Page 52 of This Could be Love

He shook the water out of his hair, and some of it flew in my direction.

“You’re saying you didn’t want to go surfing with Chip after turning me down for it being toorisky?” Snarky.

“That was just an excuse!”

“What was an excuse?”

“All that stuff about being too risky,” I mumbled, stepping from one foot to the other.

He looked confused, and I couldn’t blame him.

“I’d had a…dream. A really uncomfortable dream. Where…well, okay, no, it wasn’t uncomfortable at all, to be honest.” My cheeks began to glow. “But a bit…unsettling.”

“A nightmare?”

“Umm…no. Not a nightmare.”

He frowned.

“It was…a different kind of dream,” I blurted out. “Doesn’t matter. In any event, it was like that dream was becoming real, and that made me panic.”

Unable to follow, he held up his hands. “Sorry. Don’t get it.”

“It’s super embarrassing.”

“What?”

I procrastinated, even though I knew I wouldn’t be getting out of it.

“In my dream, you and I went surfing.” I looked up at him, my eyes half-closed. “And then something…happened.”

“Happened,” he repeated, distracted for a second by another surfer coming out of the water behind him and giving him the shaka sign.

“Between you and me,” I croaked once he was looking at me again.

For a few seconds he still didn’t understand. Then realization flickered across his face. “Oh!” His eyes grew wide.

“We didn’t… I mean, it wasn’t…” I buried my face in my hands. “This really is so totally embarrassing.”

“Hey…not half as embarrassing as my little jealousy attack there, if that’s any consolation.”

I peeked through my fingers. “Jealousy attack?”

“What wouldyoucall it?” He rubbed his nose, and a few grains of sand stuck to his wet skin. “I’m a total idiot.”

“No, you’re not. I mean, it looked like I just didn’t want to go surfing withyou.”

“Yeah, but after last night… Sorry,” he said, and it sounded so sincere that I didn’t want to take the discussion any farther.

Instead, I got an idea. “On a scale of one to ten, how wiped out are you?”

“Umm…no idea. Seven?”

“Does that mean you’d still be up for giving a total newbie her first surf lesson?”

His face brightened. “I think that seven just became a four.”

Chapter 22