I tilted up my chin, and he leaned down. The floor beneath our feet squeaked as our weight and our bodies shifted toward each other.
Holy shit, Adrian Storm is going to kiss me, I thought.
Only he didn’t, because his mother walked into the kitchen, calling back over her shoulder to the others, “We can’t break with tradition! Two members are present, so there must be dandelion wine!”
“Mom!” Adrian said, sounding exactly like his fifteen-year-old self and making my insides get squishy. “You’re such a lush.”
Mrs. Storm pulled a bottle of hand-labelled wine from the cupboard. “I’m not a lush, I’m lush-scious.” She wiggled her ample butt.
Adrian looked like he was going to die right there in my parents’ kitchen, yellow dishtowel in his hand.
After she left, I said, “Two members of the Beaverdale Orchid and Dandelion Wine Society are present tonight, so she’s not wrong.” I got back to washing the dishes, head down to avoid any awkward kiss-like movements. “I like your mom. She’s cool.”
“Um. Yeah! She’s only the best mom ever, except for maybe your mom.” He took a platter from my hands, careful not to touch me, and wiped away at the platter fastidiously. “So, are you curious about that movie they’re shooting here? Is that why you were out in the bushes at Dragonfly Lake that night?”
My cheeks grew warm with fury. I wanted to tell him everything, just to crack that look on his face.
“Well?” he asked.
“If you must know, I was ha**ng s*x with Dalton Deangelo. Me and him. Bigtime. Naked and everything, stuffing body parts in each other’s faces.”
“Sorry I asked. No need to be sarcastic.”
“He’s coming to my house tomorrow so I can ride him like a pony.”
Adrian chuckled, still not believing me. “So I guess you’re not available to go for a bike ride with me?”
“You could check back Sunday, but I’ll probably be too sore from all the hot movie star sex.”
Adrian stared down at me in amusement.
I added, “In the vagina area.”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the concept. Are you flirting with me?”
“Never.” I shook my head. “That’s something fun girls do.”
Adrian kept staring down at me. He really was tall. From that distance, did I look smaller to him than to other not-so-tall guys?
“I thought I knew you,” he said.
“And?”
He shrugged and reached into the soapy water, moving in on my washing job. “Maybe the truth is nobody knew you, because you always had your nose in a book.”
“And you always had your nose up Chantalle Hart’s perfect heart-shaped ass.”
He grinned, and the little scar below his lower lip where his piercing had once been glinted and caught the light of the fixture over the kitchen sink.
“You still love her,” I said.
“I wouldn’t call it love. Just a silly infatuation. It’s better to want something you can’t have, because human beings are never satisfied. The wanting is better than the having.”
I gave him a little hip-check to jostle his mood, which was taking a turn for the goth. “Serious much?”
“You should have seen the house I had, at the peak of my business. Four thousand square feet. A clover-shaped pool in the back yard, as blue as a tropical sky. And I still wasn’t satisfied. You’ll never be as lonely as you are in four thousand square feet of dissatisfaction and envy.”
“Who were you envious of?”
“The neighbors had better parties.”
“You always were moody. You probably need more sunshine, Mr. Pale.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“That’s okay. If I start to sound like my mother, just smother me with a pillow.”
He laughed and gave me a sidelong look, his pale blue eyes looking down his aquiline nose at me. Adrian Storm had been cute in high school, but now that he’d filled out and wasn’t so scrawny, he was breaking my brain. He looked like a cologne ad in a magazine. Was that a fold line running up along his chiseled cheekbone? Could I just peel it back and inhale the scent sample?
“What are you smiling about?” he asked.
“I could never tell you, because you wouldn’t stop laughing.”
He pulled out the sprayer wand from the edge of the sink and aimed it at my midsection. “Tell me or you get the hose.”
“Hmmph.”
He blasted me with lukewarm water—one short burst that rendered my pale blue T-shirt translucent across my lacy D-cups.
“Tell me what’s so funny,” he repeated.
“You look like a cologne model,” I said, holding up my hands to protect me from another blast.
He raised his eyebrows, salaciously looking at my damp peaches. “And you look like the winner of a wet T-shirt contest.”
I crossed my arms over my wet chest. “Gross.”
“Wow. That shirt is really see-through when it’s wet.”
“If you keep looking, I’ll have to send you an invoice for the peep show.”
“You know I’m broke, right?”
“I’m sure you’ve got some assets hidden somewhere.” I moved my gaze down his chin, then down his chest. He wore a green T-shirt, and the effect of the cotton fabric on his lean, wide chest was that of an inviting grassy park. The kind you want to roll around on. My gaze moved further down, to his jeans, and that enticing, mysterious area around his fly. Oh, goodness me, it was a button fly. Perhaps it was the extra layer of thick denim, plus the bulk of the buttons themselves, but something about a button fly on a hot guy made my mouth water.
From his muscles to whatever was behind those buttons, Adrian wasn’t without assets at all.
While I was distracted, Adrian pulled his phone from his pocket and got ready to take a picture of me. “For later,” he said.
I leaned forward like a pin-up girl, pushing my boobs together with the tops of my arms.
The phone’s tiny flash went off.
I gasped. “No you did not! Delete that right now.”
“You can hardly see anything,” he said, laughing and holding the phone up out of my reach. “I swear, it’s mostly your face.”
I gave up on trying to get the phone from him, since his reach was twice the length of mine. We stared at each other, both of us grinning stupidly.
He nodded in the direction of the dining room. “I should get back in there. Unless you want to show me your old bedroom.”