by Elle Thorpe
Silence descended over us, or as much silence as there could be in a bar blaring soft rock and multiple sports games showing on big-screen TVs.
The moment slipped away.
When Heath smiled at me, it was a kind tilt of his mouth, like he’d just remembered I was the kid sister of his ex. I was twenty-seven and hardly a child, but even his completely platonic smiles stirred feelings in me. Ones I shouldn’t be harboring for someone who had once dated my sister.
Oh, this was a bad idea. Very bad. I shouldn’t have stayed. I should have left with the others.
But he seemed completely unaffected by me, and I started second-guessing if it had actually been anything at all. Maybe it had just been my wishful thinking.
He motioned back to his seat with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder. “I guess I’ll go back to the game.”
I gathered up my lightweight jacket. “I was just leaving anyway. Enjoy your night.” Something deep and low inside me whined like a disgruntled cat who hadn’t been fed on time, and heat crept up the back of my neck. Was it really a whiny cat, or a needy pussy? Oh boy. I needed to leave, stat. My alcohol-tainted thoughts were on a one-way trip to the gutter.
The pussy could be silenced in other, more solo ways. She didn’t need a man who was wholly off limits.
Heath squinted through the windows to the darkness beyond. “You still driving that old Beemer?”
Of course he remembered what sort of car I drove. Because he was thoughtful and kind beneath that bad boy exterior. “Yes. But it’s not out there in the parking lot. Tori and I were planning a big girls’ night. We walked here from my place.”
Heath’s dark eyebrows drove together. “So you’re walking home alone?”
There was that protector gene Jayela had been talking about.
“It’s not far.”
“Can I walk you?”
I laughed it off, a little squeaky. “No, no, I’ll be fine. I don’t want to ruin your night.”
“I won’t be able to concentrate if I’m wondering if you made it home okay. The game is a dud, anyway.”
I started to protest again, but he cut me off. “Just let me be a gentleman, Mae.”
He said it so earnestly my words shriveled on my tongue. He was basically the perfect man. Hot as sin, with a look that screamed of motorcycles, and back alleys, and slam-you-up-against-a-wall sex. But beneath that, he was the guy who would play peekaboo with a baby just to make her smile, or walk a little old lady across the road, before saving her kitten from a tree.
I bit my lip and nodded slowly, all while my heart fluttered about my chest. How did Jaye not like this? I was ready to swoon and faint like some historical lady with her corset too tight.
“Thank you,” I agreed quickly, before I could change my mind.
We were walking home together. Old friends. Nothing more than that.
Except for the fact you find him incredibly attractive, that you’ve always had a crush on him, and you’ve spent years wishing you’d had the good fortune to meet him first.
Yeah. Except for all of that.
We walked side by side toward the door, and I managed not to self-combust when my fingers brushed his. Jolts of electricity lit up at my fingertips, sparking their way up my arm.
Again, he didn’t seem to notice.
As soon as we were out the door, I put a little space between us and sucked in a lungful of fresh, head-clearing night air. There was silence for a minute or two, with no need to give him directions to my apartment, since he’d been there a zillion times. I kind of wished he hadn’t known, though, because it would have given me something to fill the silence with. Instead, I skittered along mounting panic because I couldn’t think of anything remotely interesting to say.
I needed more alcohol in order to converse at all effectively with this man.
Heath strolled casually, much more at ease than I was, hands shoved in his pockets. Thank God it was dark, the night lit only by intermittent streetlights, because his jeans hung so low on his hips that I might have seen a sliver of his abs if his jacket happened to move in the right direction. I was busily forcing my gaze to remain on the road when he filled the silence instead.
“So. Friday night. How was your week?”
