Page 18 of Square Waves (Big Fan #2)

XVI

“Traffic’s clearing up, but it’s still kind of gnarly,” Leon reports from Google Maps after we pay.

“We could take a walk? The beach isn’t far, right?”

“About five minutes from here.”

“Let’s go see the water. And then we can head back.”

We’re off without another word, and when we get to the sand, it’s fairly quiet—a handful of families with kids playing and surfers starting or ending a session. There’s a lineup of them out past the break, their wetsuits making them look sleek and dark like seals.

Leon stares longingly in their direction. “Man, I wish I’d brought a board. Or even just my trunks.”

“Isn’t the water freezing?”

Leon raises an eyebrow at me. Then he starts toeing off his sneakers. He reaches down to pull off his socks before I truly grasp what he’s about to do.

“You are not.”

“I can swim in my underwear. I don’t think anyone here will be, like, offended.”

I survey to see if anyone’s looking at us. They aren’t. But this still feels dicey. The day has warmed up, but it can’t be above seventy-five.

“You’re going to sit in the car the whole way back in wet boxers?” I ask, eyebrows arched.

“I’ll take them off.”

He sounds completely innocent, but still, my breath catches in my throat as I imagine one less layer of fabric between us.

How easy to let my hand drift over to his thighs and then between them.

“Come on, Cassidy. You’re on this coast for, what, another week?

And you’re not gonna at least touch the Pacific? ”

I jog a few steps over to where the tide is coming in, all foam. I dip my fingers in. I was right; it’s frigid. I dash back to flick the seawater in Leon’s face.

He just laughs and shakes his head. Like we’re playing. Like I just made the first move in a game.

When I realize his hands are at his belt, my throat goes dry. Images from that night have taunted me for the last two weeks, but this is like one of them coming to life before my eyes. Every fantasy I’ve had since is suddenly way too close, too clear.

When I pull my shirt off over my head, I’m partially trying to distract myself.

Well, distract myself and also make sure that I don’t let Leon win at anything.

Even if that thing is a polar plunge for no good reason.

My boy shorts can probably pass for bikini bottoms, my bralette is mostly made of lace, but like Leon said, no one’s paying enough attention to take offense.

“The trick is to just get in before you have time to think about it,” he says, gaze locked on the waves. “Don’t psych yourself out. Just... run. On three. You ready?”

“I’m not!”

He gives me a teasing grin and starts to count us down anyway. “One.”

I cannot believe I’m doing this.

“Two.”

I really, seriously cannot believe that I’m about to do this. In order to what? Prove a point? Divert my attention from the miles of tan skin next to me, the muscles in Leon’s thighs tensing in anticipation, the musk–salt–Old Spice scent of him that I’ve been hung up on ever since—

“Three,” Leon calls, and I run.

The water is sharp against my toes, my calves, my thighs.

The tide rushes around me, and I almost stall, but Leon is pulling ahead of me, diving in, getting swallowed by a wave, so I push forward and follow.

His timing is perfect: The current rushes over us, and when I emerge on the other side, I’m breathless with exhilaration.

“What the fuck!” I yell in his general direction.

Leon’s hair is plastered back from his face. He looks younger. More like the boy I used to know. “Fuck yes!” he yells.

“This is insane!!”

“Feels good though, right?”

I have to admit that it kind of... does. The water is so buoyant that I barely have to tread to stay afloat. Sunlight glints off each ripple, silver dancing against the dark.

“Another wave is coming,” Leon says. “Swim out a little bit. We want to get under it.”

I follow his lead: duck when he tells me to duck, jump when he tells me to jump.

Part of the reason I’ve never loved the beach is because I don’t really know how to navigate the ocean.

But he gets us out past the break, where it’s calm, where we can just bob like corks.

My fingers are going numb at the tips, and yet.

.. I have to admit that I haven’t been this joyful, this present, in a long time.

It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m not in an office.

I’m not cocooned in my bed, working from home, doing camera-off Zooms; I’m not stressing about a budget or a presentation or my stupid future. I’m half naked and completely free.

Leon is laughing, and I realize I’m laughing too. At nothing. At everything. At how utterly absurd it is that we’re here at all, let alone together.

Being out here with him almost feels like lying next to each other in the dark: cloaked by anonymity, wrapped in something that’s as soothing as it is scary. And I realize: It’s time for a confession of my own.

“I wanted you to think I was cool!” I yell out.

“What?”

“In high school. You wanted me to be impressed by you. I wanted you to think I was cool.”

Leon dips under the waves for a moment, and I can’t see how his face responds. When he emerges, he shakes his head. “What a pair of dorks.”

“Ha. Like anything’s changed since then.”

“Oh, I can think of a couple of things.”

Something brushes against my wrist in the water, and I brace for a jellyfish or a gross patch of seaweed. But then I realize that it’s Leon’s hand, reaching for me. He threads his fingers through mine. Squeezes.

Then he swims away, toward the shimmering horizon. I watch the muscles in his back move. He isn’t gym-built like some of the guys I’ve been with; instead, he’s graceful, like he knows every inch of himself. Like his body is meant to be put to use.

“I’m getting out,” I call after him. “I can’t feel my toes anymore.”

“Wimp!” Leon responds, but he’s only a few waves behind me, and we wash up on shore at almost the same time.

