Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy

by Tammy Falkner

Lacey

  I groan loudly as soon as the door closes behind Sean and Logan. “Aghh!” I want to hit something. I want to scream. I want to…kiss Sean. I want to kiss him so bad.

  “Spill it,” Friday says as she sits down beside Emily and props her head in her hand. She doesn’t say anything more. She just waits.

  “I don’t even know where to start.” My voice cracks, and I hate that it does.

  “Start at the ending,” Emily says. “What was happening when we barged in?”

  “Nothing,” I grunt. “Not a thing. Just like always.”

  “There was something going on. Something more than the usual sexual tension between you two. Did he finally make a move?”

  I shake my head. He didn’t. Not really. “He hinted that he might make a move. So, I gave him an opening. That’s all.”

  “He was taking it,” Friday says. “The opening that is.”

  Emily grins. “He wanted to take her opening, all right.” She snorts.

  I throw a pillow at her, but she just catches it.

  “I thought this kissing thing would make him step up. But I guess he just doesn’t care as much as I thought he did.”

  “He cares,” Emily says.

  I shake my head. “He doesn’t.”

  “He does. He told Logan. Logan told me.”

  My belly flutters. “Logan must be hearing things.”

  Emily snorts again.

  “I mean…”

  “I know what you meant,” Emily says, smiling. “Logan can be pretty intuitive about some things. And he feels certain that Sean wants you. Bad. And Sean said as much.”

  Friday bites her lip, then adds, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…”

  “What?” I ask.

  “You know how he got a new tattoo last week?” she asks.

  I didn’t know so I don’t answer. “What did he get?” I ask instead.

  She inhales, weighing her decision to tell me. Then she blurts out, “It’s a honeybee.”

  “Oh shit,” I say.

  “What?” Emily asks. “What did I miss?”

  “He calls me honey when he’s being all sweet.”

  Friday nods.

  “I blew it when I told him I just want to be friends.”

  “Logan says boyfriends are friends that get to make girls come.” Emily snickers. She gets this dreamy look on her face and sighs. “Over and over and over.”

  “What if I blew my chance forever?” I ask. Tears sting my eyes.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” Friday says. “You’ll mess up your makeup.”

  “You look hot, by the way,” Emily says.

  “Thanks,” I murmur.

  I adjust the top of my dress. I never show this much cleavage. “I better get down to the booth. The sale will only last an hour, and then the kiss happens.”

  Emily frowns. “What happens when you have to kiss some strange guy?” she asks.

  “Then I guess I get to kiss some strange guy.” I shrug. I can’t get out of it now. “I’d hoped that Sean would, you know… But he didn’t.”

  “You’ve got yourself in quite a predicament,” Emily says.

  I flop down in a chair. “Tell me about it.”

  “Why did you want to be just friends?” Friday asks. “I don’t think you ever told me. It’s pretty damn obvious you have feelings for him.”

  “I was afraid,” I admit. “I can’t live without him. He’s my best friend. What if we start dating and then it all falls apart? I will lose him forever.” I shake my head. “I just can’t let that happen.” I wince. “I may have made a mistake giving him that piece of paper, but I’m going to chance it. If I don’t, I’ll never know. I love him. I just need for him to love me back.”

  “What mistake?” Emily asks.

  “What piece of paper?” Friday asks right after.

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. He’ll either show up or he won’t.”

  I slide on my sandals and pick up my jar of jelly beans. It’s big and heavy, but I don’t have to walk too far. “You guys want to come?” I ask.

  Friday snorts this time. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  We walk up to the booth, and I set up my display. Emily and Friday help me take pledges for a solid hour. People write their names and guesses on a piece of paper, and Friday sorts through them as they turn them in, tossing out the ones that aren’t even close. We keep the two closest to the actual number, both over and under. There will only be one winner, but it’s whoever comes the closest that will get to kiss me.

