The Love Playbook

by Suze Winegardner

  They dived one after the other, pushing the bottle tops they’d gathered onto the side. And then as she was reaching for a few on the bottom of the pool, she felt him next to her. As she scooped up the tops, he swam between her legs, making her jump, giggle, and flee to the surface as she lost all the air she was holding in her lungs.

  As she clung to the side, he popped up behind her and reached over her shoulder to deposit his haul, too. In a second, she realized his whole body was pressed against her back as he did, but before she could say anything or react, he dived again. This time, she followed him.

  The bottom was only illuminated by dim pool lights, but she tugged his leg, just as he was reaching for more tops, rendering them out of reach. He spun around and caught her, pulling her close. Their arms and legs twisted and slid against each other’s until they had to pop to the surface again. They emerged, facing each other, breathing heavy from holding their breath.

  She held onto him, their gazes fixed on one another. He didn’t say anything but gently and slowly tugged her under again, giving her time to hold her breath.

  As soon as they were submerged, he pulled her to him and kissed her. Her heart wanted to high-five everyone in the world. He’d kissed her again. She didn’t have to wonder anymore if he would. His lips were gentle on hers for a second, and then as she opened her mouth, he pressed all of her against all of him, and everything changed.

  She wrapped her arms around him, holding him closer. But just as quickly as it had started, he pulled away from her and propelled her to the surface. She took a breath. Everyone was where they were before; no one had noticed, even though it felt like every feeling in the world was flowing out of her pores.

  Lucas made his way to the surface by feeling his way up her leg.

  She giggled quietly and grabbed his hand to pull him up. He had a hand full of bottle tops. Jesus, how much had everyone been drinking? One dropped, and she grabbed it and moved to the side to put it up. Lucas did the same as before and stood behind her, touching her as he reached around her.

  His head was over her shoulder as he leaned in and sneaked a wet kiss on her neck. “I want to kiss you again. But somewhere we won’t die if we kiss too long.”

  Every bone in her body wanted to take him straight to her room, but she knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. God, really it was such a good idea—she could be alone with him, talk to him, kiss him, do…other…things. And that’s why it was a bad idea.

  She turned around and gently pushed him away. “I want to…” She swallowed hard, digging her nails into her palm so she didn’t say anything she shouldn’t. “…but I really can’t do that with someone who for all I know likes episodes one through three of Star Wars. It’s just not a risk I’m willing to take.”

  He laughed and stepped away. She didn’t want to lose his closeness, so she grabbed his hand under the water. She really wanted to kiss him again. To feel him pressing her against the wall of the pool, to feel the heat of his body against the nighttime coolness in the air. She just couldn’t find the words to say that. At least, of course she could, but she was embarrassed to say them out loud…again.

  She gave him a half smile and squeezed his hand and let it go. She swam over to the steps and hauled herself out, something that shouldn’t have been so hard but for some reason she was breathing hard already. Lucas stayed in the pool as she grabbed a towel and threw all their rescued bottle tops into the trash.

  He was climbing out as she found Lexi, curled up on a plastic sunbed between Colin and LeVonn. “Hey, girl. You ready to go to the room?” she asked, using her big toe to nudge her leg.

  “Huh?” Lexi tried to open her eyes. “No. M’okay,” she muttered.

  “How much have you had to drink?” She averted her attention to LeVonn and Colin. “How much did she drink?”

  “I mean…I wasn’t watching,” Colin said. “I’ll get her some water.” He got up and rummaged in the cooler to no avail. “I’ll find a vending machine.”

  “She’s okay. She didn’t drink a whole lot. Not like she has before. I think she’s more tired, honestly,” LeVonn said.

  Lucas turned up and grabbed a towel as Avery picked up one of Lexi’s arms and half-heartedly pulled on it. Lexi just pulled it away and groaned. “Okay, she’s on you now,” she said to LeVonn. “You’ll make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid?”

  LeVonn pulled a face but wrapped his arm around Lexi. “I can’t promise that, but I’ll look after her.”

  “Okay. I’m going to my room. G’night,” she said as she wrapped her towel around her. She gave a half-apologetic smile to Lucas.

  “Night,” he said, looking like he’d stepped right out of her daydreams. He was half naked, rubbing his hair dry with a towel, and she’d never felt the urge to reach out and touch him as hard as she did right then. It took everything inside her to walk away. What was wrong with her?

  …

  Lucas grabbed his clothes and went to follow Avery, hoping that maybe he’d catch up with her. But he stopped, cursed himself, and went back to LeVonn and Colin. “Look, I don’t mean to sound like a douche, but I don’t know you guys. I mean, I don’t know Lexi, either, but is she okay with you here?” He winced, but he’d already dug his grave here. “She’s drunk, and I want to make sure that nothing’s going to happen to her tonight.”

  LeVonn heaved his 6’5”, two hundred-plus pound frame out of the lounger he was sharing with Lexi and stood two feet in front of Lucas, forcing him to look up. “Are you asking if we’re going to be, like, inappropriate with her?”

