Kissing Booth

by River Laurent

  “Thanks,” I said with tears in my eyes.

  “You all right?”

  “I choked and nearly died. I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” I grumbled.

  He smirked. “Sorry. I couldn’t help it. I’m a dick.”

  He wiped a little tomato sauce from his lips. I couldn’t help ogling. That man had lips to die for. We started walking again.

  “So is this more your speed?” he asked. “Just some pizza and a walk around town?”

  I shrugged. “I can go both ways.”

  “Provocative.” His eyebrows wiggled up and down.

  “You know what I mean. God, I have to think about everything I say just in case there’s a possible double entendre.”

  “I never said I had an elevated sense of humor.”

  “As I was trying to say before I was interrupted by childish humor,” I continued pointedly, “I like a nice night out as much as the next person, but I don’t need to go all out all the time. Sometimes a girl just wants to wear her flats and eat pizza. And it helps when she has good company.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you.”

  “Of course not.”

  Mimi

  He laughed and we went up and down the street for more than an hour, and I only realized after I got home later on that I never paid attention to exactly where we were. It didn’t matter. I was busy talking about my family, how Mom lived on Long Island and Dad had moved to Newark. Max had a million questions, which he chalked up to research.

  “I have to know about you,” he reminded me. “So we seem legit.”

  “Tell me more about you,” I suggested. “I’ve talked myself nearly hoarse.”

  He shrugged, his shoulders moving up and down under his clothes. “There’s not that much to tell. Besides the Fields already know everything they need to know about me and are hardly likely to quiz you about it.”

  “Oof. What a cop out.” I laughed.

  He looked offended. “It’s the truth.”

  “Liar. You live in a gorgeous apartment in an almost-empty floor. I told you why I haven’t left, or at least I think I alluded to it.”

  “Your grandmother.”

  “Correct. So, why are you still around?”

  He shrugged, looking at the ground. “It’s where I live. That’s all. I don’t want to leave.” I liked him even more for that.

  I smiled mistily at him. How I wished things were different. “It feels better, knowing I’m not alone. I’m not crazy for sticking around.”

  He looked into my eyes and shook his head. “No, you’re not crazy for sticking around. Not for that.”

  “You’re such a sweet talker. I’ll have to make sure everybody knows that when we’re in the Hamptons.” I put a hand over my heart, fluttering my eyelashes. “And when he told me I was crazy, Mr. Fields, I knew he was the one for me.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “And I’ll tell them I stay with you even though you’re crazy because I feel sorry for you and somebody needs to make sure you take your medicine and wear your panties on the inside of your clothes.”

  I laughed. “Thanks a lot.” I paused. “I know I never really told you this, but I’m really grateful to you.”

  “For what?”

  “For what you did on the street that day with Josh and Lillian. Not many guys would have done that. You’re one in a million, Max. You knew I was in trouble and you jumped in. Just like that.” I touched his arm. “I never thanked you properly for that. I wanted to hit you at the time, honestly. But I know it was because you felt sorry for me and wanted to help. So…thanks.”

  “No problem. And I didn’t do it because I felt sorry for you. Well, not entirely.” He started walking again, and I had no choice but to follow. Who wouldn’t?

  “Why, then?” I fell in step beside him.

  “Because I don’t like watching people getting picked on. Your face was as white as a sheet and you looked like you were looking for a way out. I just wanted to get you out of it. So I did.”

  Underneath his cocky arrogance, he was a sweet guy. “Isn’t it ironic then that all you ended up doing was putting me in a position where I was forced to go to their stupid party.”

  “Yeah, I should have stood there and let you tell them you were having your appendix out.”

  I giggled. “I don’t think that’s the sort of surgery you schedule in advance, but you’re on the right track.”

  “Come on.” He nudged me a little. “Don’t pretend you didn’t have a good time.”

