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“You’re kidding!” I clapped a hand across my mouth and jumped up and down. Now this was a yacht. Glossy with tinted windows and an upper deck. “How many feet long is this, like ninety or a hundred?”
Vincent shrugged. “Dunno. It’s got a bar and a seventy-inch flat screen TV.”
“Nice.” I turned to Adam. “Nice, right?”
Adam’s lips evened into a thin line. Okay, so not a fan of this plan.
I tugged on his arm. “Come on. Have you ever been on a boat like this?”
He looked past me to Vincent. “Who’s driving this thing?” Adam’s doubt, now in vocal form.
Vincent stopped in front of a bridge connecting the dock to the boat. “We don’t have keys to drive. None of us are licensed, anyway. We’re doing our thing dockside.”
I nodded. “That dockside life, right?”
Vincent smiled. “She gets it! Docked only was the rental agreement from Craig’s buddy. It’s his cousin’s uncle’s boss’ boat. Best view for the fireworks.”
“See? We don’t even need to leave the marina,” I told Adam.
Vincent looked between us. “If you two want some alone time, there’s a nice master bedroom—”
“We’re good,” I said at the same time Adam blurted, “Got a bed at home.”
I shot a shocked glare at Adam, mouthing, “What?”
He shrugged with a mild look of confusion on his face. “I mean we can…sleep later.”
Vincent chuckled. “Yeah. Sleep. Okay, lovebirds.” He nodded at me. “Lucky you, the weekend worked out, huh?”
I glanced at Adam again, his expression an array of panic, dread, and unexpected amusement. We were both various degrees of hot mess.
“Something like that,” I said.
We joined the party on the yacht in a cushy seating area in soft mauves and rose gold reminding me of a hotel on a daytime soap opera. The guys were absolutely stoked at the idea of a captive audience to re-enact their favorite stories from childhood. Lots of pranks and accidents involving trips to the emergency department. It was like watching a next gen version of Jackass. Dockside.
Turned out, Vincent was from New Jersey (nailed it) and had moved to a Detroit area school district in sixth grade, a few towns over from where Adam and I grew up. The group had been inseparable since.
All of their inside jokes were lost on us. Adam and I kept side-glancing each other and laughing, mainly at the absurdity of the situation. I’d take heat from Adam later for getting us into this. But overall, it worked as the distraction I needed. I was freaking out less about my shifting feelings for Adam in the presence of wacky antics.
The weight of the day gradually pressed in. These guys would keep going for hours. Now felt like the right time to slip out.
“Want to get out of here?” I whispered to Adam.
He answered without hesitation. “Absolutely.”
We cut out of the yacht party with class—I claimed my butt hurt from the bike seat, which seemed to strike a chord given the pain-based stories shared tonight.
Dusk began to settle in, though the sky wouldn’t fully darken for at least another hour. We walked back to Adam’s truck. He headed out of downtown, careful to move slowly around families making their way to and from the carnival.
“Is this the part where you drop me off in a vacant lot?” I bit my lip. I felt a little nervous about the stunt I’d pulled to hang out with Vincent and the guys. I’d needed a little buffer between me and Adam after spending all day together. Clearly, it bugged Adam.
“Are you trying to look cute?” he asked.
“What?”
He shot me a glare with no fight in it. “Never mind.”
“Look, I thought it would be fun to go on a yacht.” Before I’d known it was a yacht, but whatever.
