No smoke, that was good. Was it carbon monoxide? Grace sniffed the air like the damn gas wasn’t famously odorless. Racing down the narrow hallway, she didn’t feel like she was going to pass out, which she decided was a net positive. In the overstuffed living room, the sofa bed was empty and Alix was nowhere to be found.
Grace looked outside in time to see Alix running seconds before a splash joined the screaming alarm. Bolting for the patio, Grace’s heart stopped when she saw Alix struggling to get Baby out of the pool. The blaring screech must have been the pool surface alarm.
Instinctively, Grace leapt in behind Alix to save the dog from drowning. The initial shock of the cold water chased away any lingering drowsiness, and Grace immediately positioned herself at Baby’s side across from Alix. Having jumped in the deep end, Grace struggled to keep Baby above the surface. As soon as she could feel the bottom with her tiptoes, she panted to catch her breath.
“Give me your hands,” Alix said, eyes wide and face etched with worry. “We can make a float.”
Standing on the balls of her feet, Grace grabbed Alix’s forearms. As soon as they put their arms under Baby, he started to paddle smoothly rather than flail. Holding him up like the strangest flotation device, they crab-walked all the way to the steps, where Baby mercifully got himself out of the pool. Kickboxing class had not given her the ability to carry a soaking wet fur factory out of a body of water.
As soon as Baby was out and shaking forty gallons of pool water from his coat, Grace found the source of the unholy noise. Just as she’d thought, it was a sensor that alerted every person on earth that something had gotten in the pool. She hit all the buttons on the contraption mounted to the ledge until it finally went silent.
“What happened?” Grace asked, chest and arms burning from playing lifeguard. “Are you okay?” She rested her hands on her hips where the water lapped at her waist in the shallow end.
“He was whining so I thought he had to pee, and I let him out, but he just cannonballed into the pool and—” Alix stopped short, her attention fixed on Grace’s torso. “Uh, what are you wearing?”
Grace looked down at herself. At the stupidCruisin’shirt plastered to her body. At just how see-through it had become in the water. At her own nipples staring back at her like she might otherwise forget it was cold.
Dropping into the water, Grace’s embarrassment flooded her skin with enough heat to turn the pool into a hot tub. “I wasn’t expecting not to go back home, okay?” Shame made her pitch high enough to crack a snow globe. “My aunt had this?—”
“You could have borrowed something of mine,” Alix replied with a lopsided grin. “Although, I mean, it’d be hard to top such an iconic design. Cruisin’…” Alix laughed.
Grace wanted to respond, but she couldn’t exactly form words when Alix was moving toward her, water gently breaking around her. When her hair was slicked back and her eyes were reflecting the moon. When her black muscle tee outlined the soft curves of her body and revealed just how many more tattoos painted her skin. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she saw that Alix was wearing only boxer briefs and a T-shirt right before she jumped in the pool. Curiosity pulled her gaze toward Alix’s legs, trying to see just how covered that skin might be in ink, too.
Relief from having saved Baby was replaced by a new adrenaline spike. Pulse pounding in her throat, Grace couldn’t stop her gaze from moving toward Alix’s lips. Lips that were parting as Alix neared.
“I’m so sorry,” Grace said, teeth on the brink of chattering. “This is not going at all how I planned.” She swallowed hard, like that might flush the shame from her system. “You must think I’m such a mess.”
Alix smiled slowly, revealing a single dimple at a time. She lowered herself to be neck-deep in the pool and at Grace’s eye-level. Gently, she reached out and brushed something from the top of Grace’s cheek. Mascara, Grace guessed, since she didn’t have her makeup removing products.
“That’s not what I think of you,” Alix whispered, her voice reverberating in every part of Grace’s trembling body.
It was a suspended moment. One Grace wished she could freeze. She didn’t want Alix to take her hand away, warm and sure. She wanted her to move closer until she was only a breath away.
Grace could nearly taste the yes of Alix’s kiss on her lips. She could close her eyes. Could give in. God, for once, she could give in just because it felt good. Because she wanted it. But her brain slammed on the brakes hard enough for whiplash.
You only fall for women who don’t pick you. Julie never had. It was as nauseating as it was true. Why would Alix ever choose her? Alix who was three time zones away and hadn’t once hinted at being open to dating after Kirstin. Grace wasn’t even sure that Alix wasoverKirstin.
Alix was smart and funny and kind. Grace told herself it wasn’t attraction — that she was just desperately clinging to the friendly attention Alix gave her. It was pathetic and she needed to stop before she humiliated herself.
But Alix was still looking at her, and the moon’s reflection was dancing all around them, and all Grace wanted to do was stop. Stop thinking. Stop resisting. To let herself float toward something without fighting to control the current.
Another splash ripped through the silence. Grace turned to the noise, but this time she had a clearer picture. This time, she realized that Baby had jumped onto the diving board before belly flopping into the pool.
Baby, the terrorist, could not only swim just fine, but he was happily paddling toward them with a plastic duck in his mouth.Motherfucker.
Instead of being upset that they were cold and freezing in the pool in the middle of the night for absolutely no reason, Alix threw her head back and laughed. Struggling to find the will to be angry at the dog, Grace bit the inside of her cheek and couldn’t help chuckling.
Chapter Ten
ALIX
Alix wokewith her whole body aching, not from the wine, but from the endless loop of last night replaying in her brain. Baby in the pool. Grace’s arm brushing hers as they crab-walked a soggy, flailing furball to the steps. The way Grace had looked at her after, like Alix wasn’t just a screwup who’d let the dog outside, but someone she could actually trust.
And that shirt that Grace had been wearing. Holy shit. The white fabric withCruisin’across the chest, plastered to Grace’s body, had been burned into Alix’s retinas. She couldn’t stop picturing how it clung, how Grace’s nipples were clearly visible through the fabric, how it left almost nothing to the imagination. It made her blush now just thinking about it.
She tried to remind herself that nothing had actually happened. They hadn’t kissed. They hadn’t crossed a line. But the way she’d wanted to? What had she been thinking? Maybe it was just the adrenaline, or the ridiculous relief of seeing Baby flop onto the pool deck alive and smug. It was definitely not just the nearness of Grace, wet hair slicked back, eyes wide andbright even in panic, lips inches from hers. Alix had almost leaned in. She’d almost blown it.
She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. No Phyllis banging around in the kitchen. No familiar apartment clutter. Just Sylvia’s museum house and the faint sound of Grace moving somewhere down the hall. Alix shut her eyes tighter. She could do this. She wouldn’t risk the best friendship she’d stumbled into in years just because her brain and body were short-circuiting at the sight of Grace in a soaked T-shirt.
