As we headed out the door, he said, “You one-upped me, though.”
* * *
A few tacos each deep, Ben and I officially had a case of the giggles. We sat at the bar at his favorite taco joint, the same place we’d gone with his mom and Lori. We had two seats on the end where it was a little more private.
“Wait, but really, tell me what you did to make it smell so bad,” I pried, resting my hand on his knee to recover from my laughing fit. He traced circles into the back of my hand, a tiny movement that sent a shiver through me.
“If I tell you, you have to promise not to help him,” he said, looking down at his fingers’ workings, then back at my eyes. “I’m not sure I trust you not to tell him.”
“My lips are sealed,” I said, mimicking a zipper over my mouth. He squinted at me, seemingly determining if I was trustworthy. “Come onnnnn! I’ve had to smell it more days than you have.”
He waited for me to stop laughing, looking me dead in the eye. “Shrimp in the curtain rods.”
I almost pissed myself. “Mikey! He’ll never figure that out!” I started off on another laughing jag and he joined me. I snorted, making him laugh harder, throwing his head back and banging his hand on the bar. “He’ll have to move out!”
“Aw, shucks, that’s too bad,” he said, setting us both off again. Mikey’s dimples were endearing under normal circumstances, but they were deeply carved into his face when he laughed. We hadn’t stopped laughing in a while.
Those damn dimples made me daring.
“But if he moves, you won’t have to fake kiss me for him anymore.”
Mikey’s face went serious, like he was considering what to say. “We’re pretty good at faking, don’t you think?”
Our gazes locked, my heart pounding. Our laughter had firmly stopped. It took a lot of strength to stay looking at him, to not look away because I was scared. So much hung in the spacebetween us. Did he want me the way I wanted him? “I don’t know. I think we could probably use more practice.”
The corner of Ben’s mouth quirked up as he moved closer to me. “Are you asking for more kisses, Jessalyn?”
“Is that a problem?”
He laughed a little, then put one hand on the outside of my thigh. “No, it’s not a problem.”
His other hand slid along my jaw, a delicate touch like he was handling a Faberge egg, coming to rest with his fingers in my hair and his thumb by my ear. His eyes bounced between mine and to my mouth, my hands coasting up his arms to rest on his biceps. The soft puff of his breath met my open lips, a lit match to my powder keg. The want, the need, the touches we’d exchanged that had brought us to this point came to a head as our lips magnetized, a connection that was finally just ours.
We were doing it. We were kissing for real. We were kissing for us. For everything we saw in one another. For all of our fears. For all of our hope.
My whole body was sparkling, a shimmery feeling grounded by a bass-like rumble: low, velvety, and earth-shaking. His lips were a little spicy from the hot salsa he’d slathered on his tacos, adding another sensation to the experience. Just like before, he worked in a tiny hint of tongue, just enough to make my thighs clench and have me craving more. We both kept trying to pull away, knowing that we weren’t being restaurant-appropriate, but struggling to stop.
We finally broke apart, smiling.
“That fake for you?”
I shook my head. “I wasn’t faking.”
His stare lingered on me a little longer and he turned to the counter. “I’m in so much trouble with you, Jessie.”
“Why?” I thought it was solved. Sealed with a kiss. No going back to platonic pretending.
He folded his arms on the bar and stared down at them, thenturned his head toward me. “I like you, Jessie. A lot. But I don’t know how to do this. You talked about me going back to the type of women I used to date, but I don’t want to go back. I want you. And I don’t know if what you mean is that you want this, too. But if you want this, I don’t even know if I’m qualified. I’m twenty-eight and I’ve never had a real girlfriend. I want it all. But I don’t even know how to do it all. I only know how to fuck and leave, to the point that I think it’s all I’m good for. And so do you.”
I was taken aback. Like always, Mikey just blurted it all out there.
“Ben,” I said, struggling to find my words. “I don’t think that’s all you’re good for. You’re such an amazing person. I mean, yeah, you’re bossy with me sometimes, but it’s all because you care. And I’ve never had somebody care like you do.”
His brows knit as he considered my words. I took a deep breath, terrified of what I was about to spill out.
“If I’m honest with myself, I’ve wanted this for a while. But I’ve really been scared. I just got out of a relationship where I got treated like trash. Being around you has made me realize how much all that messed me up, made me think less of myself.”
“I know that,” Ben said. “And I don’t want to be your messy rebound that you leave for some better relationship guy. You could wreck me.”