The question took me a little bit by surprise. I didn’t often find myself speaking much about myself. Now that Tori was married with a baby, I spent most of my time with Jaye, just hanging out in the apartment we’d shared for years. Her job was exciting. She always had new stories full of near-death experiences. So her conversation tended to dominate. I was a teacher in the local private school. My stories were full of seven-year-olds’ drama and parent-teacher conferences. When Jaye came home and started talking about stakeouts and murder investigations, my stories about how little Zach had improved so much that I’d moved him up a reading group, seemed to fall away as not particularly exciting dinner conversation.
“Just the same old stuff, really. Teacher life and all that. Parent meetings, trying to keep kids engaged with their schoolwork, other teacher politics. You know how it is.” I kicked myself internally, because how would he know how it is? He wasn’t a teacher. And last I’d heard, he wasn’t a parent of a school-aged child. Stupid, Mae. Stupid. “How was yours?”
He shrugged as we turned down the sidewalk to my apartment building. Jayela’s car was missing from her parking space, and I breathed a sigh of relief, even though I really wasn’t doing anything wrong. This was just one old friend walking another home.
Liar.
That voice in my head really needed to shut up.
“Same old shit, too. Landscaping for rich snobs isn’t exactly exciting.” Then he glanced over at me. “No offence.”
I shoved him in the arm. “Firstly, are you calling me a rich snob? Because I earn a teacher’s salary and share a tiny two-bed condo on the edge of Saint View with my sister.”
He punched in the security code and held the glass door open for me. “You own the condo. It may be on the border, but it still has a Providence zip code. My apartment is in the slums by comparison. And no bank would give me a mortgage, even if I begged them.”
I frowned as I passed him, not because he was holding the lobby door open for me and seemed intent on walking me literally all the way home, but how long had it been since that code had been changed? Obviously at least four years. I glanced up at the single security camera in the corner and cringed at the fact it pointed straight at the cheap carpet and a wilted indoor plant. Though it was true that Jaye and I had bought our place outright, and it technically was in the more expensive Providence area. “Fine. But I’m not a snob.”
He grinned. “I’ll give you that.”
That boyish smile nearly made me forget that I had a second point. “And what do you mean you’re still working as a landscaper?”
He hit the button on the wall, and it lit up, signaling for the elevator. “What else would I do?”
I peered up at him. “I thought you’d be working in some flashy kitchen somewhere by now. Creating menus and wowing food critics with your recipes. I still remember that gnocchi you made from scratch, and that sauce…” The memory of the best meal I’d ever eaten in my life replayed regularly in my head, often on nights I got home from work late and ate a frozen meal for dinner. “You told me that night you wanted to have your own restaurant one day.” It hadn’t seemed like an out-of-reach dream because I could eat Heath’s cooking every day for the rest of my life and never get sick of it.
The elevator doors binged and opened. We both put a hand out to keep the doors from closing, but neither of us moved to enter it.
He ran his teeth over his bottom lip. “I forgot I told you about that. I’ve never told anyone else that I once wanted to be a chef, you know? Not even Jayela.”
“You didn’t?” I searched back through my memories and realized he was right. Jayela hadn’t been in the room when he’d confessed his ambitions. She’d worked a graveyard shift and had gone to
bed early, leaving Heath and me with the cleanup. But it seemed odd he hadn’t told her at any point throughout their relationship.
“That’s a story for when I’m more drunk than I am right now.”
There was a sudden vulnerableness in his expression that ate away at me. Like I’d picked at a wound that had never quite closed and it was now verging on spurting blood again. I didn’t want to open up something painful for him, but there was also a burning desire inside me that wondered why I, of all people, was the one he’d once chosen to open up to. And if I was being honest, I was enjoying his company. This was the end of the road, and I didn’t want him to leave yet. I sucked in a deep breath and blurted out the words before I could really think them through. “If it’s alcohol you need, I’ve got tequila upstairs…”
3
Mae
Heath eyed me with an easygoing grin. “You trying to get me drunk so I’ll spill my secrets?”
Trying to get him drunk so he’ll get you naked, more like it.
Good Lord.
