Читать книгу Mai Tai For Two - Delphine Dryden - Страница 10

Chapter Three

For Julie, the whole point of the vacation was to get away from home. She wanted exotic. Debonair strangers, dangerous beach joggers. Instead, she got Alan, not even shirtless, appearing on the lanai right as she and Amanda were heading out. He had exchanged his shorts for swim trunks, but otherwise wore what he had on the flight. And what he usually wore to work, for that matter. An XKCD T-shirt that only geeks would understand, and sports sandals. He’d been ready to go since they left San Jose.

“Oh my God?” he led off.

“Oh my God,” Julie confirmed. “Oh my fucking God, this place!”

“Are we going for drinks?”

She nodded. “Of course we are.”

“You’re, um...” His eyes shifted, flicking down for a second at her bikini-clad form. If she’d blinked, she would have missed it. “You’re going like that?”

That bad? “Yeah, that was the plan. Drinks, maybe a swim, then dinner. Look, Amanda’s in a bikini, too.”

The look he gave Amanda was more open and, if Julie didn’t mistake his expression, more appreciative. Why that struck her with a sudden pang, she wasn’t sure. She knew she shouldn’t care. She spent a great deal of time reminding herself she didn’t think of Alan that way, after all. If Amanda was ready to try Alan on for size again, Julie should be happy to see that the interest was reciprocated. Because they were her friends.

“So she is. I feel overdressed.”

“We’ll put pareos on,” Amanda volunteered. “I feel too exposed to relax and enjoy a drink like this. My butt’s hanging out.”

Her butt was too tiny to hang anywhere—if Amanda was stocky, Julie thought, she was the Easter Bunny—but she wasn’t going to argue if Alan’s dismissive glance at her own bikini body was any indication of the reception she’d receive out in the world.

Amanda had to show her how to tie the pareo around her hips, while Alan tapped his foot and sighed extravagantly. “You’re wearing next to nothing and it still takes you forever to get ready.”

“I’ll remind you that I am typically ready before you.” It was true, because unlike Julie, Alan did wear hair care products, and sometimes he even ironed his clothes.

“An aspect of our friendship that I genuinely appreciate.”

“There. You’re a beach goddess now.” Amanda stood back to admire her handiwork, and Julie had to admit she liked the way the soft fabric of the pareo clung to her hips and created the impression of a smaller waist.

Then she caught it—the peek. Amanda’s momentary sideways gaze at Alan, right before she blushed. Julie’s stomach lurched again.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! Why should that be full of fuck, though? She wasn’t supposed to care about Alan that way. Was. Not. Supposed. To.

“So, Alan,” Amanda ventured, while Julie tried to quell her growing distress, “I think you’re still overdressed. You don’t look like you’re in the spirit of things.”

“Nope. You need to lose the shirt.”

“And blind everybody with my pasty chest? I don’t think so.”

Julie thought, Go ahead, blind me. And then she identified the horrible clenching grip on her stomach. It was the hand of jealousy, clutching tight. Which was ridiculous, because the last thing she needed was a nerdy, straight-arrow guy from a big, clingy suburban family like her own, who worked with her every day. Besides, Alan was like a brother to her. A brother. She told herself that all the time, so it must be true, right? There were work spouses and there were real-life love interests, and never the twain should meet.

“Lay off, Amanda. If he’s not comfortable he should keep it on. Maybe you can reconsider it after a couple drinks,” Julie suggested to Alan. “When it’s dark out.”

Pretending not to see the puzzled glare Amanda turned her way, she headed for the door.

* * *

They never made it into the water. Drinks led directly into dinner. Night fell as they finished dessert and a last round, so they took themselves down to the beach, where a respectable bonfire and innumerable tiki torches illuminated the partiers’ faces with glowing, hellish intensity. A temporary grass-roofed bar was set up nearby. Beachy music thumped through the crowd, tempting everyone to dance, but the trio skirted the gyrating crush and continued past the fire to the water’s edge. Three in a row, arm in arm, flip-flops kicking up warm sand with every step. Alan was the monkey in the middle, and he’d already made several threesome cracks. He couldn’t resist, sandwiched between two undeniably hot women as he was, but damn was there an uncomfortable undercurrent.

Amanda laughed too loud at the jokes, and Julie could barely muster a smile, so the normal order of things felt entirely subverted. It hadn’t been bad at first, but the more relaxed they all got, the more obvious Amanda’s flirting became. The penny had finally dropped about halfway through dinner. She’s actually coming on to me. And Julie looked like she was about to cry—or possibly throw up, although she hadn’t had that much to drink. She was also doing an extreme version of the aggressive, outgoing good cheer that signaled she would rather be alone. Wearing her extrovert armor to protect her soft, chewy, introverted center, which usually only happened when she was stressed or upset about something. He wasn’t sure what to make of it all. Alan’s nerves rose, making him talk too much and say stupid, obvious stuff that nobody really ought to be laughing at. He couldn’t seem to make himself stop, though.

