Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(65)

Plus, the day is sunny, the drifts of snow extrawhite where they pile up away from the street, and the city’s decorations are so pretty.

Then I find the coffee shop Bob recommended to me a million years ago, that I told Evan to meet me at, called Shelby’s House of Sprouts and it reminds me of home—equal parts caffeine and things organic and aggressively wholesome.

I pile all my shopping bags around my feet and sit down with a soup-bowl-sized mug of coffee and a scone as big as my head and all I am missing is a view of Puget Sound and my mom scribbling lines of poetry into her notebook.

“You found it,” says the voice at my table and then I remember, suddenly, that it wasn’t Bob who recommended this place to me.

Evan recommended this place to me.

I look at him, and he’s holding a bag from the bookstore, and his coat, and a giant mug of coffee, and somehow, a plate with a sandwich.

I hadn’t even seen him come in—the only table free is blocked from the rest of the coffee shop by a divider of houseplants.

“Okay.” I sigh. “You can sit.”

He smiles. “That’s good,” he says. “Because you’re at my table.”

He sits, all arms and legs and that weird grace he has that has lately made me want to lick some part of him, any part of him.

“You’re not going to believe me, but I thought it was someone from my lab that had told me to check this place out.”

He arranged his sandwich plate and mug for what seemed like a long time before he looked up at me. “Actually, I do believe you.”

“Oh.” I watch him bite into a sandwich that looked like a Seattle shade garden between two pieces of bread. He watches me watch him while he chews. “Why do you believe me?”

“Why do I believe that you’d think that someplace you’d like to go was recommended to you by someone you trust?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Yeah. But do you like this place?”

“I do.”

“I thought you might. It seems like something you’d find back home in Seattle.”

Why is he so nice? It makes it difficult to get him to do things that aren’t so nice. With my mind, I mean.

“I’m sorry, I am. Thank you for meeting me here.”

“You’re not going to believe me,” he says, “but it doesn’t bother me at all that you’d forget I recommended this place. We’ve had a long way around and I’m really glad you called.” He takes a big bite of his sandwich.

I watch him chewing, trying to figure out if this is one of his Yoda-like moments, where he means to preoccupy me with one thing and then I end up having an epiphany about another.

“Also,” he says, “I feel like I should apologize to you.”

“What for? No, not at all. Actually—”

“No, I just should have made it more clear, yesterday, when I came to see you, that I was actually completely unable to be your OT, and—”

“Right, no, that’s what I’m trying to say. I f*cked that up. I can’t”—I look up at the pressed-tin ceiling, blushing, no doubt—“ask you to work with me, not like that, when the thing is that I like you. And you probably like me? But if not, it’s fine because—”

“Yes, it’s fine. That’s fine. That’s better than fine, Jenny.”

I look closely at him. He looks like he usually does, except he is wearing a zip-up hoodie, which is good, I can’t handle another one of his T-shirts, and his hair is possibly messier. He’s abandoned his lunch and brings his fist to his mouth while he looks back at me.

“The kissing thing?” I ask. “Is it—”

“More like, the wanting to do more than kissing thing. And yeah, that’s better than fine, too. More than it should have been.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“We haven’t actually kissed, though.” I make myself keep looking at him, even though the ohmyGod?ohmyGod?ohmyGod part of my brain is sort of dialed to eleventy billion.

He looks at me in this really intense kind of way and then leans over, close. Everything is live, humming.

“No. We haven’t. We haven’t really kissed. My mouth’s only just touched. Here, and here.” He touches my forehead and temple with his thumb.

Ngh.

“Did we,” I start, “take the other kind of kissing and stuff off the table? I mean, in a total sort of way?” My voice sounds really strange, and if he weren’t Evan, weren’t open, honest, didn’t look at me like that, like I’m just the best thing, it would be harder to look at him, meet his eyes.

“Kind of. I keep remembering what your hair smells like, though. I think I’m going to take it back.”

“Take what back?” The not kissing? Because, if he leans in a little more, I am in favor. I am in favor of that hair curling at his temple and that scruff on his neck. I am in favor of his lower lip, the chap on it from the cold air. “My apology. For wanting to do more than kiss you.”

“You didn’t actually apologize.” I lean closer, and feel myself drop, helpless, into that force field that electrifies around a person you’re going to kiss.

“Then I’m not going to.”

“What about later?” I meet his eyes then, dead-on. My heart chokes and slows down, pushing and pushing the blood to my skin.