“Everything’s done,” he said.
“Go bag up the pastries that are left,” I said, barely able to keep from gritting my teeth in annoyance. There weren’t many, but there was no point in throwing them away. “And put that vegan one in a separate bag for Che.”
He didn’t argue, and the moment he left the little kitchen area, I sighed, scrubbing my hands over my face to try and clear my head. I’d actually, for a split second, felt a bloom of attraction swelling up inside me for him. Pressing my fingertips to my closed eyes, I forced myself to remember how absolutely fucking stupid that was, even if he had great shoulders and a cute face. And a firm chest that tapered down perfectly into a trim waist.
Guys like him weren’t my type. I hated smug arrogance. I hated rich, spoiled assholes who didn’t have a clue of how harsh the world could be, and never would know, because they were tucked safe in their glitzy bubbles with their mansions and trust funds and nepotism. So what if his dad was making him get a degree before he had full access to that stuff? He still had it better than the rest of us.
I was obviously just horny. The fact that I’d been too busy lately for any real action was clearly starting to affect my brain. And even though Caelyx was easy to look at, I would never be able to understand his perspective on life, and he’d never be able to understand mine. I couldn’t imagine pushing those differences aside, even if it was only long enough for a quick and meaningless hookup. I wasn’t looking for anything serious, but I still had standards.
When he returned to me with two bags in hand, one with the handful of regular pastries that had been left on the glass display shelves, and one with the single vegan pastry, I gave him a quick nod.
“Turn off the lights.”
“You just love bossing me around, don’t you?” He mused, but did as I asked, passing by me to smack down the switches along the wall. I knew what he was implying. He was trying to feel out whether I’d want to boss him around in the bedroom. I could never tell if he was seriously trying to talk me into fucking him, or if he just thought it was funny to pretend like he’d actually screw around with someone like me.
“In a general sense,” I answered, because I knew if I waited too long to respond, he’d think I was actually imagining us doing stuff together. We grabbed our jackets from the little room in the back, slipping them on before heading toward the front door. I opened it and waved him through.
“Well, let me know if you ever want to try it in a more intimate sense,” he offered, tilting his head and staring at me when I was done locking up.
A shiver ran through me, but it wasn’t because of his invitation. It was because it was fucking October and it was cold outside.
“Don’t hold your breath,” I muttered, shoving my hands into the pockets of my jeans as I moved past him to my car. Hefollowed closely behind, the sound of our footsteps echoing in the quiet air. I wrenched open the door of my beat-up old sedan, jamming the key into the ignition and starting it up while he piled into the passenger seat. Through my peripherals, I could see him staring at me curiously, the corner of his lips perked up just enough to show he was still amused about something.
I didn’t say anything as I pulled out of the lot, but I decided that if he reached out to brush my hand while I was adjusting the heat or the radio, I’d break his fingers.
CAELYX
THE RIDE HOMEwas quick and mostly void of social interaction, like always. Aspen never talked much in the car, and he usually cranked up the volume of the music to make it impossible for me to. I could understand and respect it. A man’s car was kind of like his domain, a tiny space that he could rule over. So if he wanted to assert his dominance by demanding silence for the handful of minutes between work and home, I’d let him.
Eventually I’d convince him to take a ride with me in my Porsche, and then he’d have to follow my rules. I’d brought it up here and there, but so far he’d only responded with a scoff and a firm no.
“Sorry, I just have this totally neurotic aversion to being dead.”
He’d told me that, even after I’d tried to convince him that I was a good driver. He wasn’t having it. Avoiding death wasn’t his only totally neurotic aversion, far from it, but his high-strung personality was really cute. And I might have been slightly obsessed with the idea of being the one to influence him flexing on some of those rigid rules and habits.
I realized I was grinning when he glanced over to me, the slight movement breaking me out of the bubble I’d been spacing out in. He glared, the ring pierced through the tail end of his right eyebrow twitching, before snapping his gaze back to the road in front of us. He had another small ring pierced throughhis septum, but he always tucked it up into his nose before we had a work shift, and he hadn’t flipped it back down yet.
I didn’t turn away from him, and I could tell he knew I was still staring when his black-lacquered fingernails started tapping an edgy, irritated beat on the steering wheel, but he didn’t comment. This was our daily song and dance. I would spend the whole time trying to get his attention, and he’d spend the whole time pretending like I wasn’t succeeding.
I wasn’t delusional. I knew it wasn’t because he was harboring secret feelings for me or anything. It was because he didn’t trust me. He was always on edge around me, waiting for me to do something wrong, something he wouldn’t like.
It was something I’d kind of agonized over for months after we’d met through our mutual friends. What had I done to deserve him looking at me like that? Why did he treat me like I’d committed some terrible atrocity against him and his whole damn bloodline? I’d eventually figured out it wasn’tmehe hated, exactly. It was theideaof me, the idea of wealth and privilege and skating through life on the merit of your family name. Knowing that it was mostly impersonal had soothed my ego a bit, but it still sucked.
And why did I care so much what an eyeliner-wearing little Hot Topic gremlin thought of me? What could I say? I had a crush. A big, fat, unrequited crush, like when I’d been in the first grade and liked a girl and all I’d known how to do was pull her pigtails on the playground. Except now I was an adult and I was only interested in pulling Aspen’s hair if my cock was in his mouth. And he thought I was a joke that he could barely trust to properly wipe a counter unsupervised.
Still, things were improving between us. The rate of progress was like moving through frozen molasses, but it was there. He didn’t like me, but he didn’t hate my guts either. Progress.
He pulled into my driveway, right next to my pretty red Porsche convertible, in the spot usually reserved for the grey Jeep that belonged to one of my two housemates. Cyprian was out with his sister, so it was a rare night we didn’t have the full group together.
I didn’t have to see Aspen’s face as he was getting out to know he was probably glaring at my car. A chilly gust of wind ripped through the air, stirring his light brown bangs around his face before he tucked them aside. Even something as mundane as that had my fingertips tingling, my heart stumbling a bit in my chest. I wanted to reach out and feel his hair, because it looked stupidly soft, but I was pretty sure if I tried, he’d gnash his teeth and chomp at my hand like a rabid dog.
I could already hear the hectic chaos of our friends inside as we walked up to the front door and pushed our way in.
Our pastries were divvied up and devoured alongside a massive bowl of extra buttery popcorn, while a gory and violent horror movie streamed on the TV. The usual.
Because Arie was usually the one who organized these little hangouts, he was also the one who chose the movie, which almost always culminated in us sitting around watching people get murdered. Given that most days he looked like he could be employee of the month at Femboy Hooters, I wouldn’t have expected his movie tastes to be quite so bloodthirsty, but none of us really minded. And he’d mentioned choosing this movie specifically, for reasons he planned on revealing after it was done.
As yet another high school football player was snatched up from the cornfield by a winged demon and carried away to his inevitable doom, I subtly glanced around the room at most of the people who’d become the center of my narrow little world since enrolling at Byron Bay University.
