After Arlington

Chapter 6: Lola

Lola could only just make him out from behind her oversized sunglasses. Why her neighbors had suddenly decided to swap out their aging groundskeeper for a sexy pool boy she wasn't quite sure, but the decision was starting to really piss her off.

"Are you stalking me?" she asked in accusation, ditching her book onto the banana lounge by her pool and sauntering over to the fence, the one part of their garden that could be used to peer into the grounds of the Caldwell's.

Alex looked over his shoulder, raising a hand to shield himself from the sun. "Oh, totally not. Just doing my job."

His wide smile indicated otherwise.

"And why are you doing your job in my neighbor's yard? Don't you clean pools?"

"Because it's my job," he said simply. "A job is a job. Is it bothering you, Dela?"

She scowled at him, adjusting the wide-brimmed hat sitting atop her golden locks.

"I wouldn't want to bother your boyfriend again. He looked pretty pissed off to see me coming out of your house the other week."

Her heart slowed. "He isn't my boyfriend."

"Sure looked like it," Alex said with a chuckle. He had a pair of hedge trimmers in his hand, and of course, he was shirtless. With a body like that she couldn't actually picture him favoring to wear clothes over flaunting his muscles in the sun.

"Well, he's not," she said. "He's someone from my past who I left a long time ago. He's out of the picture."

She wasn't quite sure why she felt the need to justify it.

"Are you suggesting we spend some more time together then?"

Her gaze was stuck staring dreamily at his pecs, the way sweat was shimmering over his tan skin and his muscles were taught as he raised an arm to mop his brow. She shook herself out of it. He was being a smartass.

"No. I'm not. I'm just making sure you didn't have the wrong idea."

"Okay, then. I guess now I have the right idea." He smirked and turned away, circling the tree he'd just been pruning.

Feeling unsatisfied, Lola lowered herself from where she'd been on her tiptoes to get a good view over the fence. She was wearing only a bikini, hoping her pale skin would bronze up. Maybe he'd been staring at her body too.

Returning to the lounge chair and resuming her book, Lola's thoughts were far away. She'd be lying if she said she had forgotten Alex with all that he had annoyed her, but she hadn't exactly been dwelling on him either. It was just her luck that he'd appeared pruning her neighbor's hedges while she was trying to get a sun tan. It was all her luck that he was working there in the first place.

She'd been busy. It was hard to catch up with everyone when there were so many people desperate for her attention, and then there were all the functions and family gatherings her parents were dragging her along to. Though Li was busy designing a clothing line in Paris and she'd tried to avoid hanging out with Sophie as much as possible, her schedule was still packed.

But, even surrounded by so many familiar faces, one person she'd been surprised to see was Zachary Plympton. Last she'd heard he had run away across the globe with his best friend, Max Heath. She'd never really pondered their friendship as anything more than what was shown on the surface, but clearly, something more was boiling between them, and that something had not ended well.

He'd been sitting tensely beside his parents at a few gatherings, barely giving her much more than a nod when she caught his eye. It was disconcerting that he seemed so suffocated when the summer celebrating a year away from their school was supposed to be about all of them finding freedom.