Underneath the nerves, however, there was a flicker of resentment he hated to acknowledge. Where did Julie get off pouting when she’d fixed him up with Amanda in the first place for their previous mildly disastrous attempts at dating? What was it to her if they hooked up for a vacation fling? Since that was obviously what Amanda had in mind, with the broad hints she’d been dropping. Now that he thought about it...it hadn’t been all that disastrous between them. More lacking in instant chemistry than anything else. Awkward moments, too many lulls in conversation. They had trouble agreeing on where to eat for their first date, because they had wildly different preferences in food. On their second try they’d gone to a movie, and hadn’t laughed in exactly the same places. Effort number three had been the “let’s meet for coffee and talk” outing, the end of the experiment.

But no animosity. And their brief make-out session on date two had probably been the highlight of the whole non-relationship. He could see them having a no-strings fling. Except for one thing, the part of their dates he thought wouldn’t translate well to meaningless sexytimes. The part where both of them kept talking about Julie. She was their best topic, the main thing they had in common. His favorite coworker, Amanda’s best friend. And that had been three years ago. These days, Julie was probably Alan’s best friend, as well.

It ended up not mattering whether he was receptive to the idea of hooking up or not. Instead of Amanda continuing to work up her nerve with him, she stopped in her tracks and pointed, gaping, at a guy standing near the water’s edge. And when the guy turned around to walk back toward the hotel, he spotted Amanda and friends. The mutual recognition struck like a lightning bolt, shocking the three friends into a cartoonish freeze pose that would probably have been comical to onlookers. Except the only onlooker wasn’t laughing.

“Oh my god!” Julie blurted. “He’s the mystery jogger!”

It was Jeremy.

“Whoa. This can’t be a coincidence,” Alan said.

Amanda dropped her arm from his, taking a step away. “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

Okay, maybe there was a little animosity.

Jeremy lifted a hand, not quite waving. Alan had only met him a few times before the breakup, but he remembered him well enough to see he’d clearly made a lot of changes in the last year or so. The buzz cut, for one thing. And he had obviously been working out. Holy crap, had he ever been working out.

“So...are you gonna go talk to him?” Julie asked Amanda. “Or do we all just stand here looking at each other across the sand? Awkwardly? Like we’re doing right now....”

“Fuck. All I wanted was a damn vacation. And maybe some action. Was that really too much to ask? Really?”

“Oh, he’s coming over here. Please go talk to him. But, you know...report back. Because what the fuck?”

Sensing Amanda’s worsening mood, Alan tugged at Julie’s hand in a “cut it out” way, but she ignored him. Kept her hand in his, though. He liked that.

“Fuck,” Amanda repeated. But to Alan’s vast relief, she went. He and Julie watched for a minute as she met Jeremy and they started conversing. Over the party and the surf, they couldn’t hear the words, but it didn’t look pretty.

“We should probably go,” Alan finally suggested, though his feet stayed put. Amanda was starting to gesture, her hands flying wider, Jeremy leaning away in an automatic retreat. It was like reality TV with the sound down.

“It’s a train wreck.” Julie echoed his thoughts. “I don’t even want to watch, but it’s like I can’t drag my eyes away.”

“I know. We have to, but...I know. What were you planning to do tonight, anyway? After this, I mean?”

“Um...what? Oh. I thought I’d go back to the dancing over there and see if I can pull anything interesting out of the crowd.” She turned and gestured toward the party, eyeing it with not-that-eager speculation. Watching Amanda and Jeremy’s tense reunion had sucked the fun out of the evening for both of them, apparently.

“No, seriously.”

“I am serious. To the extent I had a plan, that was it.”

Pull someone interesting, she meant. He got that, but his brain pushed the idea out forcefully. No. He started toward the lights and noise, pulling her along. “Better the dance floor than the train wreck.”

“But what are you gonna do?”

He looked at her, puzzled. “The Hokey-Pokey? The Electric Slide? I don’t know, whatever sort of dancing is going on.”

“Yeah, but—” She looked like she was choosing between bad options for what to say. Finally, she settled on, “But you can’t dance.”

“I can totally dance!”

“I have never seen you dance. Not once in... How many years have we known each other?”

“Four? Maybe?” He had no idea, because it felt like he’d always known her. Not so much the first few months after she started working for the company, but definitely the first time they worked a project together. And after she moved to his floor of the office, he’d recognized a kindred spirit. “I’m sure you’ve seen me dance, Jules. I can absolutely dance. And more to the point, there’s no way I’m gonna let you wander off alone into a torch-lit crowd of drunken strangers. You were planning to do this with Amanda, so you can do it with me instead. Dance, I mean. Not... Jesus. You know what I mean.”

“Let me? You’re not going to let me? What is this, Victorian England all of a sudden?”

She didn’t seem all that insulted, probably because she thought he’d meant it in a “friends don’t let friends pick up drunk strangers” way, not a patriarchal bullshit way. But he didn’t want to take the chance that she might actually think that of him. Especially since he absolutely meant he didn’t want to allow her to go off with somebody else. “No! I didn’t mean you couldn’t do—I just didn’t want to go off if you needed—you know. You’re twenty-seven. You can do whatever—”

“Alan.”

