Out of My League - Sarah Sutton Page 0,37
signed up for the first round?”
“Some girl named Eloise stepped in for me. I’m not feeling too great tonight.”
It didn’t take me long to realize why the name sounded familiar. Even from the corner of my eye, I saw Edith stiffen, and her eyes narrowed. “Eloise Xiang? Tall, dark hair?”
“Uh, I didn’t catch her last name, but yeah, she was tall. She’s from Greenville, I think.”
Edith grabbed Jewel’s beach blanket, the one Jewel clung to. “Come on.”
Jewel glanced back at me. “But Sophia—”
“I’ll catch up,” I told her, but Edith already dragged her away toward the volleyball net, out of earshot. I turned back to the bare-chested Walsh, forcing my gaze up to his eyes and totally not on all that golden skin. “Hey.”
“We’ve already done that part,” Walsh teased, teeth biting at his smile.
I glanced at where a bead of water dripped from his hair onto his collarbone, tracing a line across his tanned skin. “Why are you all wet?”
“Jumped in the water to cool off,” he said with a slight chuckle, like duh. “You know, I’m going to be honest. I’m surprised you wanted to come to this.”
“Why?” I raised an eyebrow at him, slightly offended. “Is that why you didn’t ask me to come? You didn’t think I’d be fun?”
Walsh reached out and wrapped his arms around me, loosely at my waist. In our time together, I’d come to learn what the sudden embrace meant. He sees someone.
This time, though, I didn’t have to force myself to relax against his chest. My body did that all on its own.
“I didn’t ask you because I wasn’t really feeling it tonight myself. I’m not much of a partier.”
“Walsh Hunter, the introvert?” I teased, reaching up and tracing my free hand down the side of his neck. Whoa, why am I touching him like this? His pulse fluttered underneath my skin, and the feel of his heartbeat made this moment turn warmer, feeling like someone dialed up the temperature. “You never answered my question earlier. Why didn’t you play tonight?”
Walsh smiled a little, looking down at me with a gaze that could’ve made any person weak in the knees. “Just tired,” he said, and then changed the subject. “Is that a swimsuit I see underneath that shirt?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Are you seriously trying to look through my shirt?”
His grin split wider, and he looked off to the side. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought he was blushing. “I’m not—no. No.”
Teasing him like that sent something of a thrill down my spine, especially when I was so perfectly in his arms. My feet were in the soft sand, a slushy in my hand, and I was pressed against Walsh’s naked chest. I couldn’t tell if it was a very good world I’d been thrown into or a very bad one.
I took a drink from my slushy to cool down my insides, the cool blue-raspberry liquid covering my tongue. Walsh watched where the straw stuck in my mouth. “What do you think? Too syrupy?”
All at once, the realization hit me. He just drank from this. His mouth was just on this.
“I don’t have cooties, I swear,” Walsh chuckled as if reading my thoughts, gaze shifting toward the volleyball net. “You showed up with Jewel, huh?”
“She found me in the slushy line. She wanted us to sit together.” I held my cup between us, between his bare chest and my face, a small barrier that gave me a semblance of clarity. “That’s weird, right?”
“That your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend wants to sit by you?” He lifted a bare shoulder. “Does she know that he cheated on you with her?”
I looked over to where Jewel now sat in the sand, Edith on the blanket next to her. Jewel had her hands in her lap and her sunglasses on, a relaxed smile on her face. Edith was just the opposite, strung tight, arms crossed.
“I don’t know. I doubt Scott told her the truth. He probably just told her I was a friend.”
“She seems nice.”
Yeah, she did. So what’s a nice girl like her doing with a guy like Scott? I looked up at Walsh. “I didn’t know you played volleyball.”
“Oh, I don’t. Not well, anyway, which is why I backed out. Ryan had signed me up.”
That made sense. Seemed like Ryan liked to push Walsh out of his comfort zone.
I backed up out of Walsh’s embrace and ran my tongue over my lips, making sure there was no trace of syrupy slushy