Page 31 of Dan.
I’m interrupted by my melancholy when her chill, wet body drops its weight on me. I grunt in shock as Elise spreads out entirely on top of me, sighing in contentment.
“You’re so warm,” she says.
“Elise,” I bite out. “Get off of me.”
Not surprisingly, she doesn’t listen. “Why didn’t you kiss me? I know you wanted to. Tell me,” she pouts, fingers ghosting up my sides. It tickles, and I twitch.
“None of your damn business. Off, Elise!”
My words make her snuggle into me even more. My cock is thrilled with this new development, but that’s the only part of me that approves.
“Oh, yes it is. It’s my lips, after all.”
“I told you that I don’t want to hook up with you anymore. There, happy?” I try to turn over to shake her off, but it doesn’t work. I grind my teeth together in frustration.
“But why not? Because of my brother? You told me you’d choose me over him––”
“That was before the love of your life came to stay with us, though,” I interrupt. Elise freezes, and then finally rolls off of me, sitting on the beach towel and leaning back on her arms as she looks out over the horizon. Her feelings are clearly hurt, which wasn’t my intention, but she’s so damned stubborn that I don’t know how else to get through to her.
“Johan was my first love, that’s true,” she says after a moment. “But that doesn’t mean he is my last, you know.”
My heart stutters in my chest. I sit up, looking down at her. She won’t meet my eyes. “Are you trying to say you have feelings for me?”
Elise bites her full bottom lip again, making me want to kiss her even more. “I like you, Dan. A lot.”
“Fuck, you can’t say anything more than like, can you?” I curse under my breath, the little ember of hope in me flickering out.
Turning her head away, Elise inhales and exhales deeply a few times. Either holding back tears or amping herself up, I’m not sure which. After an even longer pause, she tells me quietly, “I told him when I was fifteen that I loved him and he broke my heart. How do I know that you aren’t going to do the same thing?”
“Unlike him, I’m not going anywhere, El.” Now she turns back to me, expression carefully neutral. “I’m not flying back to England in the fall like he is. I’m right here, and I want to give us a shot.”
“Then why have you been pulling away?”
“Because I want something real. Because what I feel for you is genuine. I don’t want to just hook up with you for a summer fling. I want you as my girlfriend.”
The words hang heavily between us. “You mean like an exclusive, serious relationship?” Elise’s tone is disbelieving, but if I’m not mistaken, there’s a thread of hope in it, too. “Where our friends and the whole world know?”
I reach down and tuck a strand of her wet hair, stiff with salt, behind her ear. “Yes. Does that scare you?”
“I mean…” She looks away and shrugs one shoulder. “I… I don’t know, okay? Everything’s happening so fast.”
It strikes me that I’ve known Elise for years, been close to her family the entire time, but it only took her one single summer to admit her love to Johan. We know each other so much better than she ever knew him, and her response annoys me.
“Sounds like it wasn’t happening fast enough when it was with Johan,” I grumble. Elise falls back onto the blanket with a frustrated groan, rubbing her hands over her face.
“Dan, can you fucking stop?”
“No, I can’t,” I snap. “You went to his fucking room the day he wanted to leave the villa and begged him to stay.”
“Johan was gone for three years,” she says indignantly. “It’s normal to want to catch up with someone from your past.”
“Does he have to stay under the same roof as us in order for you to catch up?”
“My brother invited him, and this vacation was thrown for him, wasn’t it? Plus, how rude would it be for him to be invited to stay at the villa and then immediately thrown out?”
I can’t look at her anymore, all my emotions are too wound up and confusing for me to make sense of. I want her so badly, but then again I hate the way she shows Johan affection even when I’m near. I gaze out at the horizon, trying to think of what exactly to say. Silence settles between us, and I know I’ll have to be the one to break it.
“We can stay friends like before,” I finally come up with. “But from my end, I’m no longer interested in hooking up with you for the sake of it. Do you understand?”