Chasing Perfect (Someday#4)

by Melanie Shawn

  Our eyes held for a moment as sparks flew back and forth between us like we were wedged between metal and a welder. The air grew thick with tension until Sandy broke it by smiling brightly and saying, “Okay. Let’s go, then.”

  She spun on her heel and hurried down the hall, her flip-flops flapping noisily on her feet and her bag jostling against her side.

  Shit. If she thought she was going to distract me from my nasty thoughts by sassily twitching her hips in front of me as she rushed along the hall, making her sweet ass jiggle just the right amount in the sexy little bikini she’d put on…well, she was seriously fucking mistaken.

  We stepped out the front door of the hotel and crossed the street to the beach. With her hands on her hips, Sandy took a deep breath and looked up and down the long shoreline. She smiled and slowly released the breath. Her entire being telegraphed satisfaction.

  I looked up and down the beach myself, trying to see it through her eyes. The sand was crowded with tan, perfect-bodied people. Some were lying on their towels or beach chairs, engaging in a little good, old-fashioned sun worship. Most of them, though, were laughing and horsing around. Red cups were everywhere, and it was obvious that alcohol was flowing freely.

  Yeah. This was Sandy’s kinda scene. For sure. Sandy was all about travel, adventure and having a good time—and being around people who were into those things, as well. This was exactly the kind of life she’d always wanted, the one she’d always pictured herself living. This was where she felt like she fit.

  I’d always thought of Sandy as a reality TV show star who just hadn’t been cast in a reality show yet. In her own mind, I was sure a camera crew followed her at all times. In her own words, she was a fabulous personality whose life simply hadn’t caught up to her own inherent fabulousness yet.

  Now, here, she was finally in her element.

  I was the opposite. I loved our little hometown. I had no desire to live, or even really explore, anywhere else. I loved the idea of a wife and two point five kids, the white picket fence, the whole deal. I wanted nothing more than to finish college, move home, get a job, and settle down.

  Well. That wasn’t quite true. There was one thing I wanted more than all of that, and she was standing next to me, wearing an almost scandalously sexy bikini, looking out at the sand with satisfaction.

  “So, Hunter, what do you want to do? Where should we start?”

  I smiled down at her, totally enchanted by her eagerness. Just like yesterday on the plane, when she clapped her hands together like a kid, she was never more adorable than when she was happy and excited, thrilled about something that was about to happen.

  Even if this wasn’t my scene, I was going to do my best to relax and enjoy it. Seeing her happy was all I needed. I opened my arms wide to encompass the entire scene before us.

  “Wherever you want to start Sandcastle is fine with me. This is your world. I’m just living in it.”

  Chapter 7

  Sandy

  Hunter lay next to me on his towel. I was really glad that I’d had the impulse to toss a second beach towel in my bag when I noticed that he wasn’t bringing one. If I’d only had the one towel, there would’ve been the unspoken pressure to share it, and that would’ve definitely been too much for me.

  I already had a laundry list of things that were messing with my mind in a major way, and I certainly didn’t need to add to it by snuggling up next to him on a beach towel.

  First, there was the constant nearness of him after he’d been gone for so many months. He’d been around every single day of my life since we met in elementary school. All day, every day. If we weren’t sitting next to each other in school, we’d hang out at each other’s houses, talking on the phone, texting, Facebook chatting… When people had joked that we’d been joined at the hip, they hadn’t been far off.

  Then, when he had so abruptly and completely cut himself off from me after our grad night rendezvous, I had been forced to adjust to a new Hunter-less reality. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and that included growing up with my alchy of a mother. His leaving ripped my heart right out of my chest on the daily, but I had made the adjustment, because I was a tough-ass bitch who was capable of rising to the occasion, and that’s how I rolled.

  Mic drop.

  The problem with that was, in order to live every day without him and not spend all of my time sobbing and losing my mind with grief (which, don’t get me wrong, was tempting…but was certainly not how I, as a self-proclaimed tough-ass bitch, rolled), I’d had to cut him out of my heart and mind completely.

