Not Looking For Love: Episode 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

often?"
    I shrug. "Sometimes. I like this beach. There are hardly ever any people here."
    I relax the grip on my knees and lean back, letting my leg rest against his just a little. Warmth pools in the spot where our legs touch, and I want more of it, want it to consume me whole. It's a primal urge, there's nothing I can do to fight it. A gust of wind blows past us. He smells better than I'd imagined he would after a full day of working in the sun. A hint of cologne, manly and hot, mingles with a mustiness that hits me hard in the stomach and melts nicely upwards into my chest and down.
    I clear my throat a little and reach over to pick up his sketchbook. "Can I see?"
    He stiffens like he's going to say no, but I wasn't really asking for permission. I open the sketchbook in the middle to an empty page. The sketchbook is new; only the first few pages covered. The paper still has that new parchment smell, and I run my finger down the side of an empty page.  
    "I wish I could draw. I love parchment," I say. It's the truth. I used to buy sketchbooks just like this one and pencils, trying to draw. But I have no talent. "Don't you?"
    "I guess," he says quietly.
    I flip back to the first page, to a drawing of this very pier, just as I saw it when I walked up to it. "Wow, this is awesome."
    All the details are perfect, even down to the peeling white paint.
    There's another of a car, a shiny black BMW, kind of like the one Kate got for her birthday a few months ago.  
    The next drawing makes me gasp. Scott reaches for the sketchbook as though he's going to snatch it from my hands, but stops himself, and lets his hand fall down by his side. I'm staring at myself, just as I must have looked this morning. My eyes wide, my wet hair hanging down the sides of my face, droplets of water clinging to my eyelashes, and my wet tank top hiding nothing.  
    My face is a perfect likeness of what I'd want to look like in every photo. Except my eyes. I let out the breath I didn't even realize I was holding. "This is amazing. But do my eyes really look so haunted? So lost?"
    "They did this morning," Scott says and takes the sketchbook from my limp fingers, closes it, and stuffs it into his backpack. I want to ask him to take it back out, show it to me again, give me the drawing, but I don't.
    "You're really talented," I say instead.
    He gives a noncommittal grunt by way of an answer.  
    "I'm serious. Why are you gardening for a living if you can draw like that? You could be like, I don't know, doing portraits," I'm rambling, saying the first thing that comes to my mind, and I should stop. "Or something..." I finish lamely.
    Scott's staring off at the waves. "I might take some night classes, do something useful with it."
    "Oh, yeah, high school can be... why don't you just get your GED and then maybe try to get into college," I offer. Though I'm not even sure an art degree gets you anywhere these days. At least not according to my parents.
    He laughs a little too huskily. "I finished high school thank you very much. I was talking about college night classes."
    "Oh," is all I can say. "Well, I hear Hunter has a good art program."
    "I was actually thinking about something more practical, like graphic design maybe."
    I nod and let the silence drag. It's almost full night now. Lightning is coursing through the sky above the sea: yellow, white, and hot pink. Scott shifts beside me, and his leg is no longer touching mine. His smell hits me hard again, manly and clean. I liked him better when he was just a high school dropout gardener in my fantasy, with bulging muscles and not much to say beyond, 'are you alright?' and 'I'm just sayin.' Not sure how I feel about actually getting to know talented artist Scott, who wants to take night classes at college. I don't want him to be a real person; I want my fantasy. I want this attraction he stirs in me, which is boiling now and making me shiver, to be all there is to it. Physical and nothing more. Half the world