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“I’m glad I don’t speak good Spanish, Rami,” I say as I pull up at the mechanic’s place ten minutes later, with the soundtrack of muttered words hissed by Rami in my direction still resounding in my ears.
“I wouldn’t care if you did,” she sneers from the back passenger seat, and I can’t help but smile at how committed she is to thinking I’m a prick. “And it’sRamirezto you.”
“Don’t you have a first name?”
“Not one you’ll ever be hearing.”
I smile as I make out a few more muffled words from Rami, none of which sound cordial, glancing in the rearview mirror to meet Indigo’s eyes.
Her usual glare has dissipated somewhere and, in its place, there’s a look of concern that I despise as much as it makes my cells flare in anticipation.
I breathe deeply, trying to expel the arousal surging through my body as I watch her.
23
Greyson
“Do you fancy getting something to eat?” asks Kennedy, plastering on his most jovial of expressions as we pass a restaurant on the oceanfront on the way from the mechanic’s to our houses.
It’s an indoor-outdoor one, with the outdoor portion overlooking a narrow swimming pool that lies parallel to the ocean on the other side of the beach below the rocks beneath its deck. “I’m starving.” He throws me a sneaky grin, as if I didn’t know what he was up to…
“Yeah, you can miss me with that one,” bites Rami, making Indie smile for the first time since I’ve seen her today. In fact, it’s the first real smile I’ve seen of hers since being on the island. The thing is warm and beautiful and feels like the rays of the sun on your skin.
“I honestly need a drink,” moans Fran, who if I’m not mistaken has been eyeing up Gideon for the last hour, a fact that I know my ever-perceptive friend has not failed to notice.
“Yeah, I second that,” adds Indie with purpose, her eyes floating to mine for a brief second which she curtails as soon as they collide with mine.
“We’re joining you,” I add, aware that I can be quite the overbearing prick, but enjoying the various ways she glowers at me in response.
“Fine.” Indie lifts her chin. “But we’re paying for our own drinks and food and that’s final.”
“We are?” replies Rami, still clearly thoroughly unimpressed by our presence. “If we have to suffer through this, they could at least pay for our food.”
Indie chuckles, pulling on Rami’s arm as we walk towards the bar-restaurant which, from the sound of it, is busy tonight.
Rami tilts her head towards me. “And by the way, I wouldn’t accept a meal off you if I hadn’t eaten for a month and was contemplating amputating a toe to chomp on.”
“Good to know.” I smile as Indie chastises her with a shake of the head. Gideon and I pass in front of them as we approach the oak gables of the large restaurant.
As we walk past a small group of men sitting on a wall leading to the restaurant and enter it, we’re greeted by a slim woman in her mid-twenties who flashes us the kind of wide, toothy smile I’ve yet to witness from Indigo… other than the day she sprayed me with beetroot juice, that is.
“Fuck.”
At the scrape of gravel, I turn to see Indigo’s flip-flop snag, the central slip of rubber pulled out of the sole. She stops, dropping her bag into the ground and bending over to push the toe separator back into the hole from which it came loose.
“Table for six,” says Gideon as Indigo picks up her tatty rainbow-colored bag upon repairing her shoe.
“Right this way,” sings the waitress as Indie hops a few steps to catch up. As she approaches, my eyes slide to the men who I spotted watching her as she was bent over.
And right on cue, one of them does it—the tall one in the middle wearing the sleeveless T-shirt and the trucker cap. Some words I can’t make out over the music and chatter inside slip from his lips as the men on either side of him snigger like pigs.
And in that second, an explosion detonates inside me, held back just about by the shell of my body as I see Indigo stop dead in her tracks, pivoting her slim, barely concealed body to face them, and most probably giving them the view they were after.
Her whole tiny frame undulates as if containing a tidal wave of outrage. “What did you just say to me?!”
“Ooh, we’ve got a live one for once, fellas.”
“How dare you?!”