  “It’s not on my Top Ten list of best times ever.” I was lying. I loved my night with him. Every minute of him pretending to be my adoring boyfriend. And when he kissed my forehead and told me I was the most beautiful woman in that room, he was treating me the way I had dreamed and hoped a man would. Everything he did that night was more than I ever got from Josh or any other man.

  “But you enjoyed it,” he insisted.

  “I enjoyed certain parts of it,” I conceded cautiously.

  “We got a weekend in the Hamptons out of it.”

  I snorted. “Don’t remind me!”

  “Life could be a hell of a lot worse,” he reminded. “A weekend in the Hamptons is hardly cause to throw yourself down a flight of stairs.”

  “Oh, damn. And I was gonna do that as an excuse to get out of it.”

  I had expected him to laugh, but he frowned, instead. “Am I really that repulsive to you?”

  “What kind of crazy talk is that?” I stopped. “I’m just messing with you, Max.”

  He stopped in front of me, hands in his pockets. I could tell I had upset him.

  I touched his arm. “Max, I really didn’t mean it that way.”

  “You have a way of making it sound like you’re horrified by the idea. I have to wonder why.”

  “Not because of you. Never because of you. I mean it. It’s because I’m not a good liar, and I would hate to be embarrassed. That’s all. I dread the way I know Lillian will look at us. She eyed you up pretty seriously at the party, by the way.”

  “Did she? I can’t imagine why considering who she’s engaged to.” He rolled his eyes. “Mr. Wonderful himself.”

  “For a man, you’re pretty catty, you know?”

  “He hurt you. Why would I like him?”

  The thing was, he looked sincere. Like he meant it. But why? He was the son of a rich man. A playboy who had the pick of any woman he wanted. I wasn’t anything special. Was it because I said no? What would happen if I said yes?

  “Trust me, it’s not you I’m worried about.” That was true. I was more afraid of myself. I couldn’t imagine sharing a bedroom with this man and not wanting to jump his bones.

  We kept walking, and he seemed satisfied if not happy with my explanation. “You know, she can’t hurt you, right?”

  “You didn’t read that email from her, Max. You don’t know how she really feels about me. Have you ever had somebody call you vile names?”

  “More like how many times have I heard it. Words are just words unless you believe them. You don’t believe them, do you?”

  “At the time? I don’t know. I might have.”

  Max slid an arm around me, and I welcomed the comfort. It felt nice. Very nice. “She seems like a real piece of work,” he mused. “And she just found out she was pregnant, so there’s that. She went nuts, but it’s not your fault. You didn’t set out to hurt anybody.”

  “I know that, but she doesn’t.”

  “That’s gotta be enough. It just has to. Sometimes we all do things without thinking about them because we have reasons that make sense to us, but we don’t think about the other person. We just make assumptions. Like she assumed you were out to take her man.” He made a face. “Although, I can’t imagine why anyone would.”

  I laughed. “Sorry. I hadn’t met you yet. I didn’t have you to compare him to.” I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m more than just a pretty face.”
/>   “No comment.” I blushed to the roots of my hair.

  “Watch out!” he exclaimed as he grabbed my arm as I stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. He kept me from falling, but I turned my ankle and it hurt like a bitch. I laughed because I was embarrassed.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just incredibly clumsy.” But it did hurt. More than a little. I winced when I put weight on it.

  “Hell,” he cursed. “You might have sprained it.”

  “I don’t think it’s a sprain,” I said. “Just soreness.”

  He hailed a cab. “Come on. Time to get you home.”

  “Are you serious? I’m okay!” I wanted to die. I wanted to die right then and there. What a loser I was. A clumsy idiot. Give me stilettos and I could walk miles, but put me in a pair of flats and trust me to make a fool of myself.

  “You’re not okay. I’ll feel a lot better when you’re home with your ankle elevated. Besides, it’s getting late.”

  “Really. I’m fine. I’ll take care of it.”

  He looked me in the eye. “Why won’t you let me take care of you?”