  I see Sean in the crowd. He’s walking with Logan and three of his brothers. There’s a wide path around them. They are some fearsome-looking boys, that’s for sure. They’re also head-turners in every sense of the word. But none of the Reed boys are as handsome as Sean. His brown eyes meet mine, and he looks away. He pulls his baseball cap down low, shielding his eyes in shadow so I can’t even see them.

  Logan hands me a ten-dollar bill and ten guesses.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Emily breathes.

  He winks at her, and she crosses her arms under her breasts. He crooks a finger at her, and she shakes her head. She signs something to him really quickly. He laughs out loud and signs back. All the tension leaves her body, and she deflates.

  “I’m not going to kiss you,” I tell Logan. “Give him his money back.” I motion toward Emily.

  But she just sorts through his entries and keeps one out to the side. I take it from her. It’s close. It’s really close.

  “Emily,” I warn.

  She smiles at me. I have no idea what’s going on.

  Logan’s brothers all have guesses, too, and each of them hands me a stack of tickets. Emily and Friday sort through them and pull another one out, discarding the one that belonged to Logan. Thank God. Emily would kill me if I kissed her boyfriend. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I just wouldn’t.

  So far, Logan’s brother Matt is the closest, but I can’t tell him that.

  Friday and Emily keep taking the money as I talk with the men who stop to buy tickets. When the hour is up, my heart is racing and my pits are sweating. Logan hands me a tissue and points to my brow. I blot it dry.

  On the hour, the bell rings and the announcer calls me to the stage. “And now for the results of the kissing contest,” the announcer says. He looks at Friday who has the winning ticket in her hand. “Do we have a winner?”

  She nods and walks across the stage. She stops and takes a bow when she gets catcalls and whistles. She’s very Katy Perry-pretty with her tattoos, vintage dress, and old-fashioned hairstyle. She puts the winning ticket in the announcer’s extended hand.

  “And the winner is,” he sings. He waits, opening the folded piece of paper slowly, drawing out the suspense. I can barely hear him over my own heartbeat, which is thumping like crazy. Is it too late to back out? Shit. I don’t want to do this. “The winner is the person who guessed twelve hundred and forty-eight!”

  The crowd is silent, and all the participants look to one another. But then I hear a thump, thump, thump, thump as someone comes up the stairs onto the platform. I see the baseball cap before I see the rest of him, and I hope to God that’s Sean’s cap. But Sean didn’t even buy a ticket. Not a single one.

  Yet it’s his brown gaze that meets mine. It’s his baseball cap, and they are his tattoos. They’re his broad shoulders and his long strides that eat up the distance between us.

  He turns his hat backward and looks down at me. He stops with less than an inch to spare between us. “Congratulations,” I squeak out. “You didn’t even buy a ticket. How did you…?”

  “I bought one hundred and forty-two tickets, dummy,” he says.

  My heart trips a beat. “You did?” All he had to buy was one. I put the winning number on the piece of paper I gave him.

  He nods, and he takes my face in his hands. His thumbs draw little circles on my cheeks as his fingers thread into the hair at my temples.

  “You
didn’t look at the paper I gave you….” My heart is pounding like mad.

  “What paper?” he asks. His smile is soft and inviting, and I want to fall into him.

  “The one you put in your pocket.”

  His brow furrows.

  “Never mind,” I say, breathless. He spent 142 dollars for a kiss he already owned in more ways than one. If I loved this man any more, it would be dangerous.

  He looks down into my eyes, not moving. He’s going to kiss me, right? “What’s the plan here?”

  “I’m going to kiss my girl,” he says, smiling at me.

  My breath hitches.

  “But you have to say yes, first.” He hasn’t let me go. He’s holding me tightly, forcing me to meet his eyes. “This isn’t going to be a one-time thing.”

  I can’t even think, and he wants me to commit?

  “It’s not,” I breathe.

  “You promise?” His gaze searches mine like he’s going to find the secrets to the universe there.

  “I swear on your life,” I say.

  He chuckles. “My life?”

  I nod.

  His eyebrows draw together. “Aren’t you supposed to swear on your own life?”

  “My life means nothing if you’re not in it.”

