Telling Tales

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‘Why can’t we just use boats, I need a boat,’ he says as he trails after her to the water’s edge, and I find myself thinking: Is that how you do it? Is it the rowing that makes you all big, do you still row after all these years, do you still stand around in a boathouse somewhere in those tiny Lycra shorts that show just about everything you’ve –

‘Hey. Earth to Allie. Seriously, what’s going on with you? I talk, you’re off in some other world.’

I manage to tune back into Wade again and I don’t know. I guess I’m expecting him to be half-laughing or not that bothered. But when I actually look he’s kind of pissed. Yeah, there’s definitely something angry in his expression, like before when I thought about him being insistent somehow.

Was he this way before? All I seem to recall is me begging for his attention, me feasting on the tiny scraps of his laidback love, though that’s not what I’m thinking about right now. Instead I find myself wondering just what his expectations were for this little get-together.

Everyone pledging undying sexual allegiance to him, maybe?

‘No, I was just…’ I start, but then I stop. Mainly because the words coming to my lips were definitely going to be about Cameron, and they were going to be something along the lines of Did Cameron ever talk to you about my stories? About maybe liking them a whole huge lot? And I realise I don’t want that. I don’t want Wade to know what I saw, or how I felt about it, or anything of the kind.

Which is weird, when you really think about it.

‘Nothing. I guess your story last night really threw me for a loop,’ I finish, though it’s no better than what I was going to say, in all honesty. It sounds as though I’m talking about something else altogether, and when he grins I know he’s thinking that.

‘Yeah?’ he says and I brace myself. I know what’s coming. Or at least I kind of do until he does it, until he gets right up close to me suddenly and breathes all of his hot breath on me and murmurs in that husky way of his. ‘Well I thought you were going to come to my room last night. And maybe if you had, I could have told you a story instead.’

Ugh. Ugh. When did he become this Master of Seduction type of guy? Was he always like this? Did I always like it? Because I’m liking it now even though I don’t want to, and my body feels all hot and my face feels all hot and this close up he’s so good looking and so wolfish. Predatory, I think, even though I always used to consider him gentle. Kind, and gentle.

‘Oh yeah? Is that the one about the amateur gymnasts in the middle of the night?’ I say, only I mean it to be confrontational and bolshy and it comes out like I’m flirting instead. Like I want him to lean even closer toward me and whisper in my ear about all the stories he just can’t wait to tell me.