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Victor
When I open my eyes he’s on his back, reading a text on his phone with my arms still clamped around his middle. My right shoulder, stuck underneath him, is numb and sore as hell. I sit up and swing it around, hissing in pain.
“Gray’s pretty rude when he’s mad,” he says. My laugh turns into a dry cough.
“So we’re going back today?” I can’t fight it forever; I’ll just have to hole myself up in the hotel, where I can’t run into Coach again.
He looks pleased with himself. “I got us one more day.” When he meets my eyes, his smile fades a little. “Now youwantto go back?”
“I don’t know, ok?” I throw myself out of bed like a total drama queen and yank the carafe out of the coffee maker so hard it falls on the floor. “How the fuck do you use one of these shitty things anyway?”
He shakes his head, making me even angrier. “I’d say you woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but I don’t think you have a right one.”
I dump some water in the carafe and throw the can of instant coffee at him. “Make this.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pull on my clothes and watch him baby the pot until the drip starts. Why does the sun have to be so bright? “I’m just saying,” I blurt out, “maybe it’s for the best.”
“I’m not following.” He smells the Roman ruins shirt and frowns before pulling it on.
“We’ve fucked it all up, right? So let's just get it over with.”
His eyebrow arches. “Has anyone ever told you you’re really high maintenance?”
“I’m being serious.” I frown at my knees, picking at an old scab. The bed shifts as he sits down next to me.
“So am I.”
“You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you? This…that,” I wave my arm at the bed, “that was it. The part of the chick flick where the guy and the girl realize they don’t hate each other anymore. Where the clock starts ticking down to the fucking ‘I love you’.”
“Well—”
I cut him off. I’m boiling over inside, desperate to get out of here and never come back. “Let me make this very clear.” Standing between his knees, I grab his hair and tip his face back, jabbing his throat with my other finger between every word. “I. Do. Not. Love. You. I will never love you.”
“Cool,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “Because I pity any fool that thinks it’s a good idea to fall in love with you.”
“The shit you were saying last night—”
He holds up his hands. “Dirty talk. It’s all horny bullshit.”
“If you so much asthinkthe word ‘love’, I will take you back out on that yacht and hold you under the water myself.”
“Not if I poison your food first. Oh wait, that wouldn’t work.”
It’s such an unexpectedly dark joke, coming from him, that I let go of his hair and start laughing. “That was pretty good.”
He grabs the front of my shirt and kisses me, rough and demanding. His amber eyes are heated. “What have I told you a million times?”
“You’ll always hate me.”
“Who else can promise you that?” He smirks when I relax a little and tousles my hair. “That’s right. So we’re going to have one perfect day, just us, and no one can tell us what we are or aren’t, because we know. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t know.”
“I regret giving you a taste of power,” I snark, pouring sludgy coffee in a cup, tasting it, and throwing it away. “You’re all cocky now. I said I liked you when you were scared.”
He chews the inside of his cheek, trying not to smile as he looks out the window into the garden full of roses and the occasional big, orange butterfly. “I guess that means we’ll have to go to the beach today.”
Ethan
We walk to the convenience store from last night, but the cashier who got Victor’s autograph has been replaced by a bored teenage girl. She scans our sandwiches and drinks, along with two cheap t-shirts from a display in the back. Mine is gray and has the logo of the national football team, but Victor’s saysItalian Princesson it in green, white, and red.
