Summer's Kiss (The Boys of Ocean Beach 1)

My mind is running a million miles at once and I finally blurt, “Nick told me about your pact.”

His shock confirms Nick hadn’t told him this. When he answers his words are slow and clear. “Did he?”

“I think it’s smart,” I say quickly. “Focusing on your goals. Not getting tied down.”

He tilts his head and a tendril of wet black hair dips in his eyes. “Jaded about love? Already?”

I shrug. “I’ve made some dumb choices. Like super-stupid decisions, and I’m not looking forward to repeating them.”

“So no more stupid decisions,” he says. “What’s the opposite of that?”

With every ounce of courage I have, I lean into him. His eyes flick from my mouth back to my own and there’s a beat. One…two…three—and he kisses me. Soft and salty. Tender and sweet. And new. So very new. Shiny enough that it washes away all the heartache I’ve been carrying for the last few weeks—at least for a minute.

He pulls away and touches my chin. “You think that wasn’t stupid?”

I hold his eye. “I haven’t even gotten started.”

Chapter 11

Somehow, when it’s time to leave, Justin ends up in my car. We’re both sun-kissed from playing in the ocean and everything has that salty-sunscreen smell.

I can’t tell if it’s weird that I just kissed his friend, but Pete squeezed my hand when we got out of the boat and wandered off with Nick and Whit.

The Pact.

No strings.

No attachments.

I wait as Justin rinses off everything back at the marina before placing it back in the car. Then he piles a cooler and towels in the back seat. I’ve noticed he’s meticulous about some things—boats, cars, especially his work ethic. Anita is probably right, that he has bigger dreams than living on this tiny part of the coast, but at the same time he seems perfectly at ease with his life.

“Here,” he says, handing me my flip-flops. They’re wet but clean and I slip them on my feet. I’d offered him a ride when the others quickly left the marina and he was still securing the boat.

“You have so much more patience than I do,” I tell him. We’re in the car now and I’ve cranked the air-conditioning to cool my burned skin. He wastes no time moving the seat back to accommodate his long legs and he fiddles with the knobs on the radio and settles on a classic rock station. I laugh at his choice. “What, no country?”

“Don’t knock it,” he says, lifting an eyebrow. “And whatever, you live in Nashville, that’s about as country music as you can get.”

I pull out of the parking lot and head down the main road. “Which way?” I ask. I’ve never been to Justin’s house—or really, Richard’s, I guess. I can’t deny I’m interested to see where someone lives around here if it’s not at the campground.

“To the right.”

I turn like he says and listen to him sing softly next to me. He knows all the words to Light My Fire and it prompts me to tell him, “In the ninth grade my friends and I all got really into Jim Morrison.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“We thought he was so tragic and poetic. Plus, those leather pants…”

He studies me. “Yeah, I can’t see it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve got that clean-cut sorority girl thing going on. I can’t see you dropping acid and eating ‘shrooms.”

“Aren’t you awfully presumptuous? You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know enough,” he says. “Believe it or not, I flirted with a Grateful Dead stage. Tie dyes and long hair.” His eyes light up from a passing car. “We were so lame.” We’re about halfway back to the campground when he gestures to a street coming up and I turn right again, back toward the water. “I guess everyone goes through some kind of rebellious stage or ‘self-exploration’. Mine just included lots of guitar jams and weed.”

“Do you play guitar?”