  His hands start to tremble against my face, and he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

  Logan’s brothers start to chant, “Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss…,” and the crowd joins in.

  “You better kiss me,” I say, “or they’re going to get restless.” A tear rolls down my cheek, and he brushes it back with his thumb, his gaze soft and warm.

  His eyes open, and he leans closer to me. I step onto my tiptoes to get to him because I can’t wait one more second. He stops a breath away from me, just like he did in the room. He waits. “You have to close the distance,” he says to me. He’s making me choose.

  I fall into him and press my lips to his. He freezes. But then he starts to kiss me. And all the fireworks at the state fair couldn’t compare to the ones that go off in my head. His lips are gentle but urgent. They’re kind but insistent. They’re soft but firm. His head tilts, and he licks across the seam of my lips. I open for him, a whimper leaving my throat completely unbidden. His tongue touches mine, and the velvet rasp of him searching my mouth makes my knees begin to shake. I tangle my tongue with his, and nothing ever felt so right as being with him. God, this man can kiss. He steals my thoughts, taking me inside him and refusing to let me go. I don’t want to let go. I want to kiss him forever and never even come up for air.

  Somewhere in the distance I hear the announcer as he coughs into the microphone, but I don’t care. And neither does Sean. He kisses me and keeps on kissing me until he wipes the memory of every other kiss I have ever experienced from my head. There will never be another kiss like this. Not for me. He’s the one. He will always be the one.

  “We’re going to have to get the hose, I think,” the announcer says. I open my eyes, and Sean opens his at exactly the same time. His withdraws his tongue from my mouth and closes his lips, kissing me quickly, again and again, and then he lets me go. I wobble on my feet, and he reaches out a hand to steady me, chuckling as he does.

  “You okay?” he asks. He holds onto my elbow until he slings an arm around my shoulders.

  I nod. I can’t speak. I can’t gather enough wits.

  The crowd goes wild. Sean takes my hand and leads me to the edge of the stage. My wobbly knees will barely carry me, but I follow. Logan and his brothers high five Sean as we approach, and Emily and Friday just laugh.

  “How was it?” Emily asks.

  I don’t need to answer. They can see it on my face. I look up at Sean, and he smiles down at me. He’s everything I ever wanted. I can’t imagine my life without him. “Earth-shattering,” I admit. He squeezes me, his face glowing. I narrow my gaze and smack my lips. “But for some reason, he tastes like pickles.”

  “Oh my God,” Emily squeals. “So does Logan!” She shoots them a quizzical glance.

  Sean flushes scarlet. There’s a story there. I just don’t know what it is. But he’ll tell me. I won’t let him avoid it.

  He reaches into his pocket and pops a handful of jelly beans into his mouth. Logan does the same. Logan points to Sean’s mouth. “Dude,” he says. “That color’s not great on you.”

  I look at Sean again, and my lipstick is smudged all over his lips. I laugh. I must look a sight if he looks like that. He wipes at the corners of my lips with his thumbs. “Next time, I’ll wear pink,” I whisper.

  “I don’t care what you wear,” he says. His gaze is hot, and my belly flips. “I’d like to see you wearing nothing.” He looks into my eyes, his expression full of longing. He presses his lips to mine briefly. “I can’t get used to the fact that I can kiss you whenever I want.”

  “Says who?” I taunt.

  “That’s what boyfriends do, Lacey,” he says, as if he needs to remind me. My stomach flutters again. I step onto my tiptoes and pull his head down to mine. I kiss him, holding onto the back of his neck, until we’re both breathless, and I’m whimpering.

  “Yea,” I agree. “That’s what boyfriends do.”

  If you haven’t read Tall, Tatted and Tempting, Smart, Sexy and Secretive, or Calmly, Carefully, Completely, you can keep reading for a sneak peek at each of the books! They’re all part of The Reed Brothers series.

  Tall, Tatted, and Tempting

  Smart, Sexy, and Secretive

  Calmly, Carefully, Completely

  Finally Finding Faith