I stepped inside the elevator and raised a challenging eyebrow. “You’re a big guy. I’m sure you can hold your liquor. Unless you actually do want to spill your secrets, I’m pretty sure they’re safe. But my first graders tell me I’m a good listener and secret keeper. I still haven’t told anyone that Layla James held hands with Ryan Slade at recess on Wednesday.” I wiggled my eyebrows playfully at him.
“Wow. Elementary school scandal, huh?” He chuckled as he stepped inside the elevator with me and let the doors slide shut.
I took a deep, steadying breath, trying to control the nerves at being enclosed in such a small space with him. Just the two of us. Alone. An emergency stop button just inches from my fingers… What would happen if I just hit it and trapped the two of us inside? Maybe he’d look at me the way he had in the bar, before he’d caught himself and jumped the line back into the friend zone.
I hit the button for my floor and watched the numbers flash as we rose from the lobby. “Oh, you don’t even know the half of it. Seven-year-olds have some very intense boy problems.”
The doors flung themselves open when we reached our destination, and I pulled my keys from my purse. Heath leaned against the doorjamb, watching me, which only made me more nervous, because he was so damn close. His aftershave swirled around my nose tantalizingly and did weird things to my chest. He smelled so good, it was all I could do to stop myself from leaning in and licking him.
These were not sober girl thoughts. I was acutely aware of that, but my imagination, or maybe my libido, was having a field day with this situation.
Eventually, I got the lock to turn and scurried inside my condo, dropping my jacket on the back of a kitchen chair. My heart rate picked up as he followed me in, my pulse thumping hard. I made a beeline for the refrigerator. “Drink? Beer? Wine?” My fingers trembled slightly, and I changed my mind. I needed something harder. “How about that tequila?”
“I could go for tequila.”
“Great!” The word came out too high and too fast. Was I even breathing properly? Panting would not be a good look. I tried to remind myself that he was only up in my home for a friendly drink. A catch-up with an old acquaintance. We were not here to quench any sort of thirst except the one in my throat.
Oh my God. Heath. My throat. Parts of Heath inside my mouth, heading for my throat… I shot a panicked glance in his direction, as if he could read my mind and the dirty things I was suddenly imagining doing with him.
He was closer than I’d expected. Standing right behind me.
My throat was drier than ever.
“Can I help?”
“Limes,” I blurted out, thrusting a bag of them into his hands. “We need limes. And salt!”
I edged away from him and practically skittered to the pantry, grabbing the saltshaker from its spot on the top shelf.
“You still keep your cutting boards in this cupboard?”
I slammed my eyes closed as he bent over to grab a board from the cupboard beneath the countertop. There was no way my hormones could handle the sight of Heath’s ass, without me doing something embarrassing like smacking him on it.
By the time I opened my eyes, he’d already found a knife and had sliced a lime into easily suckable wedges. He watched me curiously. “Are you okay?”
I took the tequila and a couple of shot glasses from another cupboard and put them down on the countertop beside him. “Yeah, I just…sorry. It’s just…is it weird you’re here? With me, I mean?”
His gaze met mine and drifted slowly over my face once more, and this time, when he lingered on my lips, there was no doubt in my mind I was seeing things. I wasn’t. There was something between us that hadn’t been there—at least not on his side—the last time I’d seen him. It sparked between us now that we were alone, an almost tangible force that demanded attention.
“No weirder than any other guy you’ve brought home from a bar, is it?” He stepped in closer, and my skin tingled at the nearness of him. “You’ve done that before, right?”
“Once or twice,” I admitted. I swallowed hard, frozen to the spot while I waited for his touch.
But he just reached for the tequila bottle and poured a hefty shot into each glass, then pushed one in my direction.
“Then it’s not weird, because I know you a whole lot better than some random stranger does. At least you know I’m not going to search through your bathroom cupboards or steal your spare change. You ready to do this?”
