“So I’ve heard.” Neither of us move. His fingers are still wrapped around my wrist. Our eyes are still unwavering. The only thing that has changed is that I’m pretty sure I feel his dick getting hard and I know something is happening to me just from a look and the moment. “Want to know what another good one is?”
“What’s that?”
“Understanding.”
His head drops slightly, bringing our foreheads together. “I’ll always try. Always.”
God, he’s a good one. Sure, he’s young and a little bit of a puppy with his energy. But at the same time, he has this old soul that makes me sometimes forget that I could’ve babysat him in another life. And when his brown eyes take me in? When he flashes that dimple? When he touches me in any sort of way? I forget everything. My name. Our ages. That I’m freshly divorced. All of it.
I hate all of this.
I’m a second from saying “fuck it” and kissing him like I want, but it’s at that moment I’m scared shitless by a bag of flour falling from a shelf and landing with a loud “thud.”
“There. All cleaned up,” I say, quickly dabbing off the last little bit of flour on his cheek before I step away and hustle over to the rogue flour. I need out of the Maddox bubble before I do something dumb like I was about to do. “You probably didn’t lose that much flour. I can add in a little more so we don't let the batch go to waste.”
"Sounds good,” he says, noticeably clearing his throat before walking toward the table where we ate dinner earlier. “Mind if I turn on some music?”
“Not at all," I say as I do my best to eyeball how much flour I need to replace from what exploded into his face. “Pick whatever you'd like.”
I’m not quite sure of Maddox’s taste in music. I expect a rap song that I have no clue what they’re saying. But to my surprise, it’s a country song that takes me back to the very first day Sugar and Sweets opened.
I don’t think I slept a wink the night before we opened. I should’ve. I was exhausted. I, along with Beau and the construction crew he hired, had been working extremely long hours to get the place running.
When I walked through these doors at four in the morning, ready to bake for the first official day, I remember the feeling of freedom. I stood in the kitchen, surrounded by ovens and mixers, and closed my eyes and let the feeling warm over me. I let myself memorize the moment when I was becoming the person I wanted to be. To have the chance at the dream I’d always dreamed of.
And then I turned on the music. It was this song playing. A song about starting over. It felt like fate. I didn’t sing along with it. Sure, I wanted to, but at that moment, I needed to take it in.And I’m glad I did. It let me live in the moment. The moment where I knew that I was now living my dream the way I wanted to.
But more importantly, I smiled.
In that singular moment of happiness, I knew that all the hardships of the divorce and leaving Justin were one-hundred-percent worth it.
“That one’s my favorite.”
Maddox’s words snap me out of my daydream. “Your favorite what?”
“Smile,” he says, his own shy smile making an appearance. “The one where you don’t realize anyone’s watching you.”
I really need this man to stop saying things like that or else this friend thing is going to go out the window.
I don’t respond, because what do I say to that? Instead, I go back to working on the batter. I feel my heart rate starting to come down a little, but that’s when I see in my periphery, Maddox doing some sort of dance.
“You can line dance?”
His moves become even more exaggerated. "When you grow up in the cornfields of Iowa, you can't help but get a little country in your blood. Between that and moving to Nashville as an adult, might as well throw a cowboy hat on me and get me some boots. Yee-haw, motherfuckers."
I laugh at his now ridiculous line dancing, while doing my best to not picture him in a cowboy hat, fitted jeans, and boots, because that visual should be illegal.
Or worse. Me riding him in said cowboy hat.
"Are you a country fan?" he asks.
"Of course," I say, probably too quickly since I’m trying to finish mixing the batter and getting X-rated thoughts out of my head. "I'm a girl from Louisiana. It's that and southern rap. Those are the options.”
"I've always wanted to go to Mardi Gras," Maddox says.
"I'm sure you have," I say teasingly. “I was born closer to Baton Rouge, but Mardi Gras is something that every Louisianan has experienced.”
“Is it one of those things that as you grow older, you get more tired of it because you’ve known it your whole life?”
