Stella
Can I ask you something?
My heart kicked up.
Cade
Anything.
Stella
What are we doing?
I stared at the screen, my chest going tight. This wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have over text.
Cade
Can I call you?
The phone rang in my hand two seconds later. I swiped to answer the incoming video, and there Stella was, sitting cross-legged on her bed, her hair damp from a shower, wearing an oversized black t-shirt that hung off one shoulder. The fairy lights strung around her loft cast a warm glow across her face.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi.” I propped myself up against the headboard, trying to shake off the last fog of sleep. “You okay?”
I watched her pull her knees tighter to her chest, the oversized shirt slipping further off her shoulder. The edge of her pillow was in frame, the same deep purple one I’d buried my face in two nights ago.
“I don’t know. Maybe?” She bit her lip. “I just … there’s something I need to know.”
“Like I said, you can ask me anything.”
She nodded, then her gaze flicked away briefly before coming back to her screen. “What Colin said earlier—about you having a crush on me—was that past tense or …?”
“Present tense,” I said without hesitation, rolling onto my stomach and propping the phone against my pillow so I could see her better. “Stella, I’ve always had feelings for you. They never went away.”
Her eyes searched mine through the screen. “But you never said anything. For decades, you’ve stayed quiet.”
“Because you never looked at me that way,” I said simply. “Not until last year, anyway.”
“The New Year’s Eve party,” she said quietly.
“Yeah. I almost shit myself when you started flirting with me. But as the night wore on, I started to wonder. Maybe you felt it too—this thing between us.”
She let out a shaky breath, and somewhere in her loft, I heard the radiator clank to life. “If I’m being honest, it started a couple of months before then, actually.” Her mouth twisted into something between a smile and a grimace. “And it horrified me at first. You’re three years younger than me, Cade. I felt like a cougar.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “A cougar? Stella, I was thirty-one years old. Hardly cradle robbing.”
“Still.” She shook her head, but she was fully smiling now. “I don’t know. It felt weird. You’re my baby bro’s best friend. I’ve known you since you were like eight, but then one day …” Her voice trailed off, and she worried her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes dropping to somewhere off-screen.
“Then one day what?” I encouraged softly.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You said something. I don’t even remember what it was. But there was something in your voice—this deep, rumbly timber I’d never noticed before—and it literally made the hairs on my arms stand up.” She laughed softly. “And after that, I couldn’t stop noticing things—only some of them PG.”
“What sort of PG things?” I asked, my voice going a bit rough.
I knew Stella liked my body just fine. She’d more than made that clear. But she’d never really said anything aboutme, the man inside the meat suit.
Her posture loosened, and her eyes went warm and soft in the glow of fairy lights. “Things like the way your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile. How you’re unfailingly kind to everyone around you, even when they don’t deserve it. The way you literally help little old ladies cross the street. How much you clearly love being a part of Mistletoe Bay’s Christmas kickoff.”
