“No, I’m not.”
“Go ahead and play this sad little game if you want,” he says, “just know that I don’t like mushrooms, bacon, ham, or cilantro.”
“Oh, I’m not the one playing a sad little game, my friend.”
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”
I place a napkin and knife and fork next to his new sandwich. He knows exactly what it means. Ordering from the Meow Squad. Requesting me.
“Who’s your little friend out there?” he asks.
I still. He saw Antonio and me out there? Was he pretending he didn’t see? “Out where?”
“Out where,” he snorts. “The strapping fella in Hugo Boss out by your lunch-cart truck?” I get the sense he’s going for lightness in the strapping fella bit, but it sounds slightly adversarial, too.
Is he jealous? Excitement surges through me. I’ve never been somebody excited by jealousy before.
“Ah,” I say with faraway eyes. “Antonio.” I’m stoking it now. What’s going on with me?
I continue my machinations, reveling in his covetous gaze. I set out his mustards with my usual flourish. He picks up a pen, moves it carelessly around in his fingers. His hands really are large. And warm and soft.
“Please,” he says.
“What?”
“Ah, Antonio,” he echoes, matching my intonation exactly. “He’s a friend. You look at him like a friend. Like one of your galpals.”
I give him a sympathetic look. “Poor Max Hilton. I think that’s maybe what you wanted to see.”
“I know what I saw.”
“That was not a galpal face,” I say. I set a bag of Lay’s plain potato chips next to his sandwich.
“What is this?” He picks them up, brow furrowed. “Where’s my array?”
“Can’t you just access the image from the last time I displayed them in your robot memory files?”
He shakes his head.
“Ungh.” I go back to the cart and pluck out four bags of chips. I hold them up. “We have Lay’s, barbeque, cool ranch, and baked sea salt.”
“No cheesy puffs today?”
“I ran out.”
He zeroes in on the bright orange cheesy puff crumbs. “You’re telling me you ran out?”
I show him the empty cheesy puffs box, quivering with maybe too much excitement. “The very last bag was eaten. Quite recently!” I bite my tongue—hard—applying intense, anti-laughter pressure.
He stands.
I’m fighting not to smile. Bite bite bite.
He’s coming for me.
I back up.
He keeps coming. I’m a deer in the blazing headlights. If a deer ate the car’s dinner. And the car is barreling down the road.
I hit the wall. His hands hit the wall on either side of me.
My knees are jelly.
“What are you doing, Mia?”
I can feel his warmth deep in my chest—it’s like he has his own personal force field.
His eyes bore into mine, and then he drops his gaze to my shirt.
My pulse pounds.
He picks a bit of cheesy puff off my chest and holds it between us, evidence of my impudence. “Who ate my cheesy puffs?”
Excited shivers rain over me. “I did,” I whisper into his face.
We both seem to hold our breath. It’s like we’re in some kind of strange limbo.
Sexiest. Re-enactment. Of Goldilocks. Ever.
His pulse drums hot and steady beneath the hard line of his jaw. I imagine pressing my lips to the tender skin there. Desire floods my veins.
“You think it’s funny?”
“I don’t know.” Something’s melting in my belly.
He drops the puff bit, his face lit with beautiful fury.
He brushes some bits off the center of my chest, my shoulder. The feeling of his hand on me is electric.
And then he moves to my cheek, swiping it with his thumb, rough velvet on hot silk. There might have been a crumb there. Really, I don’t care.
His chest rises and falls, seemingly in unison with mine. His expression is so serious. I remember it from that summer—it was the way he looked when he cared about getting something right.
I feel this rush of frustration. I want us to be different. Free of our factions and fraught history.
He slides his thumb across my lower lip. The urge to take it into my mouth is nearly unbearable. I would suck it so hard. I would reach down and touch his cock and suck the hell out of his thumb.
“Look at you.” He reaches to my hair, brushes a possibly real or maybe imaginary crumb off, then slides a strand through his fingers. He watches his progress through lowered lashes. He says, “You look beautiful with cheesy puffs on you.”
I swallow with difficulty. “Thank you.”
Again he slides my hair through his fingers, watching intently, as though he’s really into making sure the crumbs are gone. The lightest sheen of whisker stubble glints on his cheeks.
He tucks another strand behind my ear. Then he brushes some more back.
I’m catatonic with lust.
And confusion.
What is Max doing?
He tucks my hair again, this time grazing the shell of my ear. The bright swipe of his touch ripples over my body. It arrows down between my legs.
My breath hitches.
I want him to press himself right into me and make me come. Coming like that is not a thing with me, but right now, it would be.
I want him so badly, I might burst into flames.
He draws his mouth close to my ear, right there where he tucked away the hair. His breath is warm velvet on my ear.
I close my eyes.
My entire skeletal system is turning into jelly at this point. I imagine gripping his shoulders, pulling him to me.
“That,” he whispers, “is your non-galpal face.”
My eyes fly open. “Oh my god!” I push him away. “You are so full of shit.”
He just watches me, amused.
“You think you’re all that.”
He lowers his voice to a hard rumble. “You’ll bring the cheesy puffs next time.”
I snort. “Definitely not.” I grab my cart and leave, fling open the door and almost bump into Parker.
I step back.
Parker Westbrook, his brainiac business partner, a budding sax player back at the Shiz.