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“But you don’t?”
I took another long sip of wine, wiping my mouth. “I don’t. Most days, I feel like I’m paddling upstream without an oar, as my meemaw always said.” I licked my lips, the alcohol emboldening me to delve into a deeper conversation than I’d expected to have tonight, particularly with him. “I think I’ve been suffering from a lifetime of someday I will syndrome.”
He furrowed his brow. “Someday I will syndrome?”
“Yeah. You’re young, so you probably haven’t suffered its effects yet. It’s when you keep saying someday I’ll do this. Someday I’ll do that. But then you blink and you’re forty, wondering where the last twenty years of your life went.”
I exhaled a breath, then quickly shook my head. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just rambling and feeling relaxed from all the wine I’ve had tonight. I’m not usually much of a drinker. Sorry that you have to deal with the ramifications.”
“I like listening to you. Watching your mouth move,” he crooned, voice low and almost sultry. “And it’s thirteen.”
On a hard swallow, I slowly faced him, my pulse kicking up again.
“P-pardon?” I stammered, still focused on him saying he liked watching my mouth. There were so many different directions I could take with that, and I doubted any of them were above reproach.
He leaned toward me, eyes alight with amusement. “The age difference. You’re only thirteen years older than me.”
“Oh.” I stared ahead, unsure if I should have been relieved that I’d been off by two years or horrified that I’d been off by only two years.
Thirteen years was still a big age gap, especially when that gap included all of his thirties, the time most people outgrew the carefree attitude of their twenties and learned what becoming a responsible adult entailed. But why did it matter? We were merely two strangers who kept crossing paths. Why did I keep focusing on the age difference, as if we were on the precipice of becoming something more?
Maybe because I liked the way he looked at me. Liked the way he made my skin warm, my heart beat, my stomach flutter.
Liked the way he made me feel alive for the first time in ages.
“I’ve been calling you Surfer Boy in my head,” I blurted out in the silence, refocusing my gaze on him. “Surfer Boy Chris.”
“Chris?”
“You look like a cross between Chris and Liam Hemsworth. Doesn’t hurt you have that same sexy accent.”
He chuckled as he reached for the wine. “Glad you find my accent sexy.”
“Pretty sure anyone with a pair of ovaries would.”
“Thanks for your vote of confidence.” He faux saluted me, then faced forward. “You can keep calling me Chris, if you’d like. Keep the fantasy alive.”
“So you want to play that game then?”
“What game is that?”
“Not tell the other our real names.”
“Could be fun, don’t you think? You don’t know who I am. I don’t know who you are. It’s like a—”
“Clean slate,” I interrupted.
His lips curved into a lazy smile, a pair of dimples popping.
Of course he had dimples. The man was God’s gift to women. I thought the cherry on top of an already amazing package was the accent. But no. The man had dimples.
And they were fucking perfect.
“Exactly. A clean slate. Where we can pretend everything in our lives doesn’t exist. A break from reality.”
I studied him for a beat. He seemed too young to sound so jaded. Sure, he’d shared that his sister had just died, but this went deeper. I felt his need to escape in my bones.
Because I’d been desperate to escape who I was for years. Probably since the day I was born.
