With This Heart(26)

“ Oh man, that was really good. Maybe I’ll just have meat until the end of this trip or something. I need a cut-off day so I can eat everything one last time.”

“ Sounds reasonable,” I replied.

We laid there for a moment in silence.

“ Let’s go to sleep. I have a surprise for you in the morning,” he said with a confident smile.

“ Really?”

His gaze took in my wide grin.

“ Yep, and it has to do with the ocean.” He waggled his eyebrows.

I squealed and jumped up onto my feet. My hips bumped from side to side as I did a giddy dance on top of the hotel bed.

“ Abby! What if you’re getting your hopes up?” Beck called, jumping up to join me. I didn’t care if I was or not.

“ Not possible!” I yelled. “I’ve only been to the ocean one time and that was like ten years ago! I’ll be happy with whatever it is.”


We ended jumping around the bed and laughing as we tried out various mid-air poses. I attempted to do a herky jump, but I ended up just flailing around. He probably saw my bright pink underwear beneath my sleepshirt, but I didn’t really care. We were friends. Beck reached out for my hands and I gave them to him willingly. His grip held mine easily, and then he started twisting in a circle so that I had no choice but to follow his lead. My feet dipped in and out of the mattress as we spun faster and faster until the hotel room was a blur behind him. Everything was a mess of color. His hazel eyes were the only thing in focus.

“ Mercy!” I yelled, feeling the pizza in my stomach starting to protest our wild spins.

He let go of me instantly and we fell back onto the bed with exasperated sighs. Our quick inhales and exhales dotted the silence. A smile was permanently etched across my cheeks and I feared that I would end up going to sleep with it still there.

“ A journalist,” Beck said between breaths.

“ What?” I asked, shifting my gaze to him. He had the same wild grin on his face that I did. His eyes were focused on a single point on the ceiling, but there was no mistaking the hope clouding them.

“ I want to be a journalist. I applied for an internal transfer at MIT.”





[page]CHAPTER TEN





I woke up the next morning tangled in Beck. My legs were wrapped around him, his hand was under my shirt, wrapped around the side of my torso, and my arms were hugging his chest. I froze immediately for fear that he would wake up and assume that I was mauling him in his sleep.

My thoughts went something like this: Mmm this feels good, he’s so hot, OH MY GOD I’m practically feeling him up, GET OFF HIM . I decided that the best idea was to move away from him like someone would rip off a band-aid. I counted down in my head. Three, two, one. Then I rolled away from him in one quick motion. Except I overcompensated because I was nervous and a little turned on from his zero percent body fat, so I ended up slipping off the bed and hitting my head on the wall as my body thumped onto the ground.

“ Ouch!” I howled, pressing a hand to my forehead.

“ Abby?” Beck asked with a hazy tone.

“ Yes. No. Just go back to sleep.” I stayed crouched on the ground, hoping he would go back to sleep and I could tend to my pride in peace. But a moment later, a head of messy brown hair peeked over the side of the bed. He had a silly grin and was blinking his eyes open one at a time. The expression on his face told me that he knew exactly what happened.

“ You’d rather sleep on the floor than next to me?” he asked, but his words were muffled by the blanket.

I shrugged and pushed to my feet. “You’re a blanket hog.” Yeah, good job, Abby. That sounded much cooler than you really are.

“ Is that why you needed to cuddle me for warmth?” he asked, stealing my smugness.

“ I don’t know what you mean by ‘cuddling’,” I lied, rifling through my clothes, trying to distract myself from his gaze. “But I’m going to go down and eat breakfast.”

“ Okay. I’m going to go for a quick run.”

“ Sounds good. I have some things to do as well. Want to just meet at the beach?”

Beck agreed and I went into the bathroom to change into my bathing suit and cover up. By the time I was done, he’d already left for his run.

I grabbed my beach gear and the black urn before heading down to grab a banana and some granola from the hotel’s breakfast bar. I wasn’t sure where I would attempt to spread the ashes considering we’d slept in so late that the beach was already crowded. Could you imagine if I opened the urn and the ashes spread out all over some kid’s sandcastle or a family’s beach picnic? I was tempted to try it just to see the madness that would ensue, but it seemed too cruel even for my dark humor. Instead, I hiked my beach tote higher on my shoulder and set out to find a more private location.

The moment I stepped outside, a wild breeze picked up strands of my hair and whipped them around. I walked down onto the sand and stuffed my sandals into my bag so I could feel the warmth beneath my feet. In a few hours the sand would be unbearably hot, but now it just comforted my soles as I walked along the shoreline.

I passed so much life on the edge of that ocean. Happy kids running toward the water and then stopping abruptly at the edge and squealing with excitement. Would I have screamed like that if I was healthy enough to go to the beach when I was that young?