by Amelia Stone
“Good to know,” she said, turning back to the cookies. “Thanks.” She flashed me a tight smile as she began scooping more dough onto a cool cookie sheet.
I smothered a frustrated sigh. I needed to get ahold of this conversation, fast. I had an agenda here. And now that I was near her again, I found I really didn’t want to waste any more time.
“So,” I said.
“So,” she repeated, eyes still on her task.
“It’s good to see you again,” I said. Ugh. Fucking lame, Sam. I took a deep breath, reminding myself that once upon a time, talking to Jamy had been the easiest thing in the world. We just needed to get to that point again.
She looked up at me, her eyes hard once more. “Is it?”
I smiled again, though it was a little more desperate this time. Fuck. This was not going well. “It is. I’ve missed you.”
She huffed, but otherwise made no answer as she continued with the cookies.
“You look great.” And that was the truth. Maybe my memory of her was hazy, or maybe Jamy just got better with age, but Christ, she looked amazing. Even wearing yoga pants and a tee shirt, with no makeup on and her hair in a messy bun, she was gorgeous.
She looked up at that, those cool green eyes searching my face as though trying to sniff out a lie. “Um, thanks,” she said tightly.
I smiled. “Seriously. You look fantastic.”
She snorted, turning back to the cookies. “Yeah, sure. Glamor is my middle name.” She gestured to her body in general.
Wait, what? She thought she didn’t look good? Oh, hell no.
I laid a hand on her arm, and she froze. Her skin was warm and smooth under mine. Soft, just like I imagined the rest of her would be. I licked my suddenly dry lips as I let my fingertips gently caress her wrist, shamelessly copping a feel.
“You think wearing sweats makes you less attractive?” I asked.
Her eyes darted up to mine, lighting up in defiance. “Maybe I don’t care if it makes me less attractive.”
I smiled. “Good. You shouldn’t.” I tightened my hold on her wrist, leaning in until my mouth was millimeters from her ear. “Because you could wear a garbage bag for all I care. You’d still be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
I would need a full body massage by the end of the day, at the rate I was going. My muscles just kept locking up for no reason – or really every reason. Fear, anxiety, and now shock. Again. I was kind of tired of that one, in particular.
The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. What the actual fuck? Since when did Sam think I was beautiful?
And excuse me, but where did someone in a long-term relationship get off flirting with another woman? Wouldn’t his girlfriend be the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen? Shouldn’t he be paying her these attentions?
And seriously, since fucking when did Sam think I was beautiful?
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and inadvertently pulling Sam’s scent in. I got a whiff of some kind of fruity shampoo, spicy deodorant, a little sweat. No cologne – that was nice. Strong scents tended to give me awful headaches. It would be a lot less fun to be this close to Sam if he smelled like Calvin Klein or something.
Wait, what? Since when did Sam stand so close to me? Since when did he lean into my personal space, his lips mere inches from my neck, his minty breath washing over my skin, his body heat warming my side? Since when did he put his hands on me like he had a right to, like I belonged to him?
And what was wrong with me that I actually liked it? Since when did I shiver at a simple touch? And since fucking when did I crave more?
I had questions. All the questions. But I’d start with the most obvious one.
“What?” I asked.
Brilliant, I know.
I pulled back a bit and looked up at him, blinking like I couldn’t see him clearly. But I so totally could. I could see every freckle (and there were a ton – he was covered in them), could trace the outline of his full, dark pink lips, could count the golden flecks in his emerald eyes, could see his pupils dilate with… oh, dang. Was that desire?
No. I had to be seeing things. There was no way Sam would look at me like he wanted to eat me alive. I mean, aside from the fact that he’d never looked at me like that before, I’d changed so much since he last saw me. I’d gained weight, and stopped wearing makeup and dyeing my hair. Basically, I’d stopped worrying so much about what other people thought of me. I’d rather be comfortable in my own skin than conform to some arbitrary beauty standard, anyway.
