of them.
I get everything done to open the store early—it’s in stellar shape due to Elle’s work last night—and I find myself staring at my phone. Hoping for a text that isn’t going to come. But I have to do something, and all I’m going to do is be thinking about him.
Flicking through his social media, I consume recent pictures of him. A few from a vacation this past year, and the pictures of him spiking a volleyball on the beach and diving in the waves have my body producing an entirely different kind of wave. And then I come across a picture that blows me back into the past. It’s of the two of us, on the night of my college graduation party. The night that changed everything and the night that I knew I had to move away because I couldn’t take it anymore.
In this picture, I’m still in my graduation gown, and he’s got his arm around me, and I’m staring up at him like his face is the sun and the only thing I wanted was to see it shine. The fact that none of my family realized that I was in love with him is a goddamn miracle.
At this point in the day, nothing had happened. But later that night…
I was drunk. Drunker than I normally would let myself get. But I was determined to make a move. I had graduated from college. I was an adult now. I was completely convinced that that would be enough for Bryce to see me for what I was. So I put on my smallest bikini—the one he mentioned last night—and got drunk. People were in the pool in our backyard. My family and my friends, all there to celebrate. So the fact that I as in a bikini wasn’t out of place.
But I pulled Bryce away, into the pool house. I told him I wanted to talk to him, and he followed me. I was drunk and clumsy, though in the moment I felt smooth and sexy. It’s been long enough and I had consumed enough alcohol that I don’t remember the details of what I said. But I pressed myself against him, and tried to make it clear that I was available for whatever he could possibly want from me.
And then my mom walked in on the two of us.
Nothing was happening, but the noise of the door was enough to startle me into freaking out, and I nearly fell on my ass. Bryce caught me, giving us a convenient cover story. That he was helping poor, drunk me, and not that I was hitting on the man that’s so close to my father that the jokingly refer to each other as brothers.
When I woke up the next morning—completely hungover and still in the bikini—I was mortified. Bryce never gave any clue about what happened, but he had to know, right? And for a second, I think I remember before my mom walked in, I saw the hint of his interest. So I left.
I knew that eventually I would be drunk around Bryce again, and that I would try to seduce him again because I couldn’t help myself, and I would ruin everything. Five hours away in the outskirts of Boston was far enough away to make sure that we wouldn’t run into each other. Or so I thought.
“Who’s that? He’s ridiculously hot.”
I nearly jump out of my skin. I’ve been so lost in my own memories that I didn’t hear Elle enter the store or walk up behind me. “Jesus, Elle.”
She laughs. “That’s not my fault, Katti. There’s literally a bell on the door.”
“That’s fair, but you still scared me.”
“That makes sense,” she says. “You must be exhausted.”
I give her a look. “What makes you say that?”
“The accidental phone call I got that let me hear you making out with your Hearts First hottie. I heard him tell you he was going to take you into the bedroom and fuck you, and hung up. I figured you were fine, and wouldn’t be calling me if you’d dropped your phone and were getting told that.”
I go hot with a blush. “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry.”