Doing what you love makes the day go by quickly, and before I realize it, the sun’s already sunk beneath the surface of the lake, and I'm heading across the grass toward the mess hall.
Stepping into the giant log cabin with its picnic tables, red plastic trays, and cafeteria food makes me laugh. The students at Burberry Prep might call our restaurant The Mess, but this place is far more deserving of that name.
“Hey, Working Girl,” Zayd calls out, waving me over to sit next to him and Lizzie. She rises from the table and gives me a big hug before scooting a tray in front of me and grinning.
“We got here before everybody else, so I grabbed you the good stuff.” She points at the pizza on my plate, and then gestures in the direction of the line where people are complaining because the only thing that's left is meatloaf. Gross. Based on the smell, I’m pretty sure it has onions in it, too. Double gross.
“Thanks,” I laugh, as I pick up a slice and bring it to my lips. “How was your guys’ day?”
“Would've been better if you were in it,” Zayd says, throwing me a sharp grin. The way he looks at me sends shivers through my whole body. If he really had been around me all day, I wouldn't have gotten anything done because I'd have been too busy staring at him, memorizing the full curve of his lower lip, or the long dark curves of his lashes. “Doesn't matter though,” he continues, folding his tattooed forearms on the table and resting his chin on them. He looks at me from under half-lidded eyes, reminding me of Creed, and that strange situation in the bathroom.
“What doesn’t matter?” Lizzie asks glancing between the two of us. She raises her eyebrows, but she knows how I feel about Zayd. That is to say, she knows that I have no idea what to do with his attention. Or Creed’s. We don't really talk about Tristan. How can I, when I know that she still loves him?
“We're gonna make up for all that time spent apart,” Zayd says, grinning. He nods his chin at my pizza and then reaches out and steals a slice. I pretend to slap his hand away, but really I'm grinning.
“How are we gonna do that?” I ask, exchanging a glance with Lizzie. She shrugs her thin shoulders and then steals the other piece of pizza from my plate.
“We,” Zane begins, shoving the last of the pizza in his mouth and swallowing, “are going skinny dipping.”Zayd knocks on the cabin door after curfew, and I let myself out. Fortunately, Becky is sound asleep and snoring, a floral eye mask covering her face. Dressed in nothing but shorts and a tank top, I follow him down to the lake and over to a shadowy area protected by a copse of trees.
“Where's Lizzie?” I whisper, because honestly she seemed pretty excited to take a nude dip in the lake. It's the only reason I'm here. Not because I necessarily wanted her to see me naked. but because there's no way I'm stripping down when it's just me and Zayd.
“Skipped out,” he says with a shrug, already in the process of tearing his shirt over his head. “She wanted to give us some privacy.” He turns and flashes me a cocksure smirk that I can barely see in the moonlight.
And then his pants are down, and I can see that he even has a few tattoos on his legs. Zayd winks at me, and then turns and dives into the lake. He barely makes a splash, slicing through the water with his tattooed hands, and then reemerging a few feet out. The moonlight reflects off of his white-toothed smile, as I wrap my arms around myself and consider whether or not this is a good idea.
The old me definitely wouldn't have done something like this. There's always the chance that someone like Becky is waiting to sneak up and snap my photo, share it around the whole school. But … this is the new me. I'm taking chances, making a fresh start. And if Zayd were going to humiliate me, I imagine he could come up with a more creative way to do it. This just isn't his style.
My heart is pounding, and sweat is beading on my forehead. It might be cold outside, but when I dip a toe in the lake, it's still relatively warm. I can't believe I'm doing this, I think as I wait for Zayd to turn his back. And then I tear my shirt over my head. My shorts drop to the ground, and I wade into the water with my arms crossed over my chest.
Zayd turns around and watches me, his eyes tracking my movements hungrily. When he swims over to stand next to me, water dripping down the sides of his face, I don't miss the implication. It's dark, we're alone, and we're naked together. Plus, there's this palpable tension between us that I felt from day one. Even when he was being an irreconcilable jerk, I could feel it.
