“Hot is… shit, girl! Hot is HOT. Hot is those muscles. Hot is those squinty eyes. Hot is that lickable stubble. Hot is that—”
“Okay!” I interrupt. “Keep your voice down!”
She flares her nostrils and purses her lips at me. “Yeah, you know what hot is,” she purrs suggestively. “I bet you’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you? I bet your sweet spot is all nice and tingly, ain’t it?”
I roll my eyes, but my knees instinctively clamp together and I can kinda tell that she’s right. There’s definitely something going on in my nethers. It might be wrong, but looking at them lately just seems to activate something in me. Something I am finding it harder and harder to turn off.
“You know it’s not wrong,” she sighs.
“I need to flip over, Yoyo. Can you move your cell?”
“I mean you’re not even really relat
ed. Not by blood or anything.”
“That’s nice,” I answer automatically, propping myself up on my elbows.
“So you can admit it. That you’re hot for one of them. Or even both?”
The best thing is just to ignore her, I remind myself.
“I mean everybody does it. I would totally do it if I were you.”
“Does what?” I ask, despite my best intentions.
She leans forward, her eyes bright with mischief. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about Belinda and Blaine!”
“What about Bel— wait. What are you saying?”
She raises her eyebrows and leans back, cheeks sucked in, oozing mystery.
“You’re not telling me that they are…”
She nods once.
“Ew! Gross!”
Shrugging one shoulder, she assumes a more-mature-than-thou expression, as though I just wouldn’t understand.
“It’s just nature, Chelsea,” she sighs as though she’s already bored. “You can’t fight nature.”
Nature, huh? What does she know?
Chance throws the football a little wide and though Jack lunges for it like some kind of jungle cat, it bounces off his fingertips and jolts over the concrete to land between my chair and Yoyo’s. When he comes after it, Jack picks it up and glances at each of us. To my surprise, he drops between our lounge chairs and sits on the patio, grinning with his elbows on his bent knees.
“Hot out today, isn’t it?” he grins, letting his eyes skate shamelessly over Yoyo’s perfect skin.
“Just got a little hotter,” she answers with a mischievous pout.
His eyebrows rise in delighted surprise as his grin twists a little sideways.
“Oh really?” he answers, clearly intrigued. “Are you a fan of hot days?”
Yoyo shrugs one shoulder, slowly raising her arms over her head and crossing her ankles so that she can move her knees. I watch his eyes track every shifting plane of her body, the way he is mesmerized like a cat. Like if she were a mouse, he might jump right on her.
I have to bite my cheeks not to say anything. I don’t know why, but I want to jump in the middle of this. I don’t want his eyes on her. Well… what do I want? I’m not sure, but before long I realize I want his eyes on me. If I could slip myself like a piece of paper between them and intercept that hungry gaze, I think I actually might.
“What are we talking about?” Chance asks, trotting around to our side of the pool.