In Your Heart - Smeltzer Micalea - Страница 30
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“You’re unusually quiet today.” Emma commented from beside me.
I guessed I was. I kept replaying what had happened yesterday with Ezra, then again in the shower, and then yet again this morning. We were both insatiable.
I shrugged. “I have a lot on my mind.”
“Want to share?” She asked, adding another layer of sunscreen to her nose, momentarily hiding her freckles beneath the white lotion like substance.
“Not really.”
“Everything’s okay, though, right?” Her voice was full of concern.
“Yeah, of course.” I forced a smile.
“You know…” She started and then trailed off like she wasn’t sure she should continue.
“Come on, spit it out.” I bumped her shoulder with mine.
She winced—not in pain, but at whatever she had to say. “It’s just that…I thought after you broke up with Braden you’d return to the normal, bubbly Sadie you used to be, but you’re still…”
“I’m still what?” I didn’t snap at her, even though a part of me wanted to.
“Withdrawn.” She settled on.
I guessed that was an accurate description of what I’d gradually become over the last two years.
“I’m working on it,” I mumbled, adjusting the straps of my bikini top.
“Is there anything I can do?” She asked, her toes skimming the surface of the lake.
“Nah,” I shrugged, “I have to find my way back to myself on my own.”
“Hey, Em!”
We both turned to look behind us, and saw Maddox barreling straight for us.
“What is he doing?” She mumbled.
He wasn’t slowing down and reached us in a matter of seconds. Somehow, without stopping, he grabbed Emma around her torso and jumped into the water with her in his arms. Water splashed everywhere, and I ended up drenched.
They surfaced a few feet in front of me and Emma smacked her fists against his muscular chest. “You asshole! That was mean!”
“Aw,” he reached for her, pulling her body against his and she immediately melted into his embrace, “you know I love you.”
“I think you just like dragging me into bodies of water,” she mumbled, but she was smiling. She kissed him quickly and swam away.
“What are they up to?”
I jumped at the sound of Ezra’s voice. I tilted my head back and—oh Lord. I swallowed thickly at the sight of him in a pair of white low hanging swim trunks and a blue baseball cap sitting backwards on his head. Pieces of his black curls curled around the edges of the baseball cap, refusing to be tamed.
“Oh, you know, the usual, being the sickeningly cute couple that they are.” I hoped he didn’t notice the pitch in my voice but based on the quirk of his lips he definitely saw how I was eyeing him. I felt like I was dehydrated and stranded in the middle of the desert, while Ezra was the cool glass of water just out of my reach.
While we might be having sex now, our friends didn’t know that and they had to remain blind to our deal. They wouldn’t understand.
Unfortunately, that meant around them we had to keep our hands to ourselves.
When Ezra said Maddox and Emma were coming over I hadn’t expected that to be a problem, but even though they hadn’t even been here an hour I was ready for them to leave so I could have him all to myself.
“Oh, here.” Ezra mumbled and handed me a bottle of beer. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding two, one for me and one for himself, since I was too busy checking him out. “You only get one, though.” He joked.
“Ha, ha, ha.” I rolled my eyes. “I’m an awesome drunk and you know it.”
He sat down beside me and brought the beer to his lips. “You’re definitely entertaining, that’s for sure.”
“Darling!” Maddox called in a joking voice to Ezra. “Are you going to sit there all day or join us?”
“I’m fine right here.” Ezra chuckled. “Darling.”
“You guys are so weird.” I snorted, shaking my head.
Ezra shrugged. “We’re practically like brothers, after a while you find you don’t care what the fuck you say to each other. Besides, if you can’t joke around life gets pretty boring.”
“That’s true.”
I set my beer aside, not bothering to take a drink. The last thing I needed was a buzz right now.
“Come on! Get in! It’s hot!” Emma called, floating on her back. Maddox splashed her and she retaliated with an even bigger splash.
“They’re not going to leave us alone until we get in,” I told Ezra.
He sighed. “You’re right.”
He emptied his beer and stood up, tossing his baseball cap onto the dock. He reached a hand down to me and I took it, letting him haul me up. I stumbled into his chest and he steadied me before we both toppled over.
He chuckled lowly and smoothed my hair away from my face. “Are you okay?”
I swallowed thickly. “Mhmm, yeah. Great.” I definitely was not affected at all. Nope. Not even a little bit.
“We have an audience,” he whispered in my ear.
I jerked away from him like I’d been electrocuted.
When I looked out at the lake Maddox wasn’t paying attention to us, but Emma was. Her eyes were narrowed and I could tell she’d be asking me about this later. Fantastic.
Ezra reached for my hand again and we stepped up to the edge of the dock. I wanted to pull away since I knew Emma was watching, but I didn’t.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Together we jumped into the water. The temperature of it was cool, but it felt like heaven against my heated skin.
We came up and Maddox hollered. “Perfect score!”
“That wasn’t even a dive!” Ezra yelled back as he swam towards his friend.
Emma was already headed my way and I wished I could sink beneath the surface of the water and disappear.
When she reached me she pushed the wet strands of her blonde hair away from her eyes. “Are you still going to tell me nothing is going on with you guys?” She arched a brow.
“I think you need your eyesight checked,” I quipped, “because you’re seeing things.”
“I’m not blind or stupid.” She glared at me, the skin beneath her freckles turning red—and not from a sunburn. “You used to tell me everything, even things I didn’t want to know, and now you tell me nothing. I feel like I don’t know you anymore.” She frowned, her shoulders sagging even as she moved her arms to stay afloat.
The truth was, Emma and I had been growing apart for a while. That was why Ezra and I had grown so close the last few years. Our best friends ditched us for each other, so we ended up becoming friends. While Ezra had maintained his close relationship with Maddox I hadn’t done the same with Emma. It wasn’t all her fault though. She’d been wrapped up in Maddox and I’d been wrapped up in Braden.
“We used to do everything together,” she continued. “I miss our sleepovers and pigging out on way too much pizza while watching those stupid shows you seem to love.”
I laughed and began to smile. “Yeah, that was always fun.”
“Maybe we should do that again?” She suggested, her voice meek sounding.
“We’re grown ups now, Emma.”
“So?” She countered. “Maybe the mistake in growing up is thinking that everything you used to do was childish.”
“You really want to have a sleepover?”
She nodded eagerly. I hated to let her down, because lately I’d been letting everyone down, including myself.
“Let’s do it then. You provide the pizza, I’ll pick the stupid shows.” I mimed her tone with a laugh.
“Deal.” She smiled back.
“We’ll have to do it at your place, though,” I told her, “I wouldn’t feel right taking over Ezra’s place with girly stuff.”
“Sounds good. Tonight?”
“Sure,” I said, even though I cringed
I sent up a silent prayer that at this sleepover she’d let the topic of Ezra go, but I knew that wasn’t likely. Emma was too perceptive. Besides, she’d already brought it up too many times for me to believe she’d suddenly stop asking me about it.
She swam away from me, over to Maddox, no doubt to tell him about our plan for a sleepover.
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