by Anne Marsh
I kiss her ear. “Do you really want to sunbathe?”
She bites her lip. “What’s on the menu?”
“I’ll let you choose.” I don’t remove my hand—I have a very demanding boss to make happy. “Let me know if you need a hint.”
She turns around, sliding her arms around my neck. Her legs wrap around my waist and I’m pretty sure we’ve just abandoned her swimsuit bottom somewhere in the pool. It’s hard to kiss through laughter, but we manage, and I don’t even pretend to drop her as I carry her inside to the bed.
* * *
We don’t make it down to the beach for another hour. There’s no such thing as too much sex. It’s just not possible. Getting naked and inside Hazel is my happy place, and no beach or ocean can ever be better. But Hazel wants to go in the water, so here we are, sprinting over sand that’s achieved nuclear temperatures while we’ve been heating up our bedroom.
Hazel informed me I could either be the pool boy or the pack mule and dumped an impressive armload of gear on me. I’m not sure if we’re about to go snorkeling or launch a SEAL-style beach invasion. But when she gets that mischievous glint in her eyes, I’m putty—so here we are, me carrying the stuff, Hazel dancing on ahead. Which means I get to ogle her ass in a new bikini.
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
The new bikini is pink and silky. The top ties around her neck in a big, loopy bow and there are more bows on her hips. I’d like to undo them, but she really wants to swim in the ocean. She leads the way, which means I can stare at her ass. I need to shave when we get back to the room, because I left a mark on the back of her thigh after I convinced her to go a little cowgirl on my face. Hazel’s face still turns the cutest shade of pink when I suggest something new, but she’s game. She’ll try anything once, and if she likes it, she’s back in line for seconds and thirds. So far we haven’t added anything new to her off-limits list.
Actual, bona fide swimming is on her list to try today. As soon as we hit the water, however, it becomes clear that Hazel has never been snorkeling before. She’s also not a natural. She sucks water in through her snorkel, her mask fogs up worse than a San Francisco morning and she has no clue what to do with her fins, although she mutters loudly about “misleading YouTube videos.”
“You’re enjoying this,” she accuses.
Since it’s true, I just wink at her. Hazel is frighteningly competent at most things, which makes her inability to master snorkeling cute.
I’d like to tell you snorkeling’s awesome because everyone deserves the chance to come face-to-face with something as pretty as coral and fish but that’s not the reason. Hazel’s tits in a bikini top are fantastic. They float along, threatening to swim out of the tiny cups and make my day.
Since she’s determined to check out the bay from under the water, I spend some quality time instructing her. A mask and snorkel aren’t the sexiest headgear ever, but Hazel makes it work. I suit her up in a full-on life jacket rather than just a snorkel vest, because even though I’m happy to be her personal pool float, I don’t want to take those kinds of chances with her. Sharks, sea snakes, Mexican Mafia drug runners, even a leg cramp—if I went down, she’d go down, too, and I’m not a fan.
We swim together, or rather I hold her hand, pulling her after me. The snorkeling in Santa Maria Bay isn’t that great. The occasional blue-and-yellow fish darts through the big boulders that line the bay. There’s also a small school of iridescent damselfish that dart around us. Hazel, however, makes excited, happy sounds through her snorkel, so that’s good.
I want to ask her if she’d like to go to Bora Bora or the Maldives. Maybe one of the barrier reefs, in Belize or Australia. But it’s not as if we’re going to be together forever. No matter how much I don’t want things to change between us, eventually they will.
* * *
Dev and Lola tie the knot at sunset. Lola didn’t want anything over-the-top, so they’ve opted for a simple arch covered in white roses and velvety green succulents facing the bay. White candles in little glass pots twinkle from the sand. I typically don’t pay attention to those kinds of details, but Hazel keeps up a running commentary, snapping a million pictures that she promptly texts to her family. Apparently the Coleman clan can never have too many wedding ideas. I inspect the flowers more closely just in case I’ve missed anything.
