Avoiding Commitment (20 page)

She could tell he was thinking over how to
address his concerns. He could see she was lying. After all, he had
been watching them together out there. Finally, he blew out his
breath and pulled her into his arms. “Okay, baby, if you say so.
Can we still have a good time, and just forget that he’s here?” She
didn’t even need to say that that was easier said than done. “I
trust you.”

Talk about feeling guilty.

“If you say you two are done, then you’re
done. I’ve just known Jack for longer than you, and in a much
different way than you’ve ever known him. We were pretty close at
one point in time. I know how he treats women, and I know that it
doesn’t matter to him whether he has a girlfriend or not. So, if
there’s anything between ya’ll still, I’d just like the truth,” he
said pulling back to look into her guilty face.

“There…there’s nothing between us,” she said
hesitantly.

He let loose another heavy sigh, and then
nodded. “Come on. Everyone’s getting ready to head out for
dinner.”

Lexi really wished they hadn’t had that
conversation. All she wanted was for Jack to leave. The week was
going to be
very
long with him here. Lexi bit her lip as she
followed her boyfriend into the living room to meet the rest of the
group for dinner already lost in thought about the upcoming
week.

After assembling into their vehicles, the
group drove to a local Mexican restaurant that Seth insisted had
the best margaritas. Just as importantly, they didn’t check for
identification. Since apparently all the girls Seth brought along
were under twenty-one, that was a pretty important factor for
him.

The dilapidated construction was recognizable
solely by the faded green and red paint coating the walls and a
rickety sign hanging half-off its hinges that read ‘Desperados.’ It
didn’t look promising.

Under different circumstances, Lexi never
would have entered the place. The hole-in-the-wall establishment’s
only perquisite thus far rested in the gorgeous waitress who
greeted them at the entrance. She was tall and buxom with wavy
brown hair to her waist and cherry red lipstick coating her full
lips. A long skirt hung off her voluptuous hips and a white off the
shoulder top revealed her other very
full
assets. Every guy
in the place stopped to gawk at her as she greeted them with her
thick foreign accent.

Seth smirked and made a crude gesture to
Hunter before charging forward and introducing himself. The
waitress giggled at his obviously rude sexual remark and directed
them into a large corner booth. Lexi watched the woman roll her
eyes as she turned seated them and left. Lexi suppressed a giggle
as she was shoved into the inside corner of the booth next to
Jack’s girlfriend. She cursed herself for not paying more attention
to the seating arrangements.

“So you’re Lexi?” the girl asked giving Lexi
her full attention.

“Uh...yeah,” Lexi said leaning her elbow on
the table and resting her head on her hand.

“That’s a pretty name. I’m Kate. I don’t
think we had a chance to meet,” she said cheerfully.

Lexi heard a distinct chuckle emanating from
the other side of Kate. She couldn’t help but openly glare at Jack
sitting on the opposite side of Kate. Obviously, Kate wasn’t quite
as perceptive as Clark otherwise she probably wouldn’t be acting as
nice as she was right now.

The waitress came back with menus and took
drink orders, which mainly consisted of several pitchers of
margaritas. Lexi didn’t intend to drink much though. Her tolerance
was beyond low, and she needed to be fully aware now that Jack was
sticking around. Great…what a fun trip…

“Jack, thanks for giving me a heads up about
your arrival,” Seth said acting perturbed.

Jack shrugged effortlessly. Lexi tried not to
stare at the light stubble on his chin and up his jaw line that
made him look older and more handsome. “I couldn’t stay away. You
know that,” he said cocking his head to the side and smiling
suggestively at his friend.

“Oh baby, baby, take me now,” Seth cried
passionately. He cracked up laughing and smacked the table with his
hand hard enough for the water glasses to shake. “Man, I’ve been
meaning to tell you about this chick…” He wasn’t afforded the
luxury of finishing his sentence as Luke forcefully smacked the
back of his head. “Ugh…” he croaked. “What the fuck was that
for?”

“There are five women at the table, are you
sure you want to finish that line of conversation?” Clark asked
raising his eyebrows in warning.

