Jamie’s brown hair streamed down his face, and, strangely enough, he was still grinning. So widely that the indent formed in his cheek again, his face inches from mine.
Water dripped from his long lashes. “Daze,” he murmured, his five fingers pressing into my waist more firmly. Something no one would’ve been able to see, since it was underwater. “You act like I’m not exactly where I want to be.”
The ocean water lapped at my shoulders, but it did nothing to cool my hot skin. In that instant, I became acutely aware of how close we were—close enough to feel the heat rolling off him, close enough that every breath seemed shared. It was strange to look at him without his glasses—half familiar, half not.
You act like I’m not exactly where I want to be.
The words drowned me like the salty bay water, and if I’d been able to draw in a breath, I would’ve choked.
Jamie leaned in even closer, and I froze. The memory of his lips against my throat filled my mind, andeven the cool of the bay felt scalding hot against my skin. No way he was about to do it again. No way, no way, no?—
“I take it back,” Jamie whispered in my ear.
I didn’t understand why I was so breathless, or why the moment went fromirritatingtoweird. “Take… what back?”
“That you were a badactress.” The last word was silent as his lips formed it, and I had to drop my gaze to watch him. A bead of water dripped off his nose and onto his top lip, slipping down and dissolving. “You’re doing great.”
Actress. Acting. His hand on my hip, acting. His words, acting. The strangeness in his eyes—all acting. He’d flipped the Romance Switch. For a moment, the noise around us faded—the splashes, the voices, the summer air—and all I could think about was how easy it felt to stay right where I was, even though a seashell was totally slicing into my backside.
Still, I swallowed hard. “Told you.”
Jamie only smiled wider, making it harder to look away from his mouth.
“Come on, guys.” Dalton stomped past us, and the water sloshing jerked my attention back to the present. “Before we lose which heads are theirs.”
I watched him as he passed, biting the corner of my lip. His voice had been firm—annoyed. Recognizable from the years I’d known him. He didn’t look back at us as he stomped, and then swam, further into the bay.
A part of me felt a little alarmed at his mood, at the thought that I might’ve hurt his feelings—the other part ofme, still dizzy from the look in Jamie’s eye, was too flustered to care enough to do something about it.
Using the edge of his finger, Jamie caught a droplet of water that’d been sliding along my chin. “Shall we?”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over the strangeness of it all—Jamie pretending to flirt with me and being so good at it. Even down to the way he looked at me, as if he was fighting some sort of internal pull. I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought he couldn’t be heart-fluttering.
And, even weirder, I couldn’t believe I thought hewas.“I guess we shall.”
CHAPTER 8
We stayed out in the bay for what felt like hours, some of us taking turns coming to shore to grab a snack and to check on our stuff. Nellie had packed a water frisbee, so that’d been much of what kept our attention, that and seeing who could hold their breath the longest. I never won—small lungs, and all—but I still swam until my legs got too tired of kicking to hold my head above water. That, and the whole four hours of sleep thing.
So, after throwing in the towel, I retreated to the blanket and broke out my sketchbook.
Instead of working in my serious style, I allowed my pruned hands to create in a mind-numbing style for me—chibi. It was a Japanese style I’d learned from Dad, who was sub-par at drawing them, but always loved their oversized heads and little bodies. He hadn’t drawn them often, but just on scrap pieces of paper or notes to boost ourmoods. Maybe that was where I’d gotten my love for drawing on all the random papers I could find.
With my sketchbook propped on my thigh, I outlined two tiny characters attempting to build a sandcastle. I rarely drew people I knew—and absolutely never in my realism style—but I envisioned the characters to be Theo and Ivy, the former slightly smaller than the latter. I didn’t have my Prisma pencils to draw Theo’s flame of hair, nor Ivy’s blonde, so I just used my imagination with my graphite pencil, working on my shading skills.
“Are those the kids?”
I looked up and found Dalton at the side of the blanket. I hadn’t heard him creep close enough to peer at my page.
If this were my serious style, I might’ve jerked my sketchbook to my chest. I could count on one hand how many times Dalton had gotten to see my sketchbook, and only brief glances at my realism style. My chibi style, though, I was less protective of. “Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to kill them off,” Dalton said with a little downward twist to his lips. “Like, a sand monster is about to eat them or something.”
His tone had my shoulders tightening. “Of course not.”
“Do you not draw people dying anymore?”
“Not thekids.”
