Читать книгу Love Potion #2 - Margot Early, Margot Early - Страница 9

All Saints’ Day

Seven years past

Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina

TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Cameron McAllister had woken up happy. She’d woken up with Paul Cureux, her best friend from high school in Logan, West Virginia. Now, they were both students in their last year at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. The night before had been the best Halloween of her life, partying with her three best buddies, all guys. Her costume was Love; she’d worn a toga-like garment made of an ivory bedsheet—and lots of glitter. She and Paul had ended up kissing, and it was as if she’d swallowed her breath, all the breath she would ever breathe, then exhaled, and then she was screaming down a roller-coaster hill, and then they were in bed, making love, and it was great. It was exciting. It made her wonder all the things she didn’t know about Paul.

It had happened at exactly the right time, and now, the morning after, she was happy. Things might have become romantic between her and another friend, the Adonis-like Sean Devlin. But Sean didn’t intrigue her as Paul did—especially now.

Now, the morning after, she was happy.

Paul woke up and blinked at her, his curly dark hair mussed, and he smiled, and it was a boyish smile, straight white teeth. His brown eyes, strangely innocent; his lips full and sweetly curved; his nose classically shaped, the most perfect she’d ever seen—it was a young and beautiful face but also a comfortably familiar face.

Cameron had been in love. And off and on for the past two years, she’d considered trying to fall in love with her friend, Sean Devlin, who studied drama and wrote poetry and whose cheekbones could hew wood. There had been that one time, when she lost her virginity, but the chemistry just wasn’t there—not on her side, anyhow.

On the other hand, last night… It had been so perfect. And Paul was her best friend. Surely, this was love.

PAUL CUREUX peered down at his dark blue sheets. They were now sprinkled with gold glitter, as though he’d been visited by a fairy.

But it wasn’t a fairy beside him. It was Cameron McAllister, the unofficial Hottest Body of their year at Logan High School. His surfing buddy through their years at college, whom he’d decided, maybe unwisely, to sleep with.

It wasn’t that Paul was averse to sex or to casual sex. It was just that he’d had one, perfectly good, version of a relationship with Cameron. Now, she would want him to tell her he loved her. She would want dates, presents, girlfriend things. Being from Logan, she might even want him to marry her. All these ideas gave Paul a sense of time closing in, of the necessity of “settling down,” of graduation’s too-fast approach. Everything was going too fast.

He drew his eyes from Cameron’s high, perfect breasts. Yes, she was hot, but this was going to ruin everything. He grinned at her, knelt up in bed to peer out the window, and said, “Yes!” turning the focus at once to the waves and hoping she would follow his lead.

Cameron sat up, looking sleepy, and glanced out the window, too. She seemed dazed.

Paul said, “This was great. Really great.” He made himself meet her brown eyes. “But I think it could wreck our friendship. I think we shouldn’t do it again.”

He could detect little change in her expression. Not even stiffening in her body. She jumped down from the high loft bed, raised above his stereo and drawers. “Sure,” she said. “Can I borrow some clothes?”

Paul said, “Yeah. Of course.” He watched her open his drawer, rooting for things that would be much too big for her.

She did not look at him.

He said, “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she repeated.

He knew very definitely that she wasn’t, that he’d been a clod, that he couldn’t undo any of it, that he had wrecked things. Tendrils of adulthood and commitment inched toward him, crept around him, and he, too, jumped down from bed, effectively casting them off.