He reaches into the pocket of his jacket, his movement careful, almost stiff, then takes out a mangled, wrinkled version of that perfect paperback I saw three days ago. “Why don’t you find out yourself?”
I take the book, holding it between my hands like it might fall apart, my joy slightly dampened. “What did you do?” My heart squeezes for the bent pages and cracked spine. This is a murder. A literary murder, and not the good kind.
“I read it.”
“With an axe?” I quip.
“Er…” He looks down at the book. “Did I read it wrong?”
“Yes,” I say, nodding firmly. “You read it wrong.”
His expression softens, his eyes boring into mine. He says nothing, but holy shit, the things he says with his silence. He keeps looking at me that way, doesn’t he? With this intensity—like there’s nothing else worth looking at. It makes my skin prickle, and not only with nerves.
Still, hemurderedthis book.
“You’re not supposed to dog-ear the page.” I grab my pristine paperback, then show him the bookmark perched between the pages. “See? And look at the spine.” I flip the book around. “And don’t put it in your pocket. Now it’s all bent. You probably sat on it.”
I try to flatten the pages, to bend it back to normal. With that goofy smile, you’d think I would have the wordadorabletattooed on my forehead. But I’m not adorable, I’m horrified.
“Got it?”
“Got it, Freckles. Whatever you say.”
I set the book back on my lap, grazing the front page. “So, you want me to read this?”
“Yes, if you want.” His hand approaches mine on the cover, but just as I think he might interlace his fingers with mine, he opens the book instead. “I wrote some notes for you.”
What?
I peer at the words scribbled over the edges and look up, mouth falling open. “You annotated it for me?”
“Yes. I figured since you love reading, which is an intrinsically lonely activity, maybe this would feel like doing it together.” His face scrunches, as if he’s doubting himself. “And hey, maybe it’ll help with your podcast.”
He annotated a book for me.
Thatis the sexiest, most romantic thing a man could ever do.
Forget about roses, gifts, trips. He wrote his most intimate thoughts for me to read. Thoughts about love, sex. He laid them all out and wants to share those bits of himself with me. It’s the most precious gift I’ve ever received.
“Thank you,” I say. “I mean, I don’t condone writing in books, but…”
“But you’ll do it for me?” he asks. “You’ll annotate a book you want me to read?”
He can’t possibly want that, can he? Hemustbe saying what he thinks I want to hear. “You don’t have to ask that.”
“Scarlett, just assume that if I’m asking, it’s because I want it.” He holds up a fortune cookie. “Dessert?”
“Sure.” I’m full of all the amazing food, but I take it, then nudge the other toward him.
We both unwrap and snap the cookies at the same time. I pull out the tiny slip of paper and read mine out loud: “Don’t be trusting of the unexpected.”
Shit.
Our eyes meet, a heavy silence where we both know exactly what’s unspoken. “Damn. Even the cookie hates me.”
I laugh, biting into the cookie. “What does yours say?”
He glances at his paper, and as I pop the rest of the cookie into my mouth, he reads out, “If you’re lucky enough, the woman eating dinner with you won’t notice her towel is slipping, and it’ll just fall open.”
