Page 83 of Business Casual
“Hold on a sec,” he explains. “You need to collect your winnings.”
Something cold and heavy slips over my wrist. I squint open my eyes to see Charlie snapping the clasp of his Rolex. It looks obnoxious on my much smaller wrist, the weight of it too heavy, the band too wide. But I tilt my arm back and forth anyway, admiring the shine of it in the sunlight.
“It suits me,” I muse.
Charlie props his head up on his fist, one of his legs thrown over mine. Our eyes catch and hold, and I get the distinct pleasure of watching his smile start at his eyes and slip over his face until his whole body is alive with it.
He drops himself back against the couch, face smooshed against my arm. He makes a deep, grumbling groan of appreciation. “It really does.”
18
CHARLIE
I’m an idiot.
A giant, stupid, ridiculous idiot.
I knew it couldn’t last.
I knew I was swimming out of my depth, thinking I could have this one thing.
But I had hope. Hope that I could cling to the possibility of keeping this…this impossibility. I know I don’t deserve it, but that’s the thing about hope, isn’t it? You can’t reason with that little balloon in your chest.
“I think you’re being a little dramatic about the cupcakes, bud.” Caleb takes a bite of the cupcake in question. The last cinnamon apple streusel cupcake in the bakeshop. “The display case is half full. I’m sure you can find something else in there that you’d like.”
I don’t want anything else. “I wanted that cupcake.”
Caleb shrugs, not a care in the world. “Well. That’s too bad for you, isn’t it?” He takes another bite, and I fight the urge to slap the entire thing out of his hand. “Maybe you should have gotten here earlier.”
I meant to get here earlier, but I spent an hour and a half on the phone with my father, bickering about what he should and should not be doing. It was a long list. Basically everything he is doing, he shouldnot be doing. He did not agree. We had an unproductive and frustrating conversation about it.
I wanted a cupcake to make me feel better.
A specific cupcake.
The one Caleb is holding the remnants of.
I drag my hand over the back of my head. Sure, Layla has other cupcakes in the display case, but I wanted this one. It’s the one I woke up thinking about this morning. It’s the one I’ve been thinking about all day. It’s my favorite cupcake, and now all I’m going to be able to focus on is the fact that there’s no more of that cupcake left for me to enjoy.
It’s entirely possible I’m projecting.
I left Nova’s house this morning before dawn, a thick cover of clouds blanketing everything gray. I woke up with her sprawled across my bare chest, her hair in my face and her legs tangled with mine. I tried to extricate myself without waking her, but every time I moved, she’d dig her cold toes between my thighs and grumble. A tiny, aggressive barnacle. When I finally managed to tumble out of the bed, she muttered something about biscuits, slapped my ass, and rolled to her side. She took all the blankets with her too, curled over her shoulder in a lump in the middle of her mattress.
This thing with Nova is unexpected. I’ve spent every day this week at her house or at her studio, enjoying the fuck out of business casual. I know I’m playing with borrowed time, and I know it’s temporary, but I can’t help the way I keep tumbling back into bed with her. I tried to limit myself, and all I managed to do was frustrate the both of us. So now I’m indulging. Over and over again. For as long as I’m here.
Caleb pops the rest of the cupcake in his mouth and I frown at him. Between this and the tres leches incident, he’s on thin fucking ice. He’s lucky his fiancée is in the back kitchen, probably playing with knives. I’m too scared of her to slap him around.
Caleb grins at me with his cheeks bulging like he knows exactlywhat I’m thinking. “I meant to ask,” he says around a mouthful of food. “Where were you the other night?”
“The other night?”
“Yeah. You were supposed to watch the game with me and Alex. He tried calling you, but it went right to voice mail. Everything all right?”
It went right to voice mail because my phone was somewhere under Nova’s bed and Nova was in my lap, my hands braced on her hips and my mouth busy with tracing every inch of ink I could find. I didn’t realize my phone was missing until the morning.
That’s how it goes with Nova. Every time I’m with her, it’s like a vacuum of time and space until there’s nothing but her smoky laugh and her dark blond hair. Careful touches and wicked grins. She reduces me to ash with the flick of her finger.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I pull it out. Nova’s name flashes across the screen. I glance up at Caleb, but he’s busy staring dreamily into the display case, probably trying to figure out what to stuff his face with next.
