“The setting, how cute you were when you were tipsy, that’s not what made me start seeing you in that light.” He smirks at me, and I think my insides liquify. He should need a license to wield that kind of weapon around women. If he went around shooting that face willy-nilly, he could cause accidents, start riots. “Since the moment you became single, I’ve had one goal in mind, Ellie. Getting to know you better, getting you to see me something like how I see you.” His hand comes up, the one that was clenching, and he holds it to my upper arm delicately. Chills break out from that spot, emanating and radiating down my skin. His thumb traces my skin through the satiny material of my dress sleeve. “Wasn’t gonna push it, not with what you just went through, what you just got out of. But Friday night was the best time I’ve had in a long, long time, and I think it was for you, too. Maybe it’s time we start seeing what else might be between us, if you’re ready for that.”
My mouth parts, tiny exhales puffing out as my head spins, but no solid thoughts form. My eyes are locked on his, their warmth invading me, heating me from the inside out.
“I—uh—” I’m stammering, but the only things I have to go off of right now areemotion, and remember, we aren’t doing that anymore. If I dared give in to that, though, the direction it’s giving me is to admit how much I like the sound of that. The way my pulse kicked up at his touch, his words. The flutters all throughout my core at what he’s proposing.
He pulls his hand back, brings it behind his body and then it reemerges with his phone in hand. He unlocks it, taps the screen a couple times, then spins his hand to show me.
It’s a picture. A picture of the two of us, at that table the other night. We took a selfie, apparently, and I think it was me that asked for it, actually. In it, I ambeaming. Happier than I’ve seen myself in far too long. Giggling, clearly, and he looks amused, so damn pleased. Our heads are pressed together just enough to look like we’re maybe, just maybe, slightly more than friends.
And the smiles on our faces? We look weightless. Like not a problem in the world is holding us down. He looks a little older, I look slightly younger, and when I see this image, I don’t immediately thinkthey don’t belong together.
No, my insides start floating, and I think soft and fuzzy things like,they look really fucking cute. Happy, even.
His eyes watch my face as I take in every detail of the selfie, giving me a second to register the significance there. “You still gonna try and tell me you didn’t have a great time? That we shouldn’t be friends for some bullshit reason that doesn’t fucking apply to me? Does this look like I wasn’t having the best night of my year, just like you?”
My eyes round, cheeks hollow, because I can’t fight his logic on that. This picture really does speak a thousand words, and it would take me a whole lot more of them to try to combat what it says.
“I just want one thing from you right now, Ellie,” he says the words quietly, his minty breath hitting my face, his words reaching beyond it to find my softest spots underneath.
I nod, ready to hear it.
“Can you not run away from this? Ignore me, avoid me, beat yourself up alone?”
I swallow, not able to promise that. I thought I was scared after Friday night, but he isterrifyingme with this kind of honesty and intensity right now.
His eyes flit across my face, moving across each detail, taking in my reactions, intuiting my thoughts and fears. “There’s nothing to be scared of here.”
“There’s a lot to be scared of,” I whisper back.
“Like what?”
“The fact that you’re twenty—”
“For another few weeks,” he interrupts, but I haven’t stopped talking.
“—and I’m in my thirties. A ‘friendship’ like that—” I air quote on the word, “—would turn heads, raise eyebrows, set the old ladies to gossiping, much less what it could do for my professionalism and reputation here in a small office like this.”
His head falls back briefly, then he looks me in the eye again. “Who gives a shit? Fuck those people. You’re brilliant at what you do, and if I may say so, my work doesn’t suck either. If they can’t understand that we’ve become friends, that’s on their small-mindedness, not you.”
“Asher, you’ve hardly even started your life yet. I’m not sure this is the way to do it. You’d be risking an awful lot of stigma and probably mockery, for what?”
“Can you stop talking about me like I’m twelve?” His voice is dry, unamused. “It’s hardly scandalous. You’re not going to end up in Lady Whistledown’s paper over befriending me.” He raises a brow and smirks at me, and I don’t even get to laugh or ask him how he knows about that. “How many twenty-one year old girls hang out with thirty-year-old men? Doesn’t turn heads when they do it. And yeah, I wanna be your friend, for now. But I want to be more than that, too. There’s something here.” He holds my eyes with his, gestures between us almost lazily, and when no words come to my defense, he continues. “I plan to give you a chance to get to know me. Feel comfortable enough to trust me with the rest of you. That’s worth alotto me.” His voice softens drastically. “I don’t mind jumping through some hoops for that. Alotof hoops for that.”
My breaths come faster, my chest lifting and falling as my pulse skyrockets. “This is ridiculous, Asher, we hardly know each other. To think there’s something to pursue when we’ve spent one evening together, in which I was far from my normal self, I might add…it’s preposterous.” I shake my head, selling myself on this much more than I am him, I can tell.
He steps closer, closing the distance I’d tried to put between us. “So you don’t feel anything when I do this?” His hand is back, it reaches for my face, how it did a couple of nights ago. His fingers brush my cheek, then cup it. Move farther back, into my hair (loose today, down around my shoulders), fingertips scraping my scalp lightly on the way, pushing back through the strands until he’s holding the back of my neck. His eyes trace my face, my upper body, like I wish his touch would, and they land on my lips.
Shivers course through my entire system. My jaw tightens. I inhale deep breaths through my nose, eyes fluttering, but I force them to stay open. On him. Not back down. Even if I can feel myself wavering on the inside. Start to forget the reasons this sounds absolutely insane to me. The emotions are forcing a hostile takeover of my neurological activity, and they’re telling me this is definitely the way to go. My lip quivers, and my hand moves toward him.
Knock, knock, knock.
The trademark triple tap on the doorframe might as well have been a landmine that just got set off, and I jump back from his touch.
Asher recovers much smoother than I did, and he pulls his hand back slowly, not hiding where it was. “Is that better?” he asks, pretending like he was helping me fix something.
I turn to face my father without answering.
“Good morning!” I tell Thomas cheerily—not falsely, but definitely more nervously than usual.
