“You gotta be faster than that, Denise,” London teases, the same grin Lucas has now on a sixteen year old girl.
I huff, brushing my hair from my face but it’s no use with how Lucas has me on his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “I thought you were on my team,” I argue.
“Lucas said I had to help in exchange for the seashell necklace he bought me on the boardwalk.”
I gasp, hitting Lucas’s shoulder but he’s already laughing. “You can’t just go around bribing people.”
“Sure I can.”
London lightly hits Lucas’s shoulder as well before running off and shouting for Nia, who’s busying herself with taking photos of the beach. Lucas shifts me so that my legs are around his waist and his arms hook around my thighs, bringing us face to face.
“I thought London and I were really getting somewhere.” My breaths come out shallow from all the laughing and running. “Then you went ahead and ruined it.”
“Trust me, she’ll go back to plotting my demise in another half an hour.”
“Just another reason for me to like her.” I laugh and slap Lucas’s hand when he lightly pinches my outer thigh.
“Yo, lovebirds!” Vanessa, Lucas’s older sister, calls out to us from her spot on the sand. Her curls were once neatly done in a gelled-back bun, but the wind has now pulled ringlets out. She waves us over. “We’re heading out!”
Lucas’s parents and sisters are packing things up, laughing at Vanessa’s nickname for us. She’s been saying it ever since I met her three weeks ago when she caught me and Lucas making out in the backyard of their parents’ house.
Lucas did try to tell me that his family is nosy and keeping our hands to ourselves was probably for the best but sitting in the grass, under the stars made me confident enough that we wouldn’t get caught.
Yeah no, Vanessa and London took it upon themselves to shout from the window, telling us to get a room. I thought it was funny, Lucas with a hard-on at that point, did not. The two have teased us the entire time we've been here about being attached at the hip.
They think we’re clingy now? I’m just waiting for them to find out about our matching lip tattoos.
Lucas’s name is inked on my inner lip and mine on his.
I dared him just before we left for San Diego, not actually expecting him to do it but when he started looking up tattoos shops, I jumped in and suggested matching fonts. I couldn’t let him have all the fun.
The tattoo artist may have looked at us like we were insane, but Lucas and I were more focused on discussing fonts and whether we should do red or blank ink. The understanding that we were basically branding each other came as an afterthought.
“Come on.” Lucas sets me back down. “They’re not afraid to leave us.”
I laugh and we walk back to shore, hand in hand. After almost five months of dating, I still can’t get over the butterflies that tend to take over my stomach whenever Lucas is around.
And honestly, he doesn’t even need to be around for them to show up. All I have to do is picture his smile or laugh. The way his hands feel on me. His groggy morning voice and the way he gets excited whenever he’s on the phone with either his parents or sisters.
I quickly learned a few months back, just after a few short weeks of dating, that Lucas’s family mean everything to him. So, when he invited me to come out to San Diego to meet them for the summer, I was panicked and honored at the same time.
If Lucas’s family didn’t like me then what would that mean for us? I wouldn’t make him choose but I didn’t want to stomach the idea of not being with Lucas.
Which in hindsight was a stupid mindset because I love everything about Lucas, so why wouldn’t I love the people who helped raise him?
Lucas drops down onto the blanket that Melody is sitting on, her attention consumed by whatever is playing on her phone, headphones over her ears.
He gently nudges her shoulder with his. “The water is calling your name, Mels.”
Melody looks at him, slipping off her headphones and turning to her brother with the most unamused expression. “I’ll drown, Lucas.”
I force myself to hold back my laughter, choosing to focus on slipping my shorts and tank top back on instead of Lucas arguing with his fourteen year old sister about him being a certified lifeguard.
He in fact is not and Melody calls him out on it.
Nia, the third youngest and closest in age to Lucas, walks over and hands me my sunglasses. I look down at her outstretched arm, surprised that she even walked up to me. I quickly learned that right after Melody, she’s the quieter of the siblings.
“These fell out of your bag.”