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“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Need it?”
His eyes scan my face as he swallows. “Yeah. I think I needed a break. I need to be around my family.”
“All of a sudden?”
“What?” he asks, turning toward me with his eyebrows pinched together.
“You live twenty minutes away from us. It just seems a little random that you all of a sudden want to spend time with your family.”
“You know I’m busy running a company. I don’t have the luxury to see my parents all the time like you do. I don’t still live with them,” he snaps back, and my jaw hangs open from that insult.
I freeze and throw my hands up. A few steps past me, he stops and turns toward me.
“Is this why you came on the walk with me? To be an asshole and tease me about living in my dad’s basement?” I ask.
“You—” he starts, but stops himself. Taking a deep breath, he composes himself before continuing, “I didn’t mean to insult you, Mia. I just…I used to love coming to the lake, and the way Mom spoke on the phone yesterday, she seemed to think Paul would appreciate me coming this year too.”
My stomach drops. “Why would she say it like that? He’s fine.”
“I’m sure he is,” he replies with a sympathetic expression. “I just think she was saying anything she could to get me to come.”
For a moment, we just stare at each other, and I wish that Garrett could just be real with me. It would be nice to have someone to talk to about this who didn’t constantly dismiss me or mock me. But that’s not who we are to each other.
“Come on,” he says, gesturing for me to keep walking with him. When I finally fall into step next to him, we’re quiet again. I still can’t shake the feeling that Garrett knows something he’s not telling me. But I don’t push it.
After a while, he asks, “So, what the hell do you do up here all week?”
“Relax,” I reply, “you should try it sometime.”
“I know how to relax.”
“Oh yeah? So tell me…how do you relax?”
He contemplates for a moment, that strong brow of his arched in thought. “I run.”
“Running is not relaxing.”
“It is to me.”
“And that’s what makes you a sadist,” I tease him. “That’s like saying sex is relaxing.”
He reacts with surprise. “Sexisrelaxing.”
“If you think sex is relaxing, then you’re doing it wrong.” I laugh.
“Oh yeah. You’re a sex expert now?” he asks, and I notice the way his brow creases as he glances at me, something unsettled and almostangryon his face.
“I’m not a sex expert at all, but I just think sex is supposed to be fun, not relaxing.”
Suddenly he stops and turns toward me, taking a step in my direction, closing the distance between us. I almost forget to breathe as he starts to speak.
“You know why I consider running relaxing? It’s because of how I feel when I’m done. The same goes for sex. You can’t call it relaxing because you’ve never been fully satisfied in bed. Letting go of every thought in your head and only focusing on the sensations in your body and not what you’re thinking. Working up a sweat and being so in tune with someone that you can experience their pleasure as if it’s your own. And then coming hard enough to see stars, now that’s what I call relaxing. If you find someone who can do that, then you’ll know what I mean.”
“Oh, someone like you?” The words slip out of my mouth and hover in the few inches of space between us as I stare up at him. It’s certainly the closest we’ve ever stood to each other, and suddenly we’re talking about sex. What is happening?
