Everything I Left Unsaid(37)

The next day I stepped into the arctic chill that was the Flowered Manor office.

“Hey, Kevin, the lawn mower died again.”

“What?” he cried, looking up from the game of solitaire he was playing on his computer. In the three weeks I’d been working here, it was really just about all I ever saw him do. “You’re kidding. This is like the third time this week.”

“Fourth.” And I’d been in here telling him about it every time, too. Kevin didn’t seem to have a whole lot of concern that I wasn’t going to be able to do the work he was paying me for. But I did. I had oceans of concern. “And I’ve done everything I know how to do to keep it running. Can you get someone to take a look at it? It’s in the field.”

“Can you ask Ben to have a look-see?” he asked, unable to make eye contact for very long. As though the solitaire had magnetic powers over his eyeballs.

“Sure,” I sighed and opened the door back, the hot air rushing into the small office.

“Oh, hey, I think there’s a package for you.”

“For me?”

“Well, it’s addressed to Layla. I figure that was you last time. Must be you again.”

The wild thump of my heart was ridiculous.

“Where is it?”

“There.” Kevin waved his hand behind him toward the far end of the counter, where a white box sat tied with a red ribbon.

For some reason just looking at that package made me blush. It looked like a secret. A delicious, dirty secret.

“I’m…it’s…Layla is my middle name.”

“Whatever,” he said, clicking on a Jack of Hearts. “Ask Ben to look at the mower.”

“I will.” Clutching the box to my chest and acting as nonchalant as I could, I raced back to my trailer to open it in private.

I set it down on the table and pulled one end of the red ribbon, until the bow came undone and the box opened a little. Like it took a deep breath. There was the name of a bakery in Asheville embossed in gold on the front. Looked fancy. My fancy scale was skewed to the low side, and so this was the fanciest thing I’d ever seen.

There was a note folded on top.

Call me.

That was all it said.

I lifted the lid to find a large piece of yellow cake with white icing covered in coconut. It was oozing sugary, creamy liquid.

Smiling, I went to grab my phone.

As I had become accustomed, he answered on the first ring.

“You got it?” he asked.

“It’s beautiful. What is it?”

“Tres leches cake.”

“Your favorite thing for breakfast,” I sighed, touched so much that he’d gone to this effort.

“I couldn’t let you settle for that shitty experience. Try it.”

“I will. I just wanted to thank you—”

“Try it while you’re talking to me, Layla.”

I swallowed and blinked. This…this seemed oddly intimate.

A chill raced over my skin, and my nipples were hard. My mouth was salivating. It was a full-body response to this gift. To its implications. I was…utterly charmed.

Delighted.

Turned on.

By cake.

By Dylan.

I smiled and pulled one of my three forks out of the drawer.

The first bite made me moan. “Oh my God,” I sighed. “That’s…that’s amazing.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s so moist. And sweet. Really sweet. It’s kind of carmelly somehow and coconutty.”

“That’s how my mom made it. With the coconut.”

I took another bite, the sweetness gathering in the back of my throat. “Oh, God…Dylan. It’s so good.”

He was breathing hard. I was breathing hard.

I felt the emptiness inside of me. The place in my body where he would go if he were here. I wondered, suddenly, what else he would do if he were here.

“The frosting is whipped cream.” I put some on my finger and sucked it off.

“Do that again,” he said. “That sound.”

“I’m sucking the whipped cream off my finger.”

He groaned a little, in the back of his throat.

“It’s perfect,” I whispered. “It’s so perfect.”

“Take another bite,” he said.

I did. Moaning, because I knew somehow that was really what he wanted to hear.

“No more,” I said.

“What?”

“I want to save it. Stretch it out.”

“You’re the kind of kid who had her Halloween candy until Easter, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t get to trick-or-treat much,” I said, putting the box of cake in the fridge. My body was humming, from the sweetness of the cake.

The sweetness of him.

“But usually, I’m…greedy. I like all my treats at once.” The door closed with a small snick. “You don’t have to do these things, you know.”

“What things?”

“These…nice things.”

“I like to do these nice things.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said, smiling a little. Enjoying playing coy. Because I knew how to thank him. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it too.