Dear Adam, page 3
I frown, wondering why she only hates me and return my attention to my phone. “I’ll let you all go. Send me pics of the good stuff, Adam!”
I hang up, wondering why I’m imagining another shirtless picture of Levi coming through my phone. When I said the good stuff, I meant the beaches, the scenery, the food. Definitely not shirtless Levi.
I shake my head to clear my mind and turn to Emma. She’s already grabbed a vase from the shelf and is making five large arrangements, all with daisies, poppies, and sunflowers spilling out.
“Did you say we had some orders come through the website last night?” I ask.
“If by some, you mean thirty-two, then yes,” she replies, a smile playing at her lips. She tosses me an apron. “You have a little bit of…drool, right at the corner of your lip.” She narrows her eyes and wipes at her own mouth to direct me where to go. I wipe furiously until she busts out laughing. “Did Alyson Bloomingdale’s crush on her brother’s best friend never go away?”
“What? No!” I say, turning from her so she can’t see the blush spread across my cheeks. I tie the apron on and get to work on the wildflower arrangements beside her.
“Remember all those nights we’d lie in bed and you’d practice your wedding vows to me? ‘I’ll love you forever and ever until the day I die, Lev-,’” Emma cuts off when I elbow her in the side.
“Sorry, I slipped,” I say when she side-eyes me.
Emma doesn’t say anything else, only smiles to herself. A moment later, though, she says, “Wow Aly. Are you nervous or something? What did you eat?”
I whirl around to find Pretzel, happily snoozing under the front table. One eye cracks open and an ear twitches. “Pretzel?” I ask, tone dripping with accusation.
The very tip of her tail wags in guilty confession.
That night, I’m lying in bed reading, Pretzel unfortunately right beside me, when my phone lights up and begins buzzing on my nightstand, alerting me of an incoming FaceTime call. It’s an unknown number, so I hit decline and settle back into the bed, not in the mood to chat about my car’s extended warranty. I crack open my novel again when it begins buzzing a second time. Annoyed, I swipe it open, ready to let whoever’s on the other end know my 1960s Bronco can’t exactly be warrantied.
“Aly!” Levi’s voice booms through the speaker and his face fills the screen. He’s holding the phone entirely too close and his cheeks are flushed.
“Levi?” I ask, pushing my glasses up into my hair. “What are you doing? Is Adam okay?”
Adam’s face fills the screen now and it looks equally as flushed. “I’m fine. I wanted to see Pretzel, and I forgot my phone,” he confides with sad eyes. “And for you to see how amazing this place is.” He switches the camera around to show a sandy beach bar with twinkling lights strung along the ceiling. It’s so beautiful I can't help but be a little jealous. Levi shifts the camera to point at the water, and the view of the glowing sun dipping lower into the turquoise waves is breathtaking.
“That’s beautiful,” I breathe. “It looks like y’all are having fun.”
Suddenly, the camera jerks and the screen goes dark. A few seconds later, Levi picks it up and uses the corner of his shirt to wipe the sand from the camera. I’m treated to the shortest, most decadent peek at his toned torso. I’m about to wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth when his face appears. “How have you been, Aly?”
Before I can answer, Adam comes into view with two very blonde, very pretty girls. “Levi, meet Olivia!” he says, taking the phone from him. An unrecognizable expression crosses Levi’s face before Adam whisper-screams into the speaker, “Bye sis!” as if trying to be as clear as possible that they are incredibly, one hundred percent single. As if the fact that we look exactly alike wasn’t a clear enough giveaway.
He ends the call, but not before I get one more glimpse of Olivia with her perfectly perfect blonde waves and juicy, pink, pouty lips, wrapping her perfectly painted red fingers around Levi’s bicep. He didn’t even get to see Pretzel.
I roll my eyes and pick up my book but give up three seconds later. How am I supposed to focus now? I look over at Pretzel and honestly, she looks annoyed that her man’s out with another woman. “Disgusting, right?” I ask and scratch behind her ears. She winks, which obviously means she’s agreeing with me.
