Two Truths & a Lime (The Love Game #3) - Elizabeth Hayley Page 0,80
approached.
“Thanks. I was about to say the same to you.”
In my heels, I didn’t have to lean up too much to kiss him. And as I admired the top of his tan chest and let my gaze trail down his body to where his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, I realized I’d developed quite a forearm fetish this summer. The freckles that ghosted his skin had darkened a little from the sun, and the hair, which had never been that dark to begin with, had lightened to blond.
“Are you petting my arm?” he asked with a laugh.
I hadn’t noticed I’d actually been stroking him with my thumb as I held his wrist, but I wasn’t self-conscious about it.
“It seems that I am,” I admitted. “I can’t help it. I always find new parts of you I wanna touch.”
“Well, don’t touch me too much because then we’ll never leave.”
I almost told him that was completely fine with me, but I knew he’d been planning something, and I was excited to find out what it was. So I slid my hand into his and smiled at him so he could lead the way.
“Brody let you borrow his car for the night?” I asked when he used the fob to unlock it.
“Yeah. I think he’s hanging out at the pool with Aamee and grilling. It didn’t take much convincing. It gives him a reason to stay at our apartment for the night.” He raised his eyebrows as he opened the door for me. “He just told me not to fuck in it.”
“Ew.”
“That’s what I said. God only knows what Brody’s done in this car. Or who. There’s no way we’re letting our bare skin touch any of the surfaces.”
Not only that, but my brother’s car usually had crumbs on the seats and a smell that no one could quite identify. But when I slid into the seat, I noticed I didn’t have to brush anything off the fabric.
“Did you clean it?”
“Of course. Washed, vacuumed. I even aired it out for a while and got some kind of essential oil air freshener thing so it doesn’t smell like Fritos anymore,” he said, starting up the car and pulling out of the space.
“Fancy,” I teased, but there was no sarcasm to it. Drew had clearly put a lot of thought into whatever we were doing, starting with how we were getting there. It made me even more excited to see what he had planned.
We drove and sang along to whatever came on the radio, from Zac Brown to Lizzo and everything in between. It began as something we did together but quickly turned into a competition, though neither of us actually verbalized it. Somehow we just knew.
Drew knew more songs than I did, which was saying something since Taylor and I had spent most of our childhood and teenage years doing this exact same thing. I still made it a habit to learn any song I liked, but when Drew busted out with some Mariah Carey song I’d never even heard before, I knew I’d been schooled.
Eventually he put on a playlist he called “Summer Jams,” which was mostly a mix of reggae and some modern country, and we put the windows down a bit. It was a nice night, but I didn’t want to mess my hair up completely. When we’d been gone about an hour, I couldn’t help myself.
“Are we there yet?”
He stopped drumming on the wheel and looked over at me. “I’m surprised it took you that long.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
It seemed like he was debating whether to divulge any part of the night to me before it really began, but eventually he decided against it.
“Ten minutes,” he said.
We were headed toward the coast, but I had no idea why or where our actual destination was. I hadn’t been to the beach in almost a year, and now that we were close, I could smell the saltwater in the air.
Usually I was home in the summer, which meant that the drive to the coast was significantly longer, and this summer had been so busy with my internship and the Yard opening, it hadn’t occurred to me to plan even a day trip.
“We need to plan a beach day,” I told Drew. “The pool at the apartment’s great, but I miss the sand and looking out at the ocean. Some of my best memories were going to my grandparents’ beach house as a kid.”