For some reason, Logan blushes at my comment.
"Note to self, Logan likes to be called baby," Quaid teases, and Logan's blush deepens.
Holy crap!
He really does like to be called baby.
I erupt in laughter, but it's a nervous, turned-on kind of laughter, because I would have no problem calling Logan "baby" if given the chance. I look over and see Carter lounging on one of our chairs. He has sunglasses on, so I can't see his eyes, but I would say for certain that he's watching us. Quaid sees where I'm looking and smacks my ass.
"Go talk to the loner if you must, princess," he comments, and I stick my tongue out at him before venturing back towards the beach.
Apparently, I've reverted to being a teenager again.
"Hi," I comment lamely as I stand in front of Carter's beach chair, shivering slightly from the breeze playing off my soaking wet body.
The bastard pushes his sunglasses up and then just takes his fill of my body. I'm prepared for disgust, maybe rejection, but all I see is hunger.
I plop myself down into the seat next to him and cover myself with a towel before I do something crazy like jump him. He mercifully slides his sunglasses back down.
A waiter brings me a piña colada, and I sip it slowly as we sit there in silence. Carter's fussing around on his phone, while I'm watching the guys jump around in the waves. They both rented boogie boards, and I'm having fun watching them toss themselves at the mercy of the waves. The wipeouts are epic.
"Do you think you'll ever forgive me?" I blurt out, watching Carter's expression out of the corner of my eye.
"You want to talk about this now?" he responds immediately.
The way he says it is so bland that I irrationally want to rip his sunglasses off and shake him just to get a reaction. How can I constantly feel on the edge of falling apart, and he doesn't even act affected at all?
Never mind his reaction to my body a second ago, the tone in his voice and his general body language is like I imagined it all.
"Lately, I’ve become a big believer in not wasting time," I tell him defiantly. Especially when I’m running out of it, I add to myself.
He just stares at me, or at least it feels like he's staring at me, since I still can't see his eyes through his dark lenses. He finally lets out an exaggerated sigh, like I'm inconveniencing him. For some reason, that just makes me feel more out of control. A little part of me reminds myself that my emotions are probably heightened because of the tumor and not because Carter has done anything specifically, but of course I ignore it.
"You haven't apologized," he finally mumbles, which catches me totally off track.
Apologize?
It’s almost comical to me that they don't know how hard it had been for me to walk away. How hard it had been to keep myself away. It was such a prominent theme in my head that it felt like everyone should know. I'd thought about begging for forgiveness a million times over the years. I'd thought about begging them to come find me, to love me, to fix me.
In the beginning, sometimes at night, it would get so hard to keep myself from calling them that I would give my dorm roommate in college my phone and ask her to keep it for the night. I would huddle up in my covers and cry, repeating the reasons why I could never have them again over and over again in my head, so that by the time the sun rose in the sky, I was strong enough to not call.
That first year, I would have to make lists of what I was going to accomplish that day. And I couldn't deviate at all, or I would be lost in memories of them and all my regrets.
It was the most excruciating pain I have ever felt, and that’s saying something, since my life was never an easy one. I honestly didn't think I would live through it. I almost didn't.
As the years passed, I would have less moments where I was out of control. It became easier to keep my mind occupied from the ghosts of the past. But then I would hear a song, or someone would say something that only the loves of my life would say, and I would be immediately transported back to that desperate heartbroken