“I just thought we could dance together, I didn’t—”

“Alan! It’s okay. I was just giving you a hard time.”

“Oh. Oh, good.” Lies, all lies. But she seemed to have bought it. He wasn’t sure if he was right on track, or utterly screwed. “Okay. So...are we going to dance, then?”

* * *

Bye-bye, unknown holiday lover. We could have had something magical. I know it in my heart.

Julie told herself she was relieved. She had never been the type to pick up strangers, and the prospect had been more daunting than thrilling. Really. Better she should take the first evening to size up the situation before doing anything rash. “Yes. Of course we’re going to dance. Dork.”

Alan totally couldn’t dance. He made up for it with infectious enthusiasm, however. His version of fail-dancing was highly entertaining, prompting a few eye rolls but more grins from the gyrating crowd around them. Somehow his flailing always managed to pull short of smacking anybody, and after watching for a while Julie realized he was actually in brilliant control of the whole thing. He could dance. Every so often a moment or two of perfect coordination and rhythm sneaked through. Beats where his hips moved in a way that suggested he really knew how to...move his hips.

“You’re a big liar,” she finally shouted over the cacophony of music and noisy revelers.

He didn’t even look fazed. Julie was pretty sure he knew exactly what she meant.

“How so?”

“You can dance.”

“I told you I could dance!” He raised his arms over his head and executed a brilliant twirl maneuver that involved his body undulating in a miraculous way. It left her speechless, her body responding in a manner that completely overruled her higher brain functions. The dork-face he made over it spoiled the effect, though. Sort of. “My mother made me take ballroom dance for years with my sister Theresa, so she wouldn’t have to dance with strangers. Because God forbid. Yeah...we ended up winning some competitions and shit like that. I lived in fear that some friend would find the sequins all over my closet floor. It was crazy.”

He stepped in and pulled her close, the sudden proximity startling the breath out of her. When he dipped her, smooth and swift as a lover in a fantasy tango, her world spun for a moment. She felt only slightly less disoriented when he swung her back up to standing and fail-danced away in some horrific combination of twerking and moonwalking. Her body was trying to recover from a surge of knee-wobbling hormones, and wanted to fling itself at Alan’s supple torso, while her brain was appalled at the dance-desecration visual it was receiving.

Julie suddenly thought of the conversation they’d once had about college financial aid, how she’d been griping about repaying her loans, and he’d said that he’d “gotten some help” for which he was grateful. She later learned he’d been a National Merit Scholar with a full ride from his school of choice. So when he said he and his sister had won “some competitions,” she could only imagine what he meant by that. State championships? The Olympics? Did they have those for ballroom dancing?

“Humble-bragger.”

He laughed. “Hey, I’m heading to the bar. You want anything to drink?”

“No thanks, I’m good.” If she got any better she’d be a danger to herself and others on the dance floor. Her lips were tingling as it was, her judgment quite possibly impaired.

Which might have explained her reaction when she noticed the guy checking her out from across that crowded dance floor. Beer goggles. The problem with beer goggles was you never realized you were wearing them at the time. Only once it was too late. In fact, that kind of defined how beer goggles worked.

Surfer-blond hair, messy in a deliberate way. A tan, obviously, because practically everybody here had one. And when he grinned at Julie from around his drink straw, he had whiter-than-white teeth, contrasting beautifully with the warm tone of his skin. He was firelit, but still seemed to give off an angelic glow rather than a hellish gleam. All in all, he was her every vacation fantasy come to life, wrapped in a pleasantly fitted T-shirt and sporting some ridiculously fit calves underneath his long board shorts.

Ding ding ding!

Alan was lost in the crowd by the bar, and she was all alone out on the floor. Julie felt stupid, bobbing along to the music with no partner, suddenly unsure what to do with her hands. The surfer dude didn’t seem to have a problem with that.

He sauntered closer, nodding. “Hey.”

“Hey there.”

“I’m Todd.”

“Julie.”

“Nice to meet you, Julie.” He extended a hand and she shook it, ignoring the mild clamminess transferred from the cold drink he was holding. There was a sign posted, forbidding glass on the beach, but apparently Todd hadn’t seen it or hadn’t cared enough to relinquish whatever he was nursing along. “I haven’t seen you before. Did you just get here?”

“Earlier today,” she confirmed, starting to move to the music again. “I won the trip as a door prize at work.”

“Wow, awesome! This is my work, pretty much.”

Drinking and dancing? Then she realized what he meant. He worked for the resort, obviously. “Nice. What do you do here?”

She was expecting “surfing instructor,” possibly “tennis pro,” but he came back with, “I lead glass-bottomed-kayak tours.”

He wasn’t dancing, exactly, just moving in time with the music, a subtle shift of his weight and hips back and forth. Cool. Smooth. A faint voice in her head said it wasn’t a good thing that he seemed practiced at what he was doing here. Tropical-flavored liquor gently drowned the voice out, as soft and warm as the nearby surf. The guy was exactly what she’d been looking for. No strings. No clutter. She could do this.

“Kayak tours? That’s so cool.”

Things were definitely getting back on track.