Beau was glaring over at them, looking completely disgusted, and Jones was sniggering into his shoulder. He was flat on the ground, head in Jones’s lap where she’d been running her fingers through his hair. He’d turned his face toward them; Jack wondered how long he had been watching, and then wondered why he cared. Beau made a dramatic grimace at Jones, and then he smirked with that typical Beau nastiness, rolled over onto his side in the grass, head in his left hand. The long line of his body stretched out, and his shirt gaped open, revealing so much sun-warmed pink skin, and Jack thought that he had never hated anything in his whole life as much as he hated Beau.

He was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was shirtless.

“Fuck off, Beau,” Meg tossed over her shoulder.

“You fuck off.” A snappish and thoroughly uncreative retort from Jones.

Dare slanted his eyes over at them and spoke quietly, exasperated. “Oh my God, seriously. The drama.”

“Come on, Theo.” Genni put her hand in his hair again, then pulled at the cuff of his sleeve when he shrugged her off. “They’re not worth it. Not like he,” she gestured at Jack, “Even matters.”

His face was like a stone. “You’re right, of course.”

They stood, Jones in her bikini, those long legs oiled and tanned and lustrous, and Beau buttoned up his shirt, slow and precise, and they walked past, and—

For a moment it seemed like Beau—he towered over them, all of that height like something divine and unapproachable—and it felt like he was going to do something. Something violent, and wrong, and his face twitched, and Jack thought, Oh God, I’ll fight if I have to, but I really don’t want him to touch me. Not—not right now.

He felt the spring wind on his naked chest. And another splintering, yes and no and not knowing, really, what was happening.

Theo lifted his foot, almost as if to break Jack’s nose, there in the grass, the skin of his ankle so fine and fair, and then he smiled, wicked, as Jack’s breath caught. Jack’s mouth opened—to yell or to breathe, to say stop. Theo blinked, looking down at Jack’s lips, something twisting on his face. Like he didn’t want to touch him, either.

And they were gone, strolling away cool and composed, and Meg shrugged, muttered, “Assholes,” and leaned in and smiled at him, and she kissed him, lingering, and he remembered that girl he’d met so long ago in the red swimsuit, jam and Christmases and her parents and the kind of man he wanted to be.

He loved her. Of course he did. She pulled away, pushed him down into the earth, traced the frown on his face until he was wiped smooth, and rested her head on his bare chest. He loved her.