“We could be,” he says, raising his eyebrows playfully.
When I don’t respond, he says, “I have something to ask you.”
I put my hands on my hips. “What now?”
“Hold on,” he says. He takes several steps closer until he’s looking right down at me, his chin millimeters away from my forehead.
“What are you…”
When he leans forward, his woodsy scent wafts over to me, evenunder the smell of the bonfire. The closer he gets, the more lightheaded I feel. A hand touches my cheek. His hand.
“Ash,” he whispers, gently flicking something off my face with his thumb before he steps back.
My heart is a thunderstorm in my chest, even as I regain the feeling in my legs. “Oh,” I say. I am warm all over. Embarrassed at my overreaction. It’s just Marcus Riddick, for God’s sake.
“Thanks,” I mumble.
Marcus starts talking again, but I can’t hear any distinct words. I’m still feeling dizzy from being that close.
“Because if I did somehow hurt your feelings…”
A second later, I hear what he’s saying. He’s actually acknowledging that we hate each other, that he upset me.
“You didn’t,” I blurt out before he can finish his sentence. He wants me to admit that he hurt me so he can, what, laugh in my face? Feel vindicated by my confirmation than I’ve been stewing for a solid year over a few comments he made? There’s no way I am going to give even the appearance of caring about anything Marcus Riddick has to say. “Some people just don’t jibe, and that’s what it is.”
“Some people just don’t jibe,” Marcus repeats quietly, like he’s running the thought through his mind for inconsistencies. “Okay.”
I’m annoyed by his audacity to look both confused and hurt. He was the one who literally announced to everyone that he didn’t see what Jason could see in me.
Asshole.
“I have another question,” he says, but before I can react, a pixie-like brunette girl rushes Marcus, throwing her arms around him from behind.
“Marcus!” she says.
“Kari!” he says, sounding friendly, if not quite pleased to have her plaster her front to his back. But she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Shhh. I’m not supposed to be here,” she says, using Marcus as a human wall and periodically peering around him to see what’s happening on the other side. She waves at me, then ducks behind him again. I think the joke is that she’s a junior at a seniors-only event.
“My question,” Marcus says, ignoring her shenanigans, “is whether you would tell someone you know if you had a really weird dream about them.”
My brain spins at his question. He’s not saying…He can’t be suggesting what I think he’s suggesting.
I look closely at him, trying to grasp the meaning of his words, but his eyes are unreadable.
“Like a sex dream?” Kari, who is clearly very drunk, sticks her head out to join our conversation.
Marcus kind of jumps at her voice, like he’d forgotten she was there. It’s a performance, the way he immediately plasters on one of his cheeky grins. “I mean, there’s always the potential.”
Um, so not the same dream then. “I wouldn’t tell them anything. In fact, the only person I would tell about the weird things that go on in your mind is your therapist.”
Marcus laughs, but there’s something odd about it.
I collect two cans and start to leave but Marcus stops me again. “So you don’t think joint dreams are a thing?”
“Joint dreams?” I echo.
He looks at me like he’s genuinely asking. “When two people have the same dream or areinthe same dream. Together.”
