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Except this time, it’s far from wanted.
And it has far less to do with his age, and more to do with how it felt—like I need to scrub my skin raw. Just from his gaze alone.
“Hey,” she says, and through the blond hair curtaining my face, I catch her moving toward me. She grabs my shoulders, ducks her head to find my gaze. “It’s cool,” she says, carefree as ever.
It pisses me off, so I glare at her.
She rolls her lips together, and I realize she did that on purpose. To get a reaction out of me.
And she doesn’t leave it at that.
Shrugging, she says, “You’re gorgeous, J. Get used to it.”
I’m gonna kill her.
She laughs in my fury, rolling her eyes when I give her a little shove to quit it. She knows better than anyone how those words make me feel.
Finally conceding, she gives a little sigh, and says, “Was it just me or was that cane really fucking creepy?”
Reassured by the fact that she wasn’t totally unaffected, I relax a bit and shake my head. “Not as creepy as the man it belongs to.” Scrunching my face, I glance past her, worried he might be standing there listening, watching.
There was just…something about him.
Something in his eyes that wasn’t quite right.
He’s probably just senile.
I frown. But was he even that old?
His hair was white, sure, and he had a cane. But his face…it was smooth. His eyes as clear and blue as a cloudless day.
Sharp.
His gaze was sharp.
Izzy’s wiggling her fingers in my face, back to cracking jokes as she slithers up to me. “Oh, JJ, what big, pretty brown eyes you have.”
And despite how off-kilter I still feel, her ridiculousness prompts a soft snort to escape before I can help myself.
Shaking my head, I try to take a step back, but she just uses that moment to pounce on me, gripping my shoulders, and pretending to bite at my face.
“Stop,” I beg in between peels of broken laughter.
I stretch away, leaning out of her grasp, but she just wraps her arms around me in a crushing hold. “What soft, soft skin you have,” she purrs, and I feel her nose rubbing into my neck.
Shaking my head, I hug her to me. “You’re so fucking weird.”
I feel her smile against my chest, and rest my cheek on top of her head, breathing her in.
Not for the first time, I’m caught off guard by how much taller than her I am now. Freakily enough, she tips her head back and says, “You’re so tall now.”
I roll my eyes. For the last couple years or so, we’ve been steadily battling it out, more or less staying around the same height at five seven. Before that though, for years, she had several inches on me.
Finally, I shot up in the last year or so. Especially this past summer.
A late bloomer, Mom said, to which I scowled and stomped away, chased by her tinkling laughter.
Izzy drops her head to my chest once more—ear pressed right over my heart.
