Timeshare Boyfriend: A Steamy New Adult Enemies to Lovers Summer Romance Novel

Chapter 1: There Is No Love Like the First Love...Or the First Hate

My heart beat faster in my chest as our car passed the "Welcome to South Carolina" sign.

I felt it deep in my bones. This would be a summer I would never forget.

* * *

My dad knocked on my bathroom door. "Evie, we're leaving in five minutes to meet the Pierces for dinner. Make sure you're ready."

Since arriving at the timeshare building, the past two hours had been spent selecting the perfect outfit, as well as attempting to put on makeup for the third time in my life.

With the limited extent of my makeup knowledge, I had attempted an eye shadow look that turned out more like a black eye than a smoky one.

"Two more minutes, Evie," my dad yelled through the door. He knew I was never late, so I assumed his yell to me was more for the benefit of my mother who was probably still figuring out what dress to wear to see her old college friend, Maryam Pierce.

All I could remember about Adam's mother was that her hand was always wrapped around a wine cooler and she was self-employed as a matchmaker.

My thoughts traveled back in time.

"Adam and Eve. Sounds like a match made in heaven," she had said when I met Adam for the first time at the beach.

I stared at him. He stared back. At a couple of months older than me, he stood about an inch shorter—thank you, early female maturity—and wore the expression of someone who had brushed his teeth and mistakenly sipped from a glass of orange juice.

I spoke first, like the social butterfly I was most definitely not. "Hi."

He tilted his head and frowned. "Your mouth is red."

My tongue pressed against my teeth as I remembered the cherry Popsicle I had devoured half an hour earlier.

My mother laughed and responded for me, "Her mouth is always red. She'll eat anything if it's cherry-flavored." She turned to where my father and Mr. Pierce sat, watching us with light smiles. "It's saved us from having to force medicine down her throat when she has a fever. Once, she snuck into the cabinet and drank half a bottle of cherry Tylenol just because she was thirsty."

"That's gross," Adam told me.

"You're gross," I thought but kept my red, cherry mouth closed.

"It looks like you drink blood," he added for good measure.

"Keep insulting me and I'll drink yours." None of those words came out.

He stared at me some more. A sliver of silence passed before, "Can she not say anything other than hi?" he asked my mother.

"Eve is just a bit shy." My mom twirled a piece of my brown hair and pulled on it like a puppeteer. "Say something, sweetie."

"Something."

My mom loved Maryam, but she spent large amounts of time trying to impress and outshine her. My father didn't care what he looked like for dinner. He just wanted to eat.

I did the finishing touches on my wild, dark and curly hair, which acted more moldable today as if it knew it had someone to impress. Adam.

A sigh escaped me before my dad knocked again on the bathroom door.

I laughed and walked into the medium-sized living room of the unit to join him on the couch in waiting for my mother. I again twisted the small turtle ring on my pinky, an anxious habit I'd developed.