Starlight (Peaches Monroe #2)(35)
Author: Mimi Strong

“You could come to Italy.”

“Hah!”

He frowned, glancing over at me with a glowering look. “Fine, there’s no deal yet, but they haven’t said no, either.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you’d get the job. That was just my honest reaction to the idea. I mean… Italy? What would a flight out of Washington even cost? Never mind. We’ve had a nice day, Keith. Let’s keep having a nice day.”

“Sure.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, eventually falling into rhythm with the song on the radio.

We got back to the apartment building, and I felt heavy on the walk to his door. My feet were swelling in my shoes, the way they do if I eat a ton of salt and get too much sun. I still felt dirty, but I did not feel sexy.

Inside the apartment, Keith grabbed two towels and said, “Swim time.”

I just wanted to lounge around with my phone, texting Shayla, but I stripped down to my underwear and followed him to the pool.

Once in the cool water, weightless again, I started to smile.

“What are you grinning about?” Keith asked, paddling around me with a pool noodle wrapped under his armpits.

“Just happy.” I stared up at the sky, which was turning navy blue as the sun disappeared. “Do you use this pool every night?”

“Used to. With Tabitha, or with my sister. The three of us typically had the place to ourselves. We used to play this game…” He paused, looking troubled. “Never mind.”

I rolled onto my back in the water, the other pool noodle stretched across my upper back to make floating easy. Keith was paddling with his back to me, and I hooked my feet under his armpits to tag along like a caboose.

“What happened with you guys?” I asked.

He continued to paddle, towing me with him. “I don’t get why people are always so curious about breakups. What happened doesn’t matter. If I tell you Tabitha went with her cousins to a party in Las Vegas and slept with her ex-boyfriend, I don’t know what good that accomplishes.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He kept paddling, his back to me. “Nobody does shit with sorry. Sorry and a dollar will buy you four quarters.”

I wiggled my toes, which were still hooked under Keith’s armpits. “Some people say talking about the bad stuff helps. Every time you visit a bad memory, you get to re-frame it in a new light.”

He threw his arms up and submerged again, slipping away from me. A few seconds later, he came up near the edge of the pool.

Grinning, his dark brown eyes mischievous, he said, “That sounds like a lot of new age talk coming from the person who says she’s not into meditation.”

“I went to therapy. Therapy isn’t new age talk.” I splashed water his way.

“Why’d you go to therapy?” He swam toward me, looking shark-like.

I put my foot on his chest, keeping him away, but he leaned down to kiss the top of my foot and stroke my legs, massaging my calf.

“That feels so good,” I said.

He quirked his eyebrow sexily, then grabbed my other leg and propped both feet on his broad, muscular chest.

“Why’d you go to therapy?” he asked more insistently.

I floated back on the water, closing my eyes. “Have you ever been in a sensory deprivation tank? They’re full of saltwater, so you float more easily. Sounds kind of fun, but also terrifying.”

He rubbed his hands slowly all the way up and down my legs, making them feel about a mile long, and really sexy.

“You’re avoiding my question,” he said, his voice low and husky.

“I kinda freaked out over some stuff at college and had to drop out. My parents thought I was fine, but my family doctor referred me to a therapist.”

He squeezed my calves and then the backs of my thighs, making me shiver, even though I wasn’t cold.

“I used to get really worked up,” I said. “I’d get so worried about things that didn’t matter, and I’d be paralyzed with fear. I’d miss exams and deadlines for papers. My marks were bad, and that only made it worse.”

“Then you turned to drugs.”

“No, I did not.” I laughed at the idea. “Who knows. Maybe the right drugs would have helped, and I’d have a degree right about now.”

“Trust me on this one, drugs would not have helped.”

I opened my eyes and tilted my head to look at him. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Keith. I totally forgot, and I’m being so insensitive.”

“Cocaine is great for dieting. But you didn’t hear it from me. Expensive, though. I mean, you think Jenny Craig is pricey, with having to buy all the special meals from them. Coke is way more expensive.”

“Jenny Craig destroys lives, though.”

He laughed at my joke, then pulled my feet away from each other and pulled me against him. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

“Tell me more about your struggles with Jenny Craig addiction,” he said. “Is there a support group? Do you meet in a church basement three nights a week to talk about your struggles with Jenny Craig and drink bad coffee?”

“Not anymore. I’ve been three years clean.”

He grinned and ran his palms up and down my back as he stared into my eyes. The sky was darker than the pool now, which was lit by recessed lights a foot under the water line. The pool around our bodies was dark blue and green, with tiny highlights of yellow tiles glinting like precious metals.

Keith asked, “Do you believe in free will?”

“I dropped out of college before getting heavy into philosophy.”

“You don’t need a degree to have thoughts.”

“I’ve read about these identical twin studies, and I think a lot of our fate is predetermined, just by how we are.”

“Me, too.”

“And here we are. So it must be fate.”

“Everything in our lives has led us here,” Keith said. “Bad habits, bad decisions, bad temper.”

“I don’t have a bad temper.”

“Excuse me, Peaches Monroe, have you met yourself? Yesterday I flushed the toilet while you were in the shower, turning your water cold, and you whipped your face around the shower curtain like you were going to take my toothbrush, turn it into a prison shiv, and stab me repeatedly. And that was just for a small water temperature infraction.”

“A small temperature infraction? Are you kidding me? Your shower barely spits out water, then suddenly there’s a fire hose pinning me to the tiles. I only looked around the shower curtain to get some warning about what plague was coming next.”