Beautiful Graves(31)

And it’s not like everything about our dinner date sucked. There was a live band, and Dom convinced me to dance on the table, which was the most liberating thing I’d done since I pierced my septum. At one point, his brother called him, and Dom answered the phone and put him on speaker and said, “Seph, tell this girl how crazy I am about her!” The man on the other line chuckled sardonically and refused to cooperate, but it did draw a few claps and whistles from other people in the restaurant. Including one: “Marry him now, girl, or I will!”

On our way back to the inn, Dom tugs me suddenly, and we cross the road to the beach. I stumble, trying to catch up.

“What are we doing?” I ask.

“Skinny-dipping,” he says. “This is the most secluded spot in all of Cape Cod, and I’ll be damned if we don’t make a new memory here.”

My heart picks up speed. The setting and the scent remind me of Joe. My emotions feel soggy, heavy. But I go along with Dom’s plan. Just because this love feels different doesn’t necessarily mean it is less than what I had with Joe, right?

We strip down to our underwear and run into the ocean holding hands. I shriek, braving the ice-cold water of the Cape in November. I don’t slow down, even when Dom dives right into the deep end, taking me with him.

My head breaks the surface of the water first. Dom follows closely.

“Oh my God. It’s freezing!” I wail. I don’t usually wail. But I imagine that Dom goes for girls who do. Delicate girls, who are more sugar than spice.

Since when are we adhering to what guys want us to be? I hear Pippa in my head. Or maybe it’s Mom. Either way, they aren’t happy about the wail.

“Poor baby Lynne,” Dom tuts, his body latching against mine. We swim close to the shore. I learned my lesson the hard way the last time I went into a large body of water in the middle of the night. Dom curls his strong fingers around my ass. I instinctively lace my legs around his torso. Our teeth chatter when we kiss. My nipples are puckered against his hard chest. He’s seen me naked before, but this feels different. More.

I no longer feel the achy, unexplained longing to be Virginia Woolf. To fill my pockets with stones before getting in the water. And that’s a huge win.

“Confession time.” He captures my lower lip between his teeth. The contrast between the cold water on our lips and our hot mouths gives me shivers.

“Hit me with it.”

“When I first opened the door for you all those weeks ago, you were so cool, so funny, so pretty, I was, in fact, ready to propose.”

“But . . . why?” I can’t shake the feeling I am not what he usually goes for. It’s not that I think little of myself. It’s just that on first glance, we don’t fit.

“Because you’re gorgeous.” He kisses my chin, my neck, the tip of my nose. “And inspiring. And sweet. And caring. That day in my apartment, I didn’t want you to leave. I kept thinking it was a good thing you couldn’t read my mind, because then you would think I was a creeper. Then when we met again, the night I lost my patient . . . sweet Anna . . . it felt like God had sent me a sign. I just knew. Knew our hearts were made out of the same material. Cracked in the same places. That they beat to the same rhythm.”

My forehead falls against his. I close my eyes, trembling. His words are so beautiful. I want to believe each and every one of them. I realize a part of me does. I can’t deny how much my life has changed since Dom entered it. Nora is right. So what if we don’t like the same music or movies, or have the same hobbies? Dom is quickly becoming my best friend. My hot best friend.

“What did you think?” he asks me, his fingers caressing the sensitive spot behind my knee in the water. “The first time we met.”

I decide to tell him the truth. “I felt painfully average looking, you know, in comparison.” That makes him chuckle. “You were hot, put together, and super intimidating. I also thought we had nothing in common.”

He slants his head, studying me. His eyelashes—dark and long and unfairly wasted on a boy—have little drops of water clinging on them, like fallen stars. “I hope that’s changed.”

I kiss him hard in response. We grind against each other in the ocean. The friction and waves lapping on my skin bring me close to the edge. My breasts feel heavy and tender against his body. He lowers his head, takes a nipple between his lips, and sucks on it. His hot tongue is on my ice-cold nipple. I moan, watching my fingers disappear inside his thick hair.

“I need to be inside you.” He drags his teeth along my nipple, making it even more sensitive.

I grab his hand, and we both make our way back to shore. I shimmy out of my soaked underwear and walk backward, hooking a finger and motioning for him to follow. He does, but he no longer looks like Prince Charming. Now he looks like the big bad wolf.

“Lynne.” Dom’s voice has an edge to it now. He is moving toward me, cornering me against a wooden fence. I feel so alive. Oxygen scorches its way to my lungs.

“Yeah?”

“I need a condom.”

“Not necessarily,” I say. “I got on the pill a year ago to control my cramps and breakout situation.”

“So you’re into dirty talk, huh?” He narrows his eyes. “You’re good at it.”

I let out a surprised laugh. “Oops. That’s the definition of TMI, isn’t it?”