There’s a green plant with white flowers just on the tip that looks like a dick coming. Hazel smacks my arm when I suggest this, so I shut up.
I’ve honestly never thought much about the actual ceremony. When Molly and I got married, it was about making her happy—and making her mine. It seems unlikely that Dev helped Lola pick out flowers, but what do I know? The two of them walk up the aisle together, hand in hand, barefoot and beaming. They look happy.
They get hitched as the sun goes down. To no one’s surprise, the rings they give each other are custom-made, as are the vows they’ve written. Dev told me on the plane that he doesn’t really care what the words are—he just wants to make Lola his. She’d leaned over him and told me that it worked both ways, but that he was still expected to put some effort into it and use his words.
Dev is an overachiever and, like all of us, he has a deep-seated need to be the best. He won’t compromise or cut corners and I can’t help but wonder how long it took him to write his vows. They’re a little less action-oriented than I’d have expected: 10 Things I Love About You. From the look on Maple’s face, however, Max should be taking notes. Or maybe he doesn’t need to because his mouth is right there by her ear and he’s whispering something that has her smiling.
Eventually, the officiant declares Dev and Lola husband and wife. We all clap enthusiastically and Max wolf whistles. Dev sweeps Lola backward over his arm for a dramatic kiss, and there’s laughter. He’s hers now, and while I’m happy for the two of them, I can’t help feeling like I’ve just watched one of my best friends ride off into the sunset for the last time. Lola will always come first for him, as she should.
As we follow the happy couple down the aisle and toward the tables set up on the sand for a private dinner, I nudge Hazel. “Do you want to get married?”
She stares at me. There’s one of those awkward pauses where you both realize that there’s more than one way to interpret the words you just put out there. Does she think I’m proposing? What do I do if she says yes?
“Someday,” I clarify. Fuck. I’m not making this better. “To somebody. I didn’t mean—”
She pats my arm. “I know what you mean, Jack.”
One of the great things about Hazel is that we’re always on the same page about the big things. Sometimes it feels like we’re married. Not the actual wedding part, but the stuff that comes after it. Like we’re one of those old married couples who’ve put in fifty years together and who finish each other’s sentences. I mean, it definitely couldn’t work, but there are worse things than marrying your best friend and being partners for life. It seems to work all the time in Hazel’s large collection of romance novels, although those are made up and no one I know is a duke in desperate need of a bride.
I’m definitely not a duke, and I swore I wouldn’t get married again. No matter what Hazel says, I still feel as if I fucked things up with Molly, and that’s not a great feeling. Plus, do I even know ten things about Hazel? I can’t use the L word, not for us. I’m not too convinced about the math, that if you can just list ten things that make a person lovable, that equals loving them. I know exactly how I feel about Hazel, and it’s not romantic. There are no grand gestures in our future.
Right on cue, the night sky lights up with fireworks. Dev insisted that today had to be special for Lola, and he’s overdelivered. She’s gazing at him like he’s Atlas, effortlessly shouldering the weight of the heavens. For all I know—and I most definitely do not want to think about it any more than I already have—he’s a god in bed. I’m sure Hazel has all of the de
tails.
While the night sky lights up with Lola’s name and something that’s probably supposed to be flowers or shooting stars, the girls pose for a few final photos while Max, Dev and I finish off the champagne. Waste not, want not.
“You’re next.” Dev flops down beside Max and me. Sand flies everywhere. When I slide him a glance, he’s looking at Max and I breathe a sigh of relief.
Max reaches over and lazily punches me in the arm. “Unless Jack here decides to get back on the horse first.”
I stare at him, not sure if he’s serious or not. Apparently he’s forgotten our conversation at the market.
Dev looks at me. “You’re seeing someone?”
“I’m not looking for a relationship right now,” I say carefully.
Max snorts. “Hazel and he are ‘friends.’”
Dev gets a sort of arrested look on his face. Or maybe he’s just constipated. Either way, this is not a conversation I want to have. “The two of you are together?”
