Summer Love (15 page)

YOU
look at Marco one last time, and decide that a point on the flirting challenge is enough for now. Besides, you realize that Tasha has been gone for a big chunk of the afternoon, and you're starting to get a little worried.

“Thanks,” you say, “but I think I should probably go find my cousin and make sure she's okay. I haven't seen her for hours, which is actually a little concerning, come to think of it.”

Marco nods. “I totally understand,” he says. “But if you change your mind, I'll be over here with Homer.” He taps his book and you smile. Then you head back to your towel and start to scan the ocean for Tasha's bright yellow bikini. Just as soon as you do, though, you see her walking
out of the ocean, making a beeline for you.

YOU
decide food might be the way to go. Maybe a small snack. Or at least a cold bottle of water.

“Let's check out the food,” you say, grabbing your wallet.

You get to the parking lot and see four food trucks—a lobster-roll one, a fro-yo one, a hot-dog one, and the traditional Mister Softee. If you got anything, you'd get that. A swirl of soft-serve chocolate rolled in chocolate sprinkles. But you're a good cousin, so you stand in line with Tasha, who has decided she wants a lobster roll.

“Did you see the menu?” she asks. “There are, like, seven different options! I thought there was only one kind of lobster roll.”

“I know about two,” you say. “The one with mayo, and the one with butter.”

“Hmm, interesting,” Tasha says. But she's clearly focused on the menu and not you.

Your eyes start to wander, and you notice the guy working the lobster-roll truck. He is all kinds of adorable with freckles and spiked hair and eyes the color of blueberries. All of a sudden you're in the mood for blueberry pancakes. But there aren't any of those trucks around.

The lobster-roll line moves, and you take a couple of steps forward. There are about five people between you and Lobster Roll Guy now. He looks up briefly, as if he's checking out the length of the line, and his eyes catch yours. Your gazes lock, and he smiles for a millisecond before getting back to work.

“Someone likes you!” Tasha says. “And he looks tasty.”

You roll your eyes. “He was just figuring out how many customers he has.”

“I don't know about that,” Tasha answers.

You decide to ignore her.

FRISBEE
Guy stops and turns around. “Are you sure? Anything I can do to get you to play?” he says.

“I don't even know your name,” you tell him.

“Rafe,” he answers, holding out his hand for you to shake.

You shake it and tell him your name.

“So,” Rafe says, “you coming?”

As he says it, he rakes his fingers through his hair, and you see his biceps bulge. For a second, all you can think about is wrapping your hand around those muscles and feeling them move beneath your fingertips. He smiles at you, and you feel your stomach flip. That clinches it.

“Sure,” you say. “I'll come.”

You toss a sweatshirt over your bag and Tasha's, but you figure no one is really going to steal anything
from a spot right beneath a lifeguard on a private beach anyway.

“Race you?” Rafe asks, looking as if he's about to take off down the beach.

“Deal,” you answer, landing lightly on the sand as you run.

You sprint as fast as you can without your running shoes on, and Rafe matches you stride for stride. After a few steps in synch, you realize he's not really racing you at all. He's running completely by your side.

When you get to his group of friends, he stops and so do you.

“It's a tie!” he says, barely breathing hard.

“You totally could've beaten me,” you tell him, trying to catch your breath.

His honey-colored eyes twinkle. “Well, we'll have to try again later, won't we?”

He smiles, and you smile back, that stomach flip happening again. Then he turns to his friends and introduces you. “She's got a great arm,” he adds.

Rafe and another guy named Jonah are captains, and Rafe chooses you on his first pick. Jonah chooses another girl who's way taller and buffer than you are. One by one, everyone gets a spot on a team, and
then Jonah paces in one direction while Rafe paces in the other, and they make themselves an Ultimate Frisbee field, outlining it with grooves in the sand.

“You know the rules?” one of your other teammates asks.

You nod, feeling thankful that your neighbor twisted your arm into playing on his team so often. You're not fantastic, but you're not an embarrassment, either.

“We play one-on-one,” he says. “And the girl who's not here today usually covers Crystal.” He's pointing to the buff girl from before. You take a deep breath. You can totally take her. Maybe.

When Rafe and Jonah finish making the field, the two teams split up and the game starts. Rafe tosses the Frisbee from your side of the field to Jonah's team, and then they start running and tossing, trying to get to the end zone back where Rafe started. You shadow Crystal, but the Frisbee doesn't come her way until you all get close to the end zone. One of the guys on the team throws it to her and you leap with her into the air, but she's so much taller than you that she grabs the Frisbee before your hand is even close.

You both land, and you see that she's looking
toward the end zone, trying to find someone to toss it to. You know she has only ten seconds, so you quickly try to see where she might throw it. Everyone seems to be covered in the end zone, and then you notice that Jonah's not there. He's behind Crystal and to her left! You realize this just as she does, and go racing toward him just as she throws the Frisbee, hoping you'll be able to stop it once it gets closer to him. Your legs are pumping and your eye is on the white plastic disc as it flies through the air. You can tell you're going to get there in time and catapult yourself up into the air to reach for the Frisbee.

You don't realize, though, that Rafe, who was covering Jonah, is heading for the Frisbee, too. You don't see each other at all, in fact, and both of you fly toward the white disc, both get a hand on it, and then both fall to the ground, the Frisbee between you.

“Oof,” you say as you roll toward him.

“‘Oof' is right,” he says, his nose less than two inches from yours. “But we caught it.”

You laugh. You're so close to Rafe that you feel as if you have to whisper. “Good for us,” you say quietly.

“Yeah,” he whispers back, and you see his breath move the sand between you just the tiniest bit.

All of a sudden the air feels electric, and Rafe's
eyes are locked onto yours. You feel certain that right there, on the sand, in the middle of an Ultimate game, Rafe is going to kiss you.

But then someone in the end zone yells, “Get up already!” and the lock between your eyes breaks. You let go of the Frisbee, and Rafe stands up holding it. Then he leans down and offers you his hand to help you up. You grab it and feel a tingle start in your fingers and work its way through your body. Once you're on your feet he says quietly, “Let's finish that later.”

You try to not to smile too much while you say, “Absolutely.”

He winks at you. “But first, we have a game to win.”

So you focus on winning a game of Ultimate while imagining what will happen afterward . . . and decide that getting hit on the head with a Frisbee might have been the best thing to happen to you all day. Well, until Rafe kisses you, that is.

CONGRATULATIONS!

YOU'VE FOUND YOUR HAPPY ENDING!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to all the Penguins for their support on this project—most especially Don Weisberg, Jen Loja, Eileen Kreit, Jen Bonnell, Dana Bergman, and Michael Green. Special thanks, too, to my non-Penguin friends and family who listened to me go on about this book and offered their thoughts and opinions—especially Jenn Sapir and David Bell for their notes on dialogue-, tennis-, and lifeguard-related matters. I'd choose the path that leads to all of you every single time.