  The question left me breathless. “All right,” I whispered.

  So he helped me into the cab and then up the steps to our building, my arm across his shoulders.

  “You’ll be okay if you keep it up tonight, with ice on it.”

  “If you say so, Doc.” I could kid all I wanted while he was helping me down the hall, but I couldn’t deny that it did hurt. Like hell. I just didn’t want him to know how dangerous I was to myself. It was too embarrassing.

  He didn’t seem to care as he sat me on the couch, put throw pillows under my sore ankle, then put together an ice pack for me.

  “Keep this on,” he ordered. “And don’t get up unless you absolutely need something.”

  Just to be safe, he loaded up the coffee table with water, iced tea, the TV remote, my iPad, my phone and a bag of cookies in case I wanted a snack.

  “Thank you for being so nice to me,” I murmured, a little overwhelmed. “You’re my knight all over again.”

  “Your knight?”

  I blushed again. “In shining armor. You know.” Just stop talking, Mimi. Just stop talking.

  He grinned. “My armor’s a little tarnished. But I appreciate that.”

  “I appreciate everything you’ve done.” Seriously, why are you still talking? Maybe you should’ve sprained your tongue.

  “We’ll see how you feel tomorrow.”

  Then he kissed the top of my head and left.

  Mimi

  “You have everything you need?”

  “Mm-hmm. I dropped my bags off with Max last night. He’ll have them for me in the car when he picks me up.” I checked the time again. Nearly three o’clock. The day had crawled by like a tortoise stuck in drying cement. Or something similarly slow.

  “And you’ve packed for every possible turn of events?” Megan asked.

  “I’m not sure how many turns of event you expect. Max says they have a heated pool so I chucked in my best swimsuit. I packed good walking shoes in case that’s a thing. My running clothes. Outdoor stuff in the case there, I don’t know, sailing…and nice, sedate clothes for dinner.”

  “What about something for nighttime?”

  “I have pajamas.”

  “I don’t mean sleeping.”

  I was glad she couldn’t see my face. “Well, gee, Megan. In that case, I won’t need anything, will I?”

  “Atta girl!”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “What’s the point of saying no? You know that’s where this is going, so why not just relax and enjoy it?”

  I chewed my lip, knowing she was probably right. This was it. The weekend in which we would have sex. It seemed inevitable. The two of us, sharing a room. He would probably smell good like he always did, the jerk. Tempting me. Maybe I’d catch a glimpse of him changing, get a look at his muscular torso and shoulders as he took off his shirt. And my heart would beat faster and the blood would rush to my lady parts and that would be the end of that.

  “Hello? You still there?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m here.”

  “Like I said, just enjoy it. Relax and have fun this weekend. What can be more delicious than getting naked with cutie patootie? Oooo…imagine him grabbing you by the hips and slamming into you.”

  “Megan!” I giggled, my face burning.

  “Try getting that mental picture out of your head.”

  “Ugh, I’m gonna kill you.”

  “You’re welcome and have a great time, okay? Whatever you do don’t let the Beast and his Beastess get to you.”

  “That’s gonna be real hard.”

  “I mean it. Ignore them. Hang on to cutie patootie's arm the whole time. And most important: Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do.” I was smiling as I hung up. Right, I needed to get the idea of Max’s naked body out of my head. He was picking me up in a few minutes, so blushing over the thought of him in all his glorious nakedness wouldn’t be helpful.

  “Hey.”

  I swung around in my chair to find Josh standing at the entrance to my cubicle. He was leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets, with a studied air of casualness on his face. I sighed internally. He was the absolute last person I felt like talking to just then.

  What did I ever see in him? The question kept perplexing me. Nothing about him seemed attractive to me. I used to think his puppy dog eyes were cute, sort of helpless and sweet. Now I just found them pathetic.

  A shame, since he was going all-out to look sheepish and cute. It was really making me want to punch him in the balls since they were at eye level.

