Just because the pull of attraction is there doesn’t mean I should act on it.
I’m not the same impulsive asshole I was at sixteen. I know better than to follow my cock every which way it twitches. And while this trip has revealed a side of Lucy I didn’t know existed, I can’t risk our professional relationship because of a fleeting desire to explore it.
I just need to stay strong. Ignore it. Give it time to pass.
Because it will pass. It always does.
I make certain of it.
“If you’re going to stare,” she says, turning her head and opening one eye, “you might as well take a picture. For my social media.”
“Sure.” I fish my phone out of my pocket and bring up the camera app. She smiles wide, holding her half-eaten s’more up for the picture. Her hands are a mess, and there’s a loose tendril of hair blowing across her face, but she looks happy. Like someone you’d be lucky to travel with. “Say s’more.”
She laughs, and I snap the pic.
It’s a great shot, but I take a few more so she’ll have options, because, according to Lucy, pictures are like potato chips. You can’t stop at just one.
Which she proved at the old Standard Oil Gas Station today.
I swear the woman took at least a hundred pictures.
Of a gas station.
It was absurd.
What is she even going to do with them all?
“Can you AirDrop those to me?” she asks, tongue curling out to lick the chocolate from the corner of her lips. My mouth goes dry, and I couldn’t speak if I wanted to, so I just nod. “I want to post them tonight before bed.”
She takes another bite of the s’more, and I swear I’ve never wanted to be a goddamn marshmallow so bad in my life.
“Dios mío.” Lucy drops her s’more onto a paper plate. “You’re worse than my mom’s cocker spaniel, Turnip. How am I supposed to enjoy my dessert with you staring at me like that?”
Busted. “Like what?”
She snorts and reaches for the bag of marshmallows. “Like you’re going to start drooling and begging at any minute.”
She’s not far off the mark, and yet she’s got it all wrong.
Which is probably for the best.
“Come on.” She slides a marshmallow onto the metal skewer. “I’ll teach you how to make a s’more.”
“I thought you said I was too fancy for campfire fare.”
“You are, but if the only way to enjoy my s’more in peace is to give you one of your own, so be it.”
She hands me the skewer, and I hold it over the flame, slowly rotating it at her suggestion. Lucy supervises, polishing off her s’more as I roast. It’s taking forever, and when I pull it back to check, it’s still the same semi-squishy consistency.
“You have to be patient,” she urges. “You know what they say about good things coming to those who wait.”
“Bullshit. Sitting around waiting never got anyone anywhere.” I learned that lesson early, which is why, when my brothers and I started Triada, we put everything we had into the launch.
I lower the marshmallow back into the fire.
The orange flames leap skyward, reaching for the clouds, and my marshmallow catches fire. I watch in horror as the soft white fluff blackens, a crispy, bubbly shell developing on the outside. It looks like something out of a horror movie.
Beside me, Lucy laughs. “What did I tell you?”
