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When I glance over at him, I find that he’s looking down at me like I’m the most delightful interruption he could ever ask for.
Like I’m beautiful.
“Would you turn around, at least?” I ask, pretending to be annoyed by his stare.
But I’m not.
At all.
I love when he looks at me like this.
His eyes hang on mine for another long minute, but then he swivels around and starts working over by the coffee pot, readying a mug and filling it. “Did you meet Randy?”
“Yeah, but I met Mopsey first. I thought, for a minute, that she was going to snarf my face. As in, with her teeth. I tripped and ate dirt. But then she just gave me a bath with that huge tongue of hers. I’m now covered in sweat and drool.”
“Wow, sweatanddrool. That’s so attractive, Gem. Lucky me.”
“Tough cookies. You get what you get. Unless you have a shower in this magical office of yours, too?”
“No shower. But I do have a first aid kit.”
“You could’ve given me better hints about what was going on up at your place—which is beautiful, by the way.” I have my leggings peeled down, now. The silky fabric of his athletic shorts feels like liquid against my skin.
I pull the drawstring tight and loop it into a double bow.
When I look up, he’s facing me.
“I didn’t say you could turn back around,” I tell him, with a fake scowl.
“My office. My rules.” He hands me the mug of coffee. “Figure you might need this, since you left this morning without breakfast. I made you a burrito and everything. Egg whites, spinach, all the healthy, girl stuff.”
“Oh, sure, girls are the only ones concerned about nutrition. Says the man with an eight-pack.” I slurp down a sip of rich coffee, and silently decide to put off my experiments in caffeine-weaning for another year. Or two. Or five.
Parker sets a white lunch box on the desk. He opens the plastic container’s lid and I see rows of Bandaids and ointments. Ah, yes. It’s that first aid kit he mentioned.
“For a sec I thought you packed that burrito for me,” I say, before taking another long sip.
“It’s back home, in the fridge. You could’ve asked me for a ride to your car, you know.” He sets a few Bandaids and a tube on the side of the desk, and then douses a wad of paper towel with sterile saline from a bottle. “Sit.”
I lower myself down into the chair, doing my best to ignore the way my dirt-packed skin protests against the movement.
“I know, but I was sort of—” I watch warily as he presses the wet towels to my scrapes. Instead of hurting, the cool dampness eases some of the pain. “Thanks. I was sort of… nervous about seeing you, I guess.”
“Why?” He looks up at me with his gorgeous chestnut-brown eyes. There’s no playful sparkle dancing in his irises. The pools of brown are dark and sincere. “This isn’t our first rodeo, Gem. We’ve done this before.”
“Not for a long time. We’re both different people, now. Grown up. And I don’t—” I bite my lip and suck in a breath.
I don’t know how to say this, for one thing.
I also don’t know why I’m talking this much.
We kissed a couple times.
It’s not a big deal until I make it a big deal.
My mouth keeps moving, though, and words spill out in a rush. “And I don’t usually do things like this, Parker. Hooking up, for me, isn’t ever just for fun. It alwaysmeanssomething, and I’m afraid that maybe it doesn’t mean the same thing to you that it means to me.”
He presses dry towels over my scraped knee. Peels back the papers on a bandaid. Carefully squeezes ointment onto the little pad of gauze on the backside of the bandage, and then smooths it over my wound.