I pick my phone up and toy with the idea of texting Levi, only to see if he’ll answer while he’s with her. I can’t think of anything witty enough, though, and I don’t want to look desperate. Plus, we haven’t talked in years. I have nothing to say to him other than, “When did you grow up to look like that? And can you please tell me what your tattoo is because I’ve only thought about it all night.” I know I’m just sleepy enough that anything could pop out of my mouth, which is exactly what I do not need.
Growing up, Adam never actually told me to stay away from his best friend, but he always made it pretty clear that he’d kill me if I so much as looked at Levi for more than two seconds.
For instance, one time we went out to celebrate after Adam and Levi’s soccer team won a championship. The ice cream shop was packed after the big win, and Adam went to the bathroom as soon as we got inside. There were only two spots open at the bar, so Levi and I awkwardly wedged our way in. We were forced to sit so close that my right knee brushed up against his left. I was secretly dying inside from being so close to the hottest guy at our high school, the guy that I only doodled about in my notebook during every single class.
The waitress, busy from the rush, had forgotten my milkshake. “Do you want to share mine?” Levi had asked, pushing it toward me.
I blushed at the thought of sharing the same straw. Did this mean he had a crush on me? I took a sip, letting the strawberry ice cream and whip cream dance around my tongue before swallowing. When I looked up, Levi’s eyes were trained on my bottom lip.
“You have a little bit of…here let me get it,” he murmured, gently brushing his thumb over a stray gob of whipped cream on my lip. When he pulled away, I bit the spot he had touched nervously.
“Congrats on your hat trick.” My breath hitched in my throat when he lazily dragged his eyes from my bottom lip to meet my gaze. Heat spread across my cheeks like a wildfire when he leaned in, resting a hand on my knee. Heat seared through my jeans, his touch electrifying.
His mouth was inches from mine, and all it would take was one little tilt of my head and we’d be—
“Did you guys order yet?”
Adam wedged himself between us, oblivious that he had interrupted what I’m pretty sure was about to be an amazing kiss with the boy of my dreams.
Once the seat next to me emptied, he literally pushed me off my stool and sat in my place, forcing me to move even farther from Levi. Now two seats down, Levi offered a half smile that only made my heart flip uncontrollably in my chest. I questioned whether he was really into me, or simply on an emotional high from winning the game.
From that day forward, Adam had an annoying habit of making sure Levi and I were never alone again.
Pretzel rolls over in her sleep and lets out a soft snore. She almost looks, dare I say, cute. I softly scratch her belly and pick up my phone again to text Emma.
Beach Sunday?
Almost immediately, a text pops up.
I thought you’d never ask.
I set my phone on the nightstand and snuggle deep into the covers. Pretzel curls up next to me. I’m beginning to think we’re bonding until she opens her sleepy eyes, gives me the most disgusted look as if she’s forgotten I’m not Adam in her sleep induced haze, and moves to the opposite end of the bed.
“I didn’t want to cuddle with you anyway,” I mutter.
Chapter three
Levi
The music is already blaring and the tiki torches lining the beach have already been lit at my favorite beach bar, though the sun is still a few hours from setting.
I say favorite like I actually go out a lot.
Spoiler, I don’t.
It’s not that I don’t want to go out. I’d love to unwind and maybe have a pretty girl hit on me every now and then. But by the time I’m done working, sometimes twelve-hour days, the last thing I want to do is go somewhere and look like a creeper sitting at the bar all by myself.
No Scrubs is playing, and I want more than anything to sing along with every word, but I clamp my mouth shut.
In high school, this was Aly’s favorite song so I was left with no choice but to memorize every word in hopes of one day impressing her. We just got off FaceTime with her, and I can’t stop myself from remembering how grown up she is. I’ve always thought she was pretty, but the ten years since we saw each other last have been very kind to her.
“I’ve got to move here,” Adam says, eyes wide, the dumbest smile plastered on his face.
He’s frothing at the mouth over the girls in California when I’d give anything to be back in southern belle territory. The girls here just don’t seem to have enough syllables in their words and balk at the idea of sweet tea.
