Page 25 of Double Dared
Taylor’s shoulders shook when he laughed. “They are so oblivious. They’ll never know we’re just knitting sweaters together and having tea parties.”
“Have you ever knitted anything?” I asked with a good amount of skepticism.
“Nah, I keep poking my hand,” Taylor sighed.
“I like your room,” I said. “I wonder if I’m missing out on the authentic student experience by living in my own place away from all this.”
“Let me clue you in to what that authentic experience is. A lot of sleepless nights, fridge wars, stovetop skirmishes, and the last stands of the microwave. That’s on a good day. Tomorrow morning, we’re drawing sticks to see who needs to clean up the party mess. And at any point in any given day, you might just see balls hanging out of someone’s shorts. I’ve been blinded too many times.”
“Must have been shiny balls,” I said.
Taylor snort-laughed.
“Make sure you don’t get the short stick tomorrow. I need you in the morning,” I said.
“I love the sound of that.”
“There’s an exhibition on German expressionism opening at noon.”
“Is Emma big on post-World War I trauma?” Taylor asked with a straight face.
“No, but her friend directed a short video that will be played throughout. She’ll go to support her.”
“It’s a date,” Taylor said.
Some part of me, somewhere beneath the surface, leaped at hearing those words. It ignored the facts, among which the more important ones had to do with seeing Emma tomorrow and Taylor being a swaggering straight man.
“We should go back to the party,” I said.
“We can stay if you’d like,” Taylor suggested. “Make it look like it lasted.”
“You didn’t even break a sweat.”
Taylor laughed and went into the bathroom and sprayed his face with a bit of water, then ran his fingers through his hair, making it all messy and irresistible. As he stepped out, he unbuttoned his shirt all the way down, revealing his sculpted torso before buttoning it up wrong. “Your turn,” he said as he stepped closer, pushing his wet fingers into my hair.
I laughed. It was all I was capable of. Words evaporated from my mind like a sizzling drop of water on a hot, tin roof. His hand went through my hair, then back, then slid down the side of my face. “Made you blush,” Taylor said, pride touching his voice. “Perfect.”
Dammit, I thought, tongue still tied. It took all the sense that was left to me to stop myself from leaning in a few inches and trying my luck, ruining a new friendship and wrecking my plans. Only the sharp reminder of those things stopped me when Taylor pulled at my shirt just above my belt, untucking one quarter.
We walked out of the room, Taylor first, and I following the trail of his amber-and-sandalwood scent.
My skin still tingled where he’d dragged his fingers over it. My face was on fire, and my heart was hammering.
In the living room, where more people seemed to have arrived, Jason, Finn, and Greg looked at each other, then us, then each other again. One bit his lip tohold back a laugh, the other’s eyes were wide, and the last one kept flicking his gaze between the other two.
“Let’s boogie,” Taylor said loudly, breaking into a silly dance that made me stop and stare at him. It was so ridiculous, so free, so unbothered and confident and utterly uninterested in the possibility that someone might laugh at him.
And I looked, one hand on the staircase banister, the other in my pocket.
Taylor’s right arm moved diagonally from pointing to the floor on his left side to the ceiling on his right. His other hand was hooked to his belt while his hips swung left and right and front and back, feet shuffling as he turned around to look at me.
He looked right into my eyes, and I wondered if he could see it. I wondered if that was a moment of hesitation in his eyes, a moment of recognition that he had crossed all the lines without ever noticing them, that he had done such a convincing job of it that it fooled the architect of this whole farce.
Because it did. It fooled me so hard that I couldn’t move, and I just gazed at him with a complete certainty that none of this was going the way it was supposed to. None of this was going to work out. None of this was a good idea. But dammit, I wanted him.
CHAPTER NINE
taylor
