So Now You're Back (15 page)

Trey strode ahead to join Aldo on the brow of the bank that faced the lake, where her brother stood staking out their ‘best spot'. Trey pulled a blanket out of the picnic backpack and lifted it up by two corners to spread it out. All thoughts of duck poo disappeared as Lizzie became momentarily transfixed by the play of muscles in his arms, and the fleeting glimpse of his trim belly and outie belly button again, before his polo shirt settled back to cover his midriff—and the blanket floated onto the grass in perfect symmetry. The shorts and camisole ensemble she'd chosen for the day became uncomfortably tight. And the blotchy blush from this morning crept back up her neck.

There was absolutely no denying it, Trey Carson, lame clothes and all, was supremely, undeniably, super hot. Not just his model-ific features and buff body, but the quiet competence with which he did everything. So hot, in fact, she almost didn't care if Carly and Liam and every one of her friends caught them having a picnic together.

In his own uncool way, Trey was cooler than any of them. Because he didn't seem to care what people thought. Or maybe he just didn't know what was cool and what was uncool, which made him even cooler really. What would it be like to be above all that bullshit? Not to care about saying
the wrong thing, liking the wrong band, secretly being into
Hannah Montana
reruns when everyone was raving about
Game of Thrones
or
Orange is the New Black …
Or getting a rep for being a beg-friend or a frigid bitch.

Just imagining having that freedom made her feel lighter and bigger and more important.

She flicked off her sandals and carried them up the hill while Trey took out the assortment of sandwiches and brownies and crisps and dip they'd packed together for the trip. Funny how domesticity didn't seem totally boring when you were doing it with someone who exuded enough raw energy to fire a nuclear power station.

Aldo whipped off his T-shirt, revealing his sturdy boy's chest already tanned in July because of the olive skin Lizzie suspected he had inherited from that smarmy Italian dip-shit her mum had dated for about a nanosecond. As Aldo dropped onto the blanket to kick off his trainers and tug off his socks, Lizzie noticed the roll of puppy fat spilling over the waistband of his shorts, which hadn't been there last summer. She felt a momentary dart of satisfaction at the thought that he would be hitting puberty in the next year or two.

Welcome to purgatory, kiddo.

But the satisfaction was swiftly followed by guilt.
Poor bugger, he has all that crap still to come.
And then a jolt of realisation. She had no idea when it had happened, probably sometime in the past year, but she wasn't crippled by jealousy any more. Why had it never occurred to her until now that his body was a ticking time bomb, just like hers had been at ten or eleven? And, just like her, he didn't even know it. Because no amount of dopey cartoons of naked people with pubic hair or tampon demonstrations in those
furtive, giggly Year Six sex-ed classes could prepare you for how horrendous adolescence was going to be.

It seemed astonishing to her now that when she'd started her periods at thirteen she'd been hopelessly envious of Aldo's simple, sturdy five-year-old boy's body. In the three or four years that followed, she'd been so angry with all the mean tricks her body had started playing on her—bleeding and cramping and gaining hair and pus-y spots where there had once been only smooth, clear skin—that she'd taken it out on Aldo and her mother. Because they didn't have any of this shit to deal with.

Sitting down cross-legged on the blanket, she tilted her head back to absorb the sun's warmth on her cheeks. Her mostly zit-free cheeks, which had required only a minimal dose of concealer this morning.

‘Trey, can we go swimming now?' Aldo's urgent shout, pitched to piercing right next to her ear, jolted Lizzie out of her state of grace.

She opened her eyes, ready to launch into a rant, but cut it off, noticing the tiny love handles above the waistband of Aldo's swimming trunks still visible even as he stood up. Energy pulsed through his body as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting not at all patiently for Trey's answer.

How glad was she that she wasn't a ten-year-old boy? It must be a nightmare being on the brink of explosion all the time.

‘Sure, probably better to swim before we eat.' Trey hadn't even finished the sentence before Aldo gave a wild whoop and sped off. He charged straight into the lake, the whoop turning to a shriek as he hit the shallows, skidded over and bellyflopped into the water.

