It’s like four years’ worth of untapped desire is cumulating in my center. Does he feel it, too? I think he does; Will’s eyes give him away. He looks at me so plainly, as though he’s finally given himself permission and can’t imagine ever tamping the urge again. Will Grant has manifested into something else, something more significant than a dimple I want to feel with the pad of my thumb, than a chest I want to rest against. I once thought of him as a mistake. Now he’s been repackaged in my head as a missed opportunity.
Will swallows as conversations around the room pick up.
Neither of us breaks eye contact.
“You can’t look at me like that,” I get out.
He shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is wistful. “But it’s been a while since I last got to look.”
An emergency flare goes off in my stomach.
“The rules,” I say.
“Aren’t working,” Will says. “What’s the point of them, anyway?”
“What was the reason?” I parry back.
“What reason?”
“The reason you didn’t, even though you wanted to.”
“Didn’t kiss you again?” Will clarifies. He leans toward me as if pulled by an invisible string.
“Yes. That reason. What was it?”
Camila walks up then, putting her hands on our shoulders.
“Garlic Fest,” she says.
I smile. Will frowns.
“Pardon me?” he asks, wrinkling his nose.
“Garlic Fest. It’s tomorrow, and I think you should come.”
“Is that what you needed to talk to me about?” he asks.
“Yep.”
I throw Cami a look. She’s inviting him to Garlic Fest?
Will rubs a temple with his finger. “My flight back to New York is tonight.”
“Postpone it,” Cami says easily. “Stay for Garlic Fest.”
Will opens his mouth, closes it. His eyes pass back and forth across our faces, and he leans against a desk behind him, crossing one foot over the other.
Then he asks, “What the hell is Garlic Fest?”
“Garlic Fest,” Camila elaborates, “is my fiancé David’s favorite day of the year.”
“It’s a chef party,” I clarify.
“He’s grown this huge…gardenover the years,” Camila adds,and then she winks at Will, whose neck erupts into red splotches at the innuendo.
“It’s really just a garden,” I say.
“Ahugegarden,” Cami says.
