“No, I bought some especially for this trip to make sure I didn’t get any tan lines. I can’t have that in my wedding pictures.” I love Gabby to death, I really do, but she’s a horrible liar. “I need to go back to the house. Ben,” she says, grabbing his hand. “Come with me.”
Ben doesn’t really seem down with this plan, but the last thing he’s going to do is get on his fiancée’s bad side a few days before his wedding. So he goes along with her scheme. Because that’s what this is, I’m sure of it. A scheme. Based on the look on Nate’s face, he knows it too.
“I guess we’ll meet you down there,” Ben says, looking innocently over at us as Gabby pulls him toward the house.
Nate looks over at me. “You know Gabby’s trying to set us up, right?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “She’s a horrible actress.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“She’s determined to get me on a date.”
“I doubt you have trouble with that,” he says, looking at me so intensely that I can feel the blush creeping up my cheeks. That seems to happen often whenever I’m around him.
“I meant that she’s determined to get me to go out on a date, not to help me find one.” I’m flattered anyway, which I suppose is what he was going for.
“So, yesterday when you said that you don’t date-”
“I meant that I really don’t date.”
I can tell that Nate wants to ask me why, wants to find out more about that particular promise that I’ve made to myself, but he knows this isn’t the time and it definitely isn’t the place.
“Phew,” he says, playfully wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “I thought maybe it was me, that you were trying to let me down easy.”
I laugh. “It’s not you, trust me.”
“Well.” Nate shrugs as he looks down the dirt path sprawling in front of us. “How do you feel about a strictly platonic trip to the river? Because my brother and his bride aren’t coming back.”
I take a few steps forward, and soon we’re walking side-by-side.
“I think I can handle a strictly platonic trip to the river.”
NATE JOSTLES open the rickety old door to the family’s boathouse, and I keep a safe distance on a small patch of grass a few feet away, close to the river. The place looks ancient, and even though it’s probably safe, it doesn’t look all that safe to me.
“I’m just going to stay over here,” I say, folding my arms across my chest.
“Nothing in here is going to get you.” Nate seems amused by my reluctance to believe there isn’t an axe-wielding murderer hanging out in there.
“I’m going to stay over here.” I repeat. “And don’t think about playing some trick on me to get me to go in there. I’ve seen enough movies to know what kinds of scary things happen in dark boathouses.”
Nate shakes his head and laughs as he walks inside. “Would you leave me here?” he yells from inside. “If something scary happened inside this dark boathouse?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” I reach into my bag and pull out my sunscreen, then rub it on my shoulders and arms before the sun has a chance to burn me lobster red. When I’m finished applying the sunscreen, Nate walks out, his arms full.
“What are those?”
“These are inner tubes,” he says slowly.
“I know what they are, but I want to know what you’re doing with them.”
“We’re going to use them as floating apparatuses. You see, that’s what they’re for.”
“No way,” I say, looking at the water. “I thought we were just going to sit on the shore and, like, sun ourselves.”
“Well, there isn’t much shore to speak of, in case you didn’t notice.”
“I can set myself up on the grass, I don’t have a problem with that.”
“What kind of fun would that be?” he asks as he tosses the tubes onto the ground.
“The kind of fun that keeps me stationary and on dry land. Because I have the kind of luck where I’d float off down a tributary or whatever and wind up in the Atlantic.”
Nate grins as he wraps his fingers around the hem of his shirt and lifts it over his head. When my eyes come to rest on the broad, tanned planes of his chest, I forget what I was even talking about. I’m preoccupied with maybe eventually putting my mouth on his body. Again. And again.
“Are you afraid of water, Callie?”
I shake my head to bring myself back into the moment, because I really don’t need to be thinking about how good he looks with his shirt off, even though he looks really, really good.
“What?”
Nate laughs. “Are you afraid of water?”
“I’m not so much afraid of water as I just don’t get into large bodies of it. Generally speaking.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he says, undoing a knot in the rope that’s wrapped around one of the inner tubes. “I’ll tie your raft to mine and I’ll keep us going in the right direction. If you drift off and float down a tributary or whatever into the Atlantic, I’ll be right there with you.”
I look at him skeptically. “You don’t seem all that worried about our possible castaway status.”
“Well, Ben and Gabby’s wedding is in a few days and I would do pretty much anything to avoid having to wear a suit.” He winks at me, and I swear my knees almost give out. Damn him.
I want to tell him that I think he’d look really good in a suit, but I refrain. That would only encourage him, and the last thing he needs is encouragement. “Okay,” I say. “But I’ll be keeping my eye on you.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” He tosses the tubes in the river, then steps in and turns toward me. “C’mon,” he says, holding out his hand to help me into the water. “Just lean back and relax. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I HAVEN’T been in the water very long before I realize that floating to the Atlantic on this inner tube might not be such an awful thing after all. I love the sound of the water lapping against the rubber, the gentle rustling of the leaves as the breeze runs through them. The tips of my toes skim the surface of the water, and I kick a little over onto Nate.
He grins as he looks over at me. “You don’t want to start something that you can’t finish,” he says, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
I start to flick some more water onto him when I hear a familiar throaty laugh. I sit up, balancing myself on the giant floating donut I’m draped over, and sure enough, Ethan and Emily are sitting together on the river bank across from us. Ethan is leaning over, looking like he’s going in for a kiss. I groan quietly.
“What’s the matter?” Nate asks, turning to see what I’m looking at.
I think I hear a soft ‘oh’ come from his direction, but I’m not sure.
“It’s nothing,” I reply as I lean back, trying to ignore them.
Nate’s quiet for a few seconds before he says, “He’s a dick for what he did to you.”
I look over at him, not really surprised that he knows about me and Ethan, but I am kind of surprised that he said something about it. “Gabby told you?”
“My brother did, actually. He told me about what Ethan did and that his ex was coming, too. Gabby told me that the ex was you, and that you didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable this weekend, so to make sure that I didn’t say anything about it. Not that it would’ve been hard to figure out that there’s a history between the two of you, given the way that you look at him.”
I’m surprised to hear that my face gives so much away; I thought I’d learned how to sufficiently school my expression when it comes to Ethan. “How do I look at him?”
“Like you want to rip his heart out of his chest.”
“Then who thought it would be a good idea to put him and his new girlfriend in the room right next to mine?” I ask.
He sits up, and the water sloshes around him. “Shit, seriously?”