Jessica Joyce

I punch in the number of the last bakery, my gaze pinned on Eli while the line rings. He’s off his phone now, so he’s either beat me to this one or didn’t find it. His attention is fixed on something neon pinched between his fingers—a Post-it note, folded into one of his paper rings.

It’s a moment of familiarity, but since we got to Blue Yonder twenty-six hours ago, there’s little else that’s been familiar about him. Bodysnatched Eli Mora is thriving.

And he’s messing with my head.

Though I have plenty of legitimate things to think about, I’ve instead spent the past day trying to figure out what’s with him. Alien abduction? Demon possession? Some of it fits the profile, among it that moment in the car yesterday and the way he called me Peach, like I was still that person to him.

But I don’t think demonically possessed people have weekly therapy appointments, or go on what I’m starting to think of as The Adam Apology Tour, or throw therapy-speak at their ex-girlfriends about their hyper-independence issues when they’ve spent the past five years not talking about anything that mattered to or hurt them.

I hang up and rise to my knees, leaning over the arm of the loveseat to press my face against the window screen. I stare at Eli, strategizing ways to calmly tell him to back off my list and honor our agreement.

But then he stands and my thoughts fall off a cliff. I absorb that he’s wearing light blue swim trunks seconds before he pulls off his black T-shirt, revealing acres of golden skin, a flash of gold against the nape of his neck.

My mouth instantly parches. I haven’t seen him shirtless for years; he’s filled out, especially since Nick and Miriam’s wedding. He looks good. Gorgeous.

I used to be so well acquainted with that body that sometimes it felt like mine. I knew every blunt curve of it, every hard plane. I knew where his skin would shiver from a ticklish spot, where it would shiver from pleasure. His shoulders look even broader bare, the wings of his shoulder blades flaring as he tosses his shirt aside. I used to dig my fingers into that spot right there, run them in soft, whirled patterns as he fell asleep.

A face pops into my line of vision. “Great view, right?”

I scream and roll off the loveseat, my ass hitting the hardwood floor so violently that my teeth rattle. “Jesus, Cole!”

His cackle rolls in through the window as I crawl over. “You obviously think so, at least.”