“Okay. Thanks.”
Landon leaned up to kiss me, and then his hands went from my belt loops to the small of my back. I kissed him with my lips closed, but then he started to add some tongue, and to squeeze my butt, and I leaned away.
“Hey,” I said. “I’ve gotta go back out there. I can’t...”
“Can’t what?”
I swallowed and glanced at the open stockroom door. “I can’t have an erection on the job.”
Landon smirked again—he had the most charming smirk in the world—and let me go. “Sorry. But we haven’t done that in a while.”
“I know.” I thought back to what Dad and I had talked about. Communicating. I took a deep breath and said, “But I need us to take things a little slow. Okay? You’re my first boyfriend.”
Landon got this smile on his face. “What?”
“What what?”
“You called me your boyfriend.”
Red Alert.
“Um. Is that okay?”
Landon gave me this look.
Another comet fell toward the inner solar system.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s okay. Boyfriends.” He bit his lip. “Sometimes I forget this is all new to you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. We’ll go at your pace. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Landon gave me one last peck on the lips.
“Later?”
“Later.”
“Darius. Can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Sure.”
Mr. Edwards’s office was a little nook tucked behind thetasting room, glass-walled and glass-doored but with exposed brick for the other two walls. The brick was covered in maps of tea-growing regions across the world, and photos (including some cute ones of Landon when he was younger), and little sticky notes with to-do lists on them. Mr. Edwards always drew little squares as bullets for his to-do lists, so he could check them off with a flourish.
“You’ve been here for three months now, so I wanted to check in. Are you still happy?”
“Yeah! Yes. Definitely. I’m learning a lot.”
“Good. The team likes you.”
“I like working with them.”
“And obviously Landon likes you too.”
I blushed.
