LEIGH
Thursday came too quickly and not quickly enough.
I changed my outfit three times before Dex picked me up, which was ridiculous because this wasn’t a date or anything. Just a cake tasting for my brother’s wedding. The brother I still felt strange calling my brother, and his best friend who I had no idea what I wanted to call or even what everyone else would think by the time I came to that decision.
Except it wasn’t just that.
It was Dex and me in another small space, forced proximity, the ridiculous truce already having morphed into something I didn’t have a name for. It was us spending time together as… what?
When his truck pulled up at exactly two o’clock, I was waiting on the porch with my camera and a determination to keep this friendly, but appropriate levels of friendliness. And hopefully somewhere along the way today I’d figure out what that meant as well.
That determination lasted about thirty seconds.
“Hey,” he said when I climbed in.
“Hey.”
And there it was. That electricity, that awareness, that pull that made pretending impossible.
We drove in silence for the first few blocks. I kept my camera in my lap, fiddling with the lens cap. He kept his eyes on the road, jaw tight, hands gripping the steering wheel like it might try to escape.
“So,” I said finally. “Cake.”
“Cake,” he agreed.
“Should be simple enough.”
“Yep. Taste some cake. Make sure it tastes like good cake. Done.”
“Easy.”
“Right.”
Another pause.
“This is so weird,” I muttered.
“Yeah.” He glanced at me briefly, and I caught the hint of a smile. “We’re terrible at this.”
“At what? Pretending we’re not attracted to each other?”
The words were out before I could stop them. I froze, mortified. Idid notjust go there!
But Dex laughed. A real laugh, rough and surprised. “Apparently, yeah. We’re terrible at that.”
Something in my chest loosened. “Okay, so maybe we stop pretending.”
“Stop pretending?”
“That we’re not attracted to each other. Acknowledge it, accept it, and then... I don’t know. Move on?” Even as I said it, I knew how impossible that sounded.
He pulled into a parking spot downtown and killed the engine. For a moment, we just sat there. Both of us with so much to say and not knowing how to just… say it.
“Acknowledging it doesn’t make it go away,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
“And we can’t…”