Okay, so maybe I wasn’t always completely comfortable in my own skin. Or almost never. Whatever. It’s a journey, not a destination, right?
And to get back to the very confusing subject at hand, Sam had a girlfriend. A girlfriend who, judging by her Facebook pictures, was a fricking supermodel. Or should be. Adriana was all exotic looking, with olive skin and silky dark hair and a perfectly coordinated wardrobe. Not like yours truly, that was for sure.
Yeah, there was no way it could have been desire. It was just too dark in here, probably. The blinds were open, but not much sunlight was coming in. It must be close to dinnertime, or maybe after. And we hadn’t turned the overhead lights on yet, with all the surprise and confusion of Sam’s arrival. Yeah, that must be it. Just a normal reaction to insufficient light.
Sam smiled down at me, and I reeled a bit. He had never seemed huge or intimidating to me. He couldn’t have been more than five-nine or -ten, and he was a slight guy, thanks to a ridiculously high metabolism and a regular running habit. But standing so close to me, smiling like he was a predator and I was his prey, and just looking so dang good, he overwhelmed me. He was just too much. I needed to get away, before I did something really stupid, like beg him to kiss me.
“Is something burning?”
Hannah’s voice came floating into my consciousness, as though I were waking up from a dream. I blinked again, taking several steps away from Sam as his sister flew into the kitchen. She yanked the oven door open, and smoke came billowing out.
“Dang it!” I cringed. I’d let the cookies burn, so distracted by Sam’s husky voice and his nearness and his focus on me and his overall… Sam-ness.
Hannah turned to me, her eyes widened in reproach. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry!” I groaned when I saw the baking sheet, now covered in a dozen lumps of what looked like charcoal. “I forgot to reset the timer with this last batch and I guess I just… lost track of time,” I finished lamely.
She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “It’s okay. This batch is just going to come out of your take-home portion,” she added sternly. But she stuck her tongue out at me, letting me know she wasn’t really mad.
“That’s totally fair,” I replied. “I messed them up.”
“Eh, they’re okay,” Sam said from behind me. “They’re just a little crispy. You can say they’re Cajun cookies.”
“Ha ha ha.” Hannah narrowed her eyes at her brother. “What were you two even doing?” Her eyes bounced back and forth between Sam and me.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, my voice shrill once again. I cleared my throat. “Um, Sam just wanted to see my nails, and, um, yeah. So I was showing him them. Showing them to him. My nails, I mean.”
“Uh huh,” she said, her expression telling me she knew I was full of shit. But after a moment she shrugged, seemingly letting it go. She turned away, busying herself with scraping the burnt cookies into the trash, and I let out a relieved sigh.
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Nails?” he mouthed, looking bewildered.
Silently, I held out my left hand, showing him my latest design. I’d painted a scene from an old Disney movie, a couple of cartoon mice scooping up corn kernels. The scene ran from my index nail across to my pinky.
Sam’s jaw dropped, and his eyes swept from my hand to my face, as though he couldn’t believe what he saw. “Wow,” he whispered.
I gave him a tight smile in reply, uncomfortable with the praise
. But inside, I glowed. I’d spent more than two hours on my nails that morning, making sure the details were perfect and everything lined up from nail to nail. It meant a lot that Sam was impressed.
“Jamy’s a big star in the online nail art community,” said Brian as he came into the kitchen. “She’s super famous.”
“Famous on the internet,” I corrected. “Which is just like not being famous at all.”
Hannah tutted. “You have more than a million followers on social media,” she reminded me. “People all over the world love looking at pictures of your nails. That’s something to be proud of.”
I shrugged, feeling itchy in my own skin again. Everyone was looking at me, and saying nice things. I hated it. “I just do it for fun.”
“You’re not a professional nail person? Whatever they call that?” Sam asked.
Hannah chuckled. “A licensed nail technician,” she clarified.
“Yeah, that.” Sam nodded. “You don’t get paid to do nails?”
