Page 60 of Bloom

“Okay,” I say. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

“Something must be going around,” she sighs. “Well, go to bed. Let me know if you need anything.”

I hesitate. Ginny’s arrival may have stalled things, but my body is still demanding what it was denied, no matter how impossible it now appears.

“Go ahead,” she urges, irritated now. “He’ll be fine.”

I walk away, and it’s not until I’m in bed that it occurs to me to question what just happened. Why did we panic? Why did we lie? Sure – I didn’t want Ginny to find out about us in that precise way, but was that what worried him? Or does he just intend that she never find out at all?

Chapter 34

I give myself ten seconds in the morning to relish all of it. His words and his weight above me and the feel of his skin beneath my hands. Because right now, with the sun streaming in my room, I can only imagine him taking these things away from me again. I can only imagine finding him the way I’ve found him before: full of regret.

I lay in bed for a long time, unwilling to move on to the conclusion of a story I’d convinced myself had only just begun. My limbs are sluggish as I shower and head downstairs. James and Max sit at the table, and his eyes go directly to mine. I beg him to smile, to find some small way to tell me my fears are unfounded, but he does not.

When I hear him push away from the table, I want to run. It’s too much to bear, him doing this to me again. I continue on toward the coffee, but all I want to do is go upstairs and pack. One time is a mistake, but four times is just …

He’s beside me, standing closer than normal. Close enough that his arm brushes mine. He slides his mug toward me as if he’s only here for a refill.

“Everything okay?” he asks in low voice.

“Yeah. You?” I fill his mug and slide it back toward him. His hand wraps around mine, warm and rough and firm, and holds it there, blocking Max’s view with his body.

I venture a quick glance at him, and his mouth quirks up at the corner. “Yeah, I’m good. Want to go to the beach today?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say with a cautious smile. I wait for him to pull the rug out. I wait for the phrase ‘we need to talk’, but it doesn’t come.

Ginny takes the day off work, under the impression that she is coming down with whatever illness James had. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed when she and Max decide to come with us. On the one hand, it will be impossible to hold a serious conversation. And on the other hand … it will be impossible to hold a serious conversation.

“You had to wear the bikini, didn’t you?” James groans under his breath when I come downstairs.

“I thought you were all done staying away from me?” I whisper back.

“That doesn’t mean I need to spend three hours next to you dressed like that,” he sighs. “Especially after last night.”

He stays by my side as we walk, close enough that our hands brush, a small frisson of electricity that makes the surface of my skin come alive. I look at him out of the corner of my eye — his strong jaw and the curve of his bicep at rest — and feel something spasm low in my stomach. I’d be so much better off right now if we hadn’t been interrupted last night.

We lay our towels down, James not-so-subtly nudging Max aside when he walks up beside me.

“Want me to do your back, Elle?” Max asks.

James snatches the sunscreen from his hand. “I’ve got it.”

You’d think, with the anticipation I’m feeling, that we were both in bed naked. I sit up and face away from him, hugging my knees to my chest, waiting for him to begin. His hands whisper over my skin, and the anticipation builds. He lifts the back of my bikini, sliding his hand beneath it, and I actually shiver. His low laugh in response brushes my ear.

It’s only when Max calls him on it —“Gee, James, I had no idea you were so thorough. Do my back next.” — that he stops.

“Want me to do yours?” I ask.

He hesitates and we exchange a look. “Sure,” he says, laying down on his stomach. I could spend hours applying sunscreen to him, memorizing the feel of his skin and the tightly bunched muscles of his back. And I probably would were I not a foot away from Ginny, though she seems to have noticed nothing.

“So tell me about your date,” says Ginny sleepily.

I feel James tense beneath my hands. “Nothing to tell, really. We got dinner and saw a movie and that was it.”

“Nothing more? Did he try to get you to come home with him?”

James tenses again.