  Lucas took a breath. “Yeah, actually, I am.” He clenched a fist, waiting for a swing, and immediately his brain started strategizing how he could get Lexi back to her room.

  Colin laughed and stood up, too. Oh shit. Lexi stayed asleep.

  A huge grin broke out on LeVonn’s face. “You’re all right, man,” he said, holding out his hand to shake.

  Colin clapped him on his back. “Lexi, LeVonn, me, and obviously Avery go back before first grade. We’re all best friends. No one here would do anything to hurt her. Hell, no one on the team would.” He looked back at Lexi with a strange look on his face, though, like he was just understanding something for the first time, which with Colin could mean anything.

  LeVonn tipped his head to one side. “Prolly no one in town would dare, either—but that’s more because her daddy’s the DA. And of course because I’d have to beat them down. ’Preciate you checking, though. We all look after our own here.”

  Lucas didn’t want to make more of a deal about it, so he nodded and told them good night. He ran for the elevators and caught one just as the doors were closing. The elevator doors juddered as they re-opened. Avery was standing there, in her towel, holding a soda.

  Her mouth dropped open, and he grinned and stepped in and positioned himself on the opposite side of the car to give her room.

  She didn’t say anything but offered him a drink from her soda. He was going to reach for it but remembered the fucking crazy direction his brain had traveled when he’d drunk from the same straw as her before. That direction had been his pants.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” he said, draping his towel over his shoulders.

  …

  Pro:

  - There was no getting away from it. Kissing Lucas was like smoking crack. Probably.

  - They were by themselves in the elevator.

  - She really wanted to kiss him.

  - She felt safe with him.

  - She, like, really wanted to kiss him.

  Con:

  - He was leaning against the opposite side of the elevator.

  - Maybe he doesn’t want to kiss her.

  Pro:

  - Her body was virtually vibrating to feel the same as it did at the football field.

  Con:

  - He was barely even looking at h
er.

  The door binged on her floor. Shit. She spent too long thinking about it, and now she had run out of time. “Good night,” she said and looked at the floor as she went to step off. She couldn’t believe she’d pro/conned herself out of kissing Lucas. Maybe if she walked slow enough, he would grab her and kiss her anyway.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” he asked, concern furrowing his perfect brow at her slow progress to the doors.

  Great. Now he thinks I’m sick.

  “Nope. Fine. Good night!” she said brightly. Well, fake brightly. She held up a hand in a terse greeting and left. She walked down the corridor and put the keycard in her door. She looked back to the elevator. He was leaning against the doors, jerking as they tried to close.

  He held his hand up in the same goodbye she’d given him. “Just making sure you didn’t have a heart attack in the hallway,” he said in a low whisper.

  “Unlikely,” she hissed back.

  He ducked back in, and the doors closed.

  Damn, why was she acting all pissed at him? It wasn’t his fault he didn’t want to kiss her. That he didn’t find her attractive enough to kiss on a freaking elevator, in private, with no one to disturb them. Oh my God. My pity party is a spiraling devil. She had to snap out of it.

  She put the shower on and threw her wet towel on the bathroom floor and looked at herself in the mirror.

  There was a knock on the door, and she smiled. Excitement jumped in her stomach. She ran to the door and pulled it open with a grin.

  It was her father. “Everyone okay here? Where’s Lexi?” he said, peering around the corner of the room.

  Avery was so taken aback that she couldn’t even form the words. She pointed into the bathroom, where the shower was still going.

  “Okay, sleep well,” he said. “And lock your door.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied, closing the door and locking it audibly behind him. She waited a few seconds before she quietly unlocked it again so Lexi could get in later. As soon as she heard the soft click, there was another knock on the door. Shit. Her father had heard her unlocking it.

  She opened the door. It wasn’t her father. It was Lucas.

  She peeked down the hallway and saw the very back of her father standing in the doorway doing another room check. “Shit.” She grabbed Lucas’s T-shirt and pulled him in fast and then quietly closed the door behind him.

  “Er, okay. I wasn’t expecting that. Is everything all right?”

  “My dad is on his rounds. Making sure everyone is in their rooms,” she said, finally taking a breath and realizing that Lucas was in her room, standing close. Like really close. She looked around, thinking she should back up, but then she’d be backing up into the part of the room where the beds were, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good idea. She swallowed hard. “Why are you here?” she whispered as she heard a door closing outside and her dad knocking on another door.

  “I got the feeling you were pissed at me for something, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t do anything, you know, to make you that way?” he said, suddenly looking less certain of himself.

  She liked the confident, assured Lucas, but the Lucas who was suddenly unsure was even cuter. Damn. There was a flutter in the back of her mind about her father’s job and coaching Lucas to take them to the playoffs and her planner and her future…but like the flutter of a bird’s wings, it was easily crushed by the falling anvil of hormones and a few beers. Her heart pounded.

  “So what was it? What pissed you off?” he insisted.

  Embarrassment flared as the beer in her blood opened her mouth and started talking. “We were in the elevator together, and you didn’t kiss me. It’s like…” She paused.

  He couldn’t have looked more surprised.