I shook my head, suppressing a wave of irritation at him. Had he really paid no attention to my life since he’d moved away? I’d been working at the animal shelter for more than five years. A five-second peek at my Facebook could tell him that, for God’s sake.
“I don’t really like doing other people’s nails,” I replied. “Just my own.”
“Much to my dismay,” Hannah grumbled.
Sam looked thoughtful. “But isn’t there a way to make money off it, even if you’re only doing your own nails? You’re taking pictures of them and putting them on the internet. Can’t you tap into ad revenue or something?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really want it to become a job. I dunno, that’s just not something I’m interested in. I do it for fun,” I repeated. I looked around, realizing everyone was still looking at me. Brian’s expression plainly said he thought I was crazy, Hannah gave me a supportive smile, and Sam still seemed thoughtful, rubbing his jaw slowly.
And man, that jaw. I didn’t have the guts to tell Hanzilla earlier, but the beard? It worked for him. It really worked for him.
I blinked, snapping myself out of my suddenly dirty thoughts. Thoughts of what that beard would feel like against my skin. My neck, my collarbone. My thighs. Oh God. What the hell was wrong with me? I was still mad at him. Wasn’t I? Shit. I had the sinking feeling that I’d forgive him in a hot minute. All it would take is another of those smiles, the ones that crinkled the corners of his eyes and showed off his perfect teeth. I’d fold immediately.
Okay, not immediately. I’d make him work for it a little. Not much. But he definitely wouldn’t get into my pants until he told me he was sorry.
Girlfriend. He had a girlfriend. I needed to remind myself of that a few thousand more times. He wouldn’t want to get into my pants, because he had a way-better-than-me girlfriend. And I needed to know what was up with her, now that he’d moved back home. I looked around the kitchen, as though she was about to pop out from behind the island or something.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, what about you, Sam? What made you decide to move back home? Is Adriana moving here too?” There. That should make it clear that however much it killed me, I was determined to be a supportive friend. Only a friend. Whatever that was earlier that swept up both of us, made me burn the cookies, and, okay, made my panties kind of damp? That was just a blip on the radar. An anomaly. Not happening again.
Sam frowned, looking down at his hands. “I needed a change,” he said vaguely.
Brian raised an eyebrow. “A change, huh?”
Sam nodded. “Yup.” He looked up, his eyes locking with mine. “And no, Adriana won’t be joining me.” He raised an eyebrow, staring at me like he was trying to tell me something. I squirmed. What could he possibly be trying to communicate, and to me of all people?
Brian shook his head. “You guys gonna try the long distance thing again?” He was referring to our last year of college, when Sam was finishing up his undergrad degree at Arizona State after a year abroad. Adriana had stayed behind in Lisbon, and they’d only seen each other a couple of times. “That was rough, if I remember. Is she at least coming to visit when she can? Or are you going back there?”
Sam shook his head, his eyes still not leaving mine. “No, actually, we broke up.”
Hannah gasped. “What? When? What happened?”
Sam shrugged, finally breaking the staring contest and turning to his sister. I let out a long breath, trying my best to keep my expression neutral. But inside, my stomach was churning, my fingertips were numb, and my lungs felt like they weren’t expanding properly. They’d broken up? Sam was single? And why the hell had he been staring at me when he broke the news?
“A couple of months ago,” he replied casually, like he hadn’t just dropped a freaking atomic bomb in the middle of Hannah and Brian’s kitchen. “We’d grown apart. It was time.”
“It was time?” Hannah repeated, her tone making it clear she thought he was full of shit. “But you were together for what, six years? That’s practically forever! Sam, you moved to freaking Portugal to be with her.”
Sam frowned. “I didn’t move there just for her. Yeah, she was part of it,” he said, throwing me another look I couldn’t read. What. The. Hell? “But there were a lot of other reasons.”
“Like what?” Hannah demanded. “You could have gotten a teaching job anywhere, so don’t say it was that.”
Sam threw her an annoyed look. “Can’t I keep at least some things to myself?” he asked, sounding exasperated.
