Halfway across the living room, I looked up to see Pearl standing by the table, holding two plates piled with ham sandwiches. She’d cleared a place where I’d sat the only other time we’d eaten together, and the spot next to it. My stomach roared in appreciation, and I focused on that gnawing hunger instead of the one prowling around a bit lower.

“I’ll be right out,” I said, glancing at her face as I passed and realizing that she wasn’t looking at mine. She was staring at my usually covered-up parts. Hell, yes, baby—look your fill. Every muscle in my body flexed instinctively, each one challenging the rest for her attention.

The plates clattered to the table and she tore her eyes away from my bare torso. “Uh, okay. Sure. I’ll just be… here.” She cleared her throat, hands fluttering to pick up the few potato chips that had bounced off the plates when they’d come in for that rough landing. I didn’t get much time to gloat, because damn if she didn’t lean across the table to slide one of those plates to my spot, and damn if I didn’t apparently have a new favorite fantasy that wasn’t so different from the original.

Except this time she was wearing those glasses.

I slammed my bedroom door way too hard, stomped to my dresser, and ripped the drawer halfway out. Tossing clothes onto the bed, I set myself to breathing just like I did when I weight-trained to failure to surpass a lifting rut: Focused. On. The. Goal.

What the fuck is the goal?

I thought about her flustered face of five minutes ago. Pearl wasn’t an innocent little high school girl anymore. She was a woman, and women had needs. I’d filled a sizeable amount of those sorts of needs since I was fourteen. Truth be told, I probably hadn’t filled any but my own for the first few years, but I sure as hell knew how to fill them now.

I’d met her ex. No way that dickweed satisfied her regularly, if ever, but she’d spent four years in college after I’d obliged her with eliminating her virginity. My teeth clenched at the mental image of her with the sorts of college guys who came here during spring break and over summer vacation. Ninety-five percent of them were varying degrees of pretty-faced, muscled, rich, arrogant fuckers, and that was being generous. There were some, like Maxfield, who were honest about what they wanted—going after girls who wanted the same. As much as I hated the thought, I hoped she’d found a few guys like that instead of one after the other who’d be all smooth-talking and attentive just long enough to get into her cute little shorts.

Not helping.

If I didn’t have to stick my face in the freezer multiple times a day for the next ten weeks, it would be a damned miracle.

Pearl

When Boyce exited the bathroom and sauntered through the living room and past the kitchen, I stood there staring like I’d never seen a guy in a towel. A towel that could win a prize for being the smallest bath towel ever made.

The question I’d been about to ask—something about whether mayonnaise or mustard or what he wanted to drink—melted into a mushy puddle at the bottom of my brain. My last comprehensible thought was, Holy mother of God. Eyes on the floor and unaware of my ogling, he rubbed his short hair dry with a hand towel. Every rock-solid muscle of his right arm, shoulder, and pec expanded and contracted with the effort, forming shifting arcs and sharp lines that rearranged the landscape under those familiar freckles and the droplets he’d not yet toweled away.

An Internet search for unfair could include a GIF of him in that moment and a link to a biological explanation of the riot that occurred inside my body and the mental chaos it triggered. I couldn’t speak or move or form a single judicious plan to make it stop. As he drew closer, my traitorous mind projected a full-fledged fantasy behind my eyes.

Without pausing or stopping or asking permission, he would turn and walk straight to where I stood gaping and take the plates from my hands. “We’ll eat this later,” he’d say, placing the food on the table. Sweeping me into his arms, he would walk to his room and drop me on his bed, where my clothes would obligingly slide away with a few strategic pulls of his fingers. He would yank the damp towel from his hips in one movement and thrust into me in the next, his mouth seizing mine in a searing kiss—lips enveloping, tongue plunging inside, stroking deep and hard—

“I’ll be right out,” he said, snapping me from the spell I’d fallen under. I dropped the plates to the tabletop, scattering chips everywhere like a total goofball. Gathering them, I refused to meet his eyes, certain he would see every pathetic craving I’d nurtured since I was too young to know what those cravings meant.

Minutes later, he emerged from his bedroom clothed in shorts and a white T-shirt, and I crunched one chip after another and pretended to read.

Slathering a layer of mayo on his sandwich, he said, “Thanks for making supper,” his voice uncharacteristically soft. The gentle pitch poured over me, warm and hypnotic.

I forced my lips into a relaxed smile and risked a quick glance up. “Thanks for providing the ingredients.” Hoping he couldn’t read my mind, which was threatening to resume my erotic fantasy in slow motion, I stared back at the page and highlighted a random line, unsure what it even said.

“Yep,” he said, carrying his plate to the living room and turning the television on, volume low.

Eventually, the words on the page in front of me organized themselves back into intelligible details and data charts, and my rational thought processes returned.

“Sure you won’t take the bed?” Boyce said, breaking my concentration. The television was off and a glance out the window showed it had grown full dark. My laptop time read 10:21 p.m. “I feel like an asshole handing you sheets for the sofa.”

My neck popped as I stretched for the first time in two hours. I took the sheets from him and stood. “I would feel like an asshole bumping the person who’s sharing his home with me out of his own bed. I’ll be fine.”

He stared down at me. “You sure you’re fine?” he said, and I knew he wasn’t talking about the sofa.

I nodded, my throat too full for words to escape. I’d stopped checking my phone an hour ago. This was real. I was on my own. When I’d first left home for college, it had taken some adjustment being away from Mama, away from my home, Mel, high school classes, everything and everyone familiar—including Boyce Wynn. Unlike my dorm suitemates, I’d gone home for the weekend three times before Thanksgiving break. My classmates seemed so much older and more experienced, so ready to be all grown-up. I just wanted to go home. My third trip home, I’d laid my head in Mama’s lap and told her I didn’t want to go back. I knew what she’d say and knew she’d be right, even if I didn’t want to hear it.