Welcome to Corbet's Inlet, North Carolina, where the teenagers act like adults and the adults act like teenagers. It's Griffin Connolly's favorite place in the world. And while she may not be good at making decisions when it comes to her own life, s...
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In Griffin's mind, there was nothing better than napping on the beach.
Sun warming your skin... Toes pushed deep into the cool sand... The muted roar of the waves... A breeze wrapping the salt around your shoulders...
"Griffin, what the fuck."
Griffin jolted awake in her beach chair, accidentally kicking over the tumbler of lemonade she'd stuck in the sand by her feet. She squinted up at the three distinctly male silhouettes towering over her. It was way too bright on the beach, and her contacts were so dried out she could barely open her eyes.
"Jesus, Matty," she croaked. How long had she been out? "What?"
Matty walked around behind her and sat down in the sand on the other side. "Dude. Where the hell have you been?"
"Here," Griffin said flatly, tugging at her strapless bikini top. She still couldn't see very well, but she could take a wild guess at who the other dudes with him were. She wished she'd brought a coverup with her.
Evan appeared in front of her. "Yeah, no shit, Griff," he said, squatting down to fix her tumbler "Where have you been since Sunday?"
Also here. Avoiding the three of them. And sulking over how Lauren hadn't called or texted her back all week.
"Working," she said. "What are you guys doing here?"
Matty huffed and brought his knees to his chest, digging his heels into the sand. "We haven't seen you in like a week. So since you've been screening our calls and texts, we had to come to you."
Griffin still couldn't get her eyes all the way open. She leaned over and fished through her bag for a pair of sunglasses. "I haven't been screening your calls."
"You always screen our calls," Matty said, and Charlie snorted somewhere to Griffin's right. He was the only one still standing over her—looming over her—and blocking her sun. She thought about five-starring him on his calf.
Instead, she asked, "You guys came all the way down here to lecture me on screening calls?"
"No, we came down here to force you to go sailing with us. And you're not allowed to say no," Evan said, peering into her bag. "You got any food in there?"
Griffin found her sunglasses and slipped them on, then reached into a side pocket for the granola bar she was going to enjoy earlier with her lemonade. Evan lunged for it before she could even get it out of the bag.
"Jeez—don't your parents feed you?"
Evan shoved the entire thing into his mouth. "Yuff." He swallowed a bit and said, "Two-a-day workouts, man."
Right. For lacrosse. Griffin knew he'd been working out like crazy all summer, but she hadn't realized it'd gotten up to two-a-days.
"Ev's cracked out on protein powder all the time now," Matty said.
