“Does he have a twin brother?” Neil asked solemnly, still rubbing her shoulder. “I think I at least deserve a chance with the twin brother.”
That at least got a smile out of her. “No twin brother, either.”
Neil dropped down on the blanket and clasped his hands behind his head. “So now there’s a reason for both of us to be depressed.”
“You know he grabbed my ass?” Jordan asked, turning her head back slightly to look at him.
He shook his head with disgust. “The nerve.”
“Maybe I’m just being sentimental, but that shit means something. You don’t de-romanticize an ass-grab and run off.”
“Fucking disrespectful if you ask me.”
Although Jordan laughed, Gemma must have seen the hint of sadness beneath it.
“You’ve got a major thing for this guy,” Gemma stated. “And not a I-want-your-hot-sweaty-body-on-top-of-mine-humping-my-brains-out kind of thing. It’s moreof a… let’s-see-where-this-leads-and-maybe-in-the-future-we-could-have-babies-together kind of thing.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jordan replied, irritated with herself and her feelings. “But I like him…and I shouldn’t. I don’t even know why I like him. He’s so weird and he ran off yesterday like he couldn’t be around me for one more second. Monday’s gonna be so awkward. Why do I always end up liking the guy who doesn’t like me back?”
Fireworks went off above them, blazing the night sky with an array of different colors.
“At least Tyler is a big step up from douche-face,” Gemma offered helpfully, green and yellow lights illuminating her skin.
Jordan sighed and cuddled up against Neil. She used his right arm as a pillow and Gemma did the same on his left. She looked over his chest at her friend and tried to smile. “I think Tyler is actually worse. Brian was a douche but at least I knew what his intentions were. I still don’t know why Tyler asked me out to dinner in the first place.”
What?! Another Mistake
“You kissed her?” Matthew’s eyes were ready to pop out with exasperation. “You weren’t supposed to kiss her! That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
Tyler groaned his annoyance. Damn Matthew and his incessant questioning. His friend knew him too well. He’d managed to hide it all weekend, but Matt took one look at him yesterday and immediately noticed his awkwardness. The questions had not stopped since then. After another interrogation this morning, Tyler couldn’t take it anymore and finally admitted the true reason why he felt so tense around Jordan.
He couldn’t even look at her now and every time she was in the same room, memories of her body against his made their way to the fore. Not that that was hard to do. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her since Thursday night. It had been easy enough to think of a plan to get Trisha back, but Jordan made executing the plan so damn complicated. She had thrown a spanner in the works, which made continuing the plan impossible.
“So how was it? Was it weird?” Matthew asked, looking a little repulsed.
“What?”
“Kissing Jordan?”
Awesome. Out-of-this-world awesome.“It was like…taking a bite of malva pudding,” he answered softly.
There was actually no better way to describe it. Malva pudding was just malva pudding. Malva pudding wasn’t cake. It wasn’t overly decorated. There were no chocolate sprinkles, no cherries, no extravagant toppings. It’s just plain and you assume that’s how it tastes. Just plain. But then you take that first bite and it’s soft and warm and its sweetness explodes in your mouth and sends shock waves to the brain because you simply were not expecting it. That’s what kissing Jordan was like.
“I’ll pretend I know what you mean,” Matthew said.
Tyler had not expected him to understand and he was glad he didn’t, because he wanted to keep that feeling to himself.
“So I get that she kissed you,” Matt continued. “And I get why you’re weird about it and I get that you’re upset now because this has just completely destroyed your elaborate plan of getting Trisha back.”
“Yourelaborate plan,” Tyler corrected.
“Whatever. But what I don’t get is why you were there in the first place.”
Tyler made no attempt to hide his irritation. “Itoldyou I went over there to thank her. She was great in that meeting and I wanted to let her know that I was grateful. She saved usthirty million dollars.”
“And that would make perfect sense if you had gone over there at like…two in the afternoon but it was eleven at night.”
