Chelsea

An hour later, I released the tension in my legs when I found a bathroom and changed clothes. Then I met Carp at the designated spot. Carp. It was odd, but James didn’t fit him—it was too…formal. I’d just try not to imagine an ugly fish when I addressed him.

He appraised me the same way he’d done at the bar an hour earlier. Except this time, he didn’t stop at my hair; his eyes roamed from head to toe without bothering to hide the fact he was checking me out. Yet where he’d been fascinated by my hair then, he now stared at my leather flip-flops, or maybe it was the ink covering my feet.

“Do you live around here?” I asked, hoping to get a narrower indication of where I’d find him on a map. We’d been playing the get-to-know-you version of twenty questions since our toes had hit the sand.

“No. New York City.” The lack of details he gave wasn’t lost on me. Either he was a private person or a guarded one. “You?”