Sweet (True Believers #2)(50)
Author: Erin McCarthy

I could only imagine. “Before the whole throwing-up thing, I had a great time with you. Well, after you shoved that guy’s face into a garbage can of booze. Everything in between was a lot of fun.”

“Actually, I had fun at the bar with you, too. Next time let’s skip the frat party and go straight there.”

“Deal.” Relieved that not only had I not ruined our relationship, we seemed to have taken it to the next level, even without sex, I went into the bathroom and checked out the horror reflecting back at me in the mirror. Yep. Train wreck. My face was swollen and dry, mascara streaking down both cheeks. My hair was stringy and sticking up in the back. Chapped lips. Filthy, dirty feet and a scraped-up knee. Yep. Adorbs. That was me.

I didn’t even bother to brush my hair or wash my face. I figured everyone has already seen me looking like ass. I used the toilet and padded back out to the living room, grabbing the yogurt and coffee. I could hear the guys all out on the back patio and I wanted to sit with them. The sun might feel good. Wincing when I opened the door and the sun hit me in the eyes, I shuffled over to the table and plopped down next to Riley.

Tyler was on the other side and he took one look at me and said, “Wow. Good morning, pretty girl.”

“I hate you,” I said.

He laughed. But he did call out to his brother, “Hey, Easton, go grab your sunglasses for Jess. She needs them.”

Easton went streaking by.

“That kid never walks, does he?” I said, scooping up some of the yogurt and forcing it into my mouth, even when I thought I might gag.

“Nope.”

Riley was straddling the bench sideways, and he reached out and started rubbing my shoulders, easing the drunken knots out of them.

“Oh my God, that feels so good.”

Easton came back and flung a pair of plastic sunglasses on the table before going back into the yard shirtless to poke at something in the corner with a stick. “Thank you,” I called after him.

Then I opened them and realized they were twin dollar signs. Nice. I put them on my face and Tyler and Riley both started laughing.

“Wow, big pimpin’, Jess.” Riley took a sip from my coffee.

“It does help with the glare,” I said. “I can’t really look any worse, so what’s the difference?”

“I think you look cute,” Riley said, reaching out and brushing his fingers over my lip.

Oh, my. Heart. Melt.

“Suck-up.” Tyler coughed into his hand.

I looked at Tyler, thinking about how happy he was with Rory, thinking about how I really liked him as a friend, but now, next to Riley, he was like, well, a brother to me. It was almost impossible to remember what it felt like to see and feel him naked, his body inside of me, and instead of shoving that away, ignoring it, I wanted to examine those feelings and memories. I wanted to be honest with myself.

It was a weird phrase “inside of me” when you thought about it, like as if sex were an invasion. An alien moving in your body. It didn’t factor in the emotional side of sex at all.

Because I knew in that capacity, no one had ever actually been inside me.

So if I knew then what I knew now, would I still have sex with Tyler? It was hard to remember the exact circumstances that had even led to it to the first time. So it was hard to say. Probably no. But I wasn’t exactly sure.

All I knew was certain was that like fabric fades in the sun, so had the physical part of my relationship with Tyler, and neither of us would ever miss it. In some ways, it was already like it had never happened.

Which gave me my answer. Because if you could look back on sex with someone and say it was like it had never happened, then it never should have in the first place.

It should matter.

So while it wasn’t regret I felt as the sun beat down on me on the patio and Tyler smoked me out with his ever-present cigarette, I knew that I was looking forward to me and Riley.

To a relationship that mattered.

Chapter Fifteen

“Don’t spoil them,” Riley told me as I let Jayden and Easton fill my convenience store basket with a variety of candy and soft drinks. Easton seemed to have a thing for grape soda, and how could I argue with that? He was a guy after my own heart.

“It’s not spoiling them to let them get something to take to the pool. I’m not going to just buy stuff for me and then eat and drink in front of them. That’s so rude.”

Riley eyed my basket. “Hangover food?”

“Yep.” There was chips, chips, and more chips in there. Plus Twizzlers and orange juice and grape soda for me in addition to Easton’s. Jayden had picked bottled ice tea, which struck me as seriously gross. You could see things floating in there.

I had showered at Riley’s house, then we had swung by my apartment and packed one of my two suitcases. It wasn’t awesome that I was paying rent on a place I was almost never going to be in, but whatever. The high cost of a relationship. But now I was in my yellow bikini, hoodie and shorts on it, fortunately wearing my own sunglasses, making our pit stop before the pool. I tossed two trashy magazines and a fashion one in the basket.

“Are you done?” he asked me, eyebrows raised.

“Can I get gum?” Jayden asked.

“No,” Riley told him. “You already have a drink and chips. Money doesn’t grow on trees, U.”

“It should,” was Jayden’s opinion on that.

I laughed. “Totally.”

When we got to the pool, I blinked. “Holy crap, there’s a ton of people here.”

Okay, I can admit that I had never been to a public pool before. Why would I? My parents had a pool and so did the country club my dad golfed at. But this was more seminaked bodies together in one place than at the last night we’d gone clubbing.

“It is Memorial Day weekend,” Riley said. “I’m not surprised it’s crowded.”

“Chair.” Tyler pointed to a free chaise and Easton darted off to claim it, his scrawny limbs allowing him to dodge and weave around other people. He dove onto it with a move worthy of professional wrestling.

“Impressive,” I said.

What was even more impressive was that all four of the Mann brothers agreed I should have the chair. I was touched to the bottom of my cynical heart. “Really?”

“Sleep off that hangover,” Tyler told me.

“Thanks, guys.” I spread out my towel and sat down, then set down the plastic bag with our haul. “Who wants their stuff?”

“I’m going in first,” Riley said. “I’m boiling.” He peeled off his shirt and I eyeballed those muscles and his tattoos.