Page 64 of The Quit List
Is this what sparks and fireworks are meant to feel like?
Impossible, I tell myself.
When we get to shore, I spring up like a Jack in a Box and throw myself out of the kayak so fast, I almost faceplant in the shallows. And while I’m stumbling around like a drunken flamingo, Jax pulls the boat out of the water effortlessly.
He goes on to grin at me, like we didn’t just share skin and breath and heartbeats and heat for what were potentially the longest minutes of my life. “I’d say, overall, that wasn’t a bad first time.”
“Avoided the alligators, at least.” My voice is surprisingly non-shaky. Mental high-five.
Jax grabs a couple of towels from his backpack and passes one to me. I wrap it around myself and can’t help but breathe in the delicious scent of his laundry detergent. The towel smells like him, and it’s making my knees a little weak.
“How do you feel about calling it a day and getting some coffee to warm up?” he asks me.
“Perfect.” I grab my own bag, and dig out my dress—Jax must’ve folded it and placed it in here for me—and my cell phone.
The screen lights up suddenly and I see that I have a message from Ian.
Ian. The man I enjoyed who took me on a perfectly enjoyable mini golf date. The man who made me smile and chuckle, even if they weren’t full-fledged laughs. The man who told me within five minutes of meeting me that he can’t wait to get married, but he’s been holding out for the right woman.
Yes. I should be thinking about Ian. Not the tattooed mountain man with the ridiculously high core temperature.
Shaking all memories of Jax’s hot skin from my mind, I open the message.
Hi, Miss Holly. How about a second date?
22
JAX
“You sure you want another one of those things?”
My sister narrows her eyes at me. Playfully, but still not in a way that I’d mess with. “You sure you want to ask me that?”
“I am not,” I say as I get to work making her another lemonade with extra lemon juice, topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup.
And in case you’re wondering… no, that is not on our menu.
But what the pregnant lady wants, the pregnant lady gets.
It’s a busy Saturday night at Full Moon, and Maddie’s hanging out at the bar, drinking her weird sweet n’ sour lemonades and watching the TV screens behind my head. Seb is playing an away game in Dallas tonight and Maddie insisted that all of the bar’s TVs show the game.
The Cyclones are losing 5-3, and this seems to be making Maddie’s mood more sour than her lemonade.
I, on the other hand, feel strangely sour for an entirely different reason. Namely, a certain situation that is currently taking place at the other end of the restaurant.
“After this one, I’m cutting you off,” I joke as I put a straw in Chocolate Lemonade Number Three and slide it across the bar to Maddie, glancing over her shoulder as I do.
“You wouldn’t dare.” She takes a long sip, winces, then sighs happily. “I have no idea why this tastes so good. Non-pregnant me would be horrified.”
“Mmm,” I say distractedly, now trying to see past a veritable bouffant of hair at table three that’s blocking my view of the booth behind.
A booth. She’s never sat anywhere but at table seventeen on her dinner dates.
“What do you keep looking at?” Maddie asks, craning her neck around. “Is Margot Robbie sitting back there or something?”
“No, no, don’t look,” I tell her. “It’s nothing, just a friend on a date. I’m curious to see how it’s going, is all.”
“Liar,” Maddie says, sticking her finger in the mountain of whipped cream atop her drink and then licking it off. “Is it Holly?”