“Are you drooling?” I ask, glaring at the athletic brunette I’m sure Jamison would have made a play for if I hadn’t made it clear that my friends are off-limits. “Tell me you aren’t drooling, Piper Youngman.”
“Who was that?” she asks with a grin, not even bothering to deny the accusation. “Me like.”
“Me, too,” Shelley adds with a sigh that stirs the fuzzy blond curls falling into her face. “But you can have dibs, Piper. Since you drooled and all.”
“No, she cannot have dibs.” I prop my hands on my hips. “Jamison is off-limits.”
Dawn’s pierced eyebrow lifts. “Oh, it’s like that, is it? Back off ladies. Studly’s already spoken for by the birthday queen.”
“No, it’s not like that,” I say. “I just—”
“And what the birthday queen wants, the birthday queen gets,” Piper interrupts, lifting her hands into the air. “I withdraw my claws. Pounce away, sister.”
I huff. “I am not going to be pouncing anyone, especially Jamison Hansen.”
“But that’s the whole reason we’re here!” Shelley’s full lips push into a pout. “This weekend is for pouncing. It’s like Virginia is for lovers except it’s a weekend instead of an entire state.”
“Jamison is my sister’s fiancé’s brother,” I explain, since none of my besties live in Bliss River. “It would be like incest.”
“No, that’s when you marry a cousin or something,” Shelley says. “I know because my stepsister married her first cousin. She lives in Arkansas, but they went to Tennessee to get married because it’s legal to marry your first cousin there.”
“That’s it,” Dawn says, frowning as she pulls her shiny blue-black hair into a low ponytail, showcasing the mermaid tattoo on her upper arm. “I’m officially divorcing Tennessee as my birth state. I mean, what is the world coming to when something is illegal in Arkansas but not in the Volunteer State?”
“Tennessee is simply volunteering to perform a cousin-marrying service other states won’t,” Piper says as she grabs her pack from the van and swings it onto her back. “I think you should be proud of them. Love is love, after all.”
“As long as you don’t have inbred children,” Dawn adds.
I shake my head, wondering how this conversation wandered so far into the cousin-loving woods.
“But I think you should go for him, Maddie,” Dawn continues. “He’s yummy and he was looking at you like he already had you half-naked in his mind.”
I scoff, ignoring the way the thought of being undressed by Jamison—mentally or otherwise—makes my skin prickle. “You’re crazy.”
“I am not crazy,” Dawn says. “I’m thirty-two years old, unreasonably excited to be away from my precious children, and dangerously horny, but not crazy.”
Dawn and Piper both have kids—Piper has two boys she has full custody of after her ex took a job overseas and Dawn has a nine-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter she’s been raising mostly solo since her husband ran off with his secretary four years ago. Both of them need this retreat every bit as much as I do, but they insisted on the drive down that I reign as queen of the weekend.
They’re sweet friends, so sweet I vow right then and there not to do anything to ruin their good time.
I’m not going to let Jamison’s presence spoil my fun, or anyone else’s.
I resolve to ignore him completely, a feat that proves fairly easy at first. Having birthed two ten-pound babies, Dawn can’t go an entire night without getting up to pee, so our group sets up camp near the bathrooms, while Jamison and his buddies pitch their tents closer to the beach.
We join the group heading down the shore to gather driftwood for a bonfire, while the guys are on dinner duty for the first night, in charge of grilling hamburgers and hot dogs for the thirty-five singles on the trip.
At dinner, our crew and Jamison’s eat on opposite ends of the long line of picnic tables, and by the time supper is over and the beer’s been flowing for a while, I can barely hear the rumble of Jamison’s voice over the laughter and flirtation at my table.
Shelley and a man with brown eyes and glasses who resembles a graying Harry Potter, are getting along like gangbusters, and Piper has two gorgeous co-workers from an Atlanta law firm hanging on her every word.
The other two men at our table seem more interested in texting than talking, but Dawn is deep in conversation with a pretty red-haired woman named Helen, whose kids attend the same art camp as Dawn’s son and seems to be having a great time.
I’m the only one who hasn’t found a conversation mate, but I don’t mind.
It makes me feel free to toss my compostable paper plate, grab a fresh beer from the cooler, and head down the path to the beach. I arrive as the sun is setting and kick off my sandals, letting the cool sand slither between my toes as I walk toward the ocean.
The sound of the waves shushing in and out against the shore is one of my favorite sounds in the world, but it also makes me a little melancholy.
Serge and I spent most of our marriage on an island, in a condo right on the beach. We ate almost every meal on our patio and sometimes even slept outside in his-and-her hammocks, letting the surf lull us to sleep. Some of my most beautiful memories of my marriage are set to the music of the sea, and for a moment I can’t help missing the days when I assumed I was in a relationship that would last.
I sit down behind the pile of driftwood we gathered earlier in the day and stare out at the water, watching the twilight air take on a bluish hue.
Gradually, the early summer air grows chilly, and my toes begin to go numb. I’m about to head back to the campground to ask the organizers if it’s okay for me to get the bonfire started when a woman’s bubbly laugh drifts my way on a breeze.
“No, you go in first.” The woman’s voice comes from the other side of the woodpile. “I bet the water’s still freezing.”
“That’s all right.” Jamison’s drawl makes the hair on my neck stand on end, even before he adds. “If you get cold, I’ll warm you back up.”
“Is that right?” The woman giggles again.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, followed by the unmistakable smacking sounds of two people sucking face.
Ew.
I cringe, grossed-outed-ness that Jamison’s already hooking up with a complete stranger mere hours after arrival warring with the embarrassment pulsing through my veins. I’ll die if I’m discovered eavesdropping on his make out session, but I can’t very well make a run for it now.
I hunch lower in the sand, praying Jamison and his friend will finish their smooching and make a dash for the ocean without noticing me.
No sooner has the thought shimmied through my head than the couple stumbles across the sand three feet away.
Despite the fact that his lips are trailing down the blonde’s neck and his hands wandering all over her bikini-clad body, Jamison spots me immediately.
Fuuuuuuck me.
Chapter Two
Maddie
Jamison clears his throat and pulls away from the woman as my stomach bottoms out with embarrassment.