Page 56 of Tangled Up In You
The man with a handlebar mustache and bow tie tucked her key into one envelope, tucked Fitz’s into another, and wrote down their room numbers on each. Ren peeked over to see if they were even on the same floor.
They were not.
Using a pen to point to a small map printed inside the key envelope, the gentleman showed them where their rooms were. “Breakfast buffet opens at six thirty. Elevators are here, general store is over here, and our heated pool and hot tub are on the first floor, which is one floor down from where we are now.” He looked up at them and smiled. “Our pool is great. You’ll need your key to access it, but definitely give it a try if you can.”
Her brain screamed at her that hunger and sleep could take a backseat to time spent in the hot tub with Fitz.
The man closed their envelopes and handed them over. “Welcome to St. Louis,” he said as they bent to pick up their bags.
“Finally,” Fitz said in the elevator, “I can stretch out in bed, take up the entire thing.”
This made her laugh. “You’ll still sleep on your side anyway, completely immobile all night.”
He glanced at her sidelong. “You been watching me sleep, Sunshine?”
Heat rushed up her neck. “Definitely not.”
He was still looking at her when he said, “Maybe I’m really just looking forward to walking around the room naked.”
The words landed just as they arrived at the fifth floor. Ren stared at her reflection in the metal of the doors as they slid open, her body immobile, brain caught in a nuclear meltdown. Fitz held his arm out, pinning the elevator open. “This is you. I’m one more up.”
When the doors began to loudly beep, she startled into motion, stepping out into the hall. But then she turned, summoning a rush of courage and stopping the elevator doors from closing again. “Wanna meet at the hot tub in ten?”
Fitz’s expression went blank, and then he took a step forward. She released the doors to close just as his answer burst free: “Absolutely.”
Ren stood in front of the mirror, tugging on the thin fabric at her hip. What on earth was she thinking? A hot tub? With Fitz? She’d worn a bathing suit exactly one other time in her life, and now she was just going to—what? Walk around in front of him like she was some kind of supermodel? He’d probably dated the prettiest girls in school, in every school he ever attended. No—he’d probably turned down the prettiest girls in school because there were prettier girls somewhere else. Staring at herself now, Ren registered that she’d made an enormous mistake.
Once every few months, Miss Draper over at the Finders Keepers thrift shop in Troy would let Ren go through the bins of new donations and keep a few things in exchange for helping her get them washed and mended and ready for sale. Never having had a sibling to give her hand-me-downs, it was the easiest way for Ren to get new clothes when she’d outgrown her old ones. Sometimes the boxes would overflow with so many nice choices, and she’d want to try on all the silly impractical things—tube tops, tiny shorts, soft fluffy sweaters—but in the end Ren would take only what she needed. A bathing suit wasn’t ever in that category; Ren always swam alone at Finley’s Pond or at their secluded creek, anyway, and would just strip down to the buff and jump right in.
But when the bikini came through in the donations, she’d pulled it free from the pile and couldn’t let it go.
It had been two skimpy red-and-white-striped triangles for the top and a tiny scrap of blue polka-dot fabric for the bottom, and every part of her wanted it desperately. She knew Gloria would never approve of something so flimsy, so she’d kept it hidden high in a tree she knew Gloria would never climb, waiting for the days that stretched long and sultry, when the air shimmered with the heat of summer.
Ren was fifteen when she was riding her bike home from the market and followed the sound of voices down by the town watering hole. A group of kids about her age were swinging off a rope tied to a giant oak tree. Their laughter drew her closer, and their delighted screams as they soared through the air and splashed into the still-cold lake made her desperate to join in. She couldn’t get to her hiding spot quick enough. Ren shucked off her clothes, put on the bathing suit, and raced back. She swam in the sun-warmed water and splashed with the other kids. The suit was a little big—the top seemed to slip down and the bottoms crept up—but she tightened the straps and waited with bated breath until it was her turn at the rope. She’d never experienced anything as exhilarating as swinging through the air and letting go. She felt alive. She felt free. She felt very, very naked: Ren made it back to the shore long before her top did.
The one she was wearing now was newer—to her, at least—and fit better. She’d picked it up at Finders Keepers in January, just before she’d left for Spokane, after she’d seen that the school had a pool on campus. It was simple and yellow—Miss Draper called it a halter neckline—and had about three times as much fabric as that old bikini did. Unfortunately it was still a bikini, but it was the only bathing suit in Ren’s size at the thrift store that day. While she was tying it more firmly around her neck, her pulse seemed to sprint away inside her chest, tiny feet hammering down a path of incessant worries. What if history repeated itself, but this time she ended up naked in front of Fitz?
“You won’t be swinging from a rope,” she reminded herself with a laugh. But then her thoughts turned down a new path. What if Fitz didn’t like how she looked in it?
Ren drew her eyes up over the reflection in the mirror. “Knock that off,” she said to the woman standing there. “You look perfectly fine. No one can make you feel bad about yourself if you feel good.”
Ugh. She was taking too long, agonizing over nothing. It wasn’t like Fitz was going to notice her anyway. He was probably down at the pool, effortlessly shirtless in his swim trunks, scrolling on that phone of his and not thinking about her at all. She’d walk in and he’d say Hey and she would feel stupid for putting even this much thought into it.
She tugged on her T-shirt and shorts and padded out of the room.
Ren could smell the pool as soon as the elevator opened on the bottom floor but was grateful for it; turned out she didn’t like riding the elevator alone, felt weirdly claustrophobic without Fitz. She swiped her key at the door and pushed in, seeing no one else in the long, dim space. The air was heavy and humid, filled with the chemical smell of chlorine and wet cement. And just like she expected, at the very back of the pool room, she found him slumped in a chair, scrolling on his phone. She was relieved to see he wasn’t shirtless yet.
His eyes dragged upward when she approached wearing her too-big T-shirt and sleep shorts. “You swimming in that?”
Ren worked to not fidget with the hem of her shirt. “No.”
He cocked an eyebrow, a silent Well? But Ren needed another second to find her courage.
In front of them was a large, lit rectangular swimming pool with a spillover feature, like a tiny waterfall, that filled the space with the sound of splashing water. On the other side of the deck was a steaming hot tub. Refracted light bounced off the pool’s surface and shimmered along the walls, the ceiling, and rows of empty lounge chairs. Lapping water echoed in the quiet.
Fitz stood, walked to grab a couple of towels from a rack, and came back over, dropping them onto the chair. Without ceremony, he reached for the collar of his T-shirt, tugging it off, and for a second, Ren lost her breath.
His torso was so much better than she’d remembered. And that all made it so much worse.