Saugatuck Summer (Saugatuck, #1)(50)
“Seriously, dudes? What the f*ck?” I hissed, glancing back and forth between them. Robin’s mouth opened in a surprised O and Geoff looked at the ground, then tried to take the cooler from Robin. Robin wouldn’t let him, though, so Geoff walked away, leaving the two of us behind. By which I took it to mean this was all Robin’s doing and I should just deal with him.
Robin sucked on the inside of his cheek. “Ah. So, you slept with Jace. Okay, that was probably information I should have had. Topher, I had no idea, or I would never have—”
“What?” I had to force myself to pull my voice back down. “You saw those paintings! You’ve got them on display! Half the people who pass through Saugatuck know I slept with him!”
He gave me a look that said I was being silly. “Sweetie, artists do erotic paintings of models they’ve never touched all the time. All I knew was that you’d modeled for him.”
Given the fact that he’d seen how I’d reacted to the paintings, I wasn’t sure I believed him, but I couldn’t exactly accuse him of lying. I braced my back against the side of their car and ground the heels of my hands into my eyes.
Robin leaned against the car beside me, laying an arm across my shoulders. “I’m sorry. I thought it would help.”
“Help how? What’s he even doing in town?”
Robin shrugged. “I really don’t know. He just breezed into the gallery this morning, said he’d made a reservation at the Dunes months ago for the holiday weekend, and wanted to say hi. I invited him here today thinking that with more people around, there would be more distractions from possibly uncomfortable moments that could draw attention. That way the conversation would be more widely distributed, so you’d be less obligated to talk to people who might ask awkward questions.”
“Right.” I sighed heavily, wishing the ground would just open up and swallow me. “So now I’ve got to make small talk and play catch up with my one-night stand in front of the married guy I just spent almost a month sleeping with, as well as his wife and daughter. No, no, that’s not going to be awkward at all.”
“Well, if you get cozy with Jace, Brendan should stay the f*ck away and you won’t have to deal with him, and his wife will have even less reason to think anything untoward ever happened. Just make sure Jace knows what you’re doing so you’re not leading him on.”
I stared at Robin, wondering how he came up with all this social maneuvering off the top of his head.
“Alternatively, I can pull Jace aside and ask him to fake not feeling well so I have an excuse to get him out of here. In which case, really, you’re probably going to owe him an explanation and an apology later.”
I ran a hand through my hair and closed my eyes, trying to rein my brain into thinking rationally for a moment. “No. No. I’ll pull on my big-girl panties and deal with it. Jace and I don’t need to be weird around each other. It was a one-night stand, we had a good time, no reason why we can’t just hang out with friends.”
Robin’s mouth opened as if he were about to say something, but he pulled it back. “Okay. If things get too uncomfortable, let me know, I’ll run interference.”
“Right.” I drew a deep breath and nodded. “Cool. Come on, let’s go. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”
In other circumstances, running into Jace again would probably have been a lot of fun. If I had been relaxed and enjoying myself, we could have fallen back into that natural-as-breathing rapport we’d had the first time. And, to be quite honest, had it been other circumstances, I would totally have been up for a repeat of that whole night. Even now, there was a pull in my body that wanted to flirt and build up that incredible sexual tension we’d had all over again, but there was just no way that was happening.
“He’s cyooot!” Mo singsonged in the kitchen as I filled glasses with ice. The cooler, it turned out, contained several lidded pitchers of sangria packed in ice. There was even some virgin sangria for Ling. It was a great choice for a humid and blazingly hot afternoon, and everyone pretty much loved Robin and Geoff for bringing it.
Except Brendan, who was busying himself at the grill, a polite—if somewhat distant—host. So far, though, the only weirdness had been in my mind.
“Girl, don’t even.” I spoke without thinking, shaking my head and grabbing a fresh pitcher to replace the empty one out on the patio table.
“What? Why not?” Mo gave me an utterly bewildered look, and only then did I realize what I’d done. I was so used to Mo knowing everything about me that I forgot she had no reason to know why right now was so not a good time for me to flirt with Jace, much less score an invitation back to his room.
Fuck.
Her smile faded and her eyes dimmed. “Topher, what’s going on?”
“I’m just—” I sighed heavily, closing my eyes and gripping the edge of the counter for support. “I’m just trying to work some things out in my head right now, you know? I’m a mess, and I have no idea where I’m going or what I’m doing, so now probably isn’t a good time for me to be hooking up with anyone.”
“Okay, who the f*ck are you and what have you done with Topher?” she demanded sharply. “Girlfriend, you’ve had issues since the day we met, and that never seemed to stop you before. Last time I checked, inner turmoil didn’t prevent someone from enjoying the occasional orgasm. I mean, if it was a relationship or something, and it was going to screw with you working things out, then yeah, I could see that. But he’ll be back off to Chicago in a few days and you can return to figuring out your shit. I’m not seeing how enjoying his company would f*ck any of that up.”