Our underwear seemed passable as bathing suits before we got wet. Now the cotton is clinging to Leon’s hips and ass and outlining his dick in high definition. As cold as it was out there, it doesn’t seem to have affected him much.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asks.

“No, no it wasn’t.” I mean it, but I’m distracted.

Leon looks away from me. I wonder if he noticed—how could he not?

—the way my nipples are pressing against the thin lace of my bra.

A shiver ripples through me at the idea of his attention there.

His hands there. His mouth there. I feel a tug in the lowest part of my stomach, and I realize I am wet everywhere.

“There’s probably a blanket in the back of the car,” I say. “My dad is big on disaster preparedness.”

“Mmmm.” Leon studies me as if trying to assess me for the next steps.

Beads of water slide down my ribs, along my hips, between my legs, and he appears to be closely tracking their movement.

The white noise of the waves crashing around us drowns out everything else and makes it hard to remember we’re not alone.

His tongue swipes against his bottom lip.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt this observed—or this needy.

Channeling my best Bond girl, I pull my hair off my neck and twist it into a rope, wringing it out.

That seems to bring Leon back to himself. “Yeah,” he says. “Car. Let’s do that.”

We walk back, barefoot and dripping, with our clothes bundled in our hands.

I’m torturously aware of the precise distance between Leon’s body and mine.

If I thought I was turned on that first night when he pressed his knee against mine, I don’t know what I am now.

I’m like a firework, waiting for the briefest touch of a match to set me off.

In the trunk of the car, we find a full emergency kit with water, energy bars, a radio, a flashlight, and a fleece blanket that doubles as a towel. Leon flings it around me like a cape, rubbing it up and down my shoulders.

“Damn, what a gentleman.”

He rolls his eyes. “It was my idea for us to go into the water.”

When I look up, I realize how close our faces are. “It was fun,” I say.

“It was.” Leon’s hands have slowed. One drifts from my shoulder to the bare skin of my collarbone. He tugs on a lock of damp hair, and my inhale catches in my throat. “I can’t believe I’m saying this. But it’s been fun hanging out with you, Cass.”

I can’t help prodding a little bit. “How much fun?”

“Sometimes too fun. And I think maybe I’m forgetting—what we are to each other.”

“What are we?”

He could step away. Break the moment. Make a joke.

I could too. But I don’t.

“High school rivals,” he says. “Enemies.”

“Former enemies. I thought we landed on friends.”

“Right. Friends.” Leon’s been holding the blanket up; now he lets it drop. One hand comes to rest on the crest of my hip, and I feel the contact like a brand.

He helped us navigate in the water, and I can handle it here on land. “We’re also—” I keep shifting closer, closer, until his thigh is sliding between mine. I lock eyes with him. “We also fucked, that one time.”

“We did.” I’m close enough now to feel Leon’s ribs move when he inhales. “I haven’t forgotten,” he murmurs. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. How good you felt. How hot you looked bent over in my bed. How much I want to do it again.”

The hand that’s pressed against my hip squeezes, a possessive little clench. I shudder. Bury my face in his neck. “God.”

“And I think—” He rolls his hips into me, and my legs spread automatically, making space where I want him. “Sometimes I think you want the same. But I’m not sure. And I don’t want to push. So I just keep... waiting. Trying to be friends with you until you tell me I can be something else.”

“It’s been excruciating,” I say. And then I kiss him.

As my mouth moves against his, I realize how much better each touch feels now that neither of us is fighting against anything.

Neither of us is spending energy maintaining a front.

I’m not half furious at myself like I was the first time; I’m not tipsy and exhausted and trying to hold back.

I have no idea what happens next between us, but I know I can stop pretending that this isn’t what I want.

He fumbles behind us, shoving the trunk closed so he can press me up against it.

I would laugh if I wasn’t so incredibly turned on.

Then we’re a blur of limbs: Leon’s hands on my waist, greedy, like he can’t get enough.

My legs wrapping around his hips, urging him closer, closer.

There’s almost nothing between us, and I’m panting into his chest.

It’s only the sound of a truck backing up a few blocks away—its steady beep, beep, beep —that forces me back to myself.

Public sex has never been my thing, but I’m so aching and empty right now that it’s hard to remember that we are in public.

I pull away from Leon, trying to catch my breath.

His eyes are hazy, his mouth swollen; I’m sure I’m the same.

“We should...” I sigh. “Not do this here.”

“You’re probably right.” He stands straighter, but then he dips his head to nip each of my nipples through the salt-soaked fabric of my bra.

“You have no self-control.”

He grins up at me, self-satisfied. “Never have.”

For a moment, I consider just pressing his hand between my legs, the two of us getting me off together before we have to drive back.

It would be so simple to slide my underwear to the side, to guide his fingers to my swollen skin, hot against the damp chill.

I know how talented his hands are, how easy it would be for him to tip me over the edge.

But if there’s one thing I do not need at this point in my life, it’s a second sex scandal. So I disentangle myself from him. This time, Leon doesn’t pretend he’s not looking, and his stare lights me up everywhere.

He’s shameless when he reaches down to readjust himself, not that there’s really anywhere for him to go in his wet boxers. “You’re going to kill me,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to be cocky. “Yeah, well, what else is new?”