“Rafael,” James says, sitting up but not standing. Rafael slaps his ha
nd on James’s back.
“It’s, what, two years? Where have you been?”
“Some of us have to work for a living, you know.”
Rafael laughs, tipping his head back, his Adam’s apple bobbing under a hint of dark stubble in the sun. Before he even looks my way I know he is wrong. Not dangerous wrong, but…potentially dangerous wrong. And there’s something else. The way he stands over James, the way his smile is stretched to show all his teeth. He knew James would be here. This wasn’t a chance encounter. But I don’t think it’s one James expected.
“And who is your beautiful friend? Is she—she isn’t one of those girls, is she? The ones you told me about?”
James waves a hand dismissively in the air, but I see the lines of his shoulders, they are tight. He isn’t happy, but you would never know from his voice. “I said a lot of things when I was drunk, Rafael. Which was pretty much all the time. You really believed my stories?”
“About women who can see into your head? Of course I did. It explains my ex perfectly. But you never answered who your friend is.” He leans over James’s chair to mine and I feel very vulnerable laid out in just a bikini, I want to stand, to get in a defensive stance, but I don’t need to.
Not yet.
“Emilia,” I say, and he takes my hand (he shouldn’t touch my hand) and brings it to his lips.
“Charmed. So you cannot see the future or read my thoughts?”
“Judging by the way you’re staring at my chest, I’m glad I can’t read your mind.” I sit up. (Well-muscled but in a carefully sculpted way. No practical use. I could snap his wrist.) I pull my hand away.
He laughs, turns, and slaps James’s shoulders again. “I like this one. Is she yours?”
James shifts closer to me, puts an arm behind me, crossing the full length of my back. His skin is on so much of my skin, and he did it on purpose. “Yeah.”
I lean my head on his shoulder and I can’t help it, there is a smile blooming on my whole face, my whole body. I feel this smile, like I haven’t felt anything in a very long time. I am his. I am.
Tonight I am going to dance with James. Tonight I am going to dance with him and he will kiss me, and we will be together. I don’t care if there is the little wrong buzzing at the back of my head. I want this.
Rafael winks. “You always had the best taste. Come back to the yacht with me; it’ll be like old times. You can share your good fortune.”
Again Rafael smiles at me and he is wronger than wrong, but there is no danger here on this bright beach next to James. Still, my smile drops and my eyes narrow and I could break-snap-break him.
“We have other plans.”
“Cancel them. You and I have things to discuss. So much to catch up on.” Rafael has lost the false good-natured tone of his voice; it’s brimming with intensity now.
James pretends not to notice Rafael’s mood, waving a hand in the air as he leans back in his chair and pulls my head onto his shoulder, draping his fingers on the curve of my waist and it is nice, so nice, I think I have never been this happy.
Rafael slides back into a smile. “You know my number. And I know yours.” He leaves and I do not move, will not move, not ever. Right, right, right. I will make this feel right.
“Sorry about him,” James mutters.
“It’s fine.” I smile and close my eyes. It’s better than fine.
I put my hair up. I take it down. I have no sense of how I should get ready tonight. Sometimes I get a feeling—one pair of shoes over another, one way of doing my hair—that for whatever reason is right. Tonight I can’t get a read on those feelings. Everything is scattered and shattered and put back together.
Tonight I am going to dance with James.
I laugh, giddy, and leave my hair long and waving down my back. Simple. I’ll keep it simple, because James has seen me through so much and I don’t need to change, not for him, never for him. We understand each other. I can read the lines of his shoulders, catalog the lies of his smiles; he can touch my hands and not care.
I’m his. It’s such a relief to be someone’s, to not have to be my own (to not have to be Annie’s—don’t think about Annie, not tonight, especially not tonight).
It’s still early, we aren’t leaving yet, but I hold my shoes and dance and twirl barefoot out of my room and into the hallway of the cool white house we’re staying in. It is all stone and tile and brilliant splashes of color. I dance past the hallway, past the kitchen. I am going to dance into pieces, I am ready to go, I am ready for tonight.
Laughter and hushed voices from the kitchen. Something is off, my stomach isn’t giddy with butterflies so much as sick with them now, and I don’t want to but I have to, I have to see.