I imagined the burn of the tequila rolling down my throat. I wasn’t sure whether I was excited for it or dreading it. But I did know that the warmth would loosen the awkward tongue-tie I currently found myself locked in with Heath standing so close to me. I licked the back of my hand and picked up the saltshaker from the center of the table. “I don’t think I’ve done one of these since college.”
“Me neither. Not that I went to college, but I went to the parties.” Heath took the salt from me, our fingers brushing in the process. He licked the inside of his wrist and sprinkled the salt over it, making sure a generous amount stuck to his skin.
I watched, mesmerized, and then tried to get a handle on my brain that was currently fritzing out and drunk yelling ridiculous things like, “Imagine it wasn’t his skin he just licked. Imagine if it were yours!” That tingle that had shot through my arm at the tiniest of touches, turned into a full-body tremble that I tried to play off as the result of a cool gust from the air-conditioning.
“On three?” I held my hand up to my mouth and waited for his okay.
He grinned. “Three.”
I hesitated for a tiny second, just long enough to watch him lick the salt from his wrist, before I did the same, licking it from the back of my hand. In near unison, we both picked up our shot glasses and tossed back the clear liquid. It burned. Just like I remembered from back in my college days, it traced a fiery path straight down my throat and lower, warming as it went. We both grabbed lime wedges from the cutting board, and I stuck mine in my mouth, squeezing it between my teeth, sucking it hard, easing the burn of the alcohol.
Heath pulled the wedge away from his lips before I did. “Green smiles suit you.”
I couldn’t help the grin that tugged at the corners of my mouth. He was referring to the lime still clamped between my teeth. I let it go, dropping it to the countertop. The beginnings of a blush built behind my cheeks, and not wanting to show that his slightly odd compliment affected me, I held up the second of our shots and offered it to him. “Shall we do the other one?”
He raised a thick, perfect, naturally formed eyebrow, and his forehead wrinkled. “Back-to-back shots? Don’t you know how old I am?”
I relaxed a little at his teasing tone and screwed up my face at him. “Not that crap again. I remember having this conversation years ago. You aren’t that much older than me.”
“Thirty-two this year.”
“Oh, you’re such an old man,” I teased. Wait, was I actually flirting with t
his guy somewhat successfully? It kind of felt like I was, but hey, maybe that was the tequila and cocktails. Probably best I get this next shot down before I started doubting myself again, even though my head was already spinning.
“Five years on you.” But he picked up his second shot anyway, not bothering with the salt this time. “It kind of felt like a lifetime when I was with Jayela.”
At the mention of my sister’s name, I threw back my shot quicker than I had intended, and a cough spluttered up my throat. Though I tried to force it down, it was a losing battle. I choked, bringing my arm up to cough into my elbow. My eyes watered.
Heath held out a wedge of lime after downing his own shot much more successfully than I had, but when I continued coughing, unable to even take the wedge from his hand, his amusement turned into concern. “Are you okay?”
I forced myself to nod as I coughed. “Fine,” I choked out. Well, this was embarrassing.
Heath scooted closer, and before I could protest, his big hand landed between my shoulder blades, alternating between patting and smoothing his palm down my back.
Even through my clothes, his touch was warm and delicious. If I died in that moment, choked to death by an overeager tequila shot, I wouldn’t have cared. I would have died happy.
Maybe it was that touch that made me lose my mind. Or maybe it was the tequila. Maybe it was Tori hyping me up, or maybe the glue fumes from the art project I’d had my class do that afternoon had killed a few brain cells. But something made me brave. Something made me want more of those touches. Something made me want to shoot my shot.
My coughing fit subsided. “Are you still in love with my sister?”
Heath’s icy-blue eyes turned up at the corner in amusement. “Seriously? We’re going there?”
I nodded, completely serious. “Yeah, apparently. Are you?”
He snorted, his lips curving into a grin. “Is that why she left tonight? Because she thinks I’m still in love with her?”
I lifted one shoulder. “She thinks you’re still hung up on her, yeah.”