  Luckily for him, I had to be friendly, or at least civil. We still had to work together, never mind the coming weekend. I guessed that was why he was there. “Ready for the weekend?” I asked brightly.

  “Yeah, I’m all packed up. Alexander said we should try to be there by six, right?”

  I nodded. Of course, I knew that as I had received the same email from Alexander telling us traffic going out on a Friday got crazy from five to seven o’clock. He suggested leaving early (“just this once, ha ha ha”) to get there before the roads jammed up.

  “Have you ever been there?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I have no idea what to expect.”

  “I thought you ran in those circles all the time,” I said. It was easy to fall back into my old role of supporting him and making him feel better. When we were just talking like two normal people, I could pretend the humiliation he’d put me through hadn’t happened. I could pretend he hadn’t lied to me and made me look like a trollop. I could pretend he wasn’t a spineless liar.

  “My parents do. Sure, I’ve been out to the Hamptons before, but it’s not really my scene. It’s more Lill’s thing than mine.”

  I almost gagged at his use of her nickname. Lill. Why did he have to go and mention her name? Like I wouldn’t see enough of her over the weekend. Like her very presence wasn’t enough to make me wish I could sink into the floorboards and never come back. I’d already had nightmares about her cornering me at the house and tearing into me—literally, with claws and everything. I’d seen the blood and fire in her eyes as she accused me of everything from stealing her man to causing the housing crisis back in 2009. I mean everything.

  I faked a merry laugh. “Then I guess it’ll be your thing soon, huh?”

  His face changed when I joked like that, and I remembered him looking the same way when Max joked along similar lines at the party.

  “Lill will make a good wife,” he said defensively.

  I pitied him then. Max’s explanation at the party had cast the whole ugly thing in a different light. There was no excuse for cheating, ever, but when I saw it as evidence of his weakness it softened the blow. I couldn’t hate somebody I could identify with. I was not perfect.

  “I’m sure she will. Good luck to you.”

  He nodded and shifte
d his position.

  “What’s there to do out there?” I asked since he didn’t seem to be ready to leave my cubicle. I did make it a point to start wrapping it up, though, packing up my laptop and locking my drawers.

  “Oh, you know, the usual stuff.”

  I had to laugh. “No, I don’t know. Hello? Remember who you’re talking to here.”

  He chuckled. “Right. Sorry. Uh, I think Alexander has a sailboat. I know they have a heated saltwater pool and a hot tub. Tennis, but it’s probably too cool out for that. I think their property includes hiking trails, too.”

  “Sounds nice. I’m sure we’ll have a good time.” Oh, I was such a liar. Such a terrible, dreadful liar. If he knew, he didn’t seem to care. He was probably relieved I wasn’t crying and threatening grievous bodily harm after he crushed my hopes for our happy life together. Or something like that.

  Why wasn't he walking away?

  Why didn't he get the hint?

  In his next breath, he explained what he was really doing there. "I've been meaning to ask you something. I hope you don't take it the wrong way."

  “Ooh, mysterious,” I chuckled.

  “It’s just…I mean…” He looked around, making sure we weren’t overheard. Tracee was hard at work in her office, probably wondering why she didn’t get an invite to the Hamptons. “Well, I thought you and I were a thing.”

  I blinked once, twice. When I realized he wasn’t going to keep talking, I prompted him. “And?”

  “And I guess I was just wondering, well…”

  Suddenly, I knew exactly what he was going to ask.

  Mimi

  “I was just wondering…when Max came into the picture?”

  I wanted to be the bigger person. I really, truly did. I even tried folding my arms and sternly telling myself I had to control my temper. It wouldn’t do any good to claw his eyes out, especially not in the middle of the office where there were so many witnesses.

  But sadly, there was no holding back a hurricane. You just had to let it rip before it moved on.

  “You thought we were a thing? Is that what you thought?” I asked calmly. (Yes, that was the calm before the storm.)