The Perfect First (Fulton U, #1)(40)

“Do you want to do the eggs? I’ll do the bacon.”

“Eggs—on it.” I saluted and opened the twenty-four pack.

Nix came in behind me and turned on the coffee machine. He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and shoved it under the outflow.

“Where’d you disappear to last night?” Berk took another bite of his bread.

“I met up with a friend.”

“A friend who needed help with a dick delivery.”

A laugh shot out of my mouth before I could stop it. Everyone else around me froze, and the only sound was the sizzling bacon in the pan in front of Reece.

I shrugged. “What? It was funny.” Cracking an egg into a bowl, I kept my head down.

“As if I needed another reason to like you, Seph.” Berk laughed behind me. “She likes dirty jokes too. Tell me, Seph, why hasn’t some lucky guy snapped you up yet?”

“Probably because they know they could never match up to the ridiculous amount of research she’s done into every possibility and eventuality in life. She’s a walking encyclopedia of human knowledge.”

Was that what I’d done? Had I freaked everyone out, freaked Reece out because he was afraid to not measure up?

I cracked all the eggs and stirred them with a fork. Turning on the burner, I added more butter into the pan and waited for it to melt.

The guys banged and bumped around the kitchen in their hangover stupors. Mixing the eggs gently, I took them on and off the heat to make sure they didn’t cook too quickly and burn. I was shoulder to shoulder with Reece, but he felt miles away. I once again felt like an observer from space trying to fit in.

“You’re quiet. What’s up?” He ducked his head, trying to catch my eye.

“My stomach isn’t feeling too great. I think scrambled eggs was a bad choice.” The once lumpy mix had turned fluffy and wasn’t actually turning my stomach, but it was a better excuse than ‘I’m worried I might have freaked you out too much to ever try anything with me.’

He looked from me to the pot. “Let me take over. You grab the bacon. The salt will be good for you.”

Nodding, I moved over to the pan filled with popping, sizzling strips. I stole a piece from the paper towel-covered plate and closed my eyes the second it hit my taste buds. It was like music playing in my mouth.

“No fair, Seph’s stealing bacon.” Berk’s chair skidded on the kitchen floor.

“Are you five?” Nix leaned against the counter with his mug in one hand, reading a folded newspaper.

“What are you, fifty? Who reads the paper anymore?”

Nix’s head shot up. “There’s a lot of good information in here, the financial section and sports too. Better than zoning out in front of a screen.”

LJ’s head popped up from scrolling through his phone. “I feel personally attacked.”

Berk and Reece laughed. Reece stepped back from the stove and reached around me. His chest pressed against my back as he flipped open the cabinet beside me and pulled out some plates. My heart sped up and I held myself still so I didn’t attempt to rub up against him like a cat in heat. He smelled so good. Even after a night out and sleeping on my floor, he smelled like the outdoors and his own special aroma.





*



Two weeks of firsts later, we’d checked off dessert for dinner with cupcakes from a bakery near campus, Bread & Butter. I needed to find that place, like, yesterday. Chocolate, vanilla, red velvet. I’d taken a bite out of each one. So delicious. Breakfast for dinner was French toast at an all-night diner, and—best of all—dinner for breakfast, which was cold pepperoni pizza. Who knew it tasted so good? Our time together got more frequent. I didn’t think twice about calling or texting him.

He was my friend and so were the rest of the guys, and that scared me because all those feelings I’d tried to bury when it came to him kept bubbling up. What would happen when it ended? I’d lose not only him but the only other friends I had so far.

Reece grabbed hold of the back of my coat as I tugged open the door to the bar. The flickering neon light overhead looked like one straight out of the movies. He pulled me back and I slipped, slamming into his chest.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to go in here.”

“Does this look like a bar you want to hang out in?”

I craned my neck and looked at the sign. “Yeah.”

He smacked his hand against his forehead. “You’re not going in there. Why don’t we go back to The Vault?”

“We’ve already been there. How much of the city have you actually explored?”

His lips tightened as I dropped the words he’d laid on me before our disaster of a swim lesson back on him. Letting out the sigh of a thousand-year-old man, he shook his head. “Fine, but if I say we need to leave, we need to leave.”

“Yes, boss.” I saluted him and opened the door. The beer-and-booze mixture wafted out over us. I stepped inside. There were booths and tables, and the bar on the right had lots of bottles behind it. Unlike at The Vault, they weren’t lit up on glass shelves, and the music playing was older.

Reece kept a hand on the elbow of my coat like he might have to rush me out at any second, like he was my Secret Service detail.

There were pool tables along the back with dim lighting hanging over each green felt-covered surface. The bartender behind the bar turned to us with his hand inside a tall glass, running a towel over it.