She grips it gratefully and I gesture toward a more secluded part of the beach where the sound of the wind and the water are less overwhelming.
As she crosses through the rocky outcropping, she pushes her shining hair behind her ears and nods, smiling.
“This place is really amazing,” she says when the background noise dies down.
I look around, seeing it almost through her eyes. The moonlight on the water. The dramatic outcropping of rock. The sultry sound of water brushing the shore.
“That’s why I bought it,” I say.
“Of course,” she smirks.
In the moonlight, she is practically rendered in black and white. She looks like a silver screen movie star. With her shoes in her hand and my shirt over her shoulders, I find the vision of her utterly enchanting. Dipping my head, I deeply inhale the warm, salty smell of the seam between her neck and shoulder. She raises her shoulders shyly.
“You took my advice,” I smile.
She startles, emitting a small cough at the back of her throat as she stares at me. “Are you some kind of mind reader too?”
“Mind reader?”
“I swear that I am surrounded by some kind of psychic vortex. How did you know that I…”
I want to laugh, but I suppress it. I don’t want her to think I’m laughing at her.
“You’re just extraordinarily easy to read,” I explain. “You are an open book.”
She juts her chin defiantly. “You make it sound like I am simple.”
“Not at all!” I object. “It’s a wonderful quality. Everybody in the world is a liar, Opal. You are… weirdly, not. You are… I’m not sure there is a word for what you are. Wonderful.”
She squints at me, trying to suppress a shy smirk.
“Today is so weird!” she finally blurts out, then lets herself chuckle for a few moments. “I don’t know what else to say about it. It’s just so weird. I never thought today would’ve gone like this.”
“Me neither, honestly,” I shrug.
“Really?” she counters. “Because if I am not mistaken, I am doing exactly what you told me to do. Are you trying to tell me the results are any kind of surprise?”
Moving closer, I try to catch her eye, but she is acting demure. When I take her hand, she squeezes mine and then gently pulls away.
“Listen, Cal, I’m not sure what to say, but I don’t want to get in the middle of things. Whatever is going on between you and Irving is between you. I don’t want to seem…”
She pulls away, and I take her hand again, looking at it until she looks at it too.
“Are you saying you don’t want me to touch you? Be honest.”
She scowls. “No, I can’t say that.”
I step closer, noting how she instinctively arches her back toward me. With the sound of the wind and the ocean around us, her nearness is exaggerated. We exist in a secret pocket environment. We share our warmth. I note the way her eyes dart across my bare chest and I can see the flutter of her pulse in the pit between her collarbones.
“Opal, you can have whatever you want. Be bold.”
“Be bold?”
I give her another minute to think about it. I know she wants me. I know that the heat between us on the jet is still there. I also know—in ways I can’t explain to her—that she is the missing piece between me and my brother. I can feel it. While she is saying that she doesn’t want to “get between” Irving and me, something tells me that is exactly where she should be.
“You’ll figure it out,” I smile, taking her hand and leading her away from the rocky outcropping. When we are back on the open beach, the wind kicks up again, sweeping away any chance of conversation. She allows me to hold her hand and guide her back to the resort. I can almost feel every thought she has. I am no mind reader, but I understand her at a visceral level. She has doubts.
Those doubts are going to disappear.