“Yeah, I can,” I chuckle.
“Oh, huh, I forgot you’ve lived here for six years.”
“First time in warm tropical waters?”
“Yep. The water in Jersey never gets truly warm and it’s probably been ten years since I’ve been to a beach.”
Ten years. Wow. I’m not sure why that surprises me so much. I rarely visited a beach before I moved here, but now it seems so odd to hear someone say they never go to the beach. I come out here to relax at least once a week even though I don’t go in the water.
When we are both thoroughly drenched, Evan runs back onto the sand and drops to his knees. At first, I think something is wrong, so I rush to his side. When I get there, he is packing sand into small squares.
“What are you doing?”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, “Building a sandcastle,” he says it as if the most normal thing in the world for a grown man to be kneeling in the sand building his owncastle. I guess it isn’t that uncommon. There are huge sandcastle building contests around the world.
Deciding that he’s having way too much fun without me, I park myself next to him and start making my own squares. “Do you have a plan?”
“Not at all,” Evan laughs. “Stack the squares to make walls?” He says it as a question, so I agree and start stacking.
By the time we have the third wall built, it’s beginning to look a little like a building. Evan starts a new wall, coming off one of the three completed ones, but not closing the fourth wall. When he notices me staring at him with a raised brow, he shakes his head.
“We can’t have a one room castle.” It sounds as if he can’t believe I didn’t understand that piece of information, which I didn’t.
“Alright. Since you’re the master architect, how many rooms are we making?”
“Ten,” he says with confidence. “On the first floor.”
“Ten? First floor? You really are building a castle.”
“Well, yeah, go big and all that.” He waves his hand as if it makes perfect sense.
This guy is amazing. If someone would have told me a week ago, I’d be spending today building a sandcastle with the hottest guy I’ve met in a long time and enjoying every second while falling very hard and very fast, I would have laughed in their face and called them crazy.
THIRTEEN
EVAN
I’m starting to doze off when I feel the car stop and hear Isaac chuckle softly beside me. I open my eyes suddenly alert. Shit. We’re back at my apartment already.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“It’s fine. You had a big day. Building an entire castle takes its toll on one.”
“Are you making fun of me?” I ask in mock horror, holding a hand to my chest.
“Not at all. You had a busy day.”
“That castle was three stories!” I exclaim.
“I’m aware.”
“It had a moat!”
“It did.”
Isaac tries to keep a straight face but fails miserably, leaning forward and laughing a deep, loud belly laugh that goes straight to my dick. He gets out of the car and rushes around to my side, opening the door before I have a chance. I’m enjoying the whole gentleman thing he’s been doing allday. We didn’t hold hands or act like more than friends, but all day he’s done little things like open my door and buy me lunch to show he cares.
I gather my bags from the festival and climb out of the car. Starting for the elevator, I glance back to make sure Isaac is following me. I should have invited him in, but when I look behind me, he is hot on my heels. Good. Even though I’m tired, I’m not ready for the date to end.