“You mean you purposefully add calories into a drink?” Eliza, a girl I dated very briefly, asked when I ordered sweet tea one evening with dinner.
“We have unsweet tea but I’d be happy to bring you some sugar packets,” the waiter had offered.
“Maybe bring him some Stevia,” Eliza had suggested. “Less calories.”
“Stevia? Are you kidding me?” She thought I was joking and tilted her head back to laugh. It was like a little tinkle, and I knew it was fake because she was afraid to contort her face too much and risk screwing up her Botox results.
I was, in fact, not joking, and ended up telling our waiter to forget the tea and bring me a Coke instead. Everyone knows the proper way to make sweet tea is by adding the sugar in while it’s hot so it melts anyway. Otherwise, it’s just a sad excuse for sweet tea and frankly, disgusting.
Needless to say, Eliza and I did not last long.
While Adam is busy charming the two girls he just met, I sidle up to the bar and order a round of the local draft beer for me and Adam.
It must be a Hawaiian-themed night, because everyone either has a lei around their neck or—if they’re already really drunk—on their head.
A moment later, Adam joins me, and as if on cue, the bartender slides us our beers and throws us each a lei.
“Aly would love this place,” Adam says, taking in the disco ball hanging from the ceiling of the tiki hut, the open-air bar, and the waves crashing in the distance. “She loves themed parties.”
I try to keep my face neutral at the mention of Aly. All I can think about is her eyes, which are the perfect shade of blue. They’re not too blue like the fake contacts the girls here wear. They’re the exact color of the water in the Charleston Harbor that I miss so much, tinged with a little gray like the mist that hangs over it each morning. Her cheeks were pink, and her full, pouty lips formed an O of shock at finding me—not her brother—on the phone. It was enough to send me into a tailspin of thoughts that Adam would certainly kill me for having.
“Oh yeah?” I say, thinking of the crush I had on her back in high school. She was cute then, with her thick glasses, long ponytail, and tan legs for days. But now? Now, she’s drop dead gorgeous. How had I let Adam weasel his way into every attempt I had of being smooth with her that he could? “How is she?” I ask, finishing off my beer. Before I can even ask, the bartender, bless her heart, is already pouring me another.
I didn’t really get the chance to actually talk to her either of the times we called her today, so I’m hoping Adam takes my curiosity as more friendly than desperate for any tidbit of information about her I can get.
“She’s good,” he answers skeptically.
“That’s great,” I say. “She looks fantastic. Who is she seeing these days?”
I know I’m pushing my limits, but one beer has me thinking that doors that have always been shut are suddenly wide open.
Adam doesn’t answer right away, and instantly I panic. He knows. He knows I have inappropriate thoughts about his sister.
“She’s really hit her stride with the flower shop,” he says, and I can tell how proud he is of her. I wait for him to say more but when he doesn’t, I point to a couple seats that just opened up at the bar. We move over to them and the bartender slides us two more glasses. I ignore this one and instead push it to the guy next to me. He happily takes it and moves off toward the dance floor.
Adam and I stay at the bar catching up until Adam’s eyes glaze over and his words start to slur. He’s telling me a story about Pretzel when he stops abruptly and says, “Oh my gosh. Could you imagine if your German Shepherd had puppies with my Weiner Dog? We’d have… Weiner Shepherds.” Adam’s already red face deepens even more crimson as his laughter fills the small space between us.
“Right. Weiner Shepherds,” I echo dryly, aware that maybe we should be getting home sooner rather than later. Adam’s still chuckling, so amused at his joke that would make middle school boys everywhere laugh too.
Then, the girls from earlier find us at the bar, and I groan. I just know Aly got the complete wrong idea earlier when whatever-her-name-is had her hand wrapped possessively around my bicep.
Adam’s already headed to the makeshift dance floor in the sand, which is illuminated by hundreds of Edison lights. This girl is tugging on my arm, and I have no choice but to follow. She wraps her arms around my neck and presses herself against me.
You know how when you’re holding someone, and they fit perfectly against you? Like how I can tuck my mom perfectly under my chin, or a baby fits perfectly in the cradle of its mother’s arms?