Max nods, as if it’s as simple as that.
“We’re just friends.” I’m pretty sure the tone of my voice makes it more than clear that I’m not in a sharing mood.
“With benefits,” Max says.
Dev freaking gawks at me. This is one of the reasons why Hazel and I have kept our sleeping together a secret. I can practically see the thoughts marching through Dev’s head. Hazel and I are business partners. We’re part of the same friend group. What happens when I fuck this up? But it’s actually nobody’s business what Hazel and I do together. We’re two consenting adults and nobody’s getting hurt.
“So...does that mean you’re ready to start dating again?” Dev asks.
“He’s ready for something.” Max sounds pissy, but you know what? It’s still none of his business.
“I don’t want to be in a relationship. Hazel is just Hazel.” I shrug. “She’s like one of us, one of the guys. She’s not the kind of girl you feel romantic about.”
Dev’s face sort of freeze-frames. Right. I don’t even need to turn around to know that Hazel’s heard what I just said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT’S SATURDAY, TWO WEEKS after Hazel and I watched our friends tie the knot on a Cabo beach and I made an ass of myself. We’re both pretending everything is normal, even though it’s not. We go to work, we go home alone on the weeknights, and on the weekends we have sex constantly. The only thing that changes is where, because Hazel still insists that we alternate houses. It seems to matter to her, so I give up trying to figure out why and just do it.
This weekend it’s my turn to host, so we’re hiding out in my beach house. I finally let Hazel pass out around one this morning, so we haven’t gotten too much catch-up work done today, although we’ve both dutifully hauled our laptops into my home office. My office is a modern space with floor-to-ceiling windows. I can look out and see the ocean.
Today’s one of those rare rainy California days where the ocean is shades of gray and it’s cool enough that the heat is running. Hazel barely cracks her laptop before she passes out on the floor pillow she dragged next to the glass. She’s definitely been working too hard these last two weeks, so I don’t wake her up even though I was looking forward to lazy weekend sex.
After I clear my inbox, I open a new tab in my browser and look at Pinterest. There’s only one desk in my home office, so it feels like I should get another one for Hazel. I pin a few ideas so I can run them by her when she wakes up. Somehow I end up migrating from my desk chair to the floor beside her. It felt weird sitting up there when she’s down here—plus, I just like being next to her.
Hazel snores softly, making little sleep-whiffle sounds, and I pin. I have enough good ideas for thirty home offices, so we’ll have to narrow it down. I reach over and rescue the laptop when she rolls over, stretching like a cat. She looks really good asleep. There’s a smooth expanse of skin where her T-shirt pushes up, and I brush my fingers over it.
“You’ve been busy,” she says, her voice thick with sleep. “I passed out. Sorry.”
I close the laptop and set it to the side. “You were tired.”
“It feels like getting busted by my boss,” she grumbles.
She’s not wrong. Before we hooked up, I’d have given her shit about sleeping on the job. Now I want to scoop her up and carry her to bed because she does work too much and sometimes that means she doesn’t sleep enough.
“You know you don’t have to work 24/7, right? There are health benefits to sleeping.”
“I’m too old to sleep on the floor.” Hazel makes a face and sits up, looking around for her laptop. I nudge it firmly out of reach and pull her onto my lap.
I reach for her shoulders, working my hands over the knots I find beneath her shoulder blades. She feels wound up and tense beneath my palms. “Problems?”
Hazel shakes her head. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time she opened up about something that was bugging her that wasn’t work-related. Maybe when she first pitched me our arrangement and complained about the lack of orgasms in her life?
“We’ve found your backup career,” she groans.
I smile into her hair. “If you’d sit in a proper chair at a proper desk, you wouldn’t fall asleep on the floor and then you wouldn’t have this problem.”
“Nobody likes a smart-ass.”
I distract her by setting my laptop in front of her and pointing to the browser bursting with Pinterest goodness. My top three choices are a hot pink lacquer desk, a white-and-gold number and another desk that’s a rich dark blue. I’m betting she goes for the pink.
