Jett:I’m screwed, aren’t I?
Sierra:Completely.
Raven:Totally screwed.
Calliope:But in the best way.
I started walking home, phone in hand, grinning like I’d lost my mind.
They were right.
I was completely, totally screwed.
And I’d never been happier about it.
Chapter nine
Three dates in nine days. That was the count.
Coffee on Wednesday. Dinner on Saturday. And now this: Tuesday night, takeout containers on my coffee table, some Netflix documentary about octopuses that neither of us had actually been watching.
Ellis sat on the other end of my couch with his legs stretched out, socked feet almost touching my thigh. The remains of pad thai sat between us like a chaperone. His sleeves were pushed up, the black-and-gray tattoo catching the fairy lights every time he moved his arm.
“This octopus is smarter than half my coworkers.” He pointed at the screen with a chopstick.
“That’s a low bar.”
“You haven’t met my coworkers.”
I reached for my water glass and let my knee brush his ankle. An accident that wasn’t. His breath hitched, barely audible, but I caught it.
We’d been doing this for an hour. The almost-touching. The charged silences between jokes. The way his eyes kept drifting from the TV to my mouth and back again, like he thought I wouldn’t notice.
Ellis owned every channel of my attention. That was the problem.
“Hey.” I muted the TV. The octopus froze mid-camouflage. “Can I be honest about something?”
His chopstick paused. “Always.”
“I have no idea what’s happening in this documentary.”
Relief broke across his face, cracking into a laugh. “Oh thank god! I’ve been lost since the second octopus showed up.”
“There’s a second octopus?”
“Apparently.” He set down the chopstick container. His fingers drummed once against his thigh, the way they did when he was working up to something. “I’ve been a little distracted.”
“By what?”
Those hazel eyes found mine. Stayed. “You know by what.”
“You could come closer.” My voice came out lower than I meant. “If you wanted.”
Ellis moved the takeout containers to the coffee table with careful hands. Deliberate. The way he did everything. Then he closed the distance between us, settling into the space beside me until his thigh pressed warm against mine.
This close, his cologne hit different. Cedar and citrus, clean and simple. A faint scar above his left eyebrow I’d missed before. The flecks of gold in his irises that only showed up in low light.
“I’ve been thinking about Saturday night.” His voice dropped. “About that kiss.”
