"What are you thinking about?" Molly asked, stirring me from my thoughts. "You look like you're worlds away."

Shaking my head, I refocused on the road and pulled out of my parking spot. "Where to?"

"Home, I guess," came her soft response.

I didn’t want to take her home. I wanted to keep her right here in my truck and never let her out, but that would be weird as hell, so I didn’t speak my thoughts aloud. "Wanna go to the beach?" I asked instead.

"What?" Her brown eyes widened. "Now?"

"Yeah, why not?"

"Because it's a school day?" she reminded me. "And neither one of us has a bathing suit."

"Never needed one when we were kids."

"Yeah, well, we didn’t have grown-up parts to cover up back then," she shot back.

I threw my head back and laughed. "Grown-up parts?"

"Yeah, I thought it was a nicer way of saying tits and ass, and cock and balls," she stunned me by saying, laughing right along with me. "Okay, we can go to the beach, but I'm not going into the water."

"Not even if I offer to show you my cock and balls?" I teased, taking the turn off for the beach.

"Hard pass," she laughed, nudging me in the ribs. "Doofus."

20 Molly

I didn’t know what was happening to my life anymore.

For years I was invisible to everyone at The Academy, and in a matter of weeks, the popular girls were targeting me with their own brand of bitchy cruelness, while the king of the school was offering me rides home from school.

Even now, as I walked along the shoreline with Daryl by my side, I couldn't quite grasp the U-turn my life had taken.

"So, what are your plans for the weekend?" Daryl asked, as he tossed a football into the air and caught it easily. He was so much taller than me that I barely reached his shoulder in height. "Doing anything interesting?"

"My plans?" Wrapping my arms around my middle, I bit back a shiver and looked out at the water. "Nope. No. I don’t have any of those."

"You cold?" Without giving me a chance to respond, he whipped his gray school sweater off and held it out for me. "Here."

"Uh… thanks?"

"No problem."

Feeling shy, I took the sweater from his hands and quickly slipped it over my head. The moment I had his sweater on, swamping my little frame, his scent filled my nose and I breathed in deeply, feeling a world of happy memories bombard me.

"You still smell the same," I blurted out, and then quickly realized myself. "It's nice. Really good. I like it." Mortified, I cleared my throat and quickly looked away from his quizzical expression. Ugh.

"Yeah?" Stopping directly in front of me, Daryl leaned in close, pressing his nose to my bare throat, and causing a riot to break out south of my navel. "Well, you smell even better," he offered before pulling back to look at me.