“Mmm…no.” I keep flicking through her camera roll. Toilet paper. Milk. Baggies. Firestarters. “Jade Quinn!” I gasp. “What are you doing taking pictures of yourself in a lacy red bra?” I joke.
A lady with a wild perm stops her cart to give us a disapprovingtsk.
Jade’s face is now the color of said imaginary red bra. Great. Now I can’t seem to get the thought of her shirtless out of my head.
“Dammit, Dylan!” Jade grabs for the phone I’m holding out of reach. Short of climbing me like a ladder, she’s not getting this back.
I finally get to the end of the products to find a selfie of Jade and Robocop from last night’s fair. For some reason, I really, really want to delete it. She looks so fucking happy, and I can’t figure out why. “What do you see in this guy? He looks like a red panda.”
Her lips purse. “Nate is nice.”
“I bet he is,” I mutter, handing back her phone. “Nice” is one adjective I’ve never heard attached to my name. Not that I care what people think of me. “What’re you doing after you get finished spying?”
She stuffs the phone back into her purse. “I’mnotspying.”
“Yeah. Okay. You have plans after this or what, Pink Panther?”
“I’m going back to the store.”
“Perfect. I’ll meet you out front.” I still need to pay for my snack even though my last name is on the building.
Jade runs along after me, her purse swinging against her thigh. “Hold on. What do you mean you’ll meet me out front?”
Isn’t it obvious? “I need a ride back to my apartment, and you’re going to give me one.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because you’renice.”
I walk off to pay for my cookies and sit on a bench outside the store, waiting for Jade to finish spying. I’m not sure if I should be concerned about the fact that she’s taking pictures of products and prices, but I figure it can’t be that bad.
A young woman wearing hiking boots and jean shorts that barely peek from beneath her oversized hoodie saunters by, her gaze cutting to me as she smiles. I don’t know who she is, but I smile back because apparently girls like “nice” guys, and smiling seems like the “nice” thing to do. The sliding doors glide open, but instead of going inside, the woman turns around and comes back toward me.
Her shorts ride a little higher on her tanned thighs when she sinks onto the bench beside me. “Hey.”
I smile and pretend like I want to talk to this stranger because it’snice. “Hello.”
She pushes her gold aviators up onto her forehead and doesn’t try to hide the fact that she is one hundred percent checking me out. “What do you have there?” Not sure if she’s nodding toward my dick or the cookie box resting on my thighs.
Better to be safe than sorry. I hold up one of my cookies and take a bite. Okay. These are seriously delicious. If Jade doesn’t hurry, I’m going to end up eating all of them and needing to run back inside to grab another box for later.
“Any good?” the woman asks.
I flip open the lid and extend the box toward her. “See for yourself.”
She fishes out a cookie and slips it between her glossy pink lips. Her eyes flutter closed, and her head falls back, kinda like that scene fromWhen Harry Met Sally.“Mmm…so good,” she moans.
I’m pretty sure she’s trying to be seductive, but it’s not working. The crumbs sticking to her lip gloss aren’t helping either.
“My name’s Cindi, with an ‘i’,” she says. “What’s yours?”
“Dylan. With a ‘y’.”
That makes her smile. “You live around here, Dylan?”
“I do for now.” I should probably tell her she has multicolored sprinkles caught between her teeth, but I’m not really sure if that’s going to embarrass her or not. Hayley would want to know, but Iris definitely wouldn’t.
“A few girlfriends and I are staying in a cabin down by the springs for a couple of weeks,” she says around another bite. “If you’re looking for a good time, you should swing by.”
