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“I’m not sure what’s worse - them talking about me or them talking about my mom.”
“Uh, your mom is pretty hot,” he grins. “Not as hot as you, but still … ”
I smack his arm. “Shut up.”
“She is!” he laughs. “She was my first crush.”
“Please don’t tell me any more about this.”
“God’s honest truth. I told my dad and he told me I had good taste. And then he told me he’d kill me if I ever mentioned that to my mom.”
“Gross,” I laugh. “Just stop talking.”
“Okay, but my point, aside from the fact that your mom is super hot, is that it was already hard for me not to step in, and now … ”
He pulls into the driveway.
“Now?” I prompt.
He lifts me out of my seat entirely and places me in his lap, our mouths an inch apart. His hand runs through my hair as he bridges the distance. “And now Elle,” he says, “it would be impossible.”
**
The next morning he apologizes again for kicking my table out.
“Does that mean next time you’ll listen when I ask you not to intervene?” I ask.
“Sure, as long as no one’s touching you,” he counters. I roll my eyes – in other words, if last night happened again he’d do the exact same thing. But I’m incapable of staying annoyed.
“Well you can make it up to me by walking me to the bookstore,” I tell him.
“Not only will I walk you there, I’ll buy you any book you want, as long as it doesn’t enhance or inform you in any way.”
“You mean like 50 Shades of Grey?” I laugh.
“No,” he says sternly. “You’re too young for that. Maybe one of those YA vampire books where do they a lot of talking and almost kiss at the end.”
“You do realize I’m in college, right?” I ask. “And I seem to recall you met my 22-year-old ex-boyfriend.”
“50 Shades is about bondage and stuff. That’s not something anyone in college is doing.”
“Speak for yourself,” I crack. He tenses beside me and I can feel irritation rolling off him.
I laugh. “It was a joke.”
“It’d better be,” he says. Just the tone of his voice makes something tighten deep in my stomach.
Something that demands more than the long, frustrating nights we spend fully clothed.
Chapter 37
In the mornings it’s hard not to go directly to him, to find some way — or many ways — to touch him. He’s not much better. His eyes follow me as I walk across the room. Half the time he gets up the minute I walk in and stands beside me as I pour the coffee just like he did the first day.
He grabs my hand as we walk into town. I glance at him. “No one we work with is out this early,” he says with a small smile. “I think it’s safe.”
I’d like to ask what ‘it’ is exactly — are we just a fling? Are we dating? Is he hiding this because of Ginny and Dan, or because he’s ashamed? But I say nothing. It’s childish, I suppose, but I worry that asking for specifics will end up stripping pieces away rather than contributing. If it’s only a fling or if he’s ashamed, I just don’t want to know.
Our schedules mysteriously change so that they are almost exactly the same — we close on the same nights, work lunch on the same days. I’m not sure how it isn’t clear to everyone that something is going on. There’s a permanent smile on my face, one I have to struggle to get rid of half the time and only then with marginal success.
