Page 13 of Apparently, I’m Torture

He nodded and flexed his bandaged hand before rubbing it across his face. “Yep. Nothing stays the same forever.”

Lilly burst through the door, startling the customers on our cozy benches as she shouted, “Sorry, sorry.”

Nerves exploded in my stomach at the sight of her, and I suppressed a laugh as I called out, “Took you long enough.”

She shot me a green-eyed glare as she hurried behind the counter, taking off her jacket and throwing it on the couch in the backroom. Her breathing was hard and fast as she whirled around to stand in front of us.

“What did I miss?” she asked, her chest rising and falling.

Uncle Henry kept working the machine as I wrenched my eyes away, leaving her question with Tristan.

When I first met Lilly, I ran into her on the Kappa Delta’s bid day, trying to find Student Career Services. I was still new to Pace University, needed a job and to get my bearings. Somehow, she attached herself to me among the screaming Kappas and took my number, promising me a job if I could be reliable enough to show up.

Later that same day, the girl actually squealed when I walked through the doors of our first class. We were both enrolled in Pace’s Education Program; we both wanted to teach.

She spent half the class talking so much that I had to shove a finger in my ear to block her out.

Once it ended, she dragged me away from Pace and into the subway. She spoke nonstop, pelting me with questions before we finally made it to the coffee shop she worked at. It was called Extra Shot at the time, and she introduced me to the owner, Tristan, who gave me a chance when I was just a skinny, nineteen-year-old kid who didn’t know any better. We’ve been a family since.

But, like Tristan said, nothing stays the same forever.

Lately, I couldn’t meet Lilly’s eye without my glance greedily roaming over every inch of her. I traced her curves, her features; imagining what she’d look like underneath me, naked, face twisted in pleasure, her husky voice moaning for me.

And that? That was a problem.

But it wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always see her this way. In fact, we spent the past five years studying and working together as friends, with neither of us making a move on the other. The urge just wasn’t there.

And maybe that was because I never saw her as my ‘type’.

Lilly’s hair was long, brown and mousy, always tied in a lopsided ponytail or bun, and cut with bangs that covered the edges of her rounder face. She had two crooked bottom teeth that only showed when she was really smiling, and green eyes that were wide and open, framed with thick lashes. With those bold, unplucked brows and freckles, she was just kind of… cute.

The girls I usually dated didn’t have crooked teeth, or mousy hair, or the wardrobe of a five-foot-four librarian. Lilly wasn’t some babe. She wasn’t the kind of girl I usually noticed.

Until recently. And I remember the exact day I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.

We were in the backroom on a Tuesday, last August, and she just finished mopping while I packed away the rest of the food.

Lilly was teasing me about this customer I’d been eyeing, and I couldn’t resist the chance to tease her back.

“You’ve never thought a customer was hot? Come on, I bet you’ve got a thing for one of them. What about James? The tall, hairy guy who orders a mocha every morning?”

She hung up her apron as she laughed. “Shawn, come on.”

“Well, maybe it’s Extra-Foam-Guy? Does the extra foam do it for you, Lil? Do you want to feel those foamy bits all over you?”

I stepped close enough to tickle her ribs and she gripped my wrists, laughing and tripping backward, dragging me with her until we were both on the couch. I kept tickling, trying not to make it awkward, but she was on my lap somehow, wriggling while she laughed, and I reacted. My hardness was poking into her shapely ass, and that was all it took.

I noticed the way her breath rose and fell, her breasts shifting under her shirt. I noticed how her lean torso and slim arms curved across the cushions. I noticed how sloped her cute little nose was underneath all those freckles, and how perfect her cupid bow lips were when she smiled.

I wanted to run my hands over her soft, velvety skin, and watch her smile fade as she bit her lip, arched for me, and silently begged for more, her breath sharp on my cheek as I dragged her onto me and pulled our bodies close.

But Lilly and I were friends who worked together almost daily, slinging coffee and cleaning tables. Nothing was supposed to happen between us. I jumped off that couch and let her thud to the ground, like a friend would do.

She groaned, rubbed her ass and said, “Damn it, Shawn,” while I tried to think of the eighty-year-old woman with the hairy chin who kept coming in, asking to ‘feel my biceps’.

Now, here we were in March, months later, and I still stiffened up when she smiled at me. If she smiled at me. After our argument about Stacey, I was starting to think I’d never get a smile from her again. But I only had to make it to graduation. After that, Lilly and I would go our separate ways, and I’d start teaching. I could hold out until then.

Tristan finished giving Lilly the rundown on what was left to do for the afternoon and she nodded, taking in air and puffing herself up with every breath.