Page 65 of All These Beautiful Strangers

Alistair was the most difficult member of Teddy’s family to read. He had been kind and charming at the charity ball, easy to talk to. He’d been exactly the way Jake had described him to me years ago when we’d sat in our tree house above Langely Lake and he’d spread out his yearbook on the plywood boards and told me about his friends, pointing to their pictures. I remembered Alistair’s portrait—his light blond hair and ice-blue eyes; he was quite handsome and striking in his school blazer. There was something haughty in the way he looked out at you, the tilt of his chin. I almost hadn’t believed it when Jake had told me Alistair was one of his first friends at Knollwood, how Alistair had taken him under his wing in tennis. But the other night, Alistair had barely looked at me when we were playing Two Truths and a Lie, and tonight at dinner, he’d ignored me. I didn’t understand what I could have done or said to put him off.

“You said you used to swim in high school?” Alistair asked.

I was surprised he’d been paying attention.

“I won state champion in breaststroke,” I corrected him.

Alistair whistled. “I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of greatness.”

I bit my lip and sent a spray of water in his direction.

He laughed and stood.

“I’ll race you to the other end,” he said. He pulled his shirt off over his head, revealing his flat muscled abs. I looked away as his hands moved to his belt buckle. “Let’s make it interesting. Let’s wager something.”

“Why does everything in your family have to be a competition?” I asked, half joking.

“Where’s the fun if you don’t stand to lose something?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said. An idea had dawned on me. “If I win, you have to trade me one of the gifts you got for your mom—a good one. And you can give her my coffee table book instead.”

“A coffee table book?” Alistair teased. “You drive a hard bargain.”

He slid into the water next to me in his boxers.

“All right,” he said. He exhaled deeply, adjusting to the cool temperature of the pool. “And if I win,” he said, “I’m going to kiss you.”

I couldn’t tell by the way he said it if he was joking, if I was supposed to laugh.

“You’re going to kiss me?” I said, waiting for the punch line.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I want to.”

“You shouldn’t want to.” It was the only thing I could think to say.

“And you shouldn’t make a wager you don’t intend to win,” Alistair said. “Or don’t you think you can beat me?”

He had that haughty look in his eye—the same one I recognized from that old yearbook photo. I narrowed my eyes at him.

“On the count of three, then,” I said, lowering my goggles onto my nose. “One, two, three.”

I pushed off hard from the wall. I was a little tired from all the laps I’d swum, but I had the advantage of being warmed up, while Alistair was going cold into a full sprint. I propelled myself forward as fast as I could, my breath in hot short gasps. In my peripheral vision, I could see Alistair keeping pace with me. My strokes were faster, but he had the advantage of height. He took one stroke for my every two. At the last moment, he reached out and tagged the wall a half second before me.

I stood. We were in the shallow end now. I was breathing hard, my breaths racking my body. Next to me, Alistair appeared winded, too. Smug, but winded.

“You’re faster than I thought you’d be,” he said.

“Not fast enough, unfortunately,” I said.

When we’d both caught our breath, Alistair scooted closer to me along the wall so that we were almost nose-to-nose. He looked at me. He had blue eyes, just like his brother, but there was something different about them—darker, colder. While Teddy’s eyes were like a bright cloudless summer day, Alistair’s were like the Arctic Sea. He leaned into me, and at the last moment, I turned my head. I felt the stubble on his jaw as his lips grazed my cheek.

When he pulled back, anger flashed in his eyes.

“That wasn’t a kiss,” Alistair said.