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But the feelings I had weren’t forherso much as they were for getting back out there. I hadn’t touched a woman in two years, so jumping right into the kissing-up-against-a-building end of the pool—zero to a hundred—was bound to make me a little short of breath.
I stopped when she did, but I shook my head, breathing hard. “I don’t think a sweaty picture is necessary—stop that.”
The little shit took a picture of me without warning.
She looked down at her phone and immediately started laughing.Hard.A big belly laugh that had her throwing her head back.
“Let me see,” I said, reaching for the phone.
She jerked away. “No.”
“Soph,” I warned.
“One second,” she said, messing with her phone as I tried taking it from her. “Max, stop.”
She turned her back to me, basically boxing me out like we were playing basketball, and I caught a whiff of something fruity as her blond ponytail smacked me in the face.
“Sophie Dickhead Assbag Steinbeck, you give me that phone this instant.”
“Look,” she said suddenly, her mouth sliding into an enormous grin. “Already posted.”
She held up her phone, and though it was hard to see the display in the bright sun, I squinted and saw—oh, that little shit.
She’d posted a picture of me dripping with sweat, my mouth half-open, with the captionSomeone couldn’t keep up with me. #winded.
Sucha little shit, and she was beaming like she’d just single-handedly won the World Cup. “Delete it.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, her nose crinkling as she looked up at me. I could see my reflection in her Ray-Bans, and I looked grouchy.
And so damn winded.
“Delete it or I will,” I said, reaching for her phone.
“Nooooo,” she yelled, and started running.
The bad thing for her was that my legsweremuch longer than hers. I think she could kick my ass and outrun me any day long distance, but it was going to be easy to catch up to her.
She was squealing as she ran away, which made it hard to run because I was laughing, but I was still on her in three seconds. Instead of grabbing her phone, I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted her off the ground so she couldn’t get away.
“Max!” she screamed, laughing and squirming in my arms.
“Give me the phone,” I said calmly.
“Never,” she yelled, holding it out in front of her.
My arms were also longer than hers, so it was almost like she was offering it up to me. “Thank you very much,” I said, and grabbed the phone before carefully setting her back on her feet.
She turned around and looked up at me, and suddenly I thought,What a good fucking morning. Because there I was, on a warm summery morning, surrounded by the slowly awakening city, and her pretty face was smiling up at me.
Good fucking morning to me.
I reached out with my free hand and removed her sunglasses, almost like my hand was working independently of the rest of my body. Warm brown eyes, with a hundred shades of freshly baked cookie speckled inside, squinted up at me as her smile settled into something small and content.
“I like your eyes,” I said, my mouth now joining my hand in functioning separately from my brain.
“Thank you.” Her gaze dropped down to my lips and she said, “Maybe Larry was right.”
“Larry?”
