Page 5 of This Could be Love

I dug around in my memory, but there was nothing to hold onto. “And then?”

“Well, the first thing I did was get you out of the sun.” Seeing my quizzical glance, he added, “You were right in front of my door.”

“Oh.” I cast my gaze across the terrace once more.

“How’re you feeling? You want me to call you a doctor?”

I waved my hand. “You were right. I simply didn’t drink enough.”

He frowned.

“I heard you on the phone,” I explained with a smile.

“Ah.” He smiled, and for a second time I noticed how inconceivably blue his eyes were. “That was my sister, Laurie. I asked her to come over because…”

“You’ve got an important appointment and can’t just leave me here.”

“Exactly.” He grinned and glanced at his watch. “She should be here any minute. So…maybe you could pretend to be asleep or something? Otherwise, I’ll get an earful about having screwed up her hairdresser’s appointment for nothing.”

Seeing my puzzled look, he laughed. “That was a joke.”

“Oh! Yeah. Of course.” I shook my head embarrassedly and emptied my glass.

“She’s probably thankful for it. She wasn’t all that convinced by the whole bangs thing.” He pointed to my glass. “Want some more?”

I shook my head. “I should get going.”

He nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Sorry for this.” I got up. More sand trickled off my clothes onto the ground. I looked at him sheepishly. “And for that.”

He laughed. “Not a thing. This place needs to be swept again anyway.”

I noticed that we were about the same height, which allowed us to look directly into each other’s eyes.

“My name’s Vince, by the way.”

His smile created perfect dimples in his cheeks. My heart skipped a beat. That had never happened to me before. Especially not with some guy I’d only known for three minutes.

“Louisa,” I whispered. “Or Lou. As you prefer.”

“Lou,” he repeated slowly, as if wanting to test out the sound.

“Oh, a round of introductions!” A voice cut through the silence. “I’m just in time.”

Grinning, a girl my age strolled toward us. Unmistakably his sister. She had the exact same blue eyes. Otherwise, the two couldn’t have been more different. She was at least a head shorter than him and petite. Her pastel-yellow, oversize T-shirt was knotted at the waist, her denim shorts frayed. She wore her brown hair tied in a ponytail, from which a few strands had come loose, and her nose was sunburned. To my surprise, she didn’t seem the least bit stressed or annoyed. Instead, she greeted me with a good-humored “I’m Laurie,” and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d added, “and I like warm hugs!”

“Hi. I’m Louisa.” I knitted my brows, embarrassed. “I’m sorry about your appointment.”

She shrugged calmly. “You probably did me a favor. I wasn’t really sure it’d be my thing anyway.” She wrinkled her nose.

“In the end, she’s another one of those hairdressers where, after two hours of sitting in front of the mirror, you still look like you just got out of bed.” She quickly glanced at Vince and narrowed her eyes. “What are you still doing here? Shouldn’t you already havebeen long gone for thatsuper importantappointment of yours? The one I had to dropminefor?”

“Uh…well”—he pointed his thumb at me—“you just thankedherfor exactly that.”

“What Isaidwas that I wasn’t all that sure about the bangs.”

For the first time I noticed the small gap between her upper incisors. It made her face look sweet.