Page 54 of This Could be Love

For a moment neither of us said anything, but then we started to laugh. A little embarrassed, a little shy.

“I…umm…I think I need a minute.” He looked around, and I had nothing better to do than follow his eyes. The water was so clear that I could see the bulge in his trunks and, for some reason, it turned me on incredibly. No, that’s not quite right. I knew why. It was standing right in front of me.

By the time we finally waded out of the water, I could feel every muscle in my body. It should have unsettled me, but all I felt was joy. That feeling of happiness that makes your cheeks glow and your eyes light up. Or at least that’s what it seemed like to me.

“Could we do that again sometime?” I asked, unhappily undoing the leash from my ankle.

He grinned mischievously. “What exactly?”

“Gosurfing.” I let myself sink down onto the sand.

“You can come by whenever you want when…you wanna go surfing.”

The dramatic pause made me smile. He shook out his wet hair and sat down next to me.

“I hadn’t thought it’d be like that,” I said even more earnestly than before. I looked for the right word. “So…”

“Intoxicating?”

“Yeah! It’s…intoxicating.”

“I think it feels that way ’cause…for a few seconds the power of the ocean shifts onto you.” He paused, as if weighing whether to share his thoughts with me or not. “When you surf, you’re movingwiththe water, not against it. You become one with the element.”

I stared at him, and his expression turned sheepish.

“Sorry, that’s just surfer kitsch.”

“No! It’s…beautiful.” The last word came out of my mouth in a whisper. “Thank you for showing me.”

The embarrassment in his eyes disappeared and a smile broke across his face. “With pleasure.”

For a few seconds our eyes remained locked. But sadly my stomach hadn’t received the memo that this was a romantic moment and began to growl so loudly that Vince burst out laughing.

“You should feed that beast,” he said with a smirk, stood up, and offered me his hand. A large, suntanned hand with little golden hairs flecked with sand. As I took it and let him help me up, my whole arm tingled. “And put on something dry,” he added with a glance at my goose bumps, which, to be honest, didn’t have anything to do with my wet bikini. All I managed was a nod and crossed my arms as my chest certainly was giving away more than I wanted it to.

“Okay, so…” He ran a hand through his hair almost self-consciously.

“See you next time.”See you next time?!Before my face could turn the color of a boiled lobster, I turned away and screwed upmy eyes. I was about to walk off when an “umm” made me stop. I turned around once more. He was still standing in the same place with his wet, scruffy hair, sandy hands, and slightly sheepish look.

“You like shrimp?”

Chapter 23

“Most people say the shrimp at Giovanni’s are the best, but I like the ones here more,” Vince said, dunking a fried shrimp into a bowl of spicy salsa. We were sitting at a colorfully painted wooden table in front of a food truck in Kahuku. Vince had given me Laurie’s helmet and we’d gotten onto a shabby old scooter. We’d driven along the ocean for a while, my wet hair whipping in the wind, my T-shirt billowing, and my bikini drying. I had wrapped my arms around Vince’s waist, feeling his tight muscles beneath my fingers.

“Lou?”

I met his stare. His hair had been flattened by his helmet and grown wavy on the sides thanks to the wind. He lookedsocute.

“I was asking you if you wanted anything else.”

“Anything else?”

He stole a glance at my almost untouched portion of shrimp.“They got tacos and burritos over there.” I followed his index finger to a truck painted in the colors of the Mexican flag. “And the pink one over there has bowls if you…”

“No, no. The shrimp are super good. I was just lost in my thoughts.” I pointedly reached for my plate. “It’s been ages since I’ve eaten something like this.”

“Shrimp?”