Page 74 of Mixed Signals
“Okay.” I don’t move from where I’m plastered against her, my face in her neck.
“Caleb.” I can feel her smile against my shoulder. She circles her arms around my waist and gives me a squeeze. “Go sit on your stool.”
“No, thank you.”
I don’t want to. I want to stay right here, wrapped around Layla, smelling flour and sugar and lilac on her skin, her heartbeat ricocheting against mine. Alex has been telling me I need to hold on to my expectations, but I don’t see anything wrong with indulging myself in this.
I’ve always liked Layla—in the way anyone likes someone who is good and kind. Warm yet vaguely impersonal. I liked her smile. I liked her laugh. I liked the way she always worked the register herself, no matter how crowded the bakehouse got. I liked watching her decorate her cakes with her tongue between her teeth and that tiny little spatula held carefully in her hand.
But now that like is slipping into something deeper. I like how she leads with her heart no matter how many times it’s been bruised. The way she tilts up her chin and does her best to be brave when she talks about her family. The unwavering loyalty she has for her friends and how proud she is of this place she’s built.
I like the way she touches me too, how she mindlessly trails her fingers up and down my arm while we’re sitting against the bumper of my Jeep. I like watching the sun paint the sky in a kaleidoscope of candy colors with Layla’s head against my shoulder. The way her thumb digs into the soft skin at the base of my neck when she’s excited about something, her voice tripping one octave higher, one beat faster.
She is all the things I thought she was and then some.
She hums the ambiguous beginning of a song beneath her breath and wiggles beneath me. Her fingertips play with the short hair at the back of my head as I sway us gently back and forth. A private dance for the two of us in the back kitchen of Layla’s bakehouse. Flour in my hair and my heart pounding in my chest. Better than any date I could have ever planned.
“Do you think—” She swallows her sentence and scratches her nails lightly against my skin. A faintly embarrassing sound rumbles out of me and I lean harder into her touch.
“What?”
I can feel her hesitation in the way she holds herself against me. I sway us back and forth again as she collects her words. “Do you think things are working so well between us because of our arrangement?” Her voice is a whisper. “Or do you think it’s us?”
I hum and let my mouth brush against her temple. “What do you mean?”
She tilts her face up towards mine, both of her palms pressed against my chest.
“Things between us feel—” A smile curls at the edge of her lips and I like it so much I bend my head to taste it. She huffs a laugh into my mouth and pushes me back again. “Stop distracting me.” Her pretty eyes search mine and when she speaks again, her voice is soft. Shy. A lilt to it that I haven’t heard before. “This feels really easy, Caleb. And I don’t know how much of that is me and you, or the arrangement.”
I trace my thumb down the curve of her jaw to the dip in her chin. “Can’t it be both?”
She frowns. “What do you mean?”
I consider my words and voice a theory that’s been nudging at me. “Maybe our arrangement has made it easier for us to be open with one another, but I don’t think it’s all of it. Maybe it’s just … a shove in the right direction.”
At least, that’s how I’m looking at it. The arrangement might have made it easier for us to find our way together, but the way I feel when I’m around her? That’s one hundred percent Layla.
I keep her close to me with a firm hand at the base of her spine. She buries her face in the front of my shirt. Her short hair curtains around her cheeks until she’s hiding as much as she can.
“How do you know?” she mumbles into my shirt.
I breathe out, low and slow, and then take a leap and make a confession. “February 17th.”
She sighs, a little puff of warm air somewhere over my sternum. “What happened on February 17th?”
“I bought a cake.”
I’m taunting her. Tempting her with too-short answers so she has to lean back and look at me. She holds steady though, raising one hand to knock against my ribs in admonishment. “If you tell me you bought a cake from the bakery of a supermarket store, I’m going to punch you right in the face, Caleb Alvarez.”
A surprised laugh rumbles out of me. “What?”
“If it was out of a box or made by someone else, you’re dead to me.”
“I didn’t buy a cake from the grocery store and I didn’t buy it from someone else,” I tell her. “I bought this cake from you.”
She doesn’t say anything. I dance my fingertips down her back, along the ridge of her spine. She’s so strong here, so steady. I don’t think she even realizes.
“I bought a cake on February 17th. I remember the date because there was still a bunch of Valentine’s Day stuff strung up around the front. You had this paper cupid thing that kept knocking into my head. I think you hang your decorations too low, sometimes.”
