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kitchen area. “So you got bitten by a radioactive spider, and now you’re Spiderman?”
    He smiled as he turned back and gave her a quick glance. But the smile seemed to take effort.
    “You know I’m an X-Men fan. If I was a superhero, I’d be Wolverine.”
    “How could I forget? You had that half-naked poster in your room until you graduated. I thought...well, I thought...”
    Kevin had pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and was chugging a few gulps, giving her a weird look as Susan lost use of all her words. How could she tell him she’d actually thought he was gay? She couldn’t. Not in a million years could she say that to him. She wasn’t Liz, she didn’t go around hurting people’s feelings--especially people she loved--for the hell of it. If she told him what she’d believed about him all those years ago, she might lose him. She couldn’t bear the thought of it. She couldn’t imagine life without him.
    Susan’s face burned with embarrassment. The pit of her stomach felt like it was ready to fall out. She gasped at the pain she caused herself as she bit her bottom lip. Now if she could just look into his eyes and lie well enough to keep him from leaving her.
    “You thought what?”
    She shrugged her shoulders lamely. Her face may be hot, but the rest of her was stone cold and stiff as a board. She felt like she was ready to crack apart into a million pieces.
    “You thought I was gay, didn’t you?” He smiled.
    “Well...yeah.” Relief flooded through her just seeing him smiling about it. She sighed. “Until you started asking me out every day for a week straight.”
    Kevin cringed, his eyes going all puppy-dog cute. “I asked for a whole… I…” He shook his head. “I only remember asking once.”
    “Liz would say you repressed it. Or maybe you’ve just got a selective memory. I’d say repressed.” Susan laid her hand on his face. “You okay? I didn’t mean to...” She had to stop. She suddenly felt very warm. Just touching his cheek, the unshaven scruff, the firm line of his jaw, the feel of him--he felt quite alarmingly like a man. She shuddered as her body responded to that new realization.
    Immediately Kevin flashed his million-watt smile and shook his head, abruptly ending that brief moment of physical contact. “Thought I was supposed to cheer you up, not the other way around.” Suddenly Kevin grasped Susan’s wrist and started pulling her to the front door. “I just thought of something that will cheer both of us up.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a surprise.”
    “Yeah, but what is it?” Susan hated the whininess in her voice.
    Kevin stopped pulling and shot her a wickedly arched eyebrow. “You do know the meaning of the word, don’t you?”
    “Funny.” Susan growled, but Kevin continued, sliding the French glass door open and pulling her through. “But where are we going?”
    “To risk our lives!” Kevin crooned as he slammed the door shut behind them.
     
    ~*~
     
    Susan had to jog to keep pace with Kevin’s gait. She would’ve let him go off alone, but he had a death grip on her wrist. Keeping up with him, barefoot, wasn’t that hard on the smooth granite walkway leading from the hotel down to the beach. But once on that soft, hot sand, her feet started to slip and slide, digging too deep and causing her to momentarily get stuck in the sand. Kevin jerked her free, dragging her along, tripping, until she got her feet back under her again.
    She tried yanking back, but it didn’t even slow him down. She considered biting him, but she’d have to catch up to him first. Susan thought of a movie, The Quiet Man, where John Wayne hauls Maureen O’Hara across the beautiful Irish countryside, against her will, dragging her behind him like a caveman whenever she lost her footing.
    That’s it. She wasn’t Maureen O’Hara, and no matter how unexpectedly macho Kevin seemed, he was no John Wayne. She put on the brakes. Or tried to, digging both feet into the sand and