Page 43 of Reaching Gavin

Chapter Sixteen

The week passedat an excruciatingly slow rate. I had two run-ins with Trevor, who seemed intent on catching me in the act with Gavin. Gavin, on the other hand, continually reassured me that no one in the office would have a problem with our relationship. Still, I wanted to keep it private for now. We hadn’t even slept together yet. It hardly seemed like the business of the rest of, well, the business. When Thursday night finally rolled around it was like Christmas Eve. I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I managed to get both Jess and Jillian on video chat to help me decide what to pack. Since I’d finally told them about my dinner with him the other night, they’d adjusted their attitudes about him. It felt good to have my outfit-prepping, over-analyzing, twenty-four hour cheer squad back together.

“Will I need a swimsuit?” I asked them, studying the meager choices I had to work with. I kept most of my suits back in Texas where I usually spent the summer. There wasn’t a lot of call for swimwear in the rainy Pacific Northwest.

“Yes,” Jillian said definitively as though she was an expert on my itinerary. “It’s better to have it then to have to go au natural.”

“I don’t know.” Jess jumped in with her opinion. She was back in the hammock, even though it was dark outside. “Gavin might find au natural pretty inspiring.”

“Look at her,” Jillian exclaimed. “She could wear a burlap bag and he would be inspired.”

“I’m packing this one,” I announced. Gavin had been a little less forthcoming with the details than I would like. I didn’t know if we were staying in a hotel, a bed and breakfast, or a tent. I really, really hoped we weren’t staying in a tent. This was one weekend where I wanted a bed at my disposal.

“How are you getting there?” Jess asked. The wind blew a strand of blonde hair over her freckled nose and she pushed it away with a puff. She was like a talking advertisement for a Mexican vacation.

“Driving? Where is Friday Harbor?” I didn’t really have any clue where that was located. Since I’d found out our destination only a few hours ago, I’d jumped straight into packing.

“It’s on an island in the San Juans,” Jillian said dryly.

“There are plenty of bridges that connect the islands,” I pointed out. Gavin had left that detail out, but he’d probably assumed I’d know after three years of college here.

“It’s like a four-hour ferry ride,” Jess informed me. She had lived in the Pacific Northwest the longest of any of us. Naturally, she knew exactly where Friday Harbor was. I wished, though, that she thought to mention this fact before.

“Four hours?” I was aghast. “Will we be stuck in a car for four hours? Or on a boat for four hours? How does he expect me to wait that long to…”

“You can do it on a boat,” Jess said.

“You can do it on in a car,” Jillian said at the same time.

“Are we writing a Dr. Seuss novel or helping me out?” I was frustrated. Sexually. And otherwise. But mostly sexually. “I don’t want our first time to be in a car or on a boat.”

“You haven’t done it yet?” Jillian said with a look of horror that mirrored Jess’s. I’d been a little light on the details of our first date. Mostly, because I didn’t want them to psych me out about the sex stuff.

I shrugged as if this was no big deal. “We messed around. We’ve just been waiting.”

“Who are you and what have you done with our best friend?” Jess asked.

I stopped trying to shove another pair of shorts into my overstuffed weekender bag and looked at the phone screen. “I always jump into bed with a guy too soon. You both know that.”

“We know that. We didn’t know that you knew that.” Jillian looked mildly impressed as though I told her that I’d taken a vow of silence or that I had swum the English Channel. Given that she had slept with Liam before she knew his name, I could see why this was the case.

“Gavin is… different.” I didn’t even want to say it. Those words felt like a jinx. I’d thrown around the term ‘the one.’ I talked about long-term possibilities with Trevor. There was even the terrible choice of a certain tattoo. Thank God, it wasn’t his actual name. I had been that girl who wanted the real thing so much that she was willing to settle for the knock-off. Now, I couldn’t believe that I’d landed the genuine article.

“Uh-oh.” Jess sat up in the hammock, nearly falling out of it, her legs tangling as she tried to get up while still holding the phone. “Is this more than a fling?”

“No way!” I held up one finger. Yes, I had been hinting that Gavin was Mr. Right, but they weren’t going to get me to say it. Doing that would really screw my chances to make it work with him.

“Oh my God!” Jillian squealed, then clapped a hand over her mouth and looked over shoulder. I assumed Liam was asleep at this hour. “She’s falling for him!”

“I don’t see why you two are happy about this. I usually have terrible taste in men.”

Both of them averted their eyes from the camera on their phones at the same time. That was more than a little suspicious.

“Spill it,” I demanded. They had been up to something. Something behind my back. They were being a little too cool about Gavin, especially given how concerned they’d been after I told them we kissed.

“I called my sister,” Jess said in a rush. She sighed heavily, as though she felt relief for keeping such a serious secret for so long.

“She had dinner with him. That doesn’t make her an expert,” I said. Lillian’s own workaholic tendencies and commitment to her job didn’t exactly make her a matchmaker.