  “It’s like you only want to kiss me when someone might see. Why is that?” She had no idea what she was talking about now, but as she said the words, she realized that it was true.

  He hesitated. After a long second, he took a step back toward the door. “You’re wrong. I only want to kiss you when I’m awake. Like, every minute.”

  Damn him. He was so smooth with his answers.

  A true, shit-eating grin spread over his face. “And if you ever, ever want me to kiss you, darlin’, you just have to as—”

  “Kiss me,” she said fast. She closed her eyes for a second and swallowed. She’d never, ever said anything like that to anyone else before. And it was the second time she’d said those words to Lucas.

  He lifted her chin with his fingers and stared into her eyes for a second. “I like it when you say that,” he whispered.

  And then his lips were on hers.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Those two words struck Lucas like a lightning bolt again. He leaned in to kiss her and was lost. She tasted sweet like Coke, hot like the Texas sun, but her skin was cool like air conditioning. What was it about this girl? He could barely rein in his need to feel every part of her against every part of him. Her kiss made him feel unanchored to anything. Like he was free, but flying without a safety net.

  She pulled him closer to her, and his control over his…bodily functions just about flew out of the window. Her swimsuit was slick, but holy hell—with his eyes closed, it seemed as if she was totally naked. This was everything he wanted, everything his soul had been screaming for since the time he kissed her in the hospital and saw the expression on her face.

  He tried not to think about what she’d said about only kissing her when someone might see them. He’d never consciously thought about it, but he wondered if it was his subconscious guilt trying to get him kicked off the team—either by Colin or Coach, who’d told him that he wasn’t allowed to have a girlfriend.

  “No, no, wait,” she said, pulling back slightly but still kissing his face. He was confused but took a step back, though not so far back that she had to stop kissing him.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered, eyes still closed against her lips pressing into his neck.

  Avery took a shaky breath and stood back.

  He opened his eyes. She was flushed, but her eyes shone in the light leaking from the bathroom.

  “I want to know stuff about you,” she said.

  He cleared his throat and adjusted to the 180-degree course correction. “055 34 7012, 3.15 GPA, O positive, yes to episodes four through nine, no to episodes one through three, no to ice hockey, no to tequila unless it’s the end of the season, yes to football, obviously, no to hot coffee, yes to iced coffee. No to country music. That’s a hard nope; the rest I can be persuaded on, I guess. I can’t imagine anything else you would want to know about me. Your turn.”

  She looked taken aback, and he grinned.

  “Well—obviously, I have questions about some of that, which I’m totally going to circle back to, but I meant, I want to talk. I don’t know you, like at all. I feel like I can’t…” She looked like she was searching for the words. “I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions about you because I feel like I don’t know you.”

  Well, shit. She had a point, but this was not the direction he wanted to go in.

  “Okay. That’s fair. And I want you to make only the best decisions when it comes to me.” He grinned again and pointed at the bed that had Lexi’s overnight bag on it. “Can I sit?”

  There was a second of hesitation. “Okay. I’m going to sit here.” He pointed at the desk chair across from the two beds. “And you can sit here.” He took her by the shoulders and nudged her back toward the bed that was obviously hers. She sat. So did he. “I’ll do you a deal: for every question you ask, I get to ask one back.”

  “How many girls have you kissed?” she asked, pulling the comforter around her. She looked chilly.

  “Do you want to get dressed? It’s cold in here. Did I interrupt your shower?” He nodded toward the still-running water in the bathroom.
<
br />   “Yes, and yes, but now I just feel like you’re avoiding the question,” she said, getting up.

  He frowned at himself. He could honestly say, hand on heart, that he’d never, ever asked a girl to put more clothes on in his life before, but he swore her teeth were almost chattering.

  The water turned off, and she came out in baggy sweatpants and a huge sweatshirt. His lips twitched. Yeah, he was off his game for sure.

  “So, how many girls have you kissed?” she repeated, sitting back on the bed but this time on top of the comforter.

  “Let’s get into that. Do you mean, how many girls have I kissed in total, or how many girls have I kissed, like as a friend, or as a girlfriend, or how many girls have I kissed for fun, or how many girls have I kissed like my very existence would crumble into nothing if I didn’t kiss them again?”

  “Dude. You can’t answer my question with, like, five questions,” she said, grabbing her soda and taking a sip. She held it up toward him, and he nodded in return. She screwed the cap on and threw him the bottle.

  He grabbed it and took a gulp and sent it back to her. “It’s not my fault if your questions are hopelessly nonspecific.” Okay, he had this. He could be honest without being candid. “But in answer to your wildly general question: I have never counted—it never occurred to me to—and now, I couldn’t count. I’ve kissed a lot of girls. How about you?”

  She grinned. “Only one.”

  What? He shook his head. “You’ve only kissed one guy? Wait, you can’t have.” She definitely said that the Sonic guy had dated her.

  “Oh, no, sorry,” she said with a blank face. “You asked how many girls I’d kissed.”

  His face must have been a picture, because she burst out laughing and threw a pillow at his head.

  “So predictable,” she said, shaking her head.