“Yeah man, I don’t care who hears.” He
shifted his attention back to Jack. “So I was fucking this…”
Another vicious slap came, but from his other side this time.
“What. The. Fuck. Sandy!” he cried glaring at the leggy brunette
seated next to him.

“I can’t believe you were going to…” she
trailed off as she realized everyone was staring at her.

“I wasn’t going to tell them whether or not
it was you.” A blush crept onto her cheeks, but she remained
resolute. The other two girls at the table seemed to find this
highly amusing. They were facing into each other and giggling, then
began whispering something that they obviously didn’t care to share
with the rest of the table. “Anyway,” he began again massaging the
back of his head, “like I was saying, I was banging this girl from
behind, and she did this amazing…”

Lexi blanched at his next comment. She knew
Seth was crude, but this was over the top even for him. She heard
Kate whimper. When Lexi flashed her eyes towards the girl, she
realized she was tugging on Jack’s sleeve, begging him to make Seth
stop.

“Alright man,” he said grabbing Kate by the
upper thigh and pulling her into him. She giggled a little. Lexi
felt like gagging. “How about you tell me what she did when we’re
not about to eat?”

“Your loss man,” Seth said running his hand
down Sandy’s back.

The night proceeded smoothly after that
point. Lexi managed to carry on an entire conversation with Jack’s
girlfriend who, as much as Lexi hated to admit it, seemed like a
genuinely nice person. Jack remained civil, but they both
purposefully avoided all means of communication. Sometimes when
Lexi would say something referencing something from their past, he
would catch her eye and grin devilishly. At those moments, she
tried to keep the desirous glint out of her own eyes, and reminded
herself repeatedly that she was sitting at the table with her
boyfriend. Her very lovable, amazingly intuitive boyfriend…who
would notice if she kept up the flirting signals Jack was
conspicuously sending her way.

At the end of the night, Seth boasted about
getting the waitress’s number, all the while having each arm slung
around another girl. Lexi wasn’t all too sure how he did it. But
she was pretty sure that the waitress, at least, had given him a
wrong number.

Since they had arrived so late in the
afternoon, and the majority of them wanted to be awake as soon as
possible to hit the beach, they all separated into their rooms to
sleep. Lexi simply couldn’t get comfortable in her room. The
queen-size bed she was sharing with Sandy, felt lumpy despite how
expensive she knew it was. She turned onto her back and felt a
sharp elbow dig into her side. Lexi shot up in bed wondering if
this girl was feigning sleep with how cruel her jabs were. After
experimentally pushing her body, she decided Sandy was actually
asleep. Apparently, she was just a brutal sleeper. Not that Lexi
could really sleep anyway. All she could think about was Jack.

Besides his occasional chuckle and rather
suggestive eye contact, he hadn’t really done much else to entice
her...whether good or bad. The sane part of her told her that that
was a good thing. She should definitely consider that to be a good
thing. But being this close to him and having him nearly completely
ignore her...well, it damn well irritated her.

So what if he had an adorably, perky
girlfriend? He had flirted with her when he had been with Danielle,
and they had been together much longer than that. Hating herself
for her thoughts, she kicked her feet over the bed and silently
edged out of the room.

The beach house was designed in such a way
that when you entered from the front door a large set of stairs off
to the right led to the enormous, lofted, master bedroom suite. It
took up the entire top floor, and Seth had happily claimed his
parents’ king-size bed as his own for the week. The front doorway
opened to the living room with standard beach decorating, hardwood
floors, and a host of stylish wood furniture. Down a hallway to the
left, the guys were staying in two standard offices, one with a
pullout couch and the other with a black futon. A set of stairs off
of the living room led to the bottom floor where Seth’s sister’s
bedroom, where Lexi was staying, and a separate guest bedroom were
connected by an adjoining bathroom. A homey-looking den opened to
the massive deck Lexi had looked up at earlier that day.

