“Drawn to him?” I can picture Paige’s face all scrunched up in her head. “What, like pheromones or something?” She laughs. “Hey, I admit the guy is delicious; you’ll get no argument from me, but I’m worried.”
“What’s there to worry about—oh dammit!” I look down to see turquoise nail polish soaked into the stark white bedsheet where a glop had fallen from the end of the brush before I could catch it on the rim of the bottle. “There’s another charge on my credit card. Just great.” I set the nail polish aside on the nightstand and get up from the bed, still with the phone held against my ear by my shoulder, and I walk awkwardly across the room on my heels.
“It’s just not like you,” Paige rambles on. “I’ve tried to hook you up with several guys, but you usually had an excuse not to go, or you’d never see them again afterward if you did.”
“OK, but I don’t get what’s got you so worried.”
I set the phone on the bathroom counter and run my finger over the speaker icon and Paige’s voice appears—should’ve done that while trying to paint my toenails on the bed.
I hoist my right foot on the edge of the counter.
“Well, we haven’t even gone on our vacation yet,” Paige says, her voice funneling from the tiny speaker into the confined space. “If you take the plunge and fall in love at twenty-two, you’ll be barefoot and pregnant by the time you’re twenty-four, living in a trailer somewhere with ugly wallpaper, waiting for your boyfriend who works for minimum wage to come home so you can bring him a beer while he sits on his ass and watches wrastling.”
I laugh out loud, holding a cotton ball doused in nail polish remover over my big toe.
“What’s so funny, Sienna? I’m being serious here. Bitches get serious with guys and it’s like parts of their brains stop functioning. You don’t care anymore if there’s no condom, or if you forgot to take your pill, and you blame getting knocked up on the heat of the moment—life ruined!”
“Wrastling,” I say, still with laughter in my voice.
I carefully dab the cotton ball around the edge of my toe to clean away the nail polish where it’s not supposed to be.
“Are you making fun of the way I talk?”
“Paige,” I say seriously, “I’m not going to even have sex with him, much less be having his babies. It’s just a vacation. One I think I’ve earned. We’ll still go on vacation together soon, I promise.” After inspecting my toenails, I drop the cotton ball in the toilet and my foot back on the floor.
“Why are you being so uptight, anyway?”
She sighs. “Honestly?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “Out with it!”
“I’m jealous! There, I said it!”
My laughter fills the bathroom.
“Jealous I might get knocked up and move into a trailer with ugly wallpaper?”
Paige snorts when she laughs.
“No! I just wish I was there on vacation with you. Stupid family reunions!”
We laugh together.
I take the phone from the counter and head outside on the balcony. I hear live music coming from below, faint in the distance. Drums and voices pounding and echoing into the night. The orange glow of fire is cast against the black backdrop of the ocean under the night sky. I want to go out there and see what’s going on, but I know I need to get some rest. I want to be well rested for tomorrow because I have a feeling Luke and I will be running around all day. And I’m excited and eager and so many things I never knew I could be all at the same time. And he’s all I can think about.
Maybe Paige is right—this is very different from any other guy I’ve ever been involved with before, and we’re not even going out.
In a way, it kind of scares me too.
“Paige, I need your opinion on something.” I pick the phone up from the table and turn the speakerphone off, putting it to my ear instead, as if I need the privacy.
“That’s what I’m here for,” she says eagerly.
Hesitating for a moment, I look out at the black ocean, listening to the waves crash underneath the stars, and I think about what happened earlier tonight.
“Well, Luke took me to a barbecue with some of his friends, and there was this girl there—”
“Uh-oh,” she cuts in, already not liking where this might be going. “Was she pretty?”
“Adorable,” I say. “She seemed kind of tomboyish—”
“Lesbian?” she interrupts again, this time with a little hope in her voice.
“No. I doubt it. Luke said she was his brother’s girlfriend. But she just seemed kind of … I don’t know—”
“Jealous?”
“Maybe. But not really.” I hate how difficult this is for me to explain, or rather to understand myself.
“Either they used to go out,” she says right away as if she’s an expert, “or they’ve been friends with benefits. Or she has a thing for him. You say she’s tomboyish—y’think she could kick your ass?”
“Uh, I don’t know, Paige,” I say with confusion. “Besides, I didn’t get that kind of vibe from her. It wasn’t like that.”
“Well, my question would be why would he take you around a girl like that in the first place? It’s like he’s showing off or something, letting you see how other girls like to fawn over him.”
“No, it wasn’t like that at all, either,” I defend. “She was already there when Luke and I showed up. He even apologized when we were alone and said he wouldn’t have brought me if he knew she’d be there.”