Page 12 of Catching Sparkles

I looked down to my nails, ready to be offended, but burst out laughing when I remembered. The polish was a different bright color on each finger and so sloppy, messily lapping over my cuticles and nail beds.

“I just left a birthday party teeming with eight-year-old girls. I delivered a princess cake and they begged me to stay so they could paint my nails and put bows and stuff in my hair.”

“I guess you’re kind of like a life size Barbie to them,” he acknowledged, but he was grinning like he thought it was cute.

“Something like that,” I agreed, wincing slightly. “Not to brag or anything, but half of them want to marry me when they grow up.”

He tilted his head in acknowledgment, eyebrows raised. “Someone’s going to have a disappointing 18th birthday.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’ll figure it out long before that point,” I responded wryly, but I could feel my mouth stretched into a stupid, cheesy grin.

I’d known Rhys for a long time, over half my life. But we’d never had talks like this. He’d never been flat out mean or dismissive of me, and he’d even gone out of his way to make sure the other jocks didn’t pick on Benji and I too much. But even in the deepest, most infatuated trenches of my crush on him, I’d never been under some delusion that he had any actual interest in me, or would derive any enjoyment from having a conversation with me.

Had my feelings for him festered dormant inside me for so long that I was now imagining things about him that weren’t there? If he’d been a different guy, any other guy, I’d have sworn he was going out of his way to talk with me. Maybe even… Flirt with me? A little. Or at least, he wasn’t discouraging me from flirting with him.

That’s what I would have thought if he’d been someone else. But he was straight, and he was going through a divorce. I had to remember that. Everything in his world was being flipped upside down and totally uprooted, and he was probably clutching at any familiarity, even if it was only subconsciously. I was familiar. And if chatting with me was helping him find even a sliver of comfort, then I’d stick around and let him talk about whatever he needed.

Even if I couldn’t exactly force my brain to stop hurting me by imagining these painful scenarios where he could actually ever be interested in me beyond a friendly acquaintance he could use as a sounding board.

When I glanced down into his basket for the first time since he’d walked up, I realized he only had one thing in there. A box of condoms. Ribbed. How very caring and mindful.

He immediately followed my line of sight and flicked his eyes down to them too, clearing his throat and immediately shifting his gaze up to the ceiling.

“I, uh… Well, I have kind of a date thing tonight,” he stammered out. “Well, no. Not really a date. I’m meeting some people. So I might need these. I don’t know. Maybe not.”

Blinking in slight confusion, I felt my eyebrows furrow together. “Well, safe sex is important,” I said. Why was his reaction to me seeing them so extreme? Sure, being caught buying condoms was a little awkward, but we were both adults.

“Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “The first thing I did when I found out about Hailey’s affair was get an STD test. Even though it’d been, like, over two years since we’d had sex at that point.”

My mouth dropped open slightly at his statement, but I quickly recovered and closed it, glad he was still looking away from me. The idea of having Rhys as a husband, of legally owning his body and heart and devotion, and not having my legs around his waist at every possible opportunity was like a complex math formula my obsessed little brain just couldn’t compute.

“I have absolutely no idea why I just told you that,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“I-it’s okay,” I assured him. “That sounds… really lonely. You deserve so much better. Seriously.”

He cleared his throat again, rubbing one of his defined biceps, his body language radiating nerves and discomfort.

“Yeah, well. I never fucking cheated. No matter how bad it got.”

The bitterness was so palpable, I could practically taste it as it poured off his tongue to infect the air between us. I wanted to crush his mouth to mine and suck it out of him along with all the rest of the pain and insecurities he had simmering in there.

“Of course you didn’t,” I said. “You’re not the kind of person that would be so careless with someone else’s feelings.”

He scoffed a little, before eyeing me with an expression I couldn’t exactly decode. He looked hesitant and… Shy?

Those were two traits I would have never thought to use in describing star quarterback and prom king Rhys Kensington. He was intense and dynamic and competitive. Like a living, breathing spark of energy. He wasn’t perfect. He had flaws, like how broody he could get when he was in a bad mood, or how heavy his intense pessimism could feel if left unchecked.

But to me, Rhys was bright and brilliant and warm, like a beam of sunshine I could see all the dust motes floating in. In theory, I knew what it would feel like to pass my hand through, but he would always be this ethereal, untouchable thing I could only admire with my eyes. I could never really capture him in my hands.

“You think too highly of me.”

“No,” I denied, my pulse stumbling when his gaze darkened. That deep, painful yearning I’d been feeling more and more since he’d come back bubbled up my throat for a moment before I ruthlessly swallowed it back down. It wasn’t fair for me to put that on him. It wasn’t his fault. “You just don’t know how other people see you. You’re still like a legend around here, you know.”

“Yeah, right,” he said flatly.

“I’m serious,” I insisted, and mostly because he looked so incredibly unhappy, I forced myself to inject a note of humor into my next statement to try and lighten the mood. “Men still envy you. Women still swoon at the thought of you. You left a trail of shattered hearts in your wake when you left for uni.”

The tiniest ghost of a smile flirted around the corner of his handsome, sculpted mouth and I nearly sighed in relief.