You'd Be Mine(23)

Kacey and I duck into a hip little smoothie-and-bagel shop to wait for the guys. Jason walks in as we’re finishing our drinks. “Your boyfriends are down at the pier.”



* * *



We’re not quite at the point where we’re recognized in public yet. Maybe if I carried around a mic and my guitar, but without music paraphernalia, I’m pretty forgettable. Clay and Fitz? Not so much. They can hide behind shades, but Clay radiates charisma wherever he goes. Not to mention, we all have security shadows. So once we get down to the pier, it takes me no time to find the guys. Jason lets out a shrill whistle, and they pull off the railing they’ve been leaning against like a couple of Abercrombie models.

I slip into the public restroom and strip off my jeans gratefully. I look at the suit, and my stomach sinks. It’s not mine. “Kacey?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I got your suit.”

“One of them, probably. I have my other.”

I bite back a cussword. I’m a good deal curvier than my pixie-stick cousin. “I am going to kill Jason.”

Slipping on the scraps of material, I unlatch the door and step out to where Kacey is gathering her short hair up into two spiky pigtails in the dull mirrors. She raises dual brows and smirks. “If you mean because you’re going to give him a coronary, maybe.”

“Sweet Jesus,” I mutter. “I can’t go out into public like this.” I try to adjust my cups, but shifting one sends the other off course, and it’s a fine line to my very own Nipplegate.

“Don’t be so dramatic. You look fantastic. Who knew you had all that going on underneath your T-shirts?”

I huff. “No one. That’s sorta the point.”

Kacey drops her hands from her hair and turns to me, her smile understanding. “The way I see it, girl, you have two options: embrace or retreat.” She holds up her phone. “I can call you a ride and you can spend the afternoon on the bus alone, or you can own what God gave you and show that dweeby ex of yours what he’s missing.”

I roll my eyes playfully. “Oh, please. Jason doesn’t care what I look like.”

Kacey pulls the strap of her beach bag over her shoulder and reaches for the door. “Maybe he didn’t before, but he sure will now.”

I glance once more at my reflection and throw my shoulders back, experimentally, before letting them drop naturally again. I slip on my sunglasses. I really don’t want to go back to the tour bus. Logically speaking, this is probably as good as my boobs are ever going to be. I might as well show them off. Besides, I have a feeling Jason thought he could rile me up with this, and I’d hate to give him the satisfaction.

I shove through the door into the streaming sunlight. Even in the fifteen minutes I’ve been in the bathroom, I feel like the beach has gained a zillion more people, and every one of them is staring at me. They aren’t, of course. That’s ridiculous.

One sure is, though. I spot our group down by the water. Jason is tossing a Frisbee back and forth with Fitz in the surf, and Kacey is already laying towels close to the water. Clay might have been getting in on the Frisbee with Fitz and Jason, except he gets nailed in the back of the head because his eyes are locked on me. I nervously fidget with my glasses and keep the course. Remember what you said this morning, Annie. Wild mustang. You aren’t your momma.

But for some reason, all I can think of is when I said staring at Clay was like staring down the sun. Because it is. I see him and I’m blind to everything and everyone else on this godforsaken coastline.

“Holy hell, Mathers! When’d you grow up?” Jason, the idiot, thankfully interrupts my inner turmoil.

I take a second to catch up and glory in my best friend’s slack-jawed expression. Now that I can cope with. I even stop my approach to lower my shades and jut out a hip like T. Swift on a runway. “Who, me?”

Kacey snorts from her towel. “Who feels like an asshole now, Diaz?”

Jason mock-tips his hat and lets out a low whistle. “Well played, Mathers. Well played.”

I readjust my glasses, careful to avoid Clay even though I can feel his eyes burning a trail down my skin, and make my way to the towels. It feels like the longest walk of my life, though I’m positive it takes less than a minute.

I finally make it to Kacey and drop down beside her. I roll up my bag and tuck it behind my head and lean back immediately, my heart still thudding in my chest.

Kacey grabs my fingers. “You made it,” she whispers. “And he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

I don’t need to ask who. I slowly release the breath in my lungs, trying to calm myself down. “It doesn’t matter,” I say.

An hour later, a dark shadow falls over us, and it’s Fitz trying to cajole my cousin into a swim. Her resistance is futile. He could ask her to go Siberia with him and she’d be down. I plug in my earbuds and listen to some Hailee Steinfeld, feeling my muscles melt deeper into the white sand. I can’t keep my hips from swaying slightly and prop up on my elbows, tapping out the backbeat with my fingertips and watching Fitz grab up a screeching Kacey, tossing her in the rolling deep-blue waves. A grin spreads across my lips. Clay saunters up the beach toward me, and I take advantage of my mirrored aviators to study the way the salt water drips and clings to his torso. He reaches down to pick up a spare towel and rubs it stupidly slow down his biceps before ruffling his wet hair and spreading the towel next to me. I pretend to be focused on Kacey and Fitz’s antics while surreptitiously turning down the volume on my earbuds. Jason walks up trailing two girls in athletic-looking bikinis. One is holding a volleyball. He says something to Clay, and I watch as the foursome walk off to a net set up in the sand. One of the girls shoves at Clay’s shoulder playfully, making it all look so easy. Her fingers graze his sun-warmed skin, and he tilts his head back, laughing.