“Absolutely freaking not! What else have you been keeping from me, you traitor?” Hannah looked seriously peeved. “Are you hiding a secret love child or something? Got a tattoo of Tweety Bird on your ass? Did you win the lottery?”
Sam chuckled, and I clenched my shoulders, resisting the urge to lean into the sound. Sam’s laugh was husky and deep and ugh, just delicious.
“No, no, and no,” he replied. “I promise, Han, I’m not hiding anything else.” He threw me another look. “Much.”
What?!?
Hannah’s shrewd gaze flicked from her brother and me, clearly trying to figure out what was going on between us. And I was right there with her. I was obviously about ten steps behind everyone else participating in this conversation, making me look – and feel – like a fool.
“Uh huh,” she said for what seemed like the fiftieth time today, sounding skeptical, to say the least. “I’ll figure it out. I’m not dropping this.”
Sam chuckled and pulled her into his side, playfully digging his knuckles into her head. She laughed and swatted his hand, and he let her go with an exaggerated kiss on the temple. “You wouldn’t be you if you did, little sister. What was it Mom used to call you? Little Miss Control Freak. Has to know everything so she can order everyone around with confidence.”
“You’d have died at least seven times growing up if it weren’t for me, Scatterbrain Sam,” she retorted just as my phone dinged with a message notification.
“Hey, I’ve gotten better,” he protested. “I remembered both of our parents’ birthdays this year.”
“Because I reminded you,” Hannah retorted.
My phone chimed another notification. I tuned out the sibling argument for a moment as I picked it up, scrolling through the messages.
Sabine [7/27 6:58PM]: SOS! Cable guy still hasn’t come, and I need to go. Gig starts in an hour.
Sabine [7/27 6:59PM]: Can you get home pretty please?
I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it was already seven o’clock. No wonder the room seemed too dark. The fading sunset cast a weak glow over the four of us. I reached over to flip the light on, then typed out a quick reply.
Jamy [7/27 7:01PM]: I’ll be there ASAP.
“Everything okay?” Sam asked me in a low tone. I looked up, realizing that he was standing way too close again. And by way too close, I mean less than eight feet from me. He tended to take away my ability to think if he was any nearer than that.
I cleared
my throat and took a step away. “Yeah, I just need to get home.”
“So soon?” Hannah said, her face drooping in disappointment. “I wanted to look at some bridesmaid’s dresses online. I thought we could pre-shop.”
I made a sympathetic face, but inside I was relieved. God, I hated shopping, even online. The idea of buying any clothing, much less a formal dress, gave me the hives. Plus, I’d gained so much weight in the last couple of years that I didn’t even know my size.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to sound sincere. “It’s just that Sabine needs to head to the club soon, and we’ve been waiting all day for the cable guy.”
Hannah nodded, looking resigned. “Do you need a ride home?”
I nodded. “If you don’t mind.” My car was in the shop for maintenance.
“No problem,” she replied.
“Do you need a ride to work tomorrow, too?” Brian asked. “I can pick you up on my way into the office.” Brian worked in Tempe, not too far from my apartment.
I shook my head. “Thanks, but Sabine’s taking me. My car should be done by the end of the day.”
“Let me know if anything changes,” Brian replied.
“Thanks, I will.” I checked the time as discreetly as I could.
Hannah seemed to get the hint. “Let me just pack up your cookies.” She looked harried as she moved around the kitchen.
“If you’re busy, Han, I can give Jamy a ride home,” Sam said. He was smiling a little too brightly when I looked up at him.
I frowned. I was not crazy about the idea of being confined in a car with Sam. Not only were his meaningful looks confusing the hell out of me, his very presence sent my nervous system into a tailspin. Plus, I was still mad at him. Where did he get off being so buddy-buddy tonight, when he hadn’t actually been my friend in a long time?
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said, a little too quickly. “I’m sure Hannah can do it.”
“Yeah, no sweat,” she replied, sounding distracted as she dug through a cabinet.
Brian cleared his throat, and he and Hannah exchanged a loaded look.
