“Do you know where she keeps her measuring cups?” he asks, voice husky. How can a question like that sound seductive?
I stumble backward, trying to break the haze his peppermint scent has me in. “Uh, yeah, I think.”
It takes me a moment of fumbling around to find the measuring cups, and I hold them out to Gabriel as if I were a hunter-gatherer presenting my findings. He beams at me.
“Good job.” His fingers brush mine as he takes them from me. A shiver runs down my spine at the contact and basic praise, and I want to swear at myself.
The fact that this is all it takes to get me to rethink my desire to stay away from Gabriel for Felix is a little embarrassing.
When Hazel floated the idea that Felix saying, “It doesn’t have to mean anything,” was his way of telling me he was okay if it meant nothing to me, my heart soared. She tried toconvince me to tell Felix how much it meant to me, but I’m not ready for that.
And that is when she developed her plan.
I date Gabriel.
Gabriel dates Felix.
If something happens between Gabriel and Felix, Gabriel tells him what I am to him. Then, Felix and I can decide how to proceed.
It may be a bad idea. What if Felix isn’t into me and we’re both attached to Gabriel, and things are awkward as fuck?
I proposed that question to Hazel a hundred times, and her answer was always the same.
“But what if he is?”
And those six words have been enough to get me to swallow my fears.
For the most part.
I’m still terrified of what this could mean, but I’m willing to get to know Gabriel, at the very least. We’ll figure the rest out later.
As he measures the powdered sugar meticulously, he peeks at me from the corner of his eye. “So, how do you and Hazel know each other?”
“Oh, Felix introduced us when I moved here about six months ago. We hit it off immediately.” He spoons some of the meringue powder into the mixing bowl. “She can be a lot sometimes, but she means well.”
He chuckles, turning to the side to smile at me. “That’s an apt characterization. She’s meddling with good intentions. Case in point.” He gestures between the two of us. “But I won’t complain.”
“What do you complain about? Because from where I’m standing, you seem like a fairly agreeable man.”
“Oh, I complain about lots. Green tea, for one. Hate it. Who wants to drink water that tastes like grass clippings?” Hescoots around me and fills a cup with water from the sink. “I will also go to my grave disparaging people who put pineapple on pizza.”
I grab my chest, feigning a noise of surprise. “Oh, what a controversial opinion. Be careful, you may get cancelled.”
“Don’t tell me you eat it.”
I shake my head and move closer to his side, taking a peek into the box of food coloring. “Oh, no, I hate it. Felix loves it, though.”
“Then we’d better get used to eating it. Whatever our Omega wants, right?”
My hands freeze on the cherry red bottle of dye. “I…”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel says quietly. “That was inappropriate. Let’s pretend I didn’t ruin the mood, yeah? What kind of things do you normally talk about on dates?”
I try to shake off his comment, but it’s hard. It takes me a minute to answer.
“Uh, I don’t go on dates. Or, haven’t in a while. It was exhausting, so I gave up.”
He snaps and points at me. “Exhausting is the perfect word for it. I always felt like I was performing, like I had to be on my best behavior and pretend to be into whatever they were. I can’t remember the last time a date felt natural.”