‘Eww!' Lizzie shuddered. ‘What's the betting he got a mouthful of duck poo and feathers with that manoeuvre?'

Trey laughed, warming her cheeks even more. ‘I better head in before he drowns himself. You OK to stay by the stuff?'

She shielded her eyes to look up at him. Way, way up. A trickle of anticipation worked its way down her spinal column, releasing refreshing bursts of sensation en route. Was Mr Perfecto going to disrobe right in front of her? Would she be able to stand the suspense? ‘Yes, fine. You go ahead.'

And feel free to strip down to your trunks and make me even more grateful I'm not a ten-year-old boy.

She propped herself on her elbows, smiling when Trey turned his back on her, probably to keep an eye on Aldo and—joy of joys—give her the opportunity to appreciate his striptease unobserved. He toed off the Nike high-tops, balanced steadily on each leg to pull off his socks and then tuck them into the trainers. After unhooking his jeans, he bent over to take them off.

Black stretchy Lycra trunks. Thank you, God.

Lizzie almost whooped like Aldo at Trey's excellent choice of swimwear: simple, functional, not budgie-smuggler gross but clingy enough to reveal the awesome contours of his bum, bunching and flexing splendidly as he lifted each leg to strip off his jeans. Crossing his arms, he grasped the hem of his polo shirt and pulled it over his head, then folded it and dropped it on top of the rest of his clothes.

Lizzie swallowed, drool collecting under her tongue at an alarming rate. His back was beautiful, as smoothly muscled as his arse, the wide shoulder blades tapering to the indentation of his ribs and bisected by the perfect line of his spine. Her gaze skated over his delicious bum to examine long legs dusted with curls of dark hair. He had the same olive-toned skin as Aldo. Maybe his dad had been Italian, too. Although his body was nothing like Aldo's—Trey was
a man, not a boy. She breathed through her nose. The whole of his body was beautiful. A work of art. Like that famous statue in Florence with the minuscule willy.

The blush burned her nape as she remembered Carly's constant teasing about the size of Trey's meat. Did she want him to turn around so she could make a considered assessment? Would her lungs continue to function if he did? Dying of asphyxiation would probably not be cool. Although she was beginning to see the appeal now for those people who liked to strangle themselves during sex, because just the sight of Trey's awesomeness was making her light-headed enough to feel euphoric.

The breath she'd been holding burst out when, instead of turning, he ran his thumbs round the waistband of his trunks and dropped his head to concentrate on retying the strings at the front. And she spotted the tattoo.

The red and black ink was faded, but the shape suggested some kind of mythic bird, its wingspan spread across the width of his back, hovering above his coccyx and the slope of his backside, nestled in the demarcation line of white flesh that would usually be covered by his pants.

Lizzie blinked a couple of times, gobsmacked. Mr Perfecto had inked his arse. He'd hinted at his misspent youth earlier, but seriously? What the fuck?

Then again, tattoos were hardly bad-boy insignia these days. She folded her lolling tongue back into her mouth. In fact, tattoos were more like fashion statements; every one of her friends had one, ranging from elaborate cartoon characters and geometric designs to sage Sanskrit sayings that no doubt translated as ‘Confucius says I'm a pretentious twat'. She even had a tattoo, despite her near-phobia of needles. A constellation of tiny stars that ran along the line of her instep and then curled round her ankle—and had
looked cheesy and crap almost as soon as she'd survived the horror of having it etched into her foot two summers ago.

But Trey wasn't a follower of fashion, if his wardrobe was anything to go by. And surely that would include body art trends. So why had he laid himself out in a tattoo parlour with his pants off and gotten his arse inked? There had to be a story there. A story she was suddenly very curious to hear.

‘I'll see you in a bit.'

She glanced up, past Trey's fascinating arse, to find him watching her from over his shoulder.

‘You OK?' he said. ‘Your face is kind of red.'

You don't know the half of it.
‘I'll put some sunscreen on.'

‘You sure you don't want to come in for a swim? Might help you to cool off,' he said, turning to face her.

She kept her eyes firmly on his upper body so as not to overheat completely. Checking out his other assets would have to wait for another day. ‘What about our picnic stuff?'

