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Her eyes met mine again and she said, “I told him about the whole kissing-for-me thing, and he called me a stupid asshole.”
“Larrydid?” The little old man she lived with?
She nodded. “He said that I was going to go HAM on your mouth every time I saw you... or something like that.”
I heard a roaring in my ears, but I said, “Do people still say HAM?”
“No,” she said quietly, giving her head a shake. “I told him that.”
I cleared my throat and couldn’t help but notice her long, graceful neck—the ponytail left it exposed. “Of course you did.”
“But he said that we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves from doing it again. And again.”
“Yeah?” I pushed a tendril of blond hair behind her ear with my knuckle, her sunglasses in my fist.
She nodded again. “Obviously we have self-control and he’s wrong, but every time I look at your mouth, I want to do it again.”
“Same,” was all I could manage, realizing that ithadn’tbeen the red lipstick that had made me nuts. It was apparently just her lips.
“It seems like a bad idea, though.”
“Does it?” I asked.
“Self-indulgent,” she said, but the words came out so softly, almost like a breath. “Decadent.”
“Itisthat,” I agreed.
“So we should probably chill.” As if a switch was flipped, she cleared her throat, and she was back to all business. “Let’s go get our coffee.”
I held out her phone and sunglasses, which she took and put on, and we started walking in the direction of Starbucks.
“I can’t believe you told Larry,” I said, almost more to myself than her. Yes, he was a progressive dude, but he couldn’t be younger than seventy-five. “About your oral experimentation.”
“First of all, ew, never call it that again,” she replied. “But he’s actually super easy to talk to. I think I tell him everything.”
“You do?”
She nodded. “I’m fairly certain he’s my best friend—apart from Asha—which may or may not say something about me.”
“That you’re not ageist, maybe?” I suggested.
“We’ll go with that,” she said as she approached Starbucks and grabbed the door handle. “I actually like that a lot. Thanks, Maxxie.”
“You’re going to have to stop calling me that.”
“I enjoy what it does to your face, though.”
“Explain,” I said, following her into the café.
“It’s like this,” she said, stopping and making me nearly run into her. She took off her sunglasses, and her entire face scrunched into an enormous scowl. “This is what you look like when I call you Maxxie.”
“I can assure you, I’ve never looked that ridiculous in my entire life.”
“Really?” She turned away from me and walked up to the counter.
“Really.”
“Can I please get a Venti Pike and a Venti Americano with a splash of cream?” she said to the barista. I was surprised that she remembered my order from the last time we’d been at Starbucks.
