Chapter 1: Summer Begins

The drive from the airport took about forty minutes, and Mason spent most of it trying not to stare at his aunt.

He hadn’t seen Valerie in maybe three years, not since that Thanksgiving where she’d shown up late with wine-stained lips and a dress that made his mother purse her own lips in that tight, disapproving way she had. He remembered being eighteen then, freshly aware of women in that desperate teenage way, and thinking his aunt was something else entirely. But that was a passing thought, the kind you bury and don’t examine.

Now he was twenty-one, and she’d picked him up at arrivals wearing cutoff denim shorts and a white tank top that was just sheer enough to make the question of whether she was wearing a bra an actual question. Her dark hair was longer than he remembered, past her shoulders, and she had these oversized sunglasses pushed up on her head like she’d just stepped out of some movie about hot women doing hot things in coastal towns.

“God, look at you,” she’d said when she saw him, pulling him into a hug that lasted a beat too long. She smelled like coconut and something warm underneath it. “When did you get so grown up? Your mom didn’t tell me she was sending me a man.”

“Hey Aunt Val,” he’d managed, very aware of her chest pressing against him.

She’d swatted his arm. “Don’t Aunt Val me. Makes me sound ancient. Just Val, or Valerie if you’re feeling formal.” She grabbed one of his bags before he could protest and walked ahead of him toward the parking lot, and that was the first time he noticed the way her shorts fit her from behind. The frayed edges sat right at that crease where her ass met her thighs, and he caught himself looking and forced his eyes to the concrete.

Three years had changed things. Or maybe he’d changed. She was thirty-eight, his mother’s younger sister, and she carried it like a weapon she knew how to use.

Now in the car, her hand rested on the gear shift between them, and she drove with casual confidence, one wrist draped over the steering wheel. The windows were down, and her hair was whipping around, and she kept glancing over at him with this little smile.

“So your mom finally cut the cord, huh?”

“She wasn’t thrilled about it,” Mason said. “She wanted me to do an internship this summer.”

“Of course she did. Lisa’s been scheduling fun out of her life since we were teenagers.” Valerie laughed, and it was this throaty sound that did something to the base of his spine. “Well, you’re with me now, and I don’t do schedules. I do whatever feels good.”

She said it casually, but her eyes flicked to him when she said it and held there a second too long for the road ahead.

Her house was a bungalow-style place about a mile from the beach, white with blue shutters and a wraparound porch that had a hammock on it. Inside was bright and airy, with lots of open space and artwork on the walls that ranged from tasteful to borderline provocative. There was a painting in the hallway of a woman arching backward, nude from the waist up, her face tilted toward something unseen. Mason stared at it for a moment too long.

“Like that one?” Valerie was behind him, close enough that he could feel warmth radiating off her skin. “A friend of mine painted it. She used me as the model.”

Mason’s brain short-circuited for a second. He looked at the painting again with new eyes, the curve of the spine, and the shape of the breasts and felt heat crawl up his neck.

“It’s ... it’s really good,” he said, which was possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever said.

Valerie laughed again, that same low, warm sound. “You’re cute when you’re flustered. Come on, I’ll show you your room.”

His room was at the end of the hall, small but comfortable, with a queen bed and windows that let in the late afternoon sun. Her room, she mentioned as they passed it, was directly across the hall. “So if you need anything at night,” she said, leaning against his doorframe with her arms crossed in a way that pressed her breasts together, “I’m right there.”

“Thanks,” Mason said to his suitcase.

She left him to unpack, and he sat on the bed and pressed his palms against his eyes and told himself to get it together. She was his aunt. His mother’s sister. The flirting, if you could even call it that, was just her personality. Valerie had always been the wild one, the one his mother talked about with that mixture of disapproval and something that might have been envy. She flirted with everyone. It didn’t mean anything.

He almost believed it.

Dinner was grilled fish and salad and a bottle of white wine that Valerie poured generously. They ate on the back porch with the sound of the ocean somewhere in the darkness beyond the trees, and she asked him about school, about his life, and about girls, and that last topic was where things started to shift.

“So is there anyone? Girlfriend, hookup buddy, whatever you kids call it now?”

“Not really. There was someone last semester, but it didn’t work out.”

“Mmm.” Valerie sipped her wine and studied him over the rim. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. She said I was too ... she said I was boring in bed. Her exact words, actually.”

He didn’t know why he told her that. The wine, maybe. Or the way the darkness and the sound of the waves made everything feel confessional. Valerie’s eyebrows went up, and she set her glass down.

“Boring? You?”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I am, but she seemed pretty sure about it.”

“Hmm.” Valerie leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, and the movement made her shorts ride up even further. “Well, in my experience, when a girl says a guy is boring in bed, it usually means one of two things. Either he’s selfish and doesn’t pay attention to what she needs. Or she’s too uptight to tell him what she wants and blames him for not being a mind reader. “ She paused. “Which one do you think it was?”