  I’d had to take everything about him—all of my memories, all of my affection, all of my daily routines he’d been woven through—and put them in a tightly sealed box in the corner of my mind. I’d never been good at doing that before, and it was hard, but in this case, I had no choice. It was a matter of survival. I didn’t open that box. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I did. I didn’t know if I could handle the pain and still keep on living.

  And that’s a big fucking if to roll the dice on.

  That whole plan had, of course, been blown apart when he’d decided to drop himself back into my life with all the suddenness he had ripped himself out of it in the first place. There was no such thing as keeping him in the tightly sealed box in my mind when he was right next to me on a freaking beach towel.

  To say it was starting to get to me would be an understatement.

  First, I missed him. Really missed him.

  Second, there was how distracting his surprisingly hot body was.

  Third, there was the way he kept doing sweet things for me.

  Fourth, there was how sexy his body was.

  Fifth, there was the way I kept getting little—who are we kidding? Huge—jolts of electricity rocketing through my body and short-circuiting my brain, every time his hand brushed against me.

  Sixth, there was how drool-worthy his body was.

  Seventh, eighth, and ninth, there was the perfect-ten sexy factor of how good his body looked.

  Tenth through one-hundredth, there were all the ways I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his sexy-ass body.

  So, basically, the last thing I needed was to be pressed up against him on a beach towel. God knew he was distracting enough from three feet away.

  “Are you having a good time?” Hunter asked.

  “Yeah, totally. I’ve never been to a genuine, honest-to-God, MTV-style spring break before. I’d say it’s just about my speed.”

  He smiled at me then, the same stomach-dropping smile he’d been giving me about twenty-seven thousand times a day since he’d stepped into my room while I’d been packing in Arcata. It was a deep-into-my-eyes-and-straight-into-my-soul kind of smile that contained an intoxicating mix of affection, amusement, and wistful melancholy. It was not doing me any favors in the keep-my-Hunter-emotions-in-a-box department.

  “I like seeing you happy,” he said simply.

  From the way my heart was racing, you’d have thought he’d just declared his undying love.

  Desperate to break his spell, I decided to focus my attention on someone who would bring up a different, but equally strong, set of emotions. Brandy.

  “Come on. Let’s take a selfie so I can text it to Twin-adict Arnold and show her what a good time she could be having.”

  “I never turn down a chance to take a picture with a beautiful woman.”

  Well, damn, that backfired spectacularly! While I accomplished my goal of becoming consumed with an entirely different emotion, I didn’t plan for that emotion to be jealousy over all of these other so-called beautiful women he’s apparently been snapping selfies with!

  I pulled my phone out of my beach bag and navigated through the screens until I was in the camera function. I didn’t need to switch it to selfie-mode—I rarely ever switched it out. I held the camera at a well-practiced angle that would show off my face and my body to their best advantage and leaned back towards Hunter so our faces would be next
to each other.

  He surprised me at the last second by slinging his arm casually around my neck and gently pulling me against him. My thumb, already poised over the button, pressed down automatically when the now-typical “Hunter’s Touching Me” jolt of adrenaline shot from my belly out to all of my extremities.

  I sat up quickly, returning to my towel like a startled mouse scurrying back in its hole. I glanced at my phone screen. Well, crap. I looked a little shell-shocked in the photo, but it wasn’t that bad. And, after all, it wasn’t like I could say to Hunter, “Hey, dude, can we retake this pic? Your arm touching me is kinda like sexy Kryptonite, and the exact level to which it scrambled the hell out of my brains is displayed all over my face in this one. ’Kay, thanks.”

  I opened up my photo-editing app and, as my fingers flew over the screen, explained, “I’m going to edit the pic so that there’s an arrow pointing to your face with a caption that says: This could be you.”

  “Good one. That’ll show her,” he replied flatly.

  “I assume you’re being sarcastic, but I am going to choose to take that as a compliment.”