‘I can keep an eye on it from the water,' he added, ever practical and helpful.

She debated joining him. Warmed by the offer. And the thought of getting the chance to see all those muscles in sinuous motion, up close and dripping wet. But was forced to discard the idea.

Aldo would be there to play gooseberry like an eager puppy. And there was no point in risking death by drowning in duck-poo-infested water when she had to start working on a strategy to discover all Trey's secrets in under two weeks.

But it wasn't until he strolled away and then executed a perfect dive from the end of the dock—fearlessly arrowing that long body under the murky surface of the lake—that she realised this was the first time she'd been curious about another human being and their backstory for, well, like, forever.

And that the rush of enthusiasm and expectation felt more fabulous than a spot-free T-zone.

‘Trey, did you see me do a somersault?'

Trey peeled his attention from the bank, where Lizzie Best lay on their picnic blanket, the bikini she had stripped down to a lurid red against her pale skin. ‘Sorry, buddy, I missed it.'
Because I was far too busy checking out your sister.
The guilty thought had him focusing on Aldo, or trying to.

He still hadn't quite figured out why Lizzie had mellowed so much this morning. But he'd decided to stop asking the question when he'd spotted the stunned expression on her face after he'd stripped down to his trunks.

He'd seen that expression before from women, especially when he was without a shirt. He knew it meant they liked what they saw. Ever since he'd joined the local rugby club at sixteen, in an attempt to handle the loneliness and work off the frustration of being his mum's sole carer, he'd gotten those flattering appraisals from women with increasing frequency. Because a handy by-product of the training was the muscle bulk he'd acquired in all the right places. Usually he appreciated that look. Even if he wasn't able to act on it. But seeing that dazed, unfocused look in Lizzie's cornflower blue eyes had made him instantly wary and yet uncomfortably warm.

Which was totally wrong.

Lizzie was three years younger than him, he wasn't sure she even liked him much and Lizzie's mum had told him all about how vulnerable her daughter was on Thursday night before she'd left. Lizzie having any kind of crush on him would be extremely bad. So how did he account for the tightening in his crotch her look had triggered?

‘Why don't you do another one, and I'll watch now?' he said, keeping his gaze off the girl on the bank and trying harder to refocus it on her little brother. The kid he was actually being paid to watch over.

‘But I already did it.' Aldo's face fell into a pout. ‘I'm not sure I can do another one so good.'

‘If you did it once, you can do it again.' Lifting himself up onto the dock, he sat with his legs dangling into the chilly water and swiped his fingers through his hair. Warmth seeped from the weathered boards through his buttocks to tug at his stomach muscles.

If Lizzie was still watching him, it didn't mean anything. So what if he'd noticed her doing that a lot in the past half hour while he and Aldo mucked about in the water? He didn't want her to watch him. Any more than he wanted to watch her.

He folded his arms over his chest, squeezed his biceps and shuddered theatrically. ‘But get a move on, because I'm freezing and I want to get dressed.'

And he'd probably be a lot better able to process this situation if he had his clothes on.

Aldo paddled furiously, treading water, the pout disappearing as quickly as it had come. ‘OK … I have to take a swim up, though. So don't look away.'

‘Don't worry, I won't,' he said on autopilot, used to reassuring Aldo—whom he'd noticed as soon as he'd come to work for Halle was starved for any kind of male attention.

Maybe that was all this was, Trey reasoned, keeping his gaze locked on the lake and Aldo splashing over to one of the buoys and away from Lizzie on the bank. He knew Aldo didn't have a dad, and although Lizzie did, he knew she didn't see him much. Because he lived in Paris. Maybe Lizzie saw him as some kind of surrogate dad figure. Like
Aldo. While her mum was away. The thought made him shudder for real, despite the warmth of the sun on his shoulder blades.

Bloody hell. Terrific.
Now the instant awareness he'd felt as her gaze had raked over his chest and her eyes had gone all dreamy felt sort of creepy and incestuous. As well as just really bad news.

Aldo's arms pinwheeled as his bum lifted into the air and his legs flipped over in the water, executing a lopsided underwater somersault that wouldn't win any synchronised swimming awards but still looked pretty accomplished.