Sneaking out of her bedroom trying not to
disturb Sandy, Lexi exited the house through the den and out into
the cool night air. The wind caught her hair and whipped it around
her face. She breathed in the salt enjoying every second. After
grabbing a pink and yellow striped towel, she flew down the flight
of stairs that opened to the sandy beach below.

Falling back against the towel, Lexi stared
up at the giant luminescent moon overhead. This was much more
pleasant than getting elbowed to death in her sleep. She just
wished that she could somehow get Jack out of her mind. It’s not
like her and Clark were currently in a rough patch. Things were
going as well as they ever had. He had been a little moody as of
late, but she just chocked that up to graduation and the looming
prospect of finding a job. Other than that, it was just Jack that
was bothering her. Things tended to go very,
very
wrong when
she was around him. She had kept her distance since that time she
had allowed herself to slip up. She couldn’t take that back, but
she could try to prevent a repeat performance.

But he was so gorgeous in person! Those baby
blue eyes had turned crystal clear with desire at her approach on
the beach, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself.

The cool environment coupled with the slow
rolling of the ocean eventually lulled her to sleep, even as she
was thinking these thoughts about Jack.

A hand gently shook her awake and she jumped
up from her slumber. She was terrified that she had slept through
the entire night out here on the beach. But after opening her eyes,
she noticed it was still pitch black outside, and breathed a sigh
of relief. She turned to see who had caught her out on the beach
alone.

“Hey,” Jack said removing his hand from her
shoulder. He smiled down on her brightly.

Of course, it was him. If she ran back up to
the house right now, would he be offended? Deciding against that
course of action, she mumbled groggily, “Hi. What are you doing
down here?” A long yawn followed.

“I could ask you the same thing. Scoot over,”
he directed her, bending down and plopping on the small beach
towel. He leaned his elbows back into the sand and stretched his
legs out facing the ocean.

She tried to fix her gaze forward and avoid
looking at him, but she couldn’t. Before he had woken her up, she
had been having another…rather inappropriate dream about him.
Apparently being within his presence had allowed him full access to
her dreams once again. “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked to make
conversation, even though the silence wasn’t that bad.

“I saw you come down here,” he told her.

“I thought you were sleeping upstairs.” She
couldn’t help but stare at his well-defined profile in the ambient
light.

He shook his head. “Nah, sleeping next to
guys...not my style. I took the couch in the den.”

She raised her eyebrows realizing that he
must have been in the den all along when she had passed through the
door. “Oh. How long have I been out?”

“About thirty minutes I guess, before I
decided to join you.”

“How did you know I didn’t go for a walk or
something?” she asked curiously.

He turned his head towards her, and by the
light of the moon, she got a full look at the beautiful face she
had been dreaming about. His eyes traveled over her flimsy sleeping
clothes, and then rose back to her intrigued face. Finally, he
shrugged and answered, “I just knew.”

“You didn’t come down and check on me before
this?”

“No. I waited to see if you were going to
come right back in, but then I realized you weren’t. So I came to
find you. I just knew you’d be here, Lex. I just know you,” he said
reaching out and cupping her cheek as he had done earlier that
afternoon.

At his touch, her breath quickened, and her
lips parted. How did he do that? “I’ve missed you so much,” he said
his voice lowering intimately.

“Jack,” she whimpered as he trailed his hand
down her neck, “you...you can’t touch me like that.”

He pulled her by her neck towards his waiting
lips. Just as they were only an inch apart, he broke her steady
gaze and began to kiss down her supple neck. She moaned deep in her
throat, and then ripped herself out of his enticing grasp.

“I said no,” she cried standing in a fit of
anger. He remained seated and rested back on his elbows again, not
even looking up at her. “Why are you here? What do you think you
are doing? I don’t want things to be like that again. My
boyfriend...your girlfriend...our friends...everyone is up there
right now and could see you doing this,” she said pointing up at
the beach house. “Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?”

Ignoring her other questions, he coolly said,
“Lexi, just sit down.”

“No! I’m not going to
just
sit down.
Why do you have to be so demanding all the damn time?” she cried,
her hands resting on her hips. She was glaring daggers at him.