I take in the way her almond eyes glimmer in anticipation. “It’ll take you coming closer.”
“Oh.” She lifts off the counter and takes one measly step. Barely enough to close the space. Smart ass. “Like this?”
“Keep it coming.”
“Closer?”
With my eyes, I tell her,all the way over.
“I don’t know if I should,” she teases.
“I disagree.”
I’ve been dying for a moment where I can reach out and brush a finger over her smooth skin and wrap my arms around her shoulders. Especially after thinking I might’ve royally screwed up our friendship.
As reluctant as her words sound, her body is on a different page. She continues to walk until we’re toe to toe. I can’t help but look down and get lost in her features. The slope of her nose. Her perfect lips. The tiny beauty mark below her eye.
I slowly reach up and brush my thumb over it, feeling the slight rise to her skin where it dots. My eyes bounce betweenhers, and it’d be so easy to grab her face and slide my mouth over hers. I’m damn near tempted to when her hands sprawl out over my chest and grip my shirt.
But our moment is ripped from us.
A page torn out of our story book, formed into a ball, and dunked into the nearest trash bin.
“I’m literally barfing into my mouth right now.” Sylvia’s voice scratches against my eardrums and has Violet pulling her hands away from me. She twists around to see her friend at the opening of the kitchen with an obvious look of disgust on her face.
“Sylvia.”
“You’ve really gone from Webber, to this?” Sylvia scoffs while she sizes me up. One of the reasons why I didn’t walk up to Violet in the living room and start a conversation.
“Is that really necessary?” Violet asks.
“To call you out on your shit taste in guys? Absolutely.” She makes her way to the fridge and grabs a beer from it.
“Wow,” Violet exhales, clearly shocked. “Okay.”
I glance at her, then at Sylvia as she flicks the can open and sips it. Part of me would love to see Violet knock her down a few pegs. Put her in her place. Remind her that her opinion doesn’t matter. But something tells me that Violet doesn’t know exactly how to navigate Sylvia when she acts like this and I’m not about to let her stand there and get away with it.
“Does it feel that good for you to treat your friends like that?” I ask as I cross my arms over my chest again.
“Violet appreciates the truth.” She turns to her friend. “Don’t you?”
“Uh, yeah,” Violet comments. “But not when it’s at the expense of others.”
“So, it never gets old for you?” I prod again, not waiting for her to answer. “No matter how shitty you feel inside, acting like this isn’t going to make it disappear. You’re going to push her,and everyone else away and then you’ll have no one. How sad a tale that’ll be when it happens, huh?”
“Again, you don’t know shit about me. Don’t try and act like you do.”
She might be fooling her friends but… “I know people like you. Too afraid to deal with their problems so they stir the pot for others. It’s pathetic, really, but what’s worse is that you’re too selfish to see it for yourself.”
Violet turns back to me. “Colson, you don’t have to?—”
“No, I do because I’m tired of her walking around thinking that she can say whatever the fuck she wants without stopping to consider how it’ll impact others.” I look back to Sylvia. “The sooner you realize how shitty a person you’re being, the less you’ll end up losing. Might want to take that into consideration.”
“I’ll take shit into consideration, thank you.” She looks at me like I’m the scum of the earth then twists on her heel and is out of the kitchen in the next second.
Violet steps in place beside me and leans against the counter. “You didn’t have to do that.”
I look down at her, taking in the way her demeanor has shifted. I’d give everything to get back to the moment we were sharing, but it seems as though Sylvia put out the flames that were present.