That doesn’t happen here. Amelia’s body just doesn’t conform to mine.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she whispers in my ear.
“More than you know,” I mutter, thinking of my bed, empty with the exception of my dog, Hank, who takes up enough room for two people. I glance at Adam to check on him, and he’s wearing that same dopey grin from earlier.
This girl—Amelia, is it?—must have misunderstood me, because her eyes have shifted into a weird expression. I think she’s trying to look sexy, but mostly she looks like she has a grain of sand stuck in one.
“Are you okay?” I ask, but not really willing to help if something is really stuck in her eye. Eyes freak me out.
“Never better!” she squeals, and tosses a long blonde curl over her shoulder. I catch a whiff of something burnt and scan the room for any downed tiki torches or someone having set their lei on fire.
When Amelia tosses another perfect curl over her shoulder, I realize it’s the smell of her hair. Is her hair even real? She’s doing that funky thing with her eyes again, and now I really am kind of scared.
“I’m going to run to the bathroom,” I say, breaking free from Amelia.
Adam follows me and yells, “Are we the luckiest guys in California right now or what?”
I ignore him, and a few minutes later as I’m washing my hands, I wonder why in the world I’m turning down a pretty girl on a Friday night. Adam is still in line for the next open stall, so I walk back out to the bar. Amelia and her friend are there, waiting for us and her eyes light up when she sees me. Frantically, I rack my brain for a way out of this. Suddenly, it comes to me, and I wait for the guilt to hit. When it doesn’t, I soldier on.
“Adam’s not really feeling well,” I say with a grimace. “He’s a bit of a… you know. Lightweight,” I whisper. Consider it retribution for all those times he pushed me away from Aly in high school. “Why don’t you write down your numbers on this napkin and we’ll give you a call?”
I pull a napkin from the holder on the bar and the girls both pout but write down their numbers anyway. I tuck the napkin into my pocket with a gentle pat. See ladies? We won’t forget about you. “You don’t want to stay around for this,” I say, gently guiding them to the door, knowing Adam could come out at any minute and ruin my plan.
Amelia’s eyes are doing that thing again and her head tilts to the left. She closes her eyes and brings her face toward mine and…oh boy.
“Y’all be safe, okay? Sorry your eyes have been bothering you all night, Amelia.”
“Amelia?” she screeches. “I’m Olivia, you dirtbag.”
She kicks sand at my feet, and okay, I’ll give her that one. I absolutely deserved that. Bestie in tow, she teeters away on her heels, in search of an Uber. She shoots me one more dirty look along with her middle finger before she slides into the backseat. I sigh and pull out the phone numbers, knowing there’s no way I can give these to Adam after that little whoopsie. When he finds me, I quickly wad it up and toss it into the nearest trash can.
“Where’d they go?” Eagerly, he searches the parking lot and finally lands on the Uber pulling away from the curb. A pair of round butt cheeks are plastered against the back window and he eyes me suspiciously.
“Something was in Amelia’s eye. They had to go.” I say, shrugging my shoulders.
“Seriously?” Adam whines. “They were so pretty.”
“Mhm,” I hum noncommittally, checking my phone. “So pretty.”
Adam pouts and kicks at a stray piece of gravel. “Her eyes did look kinda weird, didn’t they?”
I nod in agreement. “You’ll be okay,” I say, patting his shoulder.
“Did you at least get their numbers?”
“Look! Our Uber.” A luxury black sedan slides up to the curb, and I practically throw myself inside to avoid answering. He buckles up next to me and rubs the leather interior with his palms.
“Wow,” he muses, eyeing the fancy buttons and sleek interior of the foreign car. “This is swanky. You know you don’t have to go all out just for me though, right? Don’t worry about upgrading our Ubers on my account.”
“I do what I can,” I say, peeking out the windows. A white, older model Corolla slips into our spot and I watch in horror as a couple meanders from the bar in search of what I can only presume is the luxury, black sedan Uber they ordered. Sorry about the Corolla, folks.
