Page 95 of Mixed Signals
I swallow, my voice a whisper. “Like what?”
“I’m not going to leave you needing anything. So.” He nips once at the inside of my knee, drags his mouth down my thigh. He grins at me, dark eyes shining. “Show me what you like, Layla.”
And then he puts his mouth back on me, and I fall into my pillows.
TWENTY-THREE
CALEB
For some inexplicable reason,Charlie and Alex are waiting in my classroom when I get back from bus duty. I look over my shoulder at the empty hallway, and then back to the two of them, sitting at desks that are far too small in the front row. Alex folds his hands neatly and looks at me from overtop his glasses. Charlie doesn’t bother with a single glance as he works his way through what looks like half of my grandmother’s Tupperware collection.
“She keeps giving you food?” I pull my door shut and walk over to my desk. I have no idea what this is about, but I might as well get comfortable. Alex isn’t known for his brevity. I peer at Charlie’s bounty on my way. My grandmother gave him tres leches … again.
I reach for a swipe of cream off the top but Charlie smacks my hand away. “She made it for me.”
I frown and collapse in my desk chair. “You do realize you’re sitting in my classroom, right?”
“And that means I need to give you my dessert?” Charlie shakes his head with a menacing laugh. “I don’t think so.”
Alex ignores us both.
“We wouldn’t be here,” he says from his seat right next to Charlie. “If you hadn’t been doing your best to avoid me for the last three days.”
I haven’t been avoiding him. I’ve just been … busy. Summer school is wrapping up, Jeremy is almost done his love note project, and Layla is—
Layla is incredible. I’ve spent every free moment I’ve had sitting in her back kitchen, eating butter croissants and watching her work. Or propped up against the front counter, my chin in my hand and my heart in my throat.
Or at my house with her legs wrapped high around my hips, her back against the wall, my neatly arranged picture frames tipping sideways with our enthusiasm. Bent over the side of her bed with my hand at her neck, edging her to an orgasm that made her cry out my name in the sweetest sounding gasp I’ve ever heard in my life. Waking up with the sun to her alarm and slipping my hand over the curve of her waist to the place between her legs, listening to her whisper my name as the early gray light crawled through her curtains.
Falling asleep with her in my arms, one of her cold feet pressed between my calves, her nose in the middle of my chest.
I feel like we’ve completely abandoned the terms of our arrangement and it—it feels good.
It feels really good.
“I’ve had a lot of stuff going on,” I mumble. I turn Fernando around on the corner of my desk. I don’t need his judgment right now.
Charlie points a fork at me. “You’ve been wrapped up in Layla Dupree and ignoring the real world, my friend.”
I snort. I do not need to hear this from him, of all people.
“Haven’t you been doing the same thing with Nova Porter?” I fire back. He thinks he’s being smooth about it, but I know that’s the real reason why he’s down here every other weekend from New York. I almost always see his car parked outside of the space Beckett’s youngest sister has been eyeing for her new tattoo shop.
“Nova Porter won’t give me the time of day, but that’s alright.” Charlie cheerfully folds a tortilla into a neat square and shoves the whole thing into his mouth. “It’s about the long game, bruv,” he tells me around a mouthful of food. “And don’t change the subject.”
“I’m worried about you,” Alex says, face earnest and hands still clasped on top of the desk. He looks like my father, every single time he ever had to have a serious conversation with us as kids. Down to the glasses perched on the very edge of his nose and the twist of his mouth. “This thing with Layla—”
I scrub my hand across my forehead. “This again.”
“Yes, this again.” Alex leans back in his chair, knees bumping the underside of the desk. “You need to hear it. When is your arrangement with Layla done?”
I’ve been trying not to think about it. “Sunday is the one month mark,” I answer reluctantly.
“And what are you doing on Sunday?”
I busy myself with a pack of sticky notes on the edge of my desk, flipping them one way and then the other. “We’re having a picnic,” I mumble.
“That sounds nice,” Charlie offers.