She scans the page, her eyes lingering on the pink desk. Knew it. “But picking out furniture together seems—”
“Like what? It’s just some furniture, Hazel.”
She groans, flopping forward. I can’t tell if that’s Despairing Hazel or another yoga pose.
“It feels like a couple thing. Like we’re not just a temporary hookup.”
I wrap my arms around her middle and rest my chin on her head. I can’t see her face, which seems like a disadvantage for this conversation. “We didn’t discuss a time limit.”
“No,” she agrees quietly. “We didn’t. It’s just that we both said we’d look for our forever people. Or, if not The One, at least a relationship.”
“This works for me,” I admit. “I’ve already had my One and Only. That’s not happening again for me.”
She pulls away, folding her body into what I’ve learned is a cat pose. She stretches, her ass shoving up in the air, her shoulders pushing down. It’s sexy and hot as hell. “You really believe love only comes along once?”
I shrug. “I honestly don’t know, but I also can’t imagine looking to get married again. I don’t think I have that in me, Zee. Once you’ve scaled Everest, you’re done, right? Even if you fall down after you summit, you’ve still made the climb. It’s expensive and dangerous and the view at the top is still the same, so why do it again?”
Hazel chews on her lip. “You’re crazy.”
“Pot. Kettle.” I tug on the ends of her hair. It’s a gesture I’ve made a thousand times in the office, but it feels different here. “But I’m not looking for a serious relationship, so if we could just keep doing us, that would be perfect.”
“I like us.” She folds back in some kind of pretzel shape. Wow. Could we do it like that?
“If it works for you and it works for me, we don’t have to stop or change things. But if you decide you want someone different, then no hard feelings. You do what you need to do.”
A Pinterest notification slides across my screen and I read it automatically. Molly Chase has pinned four new cowboy images. Since when has Molly had a thing for cowboys? I’m clicking before I realize it.
Wow.
I should be glad that Molly’s getting on with her own life, but the cow
boy thing is weird. There are tons of muscled, boot-wearing guys with cowboy hats. They stand legs apart, thumbs shoved into the pockets of their Wranglers, eyeing bucking horses and some seriously scary-looking cattle. Arms and legs—and entire bodies—fly as the same guys do their damnedest to hang on and ride the livestock, with more than one cowboy biting the sawdust. She’s pinned one cowboy in particular.
The tags beneath the pin read: Real Cowboys. Sexy Cowboys. My Cowboy.
WTF?
“Do you think Molly’s dating a cowboy?”
Hazel says something, but I’m already scrolling through Molly’s Pinterest. Rodeos. Las Vegas. Image after image fills my screen. That’s definitely my ex-wife on vacation in Las Vegas. Buffet shots. I pause on a close-up of a huge bathtub that looks like it could fit a dozen cowboys. Molly always did have a thing for bathrooms. I wish I hadn’t looked. There’s no way this ends well. And then I find the couple shots. Molly at an ice bar with her cowboy. Cuddled up to the cowboy in a helicopter as the sun sets over Las Vegas. Naked cowboy shoulders in the tub.
I get up off the floor, taking my laptop with me, and crash-land in my desk chair. I need to be sure before I make an idiot of myself. I mean, what kind of a name is Evan Wilson? And how the hell did she meet a professional bull rider? She teaches English—I don’t think she’s ever ridden a horse in her life. Walking away would be better, but now I have to know. It’s like an itch that I shouldn’t scratch but it feels so good at the moment that I don’t care I’ll be hurting later.
“You’re a girl.” I look at Hazel. She’s retrieved her laptop, but the lid is still closed. She’s watching me as I go down in flames over here and I don’t care. “Do you think he’s hot?”
I flip the laptop around so she can see Cowboy Bob in all his glory. I’m not thinking, and I can’t even blame it on being drunk or tired. Once I saw those pictures, the logic train pulled out of the station and now I’m careening out of control. I don’t care.
