So he wasn’t always this way.She thought of their pale hands clasped.
The man and woman were his parents. He had his mother’s sparkling blue eyes and his father’s abundance of dark hair.
There was something instantly wrong about the couple. Jesse was in college. The picture shouldn’t have been more than four years old, maybe five at the most.
The mother’s huge hair and floral dress with a big flouncy bow came straight out of the eighties, along with the dad’s suit and tie, his hair fluffed up and gelled ala Mel Gibson in the firstLethal Weaponmovie.
“I didn’t get you anything, Soph. I ended up helping some friends of mine move into their new apartment. Are you okay?”
“Yep. Yep, I’m fine.” Sophie hastily redirected her eyes back to his, smile tight.Maybe his parents are really into the eighties.
His blue eyes followed hers as they darted. “The picture,” Jesse said it like a curse.
“It’s okay. My parents are totally unfashionable. My mom refuses to buy anything for full price. Dad tells me when she first came to this country, she and my grandma would try to talk down the cashiers at Wal-Mart and JCPenney,” she giggled nervously.
He didn’t laugh. “You’re too smart. You’re too sweet. If I... I wanted to stop myself, but I...”
Sophie found her hands clenching, mirroring his. “You’re starting to freak me out.”
“I don’t let people get close for a really good reason, Sophie. They’ll leave me when they find out.”
Her eyes turned back to the picture. Pink lips. Spring-gold skin. “You didn’t always look like this.”
“Nope.”
“I don’t care about why you look this way,” she suddenly declared. “I care about you.”
Jesse’s face screwed up in frustration. “I care about you! I care about you a lot and I barely know you.”
“You can get to know me better. It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay,” she whispered, reaching out to stroke his silky hair. He half-shuddered under her touch.
“No one... not in a long time,” he mumbled.
“No one before you,” she confessed.
The tension in the air switched gears, morphing from nervous to sensual. “Did you mean it?” Jesse asked softly, coming closer, stepping into her touch.
“That I love you? Mhm,” Sophie found her voice breathless as she tilted her head up, drinking him in.
“That it doesn’t matter why I look like this?”
“Of course it doesn’t matter. Does it matter to you why I look likethis?”
His eyes were weary but hopeful. “Not a bit.”
Lips met. Hands tangled. Arms slid around sides and backs.
Her pocket buzzed angrily.
“One second,” she gasped, yanking her phone out and responding to her mother’s text of, “Everything okay?”
I’m fine, he loves the jersey. Talk to you in the morning!
“Worried parents,” Sophie explained.
“I get that. I’ll walk you back. Oh. You have your car with you. Well, I could—”
“—go back to kissing me?”
