Page 57 of This Could be Love

“We’d gone surfing and we were hungry,” Vince explained, completely at ease.

“You all went surfing.” Laurie let her index finger wander back and forth between the two of us. “Didn’t you say you didn’t know how to surf?”

“And I can’t.”

It came out far too quickly and far too hoarsely.

“I showed her,” Vince said in a still remarkably calm tone.

Laurie looked utterly perplexed, and I was sorry. The whole situation must have appeared absolutely gaga to her. But I had no idea how to change that. I couldn’t really say,Listen, while you were in bed with a headache, your brother and I were making out. And because it was surprisingly good, we decided to do it again today.

“Does that mean you’ve already eaten?” Laurie asked, her query sounding more like an observation than a question.

Vince nodded, and I could only hope that there wasn’t a dinner waiting for him inside.

“Yeah, well, so…see you.”

I wanted to give Vince Laurie’s helmet but decided against it at the last minute and ran up to her.

“I’ll give you a call once I’m home,” I said softly, handing it to her.

With the same look of confusion as before, she took it and nodded.

“I’ll walk you over,” Vince said, but I shook my head and shot him a glance that unequivocally said it wouldn’t be necessary. Not today.

For a moment he looked like he was going to object, but tomy surprise he accepted my decision. I said goodbye to the two of them and left. The short way didn’t give me enough time to make heads or tails of Laurie’s behavior. I could get how seeing Vince and me behaving so familiarly could be confusing, but there seemed to have been something else in her eyes. Something like being on alert. As if the idea of there being something between Vince and me unsettled her. But why? Lost in thought I typed in the door code and slipped inside.

I found Kay sitting on the terrace with her laptop. A citronella candle was burning on the table next to her along with the dregs of a glass of red wine.

Seeing me, her eyes grew wide. “My God, what haveyoubeen up to?”

I looked at my reflection in the glass of the sliding door. Oops. My hair was flat against my head and, below my ears, sticking out every which way. As if I hadn’t brushed it in days. Why hadn’t Vince said anything? Why hadn’t Laurie?

“I was on a scooter.” I quickly tried to establish some order to it with my fingers.

“I can see that. But where’d you get one of those?”

I hesitated. “Vince drove.”

Her eyebrows shot upward. “Vince Greenfield?”

I knew that she wasn’t really expecting an answer to her question.

“We just went to a food truck.”

The information changed nothing in her expression,which jumped back and forth between confusion and disbelief. “Together?”

I nodded.

“So, you weren’t on the beach at all,” she said, with a tinge of rebuke. An implication of my not having been honest.

“No, I was. Vince and I ran into each other there and then…” Something told me it would probably be better not to mention the surfing. “Then we drove to a food truck.”

Her eyes fixed on me, she asked, “Was thathissuggestion?”

“Yeah,” I replied, happy for a nanosecond to have deflected responsibility onto Vince. But then I remembered what Kay had suggested at our last talk. That Vince was using me to gain an advantage. Which I believed as little now as then. “Don’t worry, we didn’t talk about you.”

“I’m not at all worried aboutme, Lou.”