Chapter 1: The Poolside Temptation
The water was still warm from the day’s sun, holding the heat like a secret. Brie floated on her back, arms out, staring at the first pale star prickling through the dusky violet overhead. The filter hummed its familiar evening song. From here, she couldn’t see her own dark windows, or the empty driveway. Just the fence, the sky, the quiet.
A chair scraped on the patio next door.
She didn’t have to look. She knew the sound of him. The weight of a gaze could be a physical thing, a pressure on the skin. She let one hand trail in the water, pretending a concentration she didn’t feel.
“Hey, college girl.”
Matt’s voice, rough from cigarettes, came over the fence. Casual. Neighborly. She turned her head on the inflatable raft. He was leaning on the top of the six-foot wood panel, just his head and shoulders visible. He’d been cutting grass; the smell of fresh gasoline and cut blades hung around him. His forearms were tan, dusted with fine blond hair, muscles defined from his construction work.
“Hey, Matt.”
“Parents finally take that trip?”
“Yep.”
“So you’re holding down the fort.” He rested his chin on his folded arms. His eyes, the color of the sky just before it went fully dark, tracked over her. She was in a faded black bikini, the kind she’d had for years. It felt suddenly very small. “Water nice?”
“It’s okay.”
“Just okay?” He pushed back from the fence. A moment later, she heard his gate unlatch.
Her stomach tightened. This was the script. He’d done versions of it since she was about sixteen—finding reasons to be over when her parents were gone, lingering a little too long, his jokes always edged with something that made her skin feel two sizes too small. She’d laughed it off then, a dumb kid thing. She wasn’t a kid now.
He came around the side of the house, moving with that loose-limbed ease he had. He was twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven. The age gap that had felt like a canyon at sixteen now felt like a narrow ditch, and she was standing on the wrong edge of it.
“Mind if I dip my feet?” he asked, already sitting on the wide concrete coping. He kicked off his work boots, peeled his sweaty socks away. His feet were long, pale where the sun hadn’t hit.
“It’s your pool too, technically.” Her voice sounded thin. The shared fence-line, the shared property line. Her dad always said the last three feet of concrete on his side was technically Matt’s dad’s, from some old surveyor’s mistake. It made the pool feel ambiguously owned, a neutral zone.
He slid his feet into the water with a sigh. “Jesus, that’s good.” He looked at her, really looked, as she paddled the float gently toward the shallow end. “You’re different.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah. Not just the...” He gestured vaguely toward his own chest, his head. She’d cut her hair shorter, dyed the ends a burgundy that was already washing out. “You just seem... older.”
“I am older.”
“I know.” He said it slowly, like he was tasting the words. “I know you are.”
Silence settled, but it wasn’t quiet. The filter hummed. A car passed on the street beyond the fence. Crickets started up their chorus. He watched her, and the watching was a loud, persistent thing.
“You gonna just float over there all night?” he finally asked.
“Maybe.”
“Come talk to me. Keep me company. I’ve been slinging drywall all day. My back’s killing me.” He stretched, the hem of his grimy t-shirt riding up to show a strip of taut stomach.
It was a test. A very simple one. Stay in the deep end, or swim to the shallow. She paddled, the plastic raft squeaking under her. When her knees bumped the step, she stood, water sluicing off her. The air was cooler now, raising goosebumps on her arms and thighs. She wrapped her arms around herself and sat on the coping, a few feet from him.
He didn’t look at her face. His gaze was a slow, deliberate journey down her neck, over her shoulders, the swell of her breasts under the thin fabric, the dip of her waist, the curve of her hip where her bikini bottom cut in. It was so blatant it was almost clinical. He’d wanted to do that for years. Now, he just did it.
“See something you like?” The words came out before she could stop them, bravado she didn’t feel.
His eyes snapped to hers. A slow smile spread, transforming his face from tired laborer to something sharper, more aware. “Yeah, Brie. I do.”
No joke. No deflection. Just the raw, acknowledged truth, lying there between them on the wet concrete.
Her breath hitched. She’d asked for it, and he’d given it to her. The power shift was dizzying. He was no longer the guy sneaking glances; he was stating a fact. And she was letting him.
“Your parents are gone for the whole week, right?” he asked, his voice lower.
“Yeah.”
“Must get lonely in that big house.” He shifted, drawing one foot out of the water. His knee brushed her thigh. She didn’t move away. The contact was electric, a jolt that went straight to her core. Heat pooled low in her belly, a thick, insistent pulse.
“It’s only been a day,” she managed.
“Feels longer.” He leaned closer. She could smell the grass and sweat and the faint, sharp scent of his deodorant. His eyes searched hers. “You used to watch me mow the lawn. From your window.”
She had. Everyone had. He’d known. Of course he’d known.
“I was a teenager,” she whispered.
“You’re not now.” His hand came up, not to touch her, but to hover near her cheek. He was letting her see it, the calluses, the strength. Letting her decide. “All those years, Brie. Thinking about it. Wondering.”
His thumb finally made contact, stroking just below her lower lip. His skin was rough. The contrast with the gentle motion made her shiver.
“Wondering what?” Her voice was almost gone.
“If you’d ever be old enough. If you’d ever look at me the way I looked at you.” His other hand came to rest on her knee, warm and heavy. “You’re looking now.”
She was. She was looking at the stubble on his jaw, the slight chip in his front tooth, the intensity in his eyes that had shifted from hungry to outright possessive. The last of the sunlight was gone. The pool lights hadn’t clicked on yet. They were in a blue, shadowy world, the only light coming from the sliding glass door of her empty house.
His hand slid from her knee up the outside of her thigh, leaving a trail of fire. He was going to kiss her. She could feel it in the air, thick and inevitable as the humidity.
Then, the pool lights flickered and blazed on, a sudden, shocking electric blue that lit the water from below, turning their skin ghostly. It broke the spell for a second. She blinked.
He didn’t pull back. His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured, his breath hot against her lips.
It was the last formality. The last check. She knew if she said nothing, if she even breathed wrong, the last seven years of wanting would collapse the distance between them. The safe, suburban night would fracture.
She didn’t tell him to stop.
She leaned in.