  I finished captioning the photo and texted it off to Brandy with a message that said: Jealous much?

  A bubble appeared under my message with three dots lighting up in turn, indicating that she was typing back to me. After a couple of seconds, her message appeared.

  Judging by the look on your face, you’re pretty happy I’m not there. Horny much?

  A hot blush consumed my face, and I hit the home button with lightning speed, wanting to hide the words before Hunter could see them. I locked the phone and tossed it back in my bag.

  “What did she say?” His teasing tone showed that he’d seen the blush.

  Not like that was hard. My blind grandpa could’ve seen it.

  “Nothing,” I hastily replied. “Just…she likes my earrings.”

  “Ah. Interesting.” I could tell by the way he persisted in using that amused tone, that he knew I was full of shit.

  I sighed. I didn’t want to ask. But I had to ask. “Why, exactly, is that interesting?”

  “Because you’re not wearing earrings.”

  My hands flew to my ears. I always wore earrings. My fingers closed around my medium-sized, silver hoops. They were my go-to pair; they matched with almost any outfit. I opened my mouth to retort, but the heat of his chest against my shoulder blade and his hot breath on the back of my neck, froze me as still as a statue.

  “Made ya look,” he whispered in my ear, and then he laughed as he plopped back onto his own towel.

  “Jackass!” I yelled, laughing myself, and playfully punched him on the chest.

  He pushed my shoulder in retaliation, and before I knew it, we were roughhousing and laughing our heads off like we were ten years old again.

  It was all fun and games until I suddenly found myself flat on my back on my towel with my wrists pinned above my head, and Hunter’s face mere centimeters away from mine, both of our chests heaving—though it didn’t feel like we were kids anymore.

  No, it felt very adult.

  I looked into his dark eyes, which were sparking with lust that mirrored my own, and every cell in my body screamed for him to kiss me. Mentally, I knew that it was a bad idea. Emotionally, I was pretty sure it was a bad idea. Physically, though, the idea struck me as fucking genius.

  Hunter’s face inched towards mine. The anticipation that built as his lips moved closer and closer, was delicious. I felt close to exploding right then and there, and he hadn’t even kissed me or touched me yet.

  “Hey! Party tonight!”

  I was ripped out of the moment by a loud voice only an inch or two from my head. A bright-orange piece of paper was thrust into the miniscule space between Hunter’s face and mine, and we quickly sat up.

  I was mortified to find that we were surrounded by a small crowd of fifteen to twenty people, and they all started to cheer when we saw them. One girl, clearly drunk, started to chant, “Kiss. Her. Kiss. Her. Kiss. Her.” Her palms rhythmically clapped together to accompany her voice, and before long, the entire group had taken up the chant.

  Holy. Shit.

  I dropped my head into my hands. Thank God Brandy hadn’t been there. I’d have never lived this down.

  The cargo-shorts-wearing, six-pack-sporting, fraternity-looking dude who’d slid the paper between our faces said, “Come to the party tonight. It’s at a house, so you two could get a room!”

  The crowd laughed good-naturedly and then dispersed. It took more than an almost-kiss from strangers to hold their attention for longer than twenty seconds during spring break, apparently, and for that, I was unendingly grateful.

  Hunter nudged my shoulder, but I couldn’t look at him. The precarious comfort level between us was all but shattered, and I was back to feeling super awkward around him. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t know how to fix it.

  He dropped the flier on the towel in front of me. “Want to hit up this party?”

  I nodded. After all, there was a reason people referred to alcohol as “social lubricant.” It was very difficult to be awkward around someone when both of you were drinking.

  “Yeah. I think it sounds like a great idea.”

  Chapter 8

  Hunter

  “I love how guys can be ready in five minutes when it takes a full hour of effort for a girl to achieve the same effect,” Sandy joked.

  She was sitting at the desk in the hotel room, a tri-fold mirror with lights around the edges set up in front of her, along with a myriad of beauty products and hairstyling tools. At least, I assumed they were from watching Sandy use them. If I hadn’t seen them in action, my best guess would’ve been “torture devices.”

  My routine for getting ready for the party had, in fact, been much shorter than hers. I’d taken a quick shower, towel-dried my hair, put clothes on, and slapped aftershave on. Sandy’s “five minutes” estimation might’ve been a slight exaggeration, but not by much.

  “That’s because of the patriarchy.”

  She grinned back at me as she met my eyes in the mirror. “Brandy will be glad to know that you picked up more than just old movie trivia from her. You’re also well versed in feminist ideology.”

  “I learned about block-scheduling my study time, too. I’m not even kidding. That’s saved my ass in college.”

  She sighed. “Oh, Bran. She might suck at following through on trip plans, but she is a damn organizational wizard.”

  “The truth is I don’t think you even care that it takes you so much longer to get ready. I think you love sitting in front of the mirror, doing stuff to your hair, brushing things on your face, and messing around with every little detail until it’s all exactly perfect. Sometimes I think you like getting ready to go out more than you like actually going out.”

  “Your detailed explanation of beauty rituals was truly inspiring. In fact, I’m going to submit you as a candidate to run the hair-and-makeup segment of makeover shows. This would be your presentation: Step one, do stuff to your hair. Step two, put things on your face. Step three, keep messing with it until you at least look better than you did when you started.”

  “Make fun all you want, but I’d be awesome. You can be my agent.”

  “We’ll make millions!”

  She went back to working on step three, which seemed to be the longest phase, and I went back to watching her out of the corner of my eye while I pretended to play games on my phone. Sure, I teased her about this being her favorite part of the evening, but the truth was that it was mine. It always had been.

  When her golden hair cascaded over her shoulders after she’d released it from her hot iron, my breath caught in my chest. My throat tightened. Shit. And it got even worse when she unscrewed her lip gloss and leaned forward, sensuously gliding the shiny liquid over her pursed lips.

  Fuck.

  She was putting on a show for my benefit. She had to be. There was no way in hell she could be that sexy and no
t be doing it on purpose.

  I focused my eyes on my phone game for real. I mentally ran through baseball statistics. I tried everything in my power to get my dick to stop straining at my jeans so I wouldn’t have to be embarrassed when I stood up.

  When Sandy finally said cheerfully, “Okay, I’m ready!” I wasn’t even close to accomplishing that goal.

  Chapter 9

  Sandy

  I walked into the party ahead of Hunter, surrendering myself to the pervasive electronic thump of EDM as it pounded in the air. Before we had fully crossed the threshold, I had my arms up above my head, rolling my body to the beat of the powerful sounds.

  “Hell yes!” I called over my shoulder to Hunter, although I doubted he could hear me at even a few inches away.

  In addition to the hypnotic music, strobes filled the room with light that pulsated in time with the song. Those two things, combined with the throng of writhing bodies on every inch of the dance floor in that room, and what I could see of the rooms beyond, created a surreal, otherworldly impression I could see myself very easily getting lost in.

  I was glad. I needed to get lost. To push reality aside and completely submerge my consciousness in a new one. I could walk into this room, let my inhibitions go, turn off the nagging voice in my brain telling me what a dangerous proposition it was to let Hunter get close again—actually, turn off all thoughts of Hunter altogether—and just be. I could lose myself in the music, in the lights, in the booze, in the people…

  Yeah, whispered that small, nagging voice I was getting so tired of, because that’s always worked out for you so well in the past, right?

  Far from having the cautionary effect I would imagine my little subconscious voice had been going for when issuing that final, sarcastic warning, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and made my decision. When a drink was thrust into my hand, I raised it to my lips and gulped it down without even looking to see what it was.

  I was going to let loose tonight. I was going to throw caution to the wind. I was going to forget about Brandy and her abandonment a few days ago, forget about Hunter and his abandonment a few months ago, forget about my father and his abandonment when I was four, forget about my mother and her abandonment…well, for my entire life…and I was going to have a good goddamn time.