I wrap the towel around my hips, taking longer than I should. “Hi.”
“Hi.” But her gaze lingers below my waist. “I needed a towel. The cabana’s…big.”
“It’s big,” Iecho.
“It’s out! It’s out of towels,” she practically shouts, reddening. I don’t bother to hide myamusement.
“Did you want this one?” The way she’s staring, I can’t resist asking. My hands hover on theknot.
“No!” Her gaze snaps to mine as I swallow my first laugh allday.
She goes to the linen closet while I dig out a pair of sweatpants from thedresser.
“The lights were out,” she blurts over her shoulder, the flush lingering on her face. “I didn’t think you’d be here, and I didn’t think you’d benaked.”
“Two-for-two.”
The first time I saw Annie Jamieson three years ago, she was listening to music on her headphones on a bench outside school in Philly. Her eyes were closed, lips curved as if she were on another plane. Lost in adream.
I didn’t know her name, but I wanted to know what it was like where she was because nothing in my world felt likethat.
Over the next few weeks, I learned she loved music and books, both popular and the ones you need CliffsNotes for. I learned she was compassionate, the kind of person whose heart aches for animals in shelter commercials and who always stops to talk and joke with people living on the street even if she’s in arush.
I also learned she was Jax Jamieson’sdaughter.
To this day, it’s the only thing about her I’d change if Icould.
“I thought you’d be at Big Leap.” Annie wraps a towel around her body, knots it at herchest.
I think of Jax’s former tour bus, converted to a mobile studio, in the driveway. “I’ve beendismissed.”
“Seriously? My dad thinks you walk onwater.”
My attention lingers on her legs a beat too long before I look away. I tug on the sweatpants, leaving them low on myhips.
“No one walks on water except Haley.” Jax’s wife could burn the house down, and he’d just take her face in his hands and ask her who’d pissed her off so he could bring them down. It would be ridiculous if she wasn’t so completely deserving ofit.
I turn to see Annie working on a knot in the hair that hangs in wet chunks over her shoulder, ending at her breasts. She lets out a little growl, and against my better judgment, I close the distance between us. “Stop. You’re going to rip yourhair.”
Picking guitar? No problem. Girl hair? Not my zone of genius. But I’ll try because my biggest pet peeves are celebrity couple names, people who can’t park without taking up two spaces, and watching Annie Jamieson hurtherself.
I expect her to fight me, but she huffs out a breath and drops herhands.
She was always cute, even back when she was a naïve fourteen and I was a worldlysixteen.
That changed when I wasn’t looking, because now she’s just the awkward side of beautiful. Her amber eyes reveal every thought, her pink lips are full in every variation of smiling and frowning, and the slight shoulders that curve inward when she’s lost in a book or listening to music on headphones make you want to hold her against yourside.
Not that she’d stay there. The girl’s a livewire.
“Did you start the poetry assignment?” Annie asks, dragging meback.
Her voice is lower than most of the girls’ at school, with this little lift at the end that makes you do a second take. Like when a girl walks by in a long skirt and you don’t notice the full-length slit up the side until she’s passedyou.
“My future is music, not essays. Suffering for your craft is legit, but I’m not gonna suffer for someoneelse’s.”
She turns that over. “I’m suffering but not getting anywhere. Norelli wants to give Carly thelead.”
Annie’s low admission surprisesme.