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Which—yes, but: “I was talking about the enormous ejaculation behind you.”
Ethan goes quiet, and I glance up at him again, shocked that he hasn’t immediately run with this one. He looks like he’s biting his tongue. I register I’ve veered away from insult territory and sprinted headlong into sexual-speak territory. I think he’s gauging whether I intended to be flirty.
And then he seems to decide that I hadn’t—which is true, but now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I should have been—and bends to take the last bite of his taco. I exhale, swiping to the next photo: a picture he took of me standing in front of the famous heart-shaped rock. Ethan looks over my shoulder again, and I feel us both go still.
Admittedly, it’s a great picture of me. My hair is up, but blown loose from the braid. My smile is enormous; I don’t look like the pessimist I am. I look entirely smitten with the day. And hell, with the wind plastering my shirt to my torso, the twins look amazing.
“Send me that one, okay?” he says quietly.
“Sure.” I airdrop it to him, and hear the small ding when his phone receives it. “Don’t make me regret that.”
“I need an accurate image for my voodoo doll.”
“Well, as long as that’s your intention.”
“As opposed to?” He leans into the naughty tone, and won’t let up on the eye contact, which suddenly screams spank bank.
My stomach rolls again. A masturbation insinuation. Suggestive humor. This feels like free-falling without a parachute. I can handle Ethan when he’s terrible; I don’t know how to handle him when he’s turning his legendary charm on me.
“What are we doing tonight?” he asks, blinking away and immediately clearing the mood.
“Do we really want to push it?” I ask. “We’ve been together for . . .” I pick up his arm and glance at his watch. “Like eighty years straight. There are bruises, but no bloodshed yet. I say we quit while we’re ahead.”
“What does that entail?”
“I get the bedroom and Netflix, you wander the island to check on your hidden horcruxes.”
“You know in order to create a horcrux you have to hav
e murdered someone, right?”
I stare up at him, hating the tiny fluttering that gets going in my chest because he knows the Harry Potter reference. I knew he was a book lover, but to be the same kind of book lover I am? It makes my insides melt. “You just made my joke very dark, Ethan.”
He balls up his taco wrapper and leans back on his hands. “You know what I want to do?”
“Oh—I know this one. You want to have dinner at a buffet.”
“I want to get drunk. We’re on an island, on a fake honeymoon, and it’s fucking gorgeous out. I know you like your cocktails, Octavia Torres, and I haven’t seen you as much as tipsy once. Doesn’t the idea of a few drinks sound fun?”
I hesitate. “It sounds dangerous.”
This makes him laugh. “Dangerous, like we’d end up either naked or dead?”
It feels like being punched, hearing him say this, because that is exactly what I meant, and the idea of ending up dead doesn’t scare me nearly as much as does the alternative.
• • •
ABOUT HALFWAY BACK TO THE hotel, we pull into the dusty lot of Cheeseburger Maui —which boasts $1.99 Mai Tai Wednesdays. This is thrilling as it is Wednesday and I am broke.
Ethan unfolds from the front seat, stretching distractingly. I definitely do not grab an eyeful of happy trail. But if I did, I would notice how soft it looks against his hard, flat—
“Ready?” he asks, and my attention rockets to his face.
“Ready,” I say in my best aggressive robot voice. Definitely not caught swooning. I hold out my hand, beckoning, and for a hilarious beat, Ethan clearly thinks I want to hold his hand. He stares at it, bewildered.
“Keys,” I remind him. “If you’re getting drunk, I’m driving.”
After he sees the logic here, he tosses them over to me, and given that I am the least athletic person alive, I manage to nearly catch them but ultimately slap them into a